By CARDINAL JOHN J. O'CONNOR

It is impossible to forget the people, the little people, the ordinary people en route to Guadalupe. Bishops and cardinals in buses, we left our Mexico City hotel at 6:30 in a cold, black morning to inch our way to the shrine for a 10 a.m. Mass with our Holy Father. Thousands upon thousands of people crowding the road had left their homes more than 30 hours before, every inch of the way by foot. For millions more, the pilgrimage of faith has been far longer and often far more arduous, at times at risk of their lives.

I was a 6-year-old when Mexico's President Calles forced the Church to suspend religious functions; 7, when Father Miguel Pro was assassinated by a firing squad, crying: "Long live Christ the King." I remember every minute of the rally my father took me to in Philadelphia, the thrilling speeches of Catholic congressmen denouncing the persecutions, praying with the huge crowds of protesters. It is the kind of thing my father would take me to. I thought of him as the bus crawled through the people on the road, and I thought of Father Pro. He was a native of Guadalupe. A Jesuit priest, he carried out his secret apostolate in Guadalupe as a fugitive and outlaw. He offered Mass secretly in factories, prisons, slums. They caught him on Nov. 18, 1927, shot him Nov. 23, without trial.

Almost 400 years before the crack of the rifle fire that killed Father Pro, Indian peasant Juan Diego, a convert to the faith, heard the loveliest music on a hill named Tepeyac and was stunned by a blinding light. Then he had his first vision of the shining Lady of Guadalupe. It was Dec. 9, 1531, and Juan was on his way to Mass, as were we these four-and-a-half centuries later. The Lady spoke to Juan, telling him to inform the bishop to build a church in her honor, there on the very spot. She promised that all who suffered and came to the church to pray would be consoled.

I am not at all sure I would have been even as patient as was Bishop Juan de Zumárraga when Juan Diego came to him with such a story. Building a church is more difficult than it sounds. At least, however, he told Juan to ask the Lady for a sign, so he was a more open-minded man than this big city bishop might have been!

Most people know the sign Mary gave, in her own good-humored graciousness. It was on the 12th of December when Juan Diego found what should have been a cold, barren hill covered with roses. He gathered them in his tilma, his long, rough cloak, and took them to the bishop. There the roses tumbled out, but it was not they that dumbfounded the bishop; it was the image of Our Lady stained into the tilma. The bishop fell on his knees. The Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe was built. Millions of pilgrims have come from throughout the world. The document signed by Pope John Paul II in Mexico City on Jan. 22, 1999, concludes: "Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of America, pray for us!"

In much of the publicity over the recent papal visit to Mexico, the reason for the visit has been at best blurred. In 1997, with an eye to the holy year, "the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000," our Holy Father called a Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Continent of America. Initially, some of us who participated from Canada, the United States, "Latin America" slipped into the term, "the Synod of the Americas." Our Holy Father corrected us quickly, and the correction was key to the solidarity of our praying, our thinking, our reflecting together. We are one "America" all, in this one, vast, unified continent that holds the key to peace for the world.

It was at the conclusion of this Synod of America that participating bishops asked our Holy Father to present the resulting "postsynodal" document, his own apostolic exhortation, "The Church in America," specifically at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He agreed. Hence, our pilgrimage in January.

So often I am so lucky--or blessed. The Solemn Pontifical Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe had concluded moments before. By happenstance, I was removing my vestments in the sacristy when a key papal assistant entered, hustled me into a little makeshift elevator, then stepped aside, and I saw for the first time our Holy Father directly behind him. "You know the Archbishop of New York," the aide said kindly to our Holy Father, and gently helped the pope into the same tiny elevator. In no time, we were face-to-face with the tilma, raised up so that our Holy Father could see Our Lady's image at eye-level. He kissed the image, prayed the Angelus, we descended.

As I said, I am so often lucky, but even more often blessed.