‘The Virgin Everywhere’ project lines Mexico’s borders with images of Our Lady of Guadalupe

 

Puebla, Mexico, Jul 30, 2025 / 11:55 am (CNA).

The “The Virgin Everywhere” project, which seeks to bring images of Our Lady of Guadalupe to every corner of the world, has completed its latest challenge: covering the entire perimeter of Mexico.

The accomplishment was announced this month by Alejandro Olivares on TikTok. “Everything ends where it begins. We are in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua state, at St. Lawrence Church. We just finished Mass. We are giving thanks because we started here to place images of the Virgin on the border, and today we finished.”

“There are already images from Tijuana to Matamoros [west to east on the northern border],” he said. “We traveled many kilometers to place the Virgin everywhere, and today we finished. But we didn’t just finish the border, we finished the entire perimeter of this great country.”

“The Virgin Everywhere” began during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 in Monterrey, Nuevo León state on the border with the U.S. as a joint initiative between Olivares and a friend, Juan García Gaeta.

Five years later, “we’ve already reached 120 countries,” Olivares told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. Among other countries far from Mexico, he noted, “there’s already one in Zambia, one in New Zealand, more than three in Australia, five in Iceland, etc.”

Outside of Mexico, he estimates there are “about a thousand” images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, out of a total of 52,000 they’ve produced over the past five years. The rest are “within Mexico.” All the “The Virgin Everywhere” locations around the world can be seen on this map.

In this challenge alone, covering the perimeter of Mexico with images of the Virgin, they used around 1,700.

How to get one

Since its inception, the project’s mechanics have remained the same: someone purchases an image through the website www.lavirgenentodoslados.com and takes it home. With that money, the team finds a suitable wall on a street and with permission stencils a similar image.

To hold up outdoors, the images are imprinted on the chosen surface by spraying electrostatic paint over a metal stencil.

The durability of the images was put to the test by the recent wildfires in California. In June, the project shared a series of photos on Instagram “of a friend who lost his house in one of the California fires.”

“They told him the temperature reached over 1,200 degrees Celsius [about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit],” the post continues, adding: “Even so, an image of #lavirgenentodoslados was recovered, and a clay statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe that was on a shelf fell to the floor and the colors were changed.”

‘Many people cry with emotion’

Olivares shared how, over the years, he’s seen the impact of taking the image of the Virgin “everywhere.”

People’s reactions are often “one of surprise, of gratitude … we’ve had many people cry with emotion,” he said. “Yes, it’s been something that no one expects, and they say, ‘You know what, you made my day.’”

He also shared a very personal story about the impact that “The Virgin Everywhere” has left in a neighborhood called “Infonavit La Huasteca,” an area marked by violence. There, encouraged by Father Humberto Noel Lozano, then-pastor of the Christ the Worker Parish in the area, they managed to put images of the Blessed Virgin Mary on more than 50 walls.

When the priest was finally going to be transferred to another parish, Olivares said, “the municipality thanked him because they’re no longer killing people, there’s no more violence, and there are no more drugs.”

“So you say: Yes, it changes the social fabric; I mean, it works … it’s worth putting her everywhere, right?”

‘A miracle’

For Olivares, the growth of this project can be summed up as “a miracle.”

“When we started, only one friend was cutting out images of the Virgin, and little by little, people have joined without even looking for them. Right now, there are seven companies making images of the Virgin for free.”

“Free metal, free paint, free cutting, who does that? … Is it because I’m so good-looking? I don’t think so; it’s because of the Virgin,” he assured.

“The other day, a man told me: ‘Hey Alex, I want to give you metal, I love your project, I want to give you 20 tons of metal. Do you know how much 20 tons of metal is? That’s way over the top. That’s two overloaded trailers,” he noted.

And the reach of “The Virgin Everywhere” continues to surprise him. “The other day, a friend went to Machu Picchu [in Cusco, Peru] and said, ‘Hey, in a little lunch shop here in Machu Picchu, I found the ‘Virgin Everywhere.’ And I said, ‘Well, she’s everywhere.’”

Stories like these, from almost all over the planet, make Olivares see “the Virgin’s action clearly.”

The next challenge

With this challenge complete, there’s another one: the plan is to take the Virgin Mary “to all the inhabited islands of Mexico,” which total 85.

“We’ve only done seven,” he said, while figuring out how he’ll take the Virgin to several more islands on his upcoming trips. And it won’t end there. Afterward, he continued, “let’s see what the Virgin and the Holy Spirit say.” It could include completing Latin America, starting either in Guatemala (right below Mexico) going from north to south, or from Tierra del Fuego (the southern tip of South America) going from south to north.

For now, with the help of Opus Dei Tips, young Catholic women from Monterrey who are currently in Rome for the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, have traveled with images of “The Virgin Everywhere” that will be distributed throughout the Eternal City.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.