The Virgin Mary: Apparitions & Cults

Tepoztlán, Morelos, La Natividad de Nuestra Señora, nave Piedad, detail "Mary's widespread popularity among worshippers was almost inevitable: God was a king too infinitely high and awesome to be approached; the Holy Spirit was too abstract to be grasped by the human mind; and Christ, in spite of his infinite love and self-sacrifice, served too often as a judge and mediator to be considered wholly merciful. Mary, on the other hand, was the embodiment of unalloyed maternal tenderness, whose sufferings for her divine son had only rendered her more eagerly beneficent in her desire to aid and save the race for which he died." (Giffords, Gloria Fraser. Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone, and Light: The Churches of Northern New Spain, 1530-1821, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2007, p. 365)