Our Lady of Guadalupe unites all Americans, says Vatican official

Rome, Italy, Nov 2, 2011 / 16:04 pm

The under secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Guzman Carriquiry Lecour, recently stressed that Our Lady of Guadalupe brings together the people of North and South America.
 
Pointing to Blessed John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation, “Ecclesia in America,” Carriquiry noted that Our Lady of Guadalupe “is the patroness of America, and she makes us—Americans and Latin Americans—into a family of sons and daughters and brothers and sisters.”
 
“This is what we need to be promoting through the bonds and ties of communion between Catholics, between Churches, but also between lay Catholics in the United States and Latin America.”
 
In an interview with CNA, Carriquiry said the two peoples of North and South America are united by the Catholic faith. “The first Christian presence in the United States … passing through New Orleans to the great California, was Catholic,” he recalled.
 
In addition, he continued, the presence of Hispanics in the heart of the Church in American culture “will continue to grow and they will be half of all Catholics in the U.S. within 10 to 15 years.”
 
The Catholic faith will again unite these groups, Carriquiry argued. “It is important that these two peoples are not in opposition to one another, distracted with one another and isolated from one another, but rather that they have a much more intense relationship of mutual enrichment,” he said.
 
Carriquiry, a native of Montevideo, Uruguay, is the highest ranking layman in the Roman Curia. He is married to Lidice Maria Gomez Mango and has four children and three grandchildren. He was a close collaborator to Pope Benedict XVI, first at the Consilium dei Laicis and later at the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
 
He also participated as an advisor at the Latin American Bishops’ Meetings at Puebla in 1979, Santo Domingo in 1992 and Aparecida in 2007.