The Virgin of Guadalupe or Our Lady of Guadalupe is a Roman Catholic icon from Mexico, which represents a Marian apparition. The icon dates back in the 16th century and it represents Mexico’s most popular religious and cultural image.

The portrait of Guadalupe entered the city of New York on Friday morning to celebrate its feast day, December 12. This day remembers of her appearances to Saint Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City, from 9 through 12 December 1531. The apparition told Saint Juan Diego that she was the mother of Jesus and she wanted a church on the Tepeyac Hill. This hill had been the site of a former Aztec temple built in the honor of the goddess Tonantzin.

A procession of pilgrims carried the portrait across the George Washington Bridge, while others were carrying torches. The pilgrims left the Roman Catholic basilica in Mexico City and reached St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Friday morning. The Virgin of Guadalupe is an important symbol for the Mexican Catholics, as she’s also called the “Patroness of the Americas.”

One of the pilgrims, Jose Reyes, 45, a construction worker, had woken up in the dawn of Friday and together with members of his church in Bronx, the Immaculate Conception Church, accompanied the portrait of Virgin of Guadalupe into the city. After the 10 a.m. Mass at Fifth Avenue Cathedral, Reyes said that he had felt a great sense of pride inside him while carrying the big portrait.

Octavio Paz, the 1990 Literature Nobel Prize winner from Mexico, had written in 1974 that the Mexican people believe only in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the National Lottery, in spite of two centuries of “experiment and failure.”