“I am truly your compassionate Mother."
Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego

The friars of St. Seraphim and lay missionaries at the site of Casa Guadalupe.

When the Blessed Virgin Mary, under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, appeared to the native Aztec Juan Diego on Mount Tepeyac in Mexico City in 1531, she requested that a house be built where she could fulfill her two greatest desires: First, to make known “the true God, through whom all being has existence, the Creator of mankind, the Lord of all that surrounds and touches your lives, the Lord of heaven and earth;” a temple – as she said - where, “I will show Him, I will exalt Him and make Him manifest; where I will offer Him to the people with all my love, my compassionate gaze and my help.” And second, a place for her suffering children: “there I will listen to their weeping, to their sorrows in order to heal all their different pains and miseries and alleviate their needs and sufferings.”

One of the completed dormitory rooms at Casa Guadalupe.

These two desires of the heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary correspond exactly to the two apostolic outreaches of our Community, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. That’s why we are building a house for Our Lady of Guadalupe here in Comayagua: a temple where she can once again fulfill her desire to make known the true God through efforts of evangelization and a house where she can receive her children who are in pain and distress, to console them in their sorrow and alleviate their need.

In Casa Guadalupe we will continue and develop our service to the poor in our neighborhood. It will house facilities for bathing and washing clothes in sanitary water, classrooms and activity rooms, storage areas for food, clothing and other supplies, an ample kitchen and two dining rooms, and a combination basketball/volleyball court – mini-soccer field.

A second floor will be devoted to dormitories for young people on retreat, lay leaders from mountain villages receiving formation, and mission visitors on retreat.

A third section of the center will be dedicated to sheltering the poor, initially patients and their families who come from mountain villages and other remote areas seeking assistance during surgical and specialty missions at the St. Benedict Joseph Medical Center. Perhaps in the future it will become a longer term refuge for the abandoned poor, disabled and infirm.

The heart of this house will be a large open chapel where everyone who comes will be able to encounter Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.

Thanks to the efforts of construction supervisor Daniel Hinckley, lay missionary and civil engineer, the third section of Casa Guadalupe described above is now finished and ready to receive medical mission patients and other visitors. The other sections are well under way and construction is expected to be complete sometime in 2006.