Guillermo von der Schulenburg Prado, often referred to simply as Guillermo Schulenburg (June 12, 1916 – July 19, 2009), was the

abbot Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various Western religious traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not the head of a monastery. The ...

of the Basilica of Guadalupe in

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital city, capital and primate city, largest city of Mexico, and the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North Amer ...

from 1963 to 1996. He was appointed Abbot of the Basilica of Guadalupe, the second-most visited Catholic shrine in the world, by the Pope in 1963, after having been the rector of the principal diocesan seminar in Mexico, after having coordinated the construction of its new campus. As abbot, he planned and successfully coordinated the efforts to build the new modern temple housing the venerated image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, inaugurated in 1976. He founded the famous children's choir of the Basílica, the "Coloraditos", from whose ranks opera tenors of global caliber have risen. Most of his legacy however has been obscured due to a controversy in 1996: at the age of 80, he was forced to resign following an interview published in the

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

magazine ''Ixthus,'' in which he was quoted as saying that Juan Diego was "a symbol, not a reality," and that his canonization would be the "recognition of a cult. It is not recognition of the physical, real existence of a person."''Daily Catholic''
, December 7, 1999, accessed November 30, 2006

References

1916 births 2009 deaths Mexican people of German descent Mexican abbots Our Lady of Guadalupe Mexican Christian monks {{Mexico-reli-bio-stub