Our Lady of Guadalupe is the model for evangelization, especially in America, according to Carl Anderson, head of the Knights of Columbus. “She is the evangelist par excellence, in part because she enters the world...from the beatific vision, a state of supreme closeness to God,” he said Dec. 10 at the “Ecclesia in America” conference in Rome.

“Her example and continued motherhood of all peoples is a sure path today for the new evangelization.” The international congress, held Dec. 9-12, commemorates Pope John Paul II's post-synodal apostolic exhortation of the same name. It also focuses on the new evangelization.

“'Ecclesia in America' is the blueprint for the new evangelization,” he said. Its importance is that it treats the American continents as a unity, and gives not a political vision, but an ecclesial vision for the future.

“Not a vision of systems but a vision of humanity encountering Christ. In other words, it presents a vision of an 'inculturated' evangelization, in which our diversity is sanctified and purified in its communion in the Church by orienting us toward Christ and therefore to our brethren as well.”