An exact digital replica of the famed Our Lady of Guadalupe image is in the Archdiocese for the foreseeable future thanks to the passion and the national ministry of an Edmonton woman.
Christine Foisy-Erickson founded the Mi Casa ministry to lead people to Christ through Our Lady of Guadalupe. Since the early 2000s, Christine has been entrusted by the Bishop of Guadalupe with an exact replica of the Our Lady of Guadalupe image, as a “gift to the Canadian people.”
After years of traveling across Canada, the image of Our Lady has been entrusted to Archbishop Richard Smith since May. It comes at a time when the Archdiocese of Edmonton prepares for the Sept. 14 launch of new pastoral priorities that will guide the faithful over the next three years.
By her life and witness, Mary is the patroness of the pastoral priorities focused on Eucharistic worship, forming confident witnesses to the Gospel and service to marriage and families.
“We hope that not only our Archbishop, but many other bishops will get involved so [Our Lady] can become even more present to the Canadian people,” said Christine, a parishioner at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Edmonton.
“Mary, as Our Lady of Guadalupe,” said Christine, “invited the common man and woman to become her ambassadors in spreading the Good News. . . confident witnesses are born and formed at the ‘School of Mary.”
“Our Lady was the first missionary disciple, going in a ‘Eucharistic procession’ to see her cousin Elizabeth, to bring Jesus into that household.”
Archbishop Smith hopes to see Our Lady of Guadalupe continue shorter travels to parish communities across the Archdiocese, in particular during Deanery Days – an open house for parishes in a regional area of the Archdiocese.
“At the heart of the pastoral priorities is evangelization,” Archbishop Smith said. “Our Blessed Mother, particularly under this title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, was designated by John Paul II as the Star of the New Evangelization.
“So we who still remain, and will remain for quite some time, in the New Evangelization, want her help, want her protection and want her guidance. We are placing our lives under her protection.”
Archbishop Smith said that Our Lady is essential to sharing the Gospel message in a modern society that is hostile towards Jesus, noting the words of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Pope Benedict XVI.
“It has always been the Mother who reached people in a missionary situation and made Christ accessible to them. That is especially true of Latin America,” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his 2002 book, God and the World.
“In Mexico, at first absolutely nothing could be done about missionary work-until the occurrence of that phenomenon at Guadalupe, and then the Son was suddenly near by way of his Mother.”
Christine Foisy-Erickson has devoted years of her life to bringing people to Jesus through his Mother Mary. She has a particular love for Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared to St. Juan Diego outside of Mexico City in 1531. It is the first Indigenous apparition of Mary and led to the conversion of millions of Aztec people.
That devotion comes as a result of Christine’s personal story.
“When I was a young mom, [I reached a point] where I was feeling exhausted and depleted and overwhelmed. And I wasn’t coping that well,” she said.
Christine’s mother sent her on a weeklong pilgrimage to Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a revered site of Marian apparitions since 1981. That pilgrimage changed Christine’s life. “It was a week of intense joy. Just incredible, intense joy.”
Christine was inspired to lead another pilgrimage to Medjugorje, only a few months later. With the help of Fr. Ray Guimond, a priest in the Edmonton Archdiocese at the time. This second pilgrimage deepened Christine’ devotion to Our Lady and impressed upon her the profound union between Christ and his mother.
“I was sitting on the stairs of St. James Church [in Medjugorje] and what rose in my heart was a sense of ‘I am with you.’ I’ve come to understand that that was both Christ and Our Lady. It was [in unison]; their two hearts joined to mine.”
Six months after her arrival back in Edmonton, Christine was asked to lead a pilgrimage to the Mexico City site where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to St. Juan Diego in 1531.
Initially reluctant due to her inexperience, Christine agreed. Few people registered to start, but she had faith.
“I showed up at this travel agency. And I told this man who I’d been working with that he would need help registering the dozens of pilgrims that would be coming in on the deadline to register. And he gave me this little funny look. But by the end of the day, we had 40 people. We went from three to 40 people.”
Christine’s pilgrimage group arrived in Mexico City in February 1999, just weeks after Pope John Paul II had been in Mexico for his fourth pastoral visit to the country and the publication of his apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America, calling on the North American Church to engage in the New Evangelization. Pope John Paul II expressed in Ecclesia in America that Our Lady of Guadalupe was key to spiritual renewal of the Americas and that she is the “Patroness of all America and Star of the first and new evangelization.”
“That’s how we spent our evenings on this pilgrimage. We gathered together and we studied this document and we realized there were several sub sections of that document that dealt specifically with Our Lady of Guadalupe and what I would call Pope John Paull II’s ‘mandate’ for Our Lady to be the way by which the Gospel was to spread all across the Americas.”
Christine founded a ministry inspired by her newfound devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. “Mi Casa,” refers to the Spanish phrase “My house is your house.”
“Jesus has asked us to take Mary into our homes, which [means] we must take him into the home of our hearts.”
The ministry began by sending reproduced images of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Canada’s Arctic and the North through the Diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith and Diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay.
As the work of Mi Casa grew, pilgrims returned to their parishes and shared their experiences of becoming close to our Blessed Mother in Mexico. Since 1999, Christine has led over 400 pilgrims on approximately 12 pilgrimage trips to Mexico City.
In 2001, inspired by the work that Christine and Mi Casa were doing to share Our Lady of Guadalupe across Canada, Monsignor Diego Ponce gave Christine an exact digital laser replica of the Our Lady of Guadalupe image that was reproduced directly from Juan Diego’s tilma, where the image of Our Lady miraculously appeared in 1531 and is preserved to this day.
Monsignor Diego Ponce was the Archbishop of Mexico City and the rector of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe stands at the foot of the Hill of Tepeyac, where Our Lady originally appeared to Juan Diego.
“The Archbishop gave this image as a gift to the Canadian people,” Christine said. “So Mary started traveling.”
Through word of mouth, this replica of the original Our Lady of Guadalupe image began being shipped to Catholic communities across Canada. Christine and her Sherwood Park friends, Lucie Tettemente and Lucie’s husband, Joseph Maksymiuk, managed the bookings.
“A request would come in and we would send Mary to Purolator and she would be shipped off. So she’s traveled across Canada, a number of times,” Christine said. “She’s been in homes. She’s been in hospitals. She’s been in nursing homes. She’s been on canoes. She’s been in airplanes. This was [all done] through a network of lay people across Canada.”
At one point, the image of Our Lady was in the care of Graydon Nicholas, the former lieutenant governor of New Brunswick who, 2013, described being “Our Lady’s chauffeur” through the Maritimes, Ontario and Quebec.
An estimated 15,000 people, on the East coast of Canada and area alone, have had “the grace-filled experience of the Missionary Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe” between 2006-2013, Nicholas wrote in a reflection.
“She has been quietly present where abortions have taken place, next door to a Catholic family center. She has visited children in parishes and private Catholic schools within the Diocese of Saint John. She has visited [religious sisters] of many congregations in NB and PEI. She has been present to bring comfort to the aboriginal survivors of the terrible Residential School experience, contributing to their healing journeys.”
Nicholas is a member of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Circle, a coalition of Indigenous people, bishops, clergy, and lay people fostering closer relationships with each other,
After years of traveling across Canada, it was time for change this year.
“The time has come for the image to go into the care of our bishop,” Christine said .”She was given as a gift to the Canadian people and we as lay people feel that we have done all that we can do.”
Christine went on to share how Our Lady is especially close to any mothers who experience loneliness or isolation.
“When Jesus said, ‘Behold, your mother,’ in the Gospels, he meant it. I’ve experienced that for sure in my life, that the only way that I’ve been able to navigate real serious challenges is through staying close to the Blessed Mother,” Christine said,
“After my trips to Medjugorje, and then for subsequent years, I took a picture of the Blessed Mother and, for instance, I would put her in my laundry room. And that morning, when I would wake up, I’d say to the Blessed Mother ‘ today, you and I can do laundry. And if that’s all the energy that I have, to get this laundry done, then so be it. And so I went down and Mary and I would do laundry together.”
“I think in our cities it is isolating and in our Canadian winters, mums get really isolated at home, raising these young children. And so I think we have to become like Mary and Elizabeth, we have to make an effort to connect. A lifeline for me was returning back to the Rosary, and the second joyful mystery where Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth.”
Christine sees the Rosary as an essential part of how the faithful can pray for the renewal of the world and the continued renewal of the Archdiocese of Edmonton.
“You know, when we pray the Rosary we pray those three Hail Marys at the beginning and we pray for an increase of faith, hope and charity. I have come to understand that actually what’s happening there is it’s her faith, her hope and her charity that is being transplanted from Mary’s heart into ours. And it’s profound; like a mother nurturing her child, said Christine.
“As Father Ray [Guimond] always used to say, we cling to Mary so we can remain faithful to Christ. If you think you don’t have the capacity to fall away, or to betray him, you’re wrong. We all have the capacity to betray the Lord. And so we cling to her. She keeps us attached to Jesus. That is the Marian way.”
Jenny Connelly – Archdiocese of Edmonton
See here for more about the incoming pastoral priorities from the Archdiocese of Edmonton.