1961-1963 SAN SEBASTIÁN DE GARABANDAL
[Conchita began writing her diary in
1962. She finished it in the second half
of the year 1963. It includes only a
part of the history of the apparitions, that which happened from María Concepción González, 13 years old. In this book I am
going to tell about my apparitions and my daily life. The most
important event of my life [It is
necessary to understand what she means to say:
the most important event of her life until June of 1961. It is clear that the future events like the
apparition of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel or the locutions with Our Lord, have greater
importance for the four girls, especially for Conchita, than the Angel’s visit]
was on June 18, 1961 in San Sebastián:
it happened in the following way: It was a
Sunday in the evening, and we were with all of the young girls playing in the
plaza. Suddenly,
Mari Cruz and I thought of going to pick apples, and we set off straight to the
place [this means to the place where they
found the apple tree of the first apparition] where they were,
without telling anyone that we were going to pick the apples. The girls, seeing the two of us were going away alone, asked us: ─ Where
are you going? And we answered: ─ Over there! And we
continued on our way, thinking about how we were going to manage to pick them. Once
there, we started to pick the apples and when we were having a good time, we
saw Loli, Jacinta and another little girl coming to see if they could find us. Seeing us picking the apples, Jacinta shouted out: ─ Hey,
Conchita, you are picking the apples! ─ Shut
up, I told her, the school teacher’s wife will hear you, and will tell my
mother [Aniceta
González, a widow, with four children: Serafín (who is now the head of the
family), Cetuco (nickname for Aniceto), who died in 1965, Miguel, and Conchita]. Then I hid among the potato plants
and Mari Cruz started to run through the field. Loli shouted out: ─ Mari
Cruz, stop running. We see you. We will tell this to the owner. Then Mari Cruz returned and we left our hiding place so that we could
all be together. While
we were talking someone called the little girl who had come with Jacinta and
Loli, and she left. The four of us remained
alone; and giving it more thought, the four of us returned to pick apples. While we
were having a good time, we heard the voice of the school teacher, who, on
seeing the branches moving so much, thought it was the sheep, and said to his
wife Concesa: ─ Go
to the garden, the sheep are wandering near the apple tree! Hearing this, we burst out laughing. When we had filled our pockets, we hurried off
to eat the apples more at peace in the path, that is in the calleja. [This is the
rocky road that goes from the village to a grove of pine trees.]
When we were
enjoying ourselves eating the apples, we heard a loud noise like thunder [It is
interesting to recall that in Fátima, a little before the first apparition of
the Angel of Peace, the shepherd children heard a noise like thunder]. And we all shouted out: ─ It
seems to be thundering! This happened at When we had finished eating the
apples I said: ─ Oh,
what a shame! Now that we’ve picked the
apples, which didn’t belong to us, the Devil will be pleased and the poor
Guardian Angel will be unhappy. Then we began to gather stones and threw them with all our strength to
the left side, where the Devil is said to be. When
we got tired of throwing stones, and were more content, we began to play
marbles with the stones. Suddenly a very beautiful figure appeared
to me, shining brilliantly without hurting my eyes. The other girls—Jacinta, Loli, and Mari Cruz—on
seeing me in that state, thought I was having an attack, since I was saying
with my hands joined together: “Oh!... Oh!...
Oh!” As they were going to call my
mother, they found themselves in the same state as I was and they shouted together: “Oh, an Angel!” Then there was a short silence among the
four of us... and he suddenly disappeared.
And, returning to normal, and very frightened, we ran toward the
Church—on the way passing the dance that was going on in the village. Then a girl named Pili González, said to us: ─ How
white and frightened you are! Where are
you comimg from? Very ashamed in confessing the truth, we said to her: ─ From
picking apples! [The
Vision seems to have accentuated the intense remorse and repentence the girls
felt.]. And then she said: ─ For
that… you are coming like this? We all answered together: ─ It is because we’ve seen an Angel! She said: ─ Is
that true...? We: Yes, yes... and we continued on our way
in the direction of the Church. The girl
told this to the others. Once at the door of the Church, and thinking it over better, we went
behind it to cry. We met some young
girls who were playing and when they saw us crying they asked us: ─ Why
are you crying? We told them: ─ BECAUSE
WE HAVE SEEN AN ANGEL. They ran off to tell the schoolmistress. When we had finished crying, we
returned to the Church door and went inside. At the same time, the
schoolmistress arrived very frightened and said to us at once: ─ My
children, have you really seen an Angel? ─ Yes,
señora! ─ Could
this be your imagination? ─ No,
señora, no! We have really seen an
Angel. Then the
schoolmistress told us: ─ Let
us go pray a Station to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in thanksgiving [The
“station” is a Spanish practice of devotion to the Eucharist. It begins by the praying of six Our Fathers,
six Hail Marys, and six Glory Be’s, a Creed, and generally a Salve When we had finished saying the Station we
went to our homes. It was already nine
at night and my mother had told me to come home during the day. And on that day it was dark when I arrived. When I got home, my
mother said to me: ─ Didn’t
I tell you to come home before dark? Very frightened because of two things—for
having seen the figure so beautiful, and for coming home late—I didn’t dare to
come into the kitchen. And I leaned
against the wall, very sad. And I said
to my mother: ─ I
have seen an Angel. She responded to me: ─ On top of coming home late, you come saying
these things! And I answered again: ─But it’s true that I have seen an Angel.
She responded the same thing, but she was already more doubtful that I
had seen the Angel. This
was at The 19th
arrives.
When we got up, the people had
begun to talk: ─ Those
four girls saw something, since they came down with such expressions…! Others responded: ─ It
could have been one of those big birds, since it was dark! Others said: ─ Or
perhaps some little boy surprised them while they… Or they were dreaming…! Well, everyone had his own idea about the
thing. It was a day in which they talked
about nothing else. They asked us to
describe what we had seen. And very
happy with the beautiful figure, we were glad to tell them, since there were
some people who doubted it was true. We
told how he was, how he was dressed, very brilliantly… Most of the people laughed at us; but it
was all the same to us because we knew it was true. We had these conversations at ten in the
morning, when we went to the school. When we arrived at the
school the schoolmistress asked us: ─ My
children, are you certain of the things you said yesterday? We answered at the
same time: ─ Yes,
Señora. We saw an Angel! The other school children surrounded us and
were amazed at what we were saying. We
acted the same as always, undisturbed. When we left school, each one went to her
own home. But this day Jacinta and Mari
Cruz went together and met the parish priest, Fr. Valentín Marichalar. [He is the pastor of the neighboring village, Cossío
and also in charge of San Sebastián de Garabandal. For some time in the past he knew the girls and their families well. His attitude toward the apparitions was at
the same time firm and questioning. It
might be said that he had a firm internal beleif in the supernaturalness of
these phenomena and at the same time he had a very prudent reserve and
exemplary discretion in front of the people who came to Garabandal.] Very alarmed, he said to them:
Look here, look here! Is it true that you saw an Angel? They answered together: Yes, Father, it’s true! ─ I
don’t know… I don’t know if you’re mistaken… he replied to them. Smiling, they said to
him: ─ No. Don’t
be afraid that we saw an Angel! Then
they went to their homes. The parish priest walked around to see
where he could find me. Finding me near
my home, he became very nervous and he said to me: ─ Conchita,
be honest—what did you see last night? I explained everything
to him... he listened very attentively and finally he said to me: ─ Well,
if you see the Angel tonight, ask him who he is and why he is coming; see what
he answers. I said that I would do what he said and the
Pastor left and went to Loli’s house to see if our stories agreed. I continued walking toward my house. Loli responded the same as the rest of us. And so he was more and more impressed because
the four of us agreed on everything. Finally he said: ─ Good,
we are going to wait two or three days to see what he will tell you and whether
you are going to continue to see this figure that you call an Angel. The Pastor added: ─ Then
I will go to the Bishop. [This was Doroteo Fernández, the former Auxiliary
Bishop of the diocese, who served in June of 1961 when the apparitions began
and was the Apostolic Administrator of the diocese of As always when we came home, we ate and
then went to the school again at two in the afternoon. In my house they were making a small
repair. I went to the house of the woman
from whom we buy the milk and she said to me: Is it true that you saw an Angel? Or is this just something the people are
saying? I answered: ─ It’s
certain that we saw an Angel!
She continued to question me: How did you see him? I explained it to her in such a way that
she listened very closely. And then
smiling, she said to me: ─ Since
I have a good opinion of you, I believe that you saw the Angel, but the
others: no! Then I said to her: ─ But
all four of us saw him—Loli, Jacinta, Mari Cruz, and I! She didn’t answer me at all. When I came home with the milk, I said to my
mother: ─ Mama,
I’m going to pray in the calleja! This
was heard by a stonemason named Pepe Díez,
[José Diez-Cantero, called Pepe Diez, is
the mason of the village and one of the principal witnesses of the first
apparitions, like the miracle of the visible Communion that Conchita received
on July 18, 1962] who was there working to repair our house, and
also by my brother, Aniceto González, who was helping him. Then Pepe said laughing: ─ Yes,
yes, let her go. Why not let her go
pray? My brother objected to this: ─ Conchita,
you shouldn’t go! The people will laugh
at you and us too. They will say that
you are going around saying that you are seeing an Angel. And that you are lying. But, of course, I insisted I go to my mother, and while this was
happening the other three girls came and called me. My mother was nervous and said: ─ Oh
my God, what kind of trouble have you all made? We said to her: ─ No kind! Then my mother, doubting it was true and
wanting to be left in peace, permitted me to go. We were very happy, and we went to this place
called the “Calleja.” (A little piece of Heaven) [“A little
piece of Heaven”: the expression is
underlined by Conchita in the original text of her diary. It seems like an allusion to the fact that
the majority of the first apparitions of the Angel and the Virgin took place in
this site.] When the people saw us they asked: ─ Where
are you going? We responded: ─ To
pray in the Calleja! But the people laughed at us and said to us: [The
people: at the beginning, as Conchita
explained, only the neighbors in the village attended the ecstasies. Very soon, other people from neighboring
villages came, and then people from the whole province, and also people from
all over ─ Why
don’t you go to the Church to pray since that would be better? And we responded to them at the same time: ─ Because
the Angel appeared to us there yesterday, and we’re going to see if he’ll
appear to us again. They called this place the “Calleja” and
when we arrived there, we began to pray.
The people looked at us, but the young boys hid in or near the corn and
threw stones at us. We told them not to throw stones at us, but
they just laughed and continued throwing the stones. We were there praying the rosary and we
waited for awhile to see if the Angel was coming. The sky was very cloudy and it was very
windy. When the afternoon arrived, we went down to the Church, but in the road
we met the teacher who asked us: ─ Have
you gone to the Calleja today? ─ Yes,
we answered, but we were very sad because we had not seen the Angel. [The fact of
seeing or not seeing the Vision is independent of the girls’ desires. The apparition is the cause and the origin of
the mystical phenomena. This was
verified in Garabandal where the will of the seers was ineffective in changing
anything in the development of the happenings.] She added: ─ Do
you know why he hasn’t come? Surely it’s
because it’s so cloudy. It was When I arrived my mother asked me: ─ Did
you see the Angel? I said that we had not seen him today. Then she made me do my work as usual; we ate
dinner, then I went to bed at a ─ “DON’T BE TROUBLED, YOU
WILL SEE ME AGAIN.” [This sentence is
underlined in the original text.] As they told me the following day, the
other three girls heard this voice as well. I stayed worried after hearing this voice and I continued praying at
great length, until I fell asleep. All of this happened on June 19, 1961. The 20th of the same month came. We led our daily lives the same as we did
before. The
people continued making the same comments even though things had changed. They said that at best it was our
imagination. Since we had not seen
anything on June 19th, they thought that the Angel wouldn’t appear
to us again. But they didn’t know what
had happened to us during the night—what we hadn’t told anyone. On the afternoon of the 20th, the other three girls and I did our
chores and we went to school. When we
came back to our homes, we told our mothers that we were going to pray at the
Calleja. My
mother said I wasn’t allowed, that if I wanted to pray in the Calleja, then I
should go to the Church. My mother, and also the parents, brothers, and sisters of the other
girls, were worried. They had a very
great conflict, because even if they were inclined to believe the truth, they
also thought the opposite. When
I was telling my mother thi,s the three girls arrived at my house: Loli, Jacinta, and Mari Cruz, and they shouted: ─ “Please,
Señora, let Conchita go. Let her go!” ─ But
why do you want to go makes fools of yourselves? ─ We
said at the same time: ─ “We
aren’t going to make fools of ourselves!
We are going to pray, and to see if the Angel comes!” ─ No,
Conchita isn’t going. You can go if you
want, my mother exclaimed. They left,
but very slowly, until they could no longer be seen because of a wall in the
way. I remained, very sad. My mother changed her mind suddenly,
and with a loud voice called: ─ Loli,
tell the other girls to come here. Soon they arrived, and my mother said to
them: ─ “If
you do what I tell you, I’ll let Conchita go.” They were very happy and answered: ─ Yes,
we’ll do it! ─ You
three go alone now, as if you were going to play there, without saying anything
to anyone. When you arrive at the
Calleja, Conchita will go secretly so that no one will notice. They went
but they were a little afraid because they thought that my mother was joking,
so they went very slowly. I said to
them: ─ Go
and then I’ll come! After a little while my mother let me go,
and I went and found that they were upset because I was late. When we were all together, we
were very happy, and we arrived at the Calleja where we began to pray the
rosary. When we had finished, the Angel hadn’t
come. We decided to go to the
Church. And when we got up—we had been
kneeling—we saw a very brilliant light surrounding the four of us. We saw nothing else except the light. And we screamed with fear. Then the bright light
disappeared and we went to our houses because it was already nine thirty. We didn’t go to the Church because it was
already very late. We didn’t say
anything to anyone when we reached our houses. The priest from the village warned us that
if we saw something again we should tell him quickly, but this priest lives in
a village called Cossío, which is seven kilometers away from our village. Our parents would not give us permission to
go to Cossío alone after we told them that we wanted to speak to the
priest. On all of these
days, there was no one in the Calleja except the five of us: the Angel, Loli, Mari Cruz, Jacinta, and me. The 21st
arrived.
It has been an
ordinary day. The people already
believed a little more. In
the evening, after having done what we had to do, we asked permission from our
parents to go to the same place where the Angel had appeared to us. But while going to the Calleja, seeing that
the people did not believe, we told a woman named Clementina González that if
she wanted to come with us... But she
didn’t want to come alone since she had her doubts, and she called another
woman named Concesa. Noticing us going together, other people joined us also, and arriving
at the Calleja, we began to pray the rosary.
We finished it, and the Angel had not come. The people were laughing very much and said
to us: ─ Now say a “Station.” And so we
did, and on ending it the Angel appeared to us... It was a Friday [This seems
to be an error on Conchita’s part. In
reality, this happened on a Wednesday; the original text has an attachment,
which makes it evident that the girl had some doubt when she was writing the
day]. We asked him who he was and why he
had come. But he didn’t answer us. When the
apparition ended, the people were very nervous and exclaimed: ─ Oh,
my children, when you see the Angel again, tell him to forgive us for not
believing! And some people
began to cry. A woman named Clementina
wanted to call all of the people in the village, and she went to do so when the
Angel disappeared.
A
woman said to my aunt, who was among the people: ─ Did
you see the Angel? My aunt answered: ─ No,
I haven’t seen him, but if you don’t believe in this, you don’t believe in
God. The other women asked this so that
my aunt wouldn’t be so influenced, but she continued believing. All those who saw us went down to the
village telling everyone about it, since they were very impressed. No one in the village had ever seen or heard
anything like it. The 22nd arrived.
We continued the same as always
and the priest from Cossío as soon as he found out what the people had seen and heard, said that
he was going to tell everything to the Bishop, but the people said that he
should see it first and that he should stay in the village. On this same day at Upon seeing us in “ecstasy,” the people
began to yell and to say that it was true.
A professor was there also; his name is Marín. Some people in the village said
that he had prepared us to do this and they wanted to put him in jail. The people repeated this to the
guards [Almost
from the beginning numerous members of the Civil Guard protected the girls from
the strangers that came to the village to see the girls in ecstasy]
who had come at the beginning. When the apparition ended, the professor brought us to the home of a
man in the village in order to question us about how we had seen the Angel. The 23rd arrived. We went to the same
place to pray the rosary, but there were many people there. Those from the village had told the
people in Cossío, Puentenansa, Rozadio, etc. At eight forty-five the Angel came and the people from the village were
as impressed as those who had come from neighboring villages. When the apparition
ended, all of the people kissed us. That
day the guards did not want the professor to take us for questioning. We went with the parish priest to the church
sacristy, where he questioned us by calling us in one by one to see if we
agreed. We told him how we had seen the Angel. Then when he finished questioning
us, we all left together, and he said to the people: ─ Up
to now, everything seems to be coming from God, and all four girls have the
same story. When the people heard this, they
were very happy that it had come from God. The 24th arrived.
It was Saturday and people came to the village from many different places. We did the same as on the other days, that
is, we prayed the rosary in the Calleja.
All of the people from the village accompanied us. When we arrived at the place, the visitors were already there; they had
come early to get a spot near the front where they could see well. On this day, we
didn’t have time to begin the rosary. As
soon as we arrived at the place where the Angel had appeared to us, we saw
him. We had never heard
him talk. On this day, we saw a
sign underneath him that said: IT IS
NECESSARY TO... and on the second line there were Roman Numerals. [In a letter
written by Conchita to Mr. William A. Nolan from We asked him what this meant, and he
smiled… but he didn’t tell us. When
the apparition was over, the young men of the village took us away in a cart so
that the people would not crush us or kiss us.
They took us to the church, and Fr. Valentín, the parish priest, took us
into the sacristy one by one so that we would tell him what had happened. We said that we had seen a sign and he asked us what it said, or what
letters it had, but we told him that we had not concentrated on the sign. The priest was
impatient to go to the Bishop to tell him everything. Then he asked us to go to the professor and
tell him to write it down if we remembered any of the letters. Sunday, the
25th, arrived. Each day more people
come from different places, and the people are still enthusiastic. Among all of these
people there were five priests, but they did not believe. A teacher from Cossío also came. We arrived
at the Calleja and we began to pray the rosary.
The people from the village had made a square with stakes and rope so
that the people could not approach us. Only the priests, our parents, siblings, and the doctors could come
near us. On this Sunday, many
doctors came, and, as I already said, five priests. [At the
beginning of the apparitions no mention was made of a prohibition or restriction that impeded the
priests from coming to the village. On
one occasion, more than a dozen priests witnessed the ecstasy: this produced great happiness in the girls,
because they felt a special predilection towards priests. They were happy that priests and religious
believed in the reality of the apparitions.
(It is interesting to note that many times priests dressed in civilian
clothing were recognized by the girls as priests. We remember at least five cases like this;
some were really amazing)]. When the Angel came, the teacher from Cossío was there. That day, he didn’t believe and he said that
it was all a comedy. He said to my brother—“your sister does this very well.” But
my brother did not respond at all. That day, while I was seeing the Angel, our
family doctor grabbed me, lifted me up, and let me fall from a height of about
a meter. And on hitting the ground, my
knees made a sound as if they were broken.
[We heard this from an reliable witness
who conversed with the doctor. He
alluded to Conchita with interesting exactness regarding this fall. Conchita said that “she didn’t notice.” This explains that the actual height of the
fall was overestimated by excited witnesses.
According to the doctor, it was not more than 75 cms. It is also true that they didn’t let her fall
voluntarily, but she fell because she suddenly weighed more. The phenomenon of increased weight, which is
related to levitation, is known in the history of the mystics. An increase of weight happened frequently
during the ecstasies at Garabandal.] My
brother wanted to stop him from doing this, but a force inside him kept him
back. I was unaware of all of this but
the people told me about it later. When
the apparition was over, the people were very excited and they all wanted to
see my knees. And I didn’t know why. Then it was about eight thirty at
night. We went to the
Church to pray to Jesus in the Sacrament.
[As seen through the messages, the
teachings and the history of Garabandal is very connected to the
Eucharist. These apparitions contain an
invitation from the Virgin to the worship and devotion to Jesus in the
Sacrament.] Then they brought
us to the Sacristy where we met many doctors and priests. They asked us a lot of
questions. Some of the priests
didn’t believe; some did. After awhile,
we looked at our legs, and they were full of punctures and marks from those who
had scratched us. But they didn’t hurt
us, although the marks were there. Monday, the 26th, arrived. We
didn’t have an apparition that day, but we did have apparitions on Tuesday and
Wednesday. We didn’t have apparitions on
Thursday or Friday even though many people came. Saturday,
July 1st, many people came, including many doctors; they came up to the village
in cars. We had an apparition very early
that day, at That day the Angel told us that the Virgin
Mary would come on Sunday, under the title Our Lady of Mt. Carmel [The
apparition of the Virgin of Mt. Carmel to St. Simon Stock took place, according
to history, on July 16, 1251. St. Simon
Stock was part of the Carmelite Order.
The Virgin told him that there would be a special protection over those
who wore the scapular or the Carmelite habit.
In 1726, Pope Benedict XIII extended the celebration of the feast of
this apparition to include the whole Church.] The Angel brought the sign again and we
didn’t know what it said. This day
happened just like the others. They
brought us into the Sacristy to question us, and we were accompanied by the young
people from the village [The young people from the village, especially their
relatives and brothers, were charged with defending the girls from the
indiscrete enthusiasm of the people.] until we reached the same place as on the
other days. The 28th
arrived, (24). [Conchita finished explaining to us what had happened
on Saturday, July 1st. Now the narration
jumps to the previous Wednesday. She
arrives at Tuesday, the 27th, to give us some supplementary explanations and
then she continues talking about the 28th a little more below.] We continued, very enthusiastic about what we had seen: the Angel with his sign, smiling. We
did everything the same as always. The
people who had seen us told those who had not seen and of course, more people
came. On Tuesday the 27th we did not have an
apparition, but many people came. In the
afternoon we went with the others to pray the rosary in the Calleja and we
prayed together with the people. When we
finished praying, we didn’t see anything, and we were very sad since we thought
that we would never again see anything.
The people were very disillusioned “but when God wants it a certain way,
it will be that way.” After praying the Rosary we went to the
Church to pray a Station to the Blessed Sacrament, and then we went to our
houses. The people from the village were
sad because they believed. On the other
hand, the strangers who had come and had not seen anything returned laughing
and they said: [It
is interesting to emphasize that Conchita does not seem to worry about the
public’s opinion. She says the same
thing whether the public’s opinion is favorable or not; in the objective
narration she speaks the pure truth, which she defends with an unalterable
firmness] It’s obvious! Since there are many of us and the people in
Garabandal are not used to this, they didn’t dare do these things in front of
us! The 28th
arrived.
We
were a little sad because we had not seen the Angel. We went as usual to the school. When we got out, the people in the village,
seeing us so sad, wept and kissed us, saying: ─ Pray
so that he will return! When
the evening came, we went to the Calleja and did as usual. The people prayed the rosary with more faith
than ever so that the Angel would appear to us.
And on finishing the litany, he appeared to us and came smiling more
than ever. We asked him, why have you
come? He smiled and did not answer
us. We began to see him around nine and
it ended at ten. It seemed to us a
minute or less, because we were so happy with him [During the
ecstasy, the time seems very short because of the intense happiness they
experience. Frequently, we have heard
them ask the Virgin after a long apparition:
“Oh, you’re going already?... Wait a minute more…”]. Thursday, the 29th arrived. We saw him, same as always, and we did
the same thing as always. Friday the 30th everything was the same. Saturday the 1st arrived.
That day many people came since
it was the Virgin’s day. Perhaps she
would appear to us. We went to the Calleja as always to pray the Rosary and the people
accompanied us. At the end of the Holy
Rosary, the Angel appeared to us, smiling, and said: ─ “I
come to announce to you a visit by the Virgin under the title of Our Lady of
Mt. Carmel, who will appear to you tomorrow, Sunday.” We were very happy and we said to him: ─ Let
her come right away! He smiled, and then we said to him: ─ What
does this sign you brought mean? ─ The
Virgin will tell you about it. This day, he spoke to us about many
things. He told Jacinta, Loli, and Mari Cruz how
the first day they were going to call Conchita’s mother because they thought
she was having an attack [The angel commented to the girls about the events
that took place during the first apparition on June 18th]. They laughed... ─ Because
they were ─ I don’t know what that day. He was there two hours, but it felt
like two seconds to us. After he said to
us: ─ I
will come tomorrow with the Virgin. And
he left. How sad for us! The people were very happy and they asked us: ─ What
has he said to you? And we told them what he had said. The
people from other places believed and were very happy and wanted to tell those
who hadn’t seen. The Angel was dressed in a long, flowing
blue tunic without a belt. His wings are
somewhat long, very beautiful, and pink in color. His face was neither long nor round; his nose
was handsome; his eyes dark; and his face tan.
His hands were fine with short nails; his feet weren’t seen. [In this portrait, we can admire the coloring, the
precision and the rich literary shading that is shown through the simple style
in which this is written].
MONTH OF
JULY OF THE YEAR 1961 Sunday, the 2nd arrived. We went to Mass and to pray the
Rosary. The Rosary was at 3 in the
afternoon [This
refers to the rosary that is said in the It is five kilometers from When we came to the village, a large crowd was waiting. There were 10 or 11 priests, doctors, an
abbot, and many cars. Since
we were very far from the village, we decided to return. Some of the people from the village descended
on horses to find us. One person we knew
saw us and told us that if we wanted to go up they would bring us to the
village. We said yes, because my brothers had not
come. When we arrived at the village many
people and priests were waiting for us. It was 6 in the afternoon. We went to the Calleja to recite the rosary. And before we had arrived there, the Virgin
appeared to us with an Angel on each side. One
of these was St. Michael. [This is the first time that Conchita uses the name of
St. Michael in her diary] We didn’t recognize the other one. He was dressed like St. Michael. They appeared to be twins. At the side of the Angel on the right, at the same height as the
Virgin, we saw an eye of great size. It
appeared to be the Eye of God. That
day we talked much with the Virgin. And
she talked to us. We told her
everything: that we went to the field
every day, that we were tanned, that we had put the hay in stacks, etc… She laughed; we told her so many things!...
We said the Rosary looking at her, and she prayed with us to teach us
to pray well. [As Conchita explains, at the beginning
the Vision taught them how to pray the Rosary well. After that, the Vision only said the
Gloria] When we had finished
the Rosary she said that she was leaving. And
we told her to stay a little while, since she had been there only a very short
time. She laughed and told us that she
would return on Monday. When she left, it made us sad. Then
some people kissed us and asked us what she had said. Some of the people didn’t believe since we
had talked so much. How could the Virgin
talk and listen so much? But the
majority did believe because they said it was like the case of a mother who
hadn’t seen her daughter for a long time, who tells her everything. And how much more we who had never seen
her. Besides, she is our mother in
heaven.
They took
us to a sacristy and a priest named Fr. Francisco Odriozola [A priest
from the Diocese of That
is how Sunday, July 2nd ended. It was a
very happy day because we saw the Virgin for the first time. For we are all always with her, whenever we
want to be. The Virgin comes in a white robe, a blue
mantle [The
current manner of showing the Virgin of Monday the 3rd arrived.
We
were very happy to have seen Our Heavenly Mother. In the morning, the first thing we did on Monday July 3rd was go to
pray there at the cuadro, the four of us together. Then we went to our homes to do what our
parents ordered. And then we went to
school. At the class we met our school
mistress, Señora Serafina Gómez. She began crying and kissed us, saying: ─ How
lucky you are, etc... When
we left the classroom, everybody was talking about the same thing. All were very impressed and happy, and they
believed very much. Our parents felt the same way.
As for Loli’s family, her father Ceferino [Ceferino
Mazón, María Dolores’s (Loli’s) father was the head of the council in the
village when the apparitions began. He
owns a tavern. Julia, his wife, has
several children. The youngest,
Guadalupe, was born during one of Loli’s ecstasies. Loli entered the house saying that she
already knew about her sister because the Vision had told her. The majority of the apparitions took place
without the Child. Conchita was heard
saying during an ecstasy on December 9, 1962: “But how long it has been since
you’ve brought the Child, and he has not grown at all… he is the same as he
was… where has he been?... where has he been?... when the Child doesn’t come,
where does he go… is He in Heaven or in a crib, where does he go?”]
said: ─ There’s
never been anything like this! It was the same also with her mother Julia. Jacinta’s mother, María, believed very much
too, and her father Simón even more.
[Simón and María had several children, and one of these is Jacinta. The whole family has an excellent reputation
in the village.] If
we performed some practical joke, Jacinta’s father would say that the apostles
had done the same. And he would begin to
explain the things we did; to him it appeared that everything we did was good.
Mari Cruz’s father, Escolástico [Escolástico and Pilar González only have one
daughter. This is Mari Cruz],
did not go to Mass much, and he didn’t say anything about this. Her mother Pilar believed on some days and
did not believe on others. My
mother, Aniceta, really believed without doubting anything. How much we talked on that Sunday! My brothers really believed insofar as they saw, and not only did they
believe, but it also made them quite spiritual as it made many people. There were people who liked what happened on
that Sunday. And there were others who
were not impressed. In our daily life, we did what our
parents told us to do. In the afternoon we left the school at
five, as we had spent a very happy Sunday on July 2nd, and as we already had
such a desire to see the Virgin again, we went to the calleja and we began to
say the rosary. We were alone. And when we had finished and hadn’t seen her,
we said nothing at the time. We weren’t
surprised, nor were we sad, as she could still come later. Then, since she hadn’t come, we went to our
homes and did what we were told to do at home. When the hour was approximately the same as Sunday—the first day on
which we had seen the vision—our families, who were now believing a lot, said
to us: You should go to say the rosary in
the Cuadro. And we told them: ─ We
haven’t been called yet. We answered that it was like an interior voice, but that we didn’t hear
it with our ears, nor did we hear ourselves called by name. It is a JOY.
There
are three calls: the first is a very
little joy. The second is somewhat
greater. At the third we become very
excited and feel great happiness. And
then she comes. We would go outside after the second call. For if we would go after the first we would
have to wait a long time, since from the first to the second there is a long
wait. We told our families about the calls.
They were astounded since they had never seen or heard this! [As Conchita
says, there are three successive calls before an ecstasy. We will tell some properties of these calls. 1st—They serve to announce the coming of the Virgin,
but not the Angel. 2nd—The call does not have any other type of
communication but an announcement (“I will come”) and they produce an intense
desire and great happiness. 3rd—According to the girls the call is not a
word. It does not engage the
senses. It is like an interior
perception which is full of happiness. 4th—It doesn’t come from any external cause. It could come at any hour of the day or
night. 5th—When the ecstasies happen frequently, for example,
two or three times in the same afternoon or night, only the first ecstasy is
preceded by the calls. The Vision says
when saying goodbye: “within a little
while or half an hour… I will see you again.” 6th—From the first call to the second call, a large
amount of time generally passes, about an hour and a half or two hours. The time between the second call and the
third call is shorter. The third call
happens only instants before the Apparition begins. 7th—Jacinta has tried to translate her impression into
words: “The first call is as if she says
‘come’; the second is as if she says ‘run’; the third is as if she says ‘run,
run, run.’ But all of this is within,
without words.”] After our conversation with them, we had a
call and we told them about it. The four
of us were together. And there were many
people and some of them didn’t believe, which could have been because they had
never come. They spoke to the parish
priest, Fr. Valentín: ─ Why
not put two in Loli’s house and the other two in Conchita’s (my) house? And Fr. Valentín said: ─ That’s
a good idea. We’re going to put Loli and
Jacinta in Loli’s house and Conchita and Mari Cruz in Conchita’s house. He told our parents and siblings about
this. Our
parents agreed and they separated us that way to see if the four of us would
come together at the same time. And after a half hour we received the second call. And the four of us came together in the
“Cuadro” at the same time. And the
people were amazed and asked: ─ How
is it possible that everything is happening to them at the same time? As soon as we arrived at the Cuadro, the
Virgin appeared to us with the Child Jesus.
But the angels did not come. [Since the Virgin’s presence would be more intense,
the angel’s would be felt less. ‘He has
served to introduce the Virgin’s apparition.
Apart from this, he has given Communion to the girls several times,
including ─ The angel doesn’t kiss. ─ And why not? Said the stranger. Conchita
smiled and responded simple: ─ Only the Virgin kisses; the angel isn’t anyone.]. She came with a broad smile, and the Child
was smiling too. And the first thing
that we said was, where is St. Michael and the other Angel? And she smiled even
more. The people and our parents who were there
gave us articles so that we might present them to be kissed. And she kissed them all [Something that can be said about Garabandal is that
the Apparition kisses the religious objects so that they can be distributed to
all of the people. At the beginning it
was small stones. Then they were
religious objects like medals, rosaries, crucifixes, holy cards, and wedding
rings. One day some people gave one of
the girls a small, old pill case from the Virgin to kiss. She thought that the Virgin would not kiss it
because it was not a religious object.
But the Virgin kissed it, to the admiration and surprise of those
around. When the ecstasy ended the girl
said: “The Virgin told me that she
kissed this little box because Our Lord was inside of it. The owner of the box, very impressed, said
that it was true because the box had been used to carry Communion to the sick
during the war. A similar thing happened
with a powder case. Conchita assured the
people that the Virgin had said that “Jesus would work prodigies with these
objects, before and after the miracle, and that the people who carried these
objects with faith would have their purgatory in this life.” As a result, some cases have been reported of
healings obtained with these objects and with the invocation of the Virgin of And since we liked to make up games for the
Child Jesus, we picked up pebbles. And I
put them in my braids, Loli put them in her sleeves, and Jacinta gave them to
Him. But he didn’t take them; He only
smiled. Mari Cruz said to him: ─ If
you want me to give you caramels, they have brought me some, so if you come
with me, I’ll give them to you. But He didn’t say anything. She said many things to us. But
she didn’t allow us to tell these things.
[To carry the Child Jesus]. The
apparition began at ─ Stay with God and with me also; that made us
sad. And we said: ─ Goodbye,
goodbye. The last thing she said to us was: ─ Tomorrow you will see me again. Tuesday the 4th arrived.
On July 4th, we were the same
as usual, and the people of the village and our parents, brothers, and sisters
were believing more each day. The
strangers who came were very enthusiastic in telling other people to come. We continued leading our normal lives, doing
what our parents told us. Evening came on Tuesday, July 4th, the
third day of seeing the Virgin. Many
people had come, and priests. There was
a Rosary at six in the evening at the parish church and we had one call. The Church was full of people and on the main altar were about a dozen
priests and photographers taking pictures.
When the rosary was finished, we had two calls and we decided to run to
the cuadro. [There
are two different ways of running, and we can explain them like this: ─ The first, outside of the ecstasy, is when they move
quickly toward the Calleja because an internal force is carrying them toward
it. This is what Conchita is describing
to us in her diary at this point. ─ But sometimes the girls also move very quickly during
their ecstasies. These are called the
ecstatic marches. The first of these
ecstatic marches took place on August 8, 1961. Those who attended are in agreement that there was
nothing ordinary about this: during
their marches, which could become races, the girls seemed animated by a very
great interior force to such a degree that it was impossible to detain
them. Other times, we saw them advance
in a manner that seemed like a dance, corresponding to a melody that only they
heard. These marches happened at great velocity. Sometimes it seemed that their feet did not
touch the ground; people have also said that it seemed like they had wings on
their feet. Upon finishing, the girls
did not show any signs of fatigue, but those who had followed, although they
were stronger, were exhausted. On several occasions the four girls ran down the road
to the Pines on their knees while in ecstasy.] The people ran after us… Some did not have
time to get there. Mari Cruz and I were
a little higher up than Loli and Jacinta.
The two of us were inside the cuadro itself, and the other two not
inside. And the people said that for all that we
had run, we didn’t perspire. And they
were perspiring and arriving all exhausted.
And they were amazed. But it was
as though the Virgin carried us! [According to the girls’ explanations, during their
ecstatic marches they had the impression that they were still and in front of
the vision]. The Virgin was smiling as usual. And the first thing that she said to us was: ─ Do
you know the meaning of the writing that the angel carried beneath him? ─ No,
we don’t know. ─ She
said: ─ It
gives a Message that I am going to explain to you so that you can tell it to
the people on the 18th of October. And she told it to us. It is the following: “IT IS NECESSARY TO MAKE MANY SACRIFICES, DO MUCH PENANCE, TO VISIT THE BLESSED SACRAMENT, BUT BEFORE THAT WE HAVE TO BE VERY GOOD, AND IF WE DON’T DO THIS THEN A PUNISHMENT WILL COME. THE CUP IS ALREADY FILLING UP AND IF WE DON’T CHANGE THEN A VERY GREAT PUNISHMENT WILL COME UPON US.” [Conchita repeated this sometimes, as
her companions did: “Above all the
message.” She said more: “Believing in the apparitions serves for
nothing if we do not fulfill the message, or if we don’t do what The girl spoke of the message because in
1963 it was the moment in which she stopped writing this diary, not knowing
that on December 8, 1964 the Apparition would announce to her that she would
have an apparition on June 18, 1965 with the last message for the world. Later
we will reproduced a copy of this second message from Conchita’s hand. These messages give Garabandal a sense of a
universal and prophetic calling. Their
content is directed to all of humanity, although certain passages of the
message of This has been the voice of John the Baptist
calling in the desert. This has been the
call of all of the prophets. This has
also been the voice of Our Lord. This is
the voice of the Church as spoken by the Roman Pontiffs. The message of 1st—A call to penance. 2nd—A call to faith and the Eucharistic life. 3rd—A call for conversion of heart and theway of life for the love of God
and his Son. 4th—The conditional announcement of the
punishment.] This is what the Angel’s sign and the
Message that we will tell on October 18th mean.
Then, after she told us this, she left.
It began at The Virgin told us this so that we would do
it like this. But the Commission said
that there were many people, and it was raining, so we couldn’t give it
personally. They said it would be better
to proclaim the Message at 9 or
October The four of
us went up to the Pines at It is interesting to see that the girls scrupulously
obeyed the orders of the Commission. The
Vision had frequently repeated that the most important thing was to obey. They accepted simply to read the message at
the Pines]. When we arrived
at the Pines, Fr. Valentín was already there.
He read it for himself and afterward he gave it to us so that we could
read the Message to everyone. The four
of us read it together. The people
couldn’t hear us well, so a man read it also. After reading it, we went down to the village, and when we had reached
the place called the Cuadro, the Virgin appeared to us. She said to me: ─ Fr.
Ramón María Andreu has doubts now. This made me wonder very much [Conchita explains what is unclear. Fr. Ramón María Andreu, S.J. came to
Garabandal with his brother, Fr. Luís María, who was also a Jesuit, in the last
days of July in 1961. They had returned
several times during the summer of 1961.
As a result, on the date that Conchita’s narration was written, Fr.
Ramón María Andreu has been a witness and has sometimes admitted that many
extraordinary phenomena occur at Garabandal.
The doubts that this priest had that day made Conchita wonder. We have had
the opportunity to converse with Fr. Ramón María Andreu at length about what
Conchita tells here. We will annex a
conversation with this Priest. We give
his version over that which Conchita tells because with his there is the
guarantee of a secure analysis, serene in its judgment, clear and respective to
ecclesiastical authority.]
The Virgin told me where he had begun to doubt, what he had been
thinking and everything. August
Two months
before the message [As has already been noted now, Conchita prefers to
follow the chain of events rather than being strictly chronological in her
narration.], they took me to The night before going to On that day, my mother had told me to ask
the Virgin if she should let me go to It was We did not have time to get to the place mentioned, and she appeared to
us before we arrived. Since
we wanted so much to know who was the priest who had come in the white habit [When referring to priests, the girls question the
Apparition in an intense way; there is nothing that seems to concern them
more.], we asked the Virgin.
And the Virgin said nothing; she only smiled. But we insisted again, and after a long time
she said: ─ He
is a Dominican. Then I said: ─ A
Dominican? And she said: ─ Yes.
That same day, I asked the Virgin if she would let me go to That
day, the apparition lasted an hour, but it seemed like a minute to us. She told us herself that she had been there
an hour. They wanted to take me to The first day I was there, I had an apparition near a church named Our
Lady of Consolation [The ecstasy that Conchita refers to here took place
on This was confirmed by telephone from Cossío, by the
brigadeer of the Civil Guard; the three girls in the Pines knew what was
happening 90 kilometers away at the same moment.]. And there were many people there; so many
people were there that the armed police had to intervene. That day they made various tests on me. [Conchita
calls the multiple examinations that so many doctors and priests performed on
her “tests”; they did it to find a solution to the phenomena.] And when the apparition was finished, they
took me to an office [She is referring to the Sacristy in the Church of the
Consolation. Without a doubt Conchita
called it an office because she didn’t have any concept of a Sacristy other
than the small one in the Church in San Sebastián de Garabandal.]
for a priest and a medical doctor to question me. The priest was named Fr. Francisco Odriozola
and the doctor was Dr. Piñal. They said
to me: ─ How
do you do these things? Are you
crazy? How do you deceive people in this
way? And then he said me: ─ Straighten up.
Look at my nose. I am going to
hypnotize you! When he said to me, look at my nose,
I laughed. And he said to me: ─ Don’t
you laugh, this is not a laughing matter! And that day they didn’t do anything
more to me. The next day they took me to some doctors
to see if I was ill. They took me to one
whose name was Morales and several others.
And they all told me that I was well and that these apparitions were a
dream. And they said that I should stay
there in Santander to amuse myself, so that I could forget everything that had
happened to me, and not go back to have more apparitions. Then my mother, as she was so convinced that there was nothing wrong
with me because of everything that the doctors told her, left me and went to
Garabandal. Some
nieces and a sister of Fr. Odriozola came every day to pick me up at the house
in order to go to the beach and the fairs, which until then I had never seen.
Since I went to the beach every day, the
Virgin did not appear to me. At
the end of eight days, a man intervened to take me to the village and my mother
came to find me. This man was Mr. Emilio
del Valle Egocheaga. I will remember him
all my life. On the day that they took me back, I
went to Dr. Piñal to tell him that I was going.
He became very angry and said to me… well, many things… so that I would
not go. I told him that I was not seeing
the Virgin; but that the others were, it seemed to me. And that the Message seemed to me to be
true. Then he told me to
sign a statement. I signed
it. Afterwards, he told me that I should
go talk to Bishop Doroteo, and I did it.
They all acted very nice to me, after all of this. When I arrived at the village on returning
from The following day, when coming down from the pastures, my mother and I
met my aunt, Maximina González, who was very excited and told us: Do you know that the Virgin’s voice
has been heard on a tape recorder? Then I asked her: ─ What
did she say? My godmother answered: Loli and Jacinta told her: ─ Speak!...
Go, speak! Then we heard on the tape: ─ “No,
I won’t speak.”
The people ─ my godmother told us ─ began
to cry and were very emotional because they had heard the Virgin’s voice. [Conchita
says this took place on Some strangers had brought a tape recorder powered by
batteries. They showed Loli and Jacinta
how it worked. The two girls marveled at
it because they had never seen anything similar. During one of the ecstasies they could record some of
the words that Loli and Jacinta said.
Afterward, they played it so the girls could hear. Suddenly, the girls fell into ecstasy again. One of them still had the microphone in her
hand. Holding it toward the vision
during a moment of ecstasy, she said: ─ “A man has come with a thing that records. Why… why don’t you speak so that they can
hear you? It isn’t for us, it’s so that
they will believe. Speak, say something
so that they will believe…” When the ecstasy ended they played the recorder so
that the girls could hear what they had said to the Vision. When the moment arrived that the girls had
said the quoted words: “Speak, say
something so they will believe…” The
tape on the recorder ended. In that
moment, a voice came from the apparatus that can only be described as “sweet”
and it said: ─ No, I won’t speak. Loli and
Jacinta exclaimed at the same time: ─ Oh! It is the
Virgin’s voice! As you might suppose, the impression produced by the
witnesses was very great. One of them
said as he went back to Garabandal: ─ I will go to the grave with the conviction that I have
heard the Virgin’s voice! We say as a conclusion to this anecdote that when the
tape was played later, the Virgin’s voice was not heard. Whatever interpretation you want to make of
this, what is certain is that we have signed testimonies from 12
witnesses. Conchita makes reference to
this in her diary as heard from the lips of her Aunt Maximina.] In those days while I was in Then one day Loli and Jacinta had an apparition at the Pines. This was during the day. These two priests were there and when they
saw the girls in ecstasy, they believed.
When a short time had passed with the two girls in ecstasy, Fr. Ramón
María Andreu thought: ─ If
this is true, let one of the girls stop having the vision. Immediately, Loli’s vision left her. After a few minutes, the Virgin appeared to
her again. The priests admitted that this was a test [We have
spoken about this with Fr. Ramón María Andreu.
We will reproduce part of that dialogue here: Question: When
Conchita says in her diary that you considered this ecstasy that Loli and
Jacinta experienced a test, is that true? Father: Yes, it’s true. But all of this is a little longer that what
Conchita quotes in her diary. Question: Could
you give us some idea of your attitude and disposition on the day you went up
to Garabandal for the first time? Father: As you
might suppose, when I went up to Garabandal that day, I didn’t think that there
could be phenomena that had any value.
When they invited me to go up for the first time, I responded that I didn’t
have time to lose on apparitions.
Generally, I am very busy.
Finally, I accepted the invitation to go up to Garabandal, but it was
only to be polite to the friends who had invited me, and also because it would
be a day to rest after many days of continuous (spiritual) exercises that I had
preached before. Question: And did your brother, Fr. Luís María,
believe? Father: No, not
at all. There was no proof at that
moment. I don’t think any intelligent
person would believe without some proof. Question: Could you tell us exactly what Conchita
describes took place? Father: With
pleasure. It was, as I said, the first
time that I went up to Garabandal. We
had already seen some ecstasies that day before the one that Conchita
describes. In the late afternoon, we found ourselves in the
Pines. Loli and Jacinta were in
ecstasy. There were very few people near
the girls. I was very close to
them. I heard them speak with the Vision
in a low voice, as though trying to be quiet, which is characteristic of
ecstasies. I understood some of these
sentences. After eight or ten minutes, I thought it might be a
case of hypnotism. I realized that this
was a vulgar thought, with no originality, but it was like that. I looked around me to discover the author of
the hypnotism. I saw the faces of Fr.
Valentín, Ceferino, Julia, and others who were present… and I didn’t find the
solution there. All of them
wore expressions of admiring surprise.
The hypnotist wasn’t there... Then I had saw the two girls enter and leave the
ecstasy. They did it at the same
time. It gave the impression that they
only had one soul. At this moment I
thought that this did not have much sense.
But I thought like this: If one
of the girls returned to the normal state, and the other stayed in ecstasy… At this same
moment, Loli, who was closest to me, lifted her head slowly and looked at me,
smiing. I asked her: ─ You don’t see the Virgin? She responded
to me: ─ No, Sir. ─ And why not? I
insisted. ─ She has gone away. Jacinta was
still in ecstasy. I said to Loli: ─ Look at Jacinta. The girl looked at her and smiled when she saw that
Jacinta was in ecstasy. It was the first
time she had seen one of her companions in ecstasy while in the normal state
herself. I asked her: ─ And what does the Virgin tell you? She was about to respond when she fell into ecstasy
again. Her head was facing upwards. I heard the following dialogue between the
girls and the Vision. Jacinta: Loli, why did you leave? Loli: (Asking the Vision) Why did you leave me? There was a
pause. The two: (At the same time) Oh, that is why. Then it was so he would believe! When I heard
this I turned to my brother Fr. Luís María and I said to him: ─ Be careful what you think, because the thought
transmission is instantaneous. My brother
said to me: ─ Has something happened to you? ─ Yes, I responded… I will tell you later. Question: Father, after this moment, did you believe? Father:
Undoubtedly this caught my attention and made me think. I understood that it was not a comedy or
simulation, and I thought that it was a very interesting topic for more
profound study. We were standing before
phenomena that were as exciting for doctors as they were for theologians. From this point to believing, there was a step that
was not easy to make. One thing,
nevertheless, is certain: taken in
conjunction with all of the happenings I have seen, including the one that I
have emphasized, although I looked on it with a certain skepticism and reserve,
I can affirm again that it is not a comedy or simulation by the four
girls. Of course, saying this is almost
saying nothing. To establish a problem
is still not resolving it. The question
is always the same: What is the cause of
these phenomena that I have seen and witnessed?
And are those that I have spoken of just a small part? I have asked this question to many people,
and all of the times I have asked it, I have not had an answer.] One day, the four of us: Loli,
Jacinta, Mari Cruz, and I, had a vision.
Many people were there and among them were Fr. Luís María Andreu and a
seminarian, Andrés Pardo, and Fr. Royo Marín, a Dominican. It was already nighttime when the Virgin
appeared to us that day. At the end of
the rosary, the four of us were in ecstasy.
And we began to walk toward the
Pines. When we arrived there, Fr. Luís
María said: Miracle! Miracle! And he was
looking upwards. We saw him
ourselves. And in our ecstasies we have
never seen anyone except the Virgin. [In what we can call the “terminology of Garabandal”
we will say something about what we call “the fields of vision.” In their ecstasies the girls did not see anyone but
the Apparition and the other girls who were also experiencing the Apparition. If one girl was in ecstasy and the other was
not, the one in the ecstasy would not see the other. The same happens with relation to those who
witness the ecstasy. Nevertheless, an exception exists, the only one of
which we know. This exception took place
on What we have said about the “field of vision” can also
be applied to the girls’ sense of touch.
During the ecstasies, the anesthesia to the pain caused out of their
field of vision was complete. The girls
did not feel the scratches or the pinches that caused them. They didn’t feel burns either. Nevertheless, they were very sensitive to all
that happened within their field of vision.
As an example, I can cite a day on which the Virgin handed down her crown with “golden stars” for the girls,
and they passed it from one to another.
When one of the girls received the crown from another she said: ─ Oh! You
hurt me with one of the stars! On another occasion in which Loli and Jacinta were in
ecstasy, one of them took a stone from
the ground and scraped the other girl’s hand with it. That girl reacted by saying: Oh! You
have hurt me with the stone!] On
that occasion we saw Fr. Luís. And the Virgin told us that he was seeing her
and the Miracle. [The Great
Miracle that we alluded to when we referred to Fr. Luís María Andreu, saying
that he had seen it as it was announced by Conchita for the Vision. The obligations that accompany this
announcement are numerous. But before
this, we have to say something about the Warning. THE
WARNING: We quote part of a letter from
Conchita dated On January1st the
Virgin told me that there will be a
warning before the miracle so that the world will change. And this warning is like a punishment. It is very frightening, for the good and the
bad. It will bring the good closer to
God. It will warn the bad that the end
of the times comes. These are the
last warnings. It is very long, and I can’t explain it by
letter. It will come to
everyone. It is certain.
I don’t know the day or the date.” The whole world will feel it. It will come before the Miracle, but she
doesn’t know when. It will be evident
that it comes from God. The child does
not know how long it will last. Conchita
adds that in the Warning, we will see all we have done to offend God with our
sins and how our sins have contributed to the Passion of Our Lord. The Great Miracle:
After the Warning, the Miracle that is discussed in the diary will
come. I have the
details that Conchita gave. She knows the exact date. Her mother, Aniceta, also knows, and two
other persons in After the
miracle, if the world does not convert, then God will send the punishment.] The people said that we prayed a Creed at
the Pines (that was the first day the Virgin taught us to pray) and that
afterwards we went down to the village in the same state. When we arrived at the Church, the Virgin
left our view. As the Virgin had not
appeared to Mari Cruz for several days, she stayed in ecstasy with the Virgin. She went into the Church. And before the altar of the Virgin of the
Rosary and St. Michael the ─ Oh
how good that the Infant Jesus comes!
How long it has been since he has come!
Why do you wait so long to come to me and come to the other girls more
often? Various
people who were near her heard this, and Fr. Luís María Andreu and a seminarian,
and Fr. Royo Marín were among them. The following day the four of us went to
sweep the Church. While we were
sweeping, Jacinta’s mother came, very upset, and said to us: ─ Fr.
Luís María Andreu has died! We didn’t believe her since we had seen him the day before. We left the Church half-swept and went to
find out more. They said that when he
was about to die, his last words were: ─ Today
is the happiest day of my life! What a
wonderful Mother we have in Heaven! After that, he died. This happened on the road to Reinosa.
[The death of Fr. Luís María Andreu,
forms an important part of the events of Garabandal, as is evident by
Conchita’s diary. This priest was a
professor of theology on the faculty that the Society of Jesus maintained in
Oña, a He had come to Garabandal for the first time in the
last days of July. He went up
again on August 8, 1961. That day, Fr. Valentín gave him the keys to the Church
because he had to go away from the parish.
Fr. Luís said his last mass in Garabandal. In the afternoon on August 8th, the four
girls had an ecstasy that began in the Church.
After that, the girls left on an ecstatic march that lasted a long
time. They stopped at all of the places
where they had previously had apparitions and prayed there. Fr. Luís María followed the
entire ecstasy. The girls went up to the
Pines. Fr. Luís María went up to the Pines as well. When they had reached the Pines, Fr. Luís
María entered into their field of vision
and pronounced the word “miracle” four times. He pronounced these words with a slightly
subdued voice, like the tone the girls used in ecstasy. The girls have described how they saw
him: “He was on his knees, sweat running
down his face, and the Virgin looked at him as though to say: ‘you will be with
me very soon.’” Fr. Luís María had left a rosary with Loli so that the
Virgin would kiss it, but he lost it on the mountain. The ecstasy ended in the Church. Going out of it, Loli said to the priest: ─ I have lost your rosary, but the Virgin told me where
it is. We are going to look for it. It was past 10 at
night. Julia, Loli’s mother, said: ─ Not now. You
can go tomorrow when there is light. Fr. Luís María said: ─ Yes, it will be better tomorrow during the day. If you find it, don’t give it to anyone
except my brother; although I won’t return, my brother will. This is what
Loli did the next day, and she found the Rosary in exactly the same place that
the Virgin had said. That night, Fr. Luís María Andreu left Garabandal in a
Jeep and went toward Cossío. There, he
awaited the others who were walking down.
He was inside the car, waiting until one in the morning when Fr.
Valentín arrived. He went to the car to
ask something and Fr. Luís said: ─ Fr. Valentín, what the girls say is true, but don’t
say so yet; prudence on the Church’s part is necessary in these things. Fr. Valentín
wrote this sentence in his diary that night after he heard the news of Fr.
Luís’s death. A caravan of four cars was traveling on the road to
Aguilar de Campoo, and Fr. Luís María was riding in one of them. There were three other people in this car
with him. Fr. Luís María slept for a while,
and when he awoke he said: ─ I have had the most wonderful sleep. I’m not even a little bit tired. They arrived at Reinosa at around four in the
morning. All of the cars stopped there
at a fountain near the entrance of the village.
They left the cars to get water, but Fr. Luís stayed inside with the
door open, surrounded by people who questioned him about what he had seen. When they left, the car in which Fr. Luís was
traveling was the last car. While they were
still in Reinosa, Fr. Luís said: ─ “I am full of joy. What a gift the Virgin has given me. We are very fortunate to have a Mother like
her in heaven. There is no need to be
afraid of the supernatural life. The
children have taught us how to act toward the Virgin. I cannot have any more doubts. Why has the Virgin chosen us? Today is the happiest day of my life.” When he said
this, he lifted his head. Since he’d
stopped speaking, they asked him: ─ Father, has something happened to you?—and he
responded: ─ No, nothing, I’m just tired. And upon saying this, he bowed his head. The mechanic
returned and when he saw Fr. Luís, he said: ─ Oh, the priest is very sick. His eyes are rolling. There was a
clinic there. They could not do anything
but verify his death. We didn’t know about any sickness he may have
had. We can say that he died without
pain. He had a smile of happiness on his
face. The history of this priest and Garabandal does not end
with his death. The girls have
frequently spoken with him, as Conchita tells us in her diary. The most astounding thing is that the Virgin told
Conchita that on the day after the miracle, the priest’s tomb would be exhumed
and his body would be found incorrupt ,just as it was on the day he was buried. Conchita says
this in a letter: “On July 18th I had a locution and in it I was told
that on the day after the miracle, they will take your brother from the tomb
and his body will be incorrupt.”] When he left San Sebastián de Garabandal,
he went in a car with Carmen Fontaneda and her husband Faito Fontaneda and
several others [Conchita
quotes here from witnesses who describe how Fr. Luís María died. Faito Fontaneda is the
diminutive of Rafael Fontaneda. His wife is Carmen Fontaneda. Their daugher was with them, and she was
about six years old when the priest died.
The mechanic was named José Salceda.] Fr. Luís María Andreu’s mother became a cloistered nun 48 hours after
her son’s death [There
is an error in Conchita’s estimation.
When asked why she had written that within 48 hours the mother had
become a cloistered nun, she said that it was because that was how she’d heard
it in the village. It is true that Fr. Luís María’s mother became a
cloistered religious in the Order of Visitation in The Andreu
family is composed of six brothers, four of whom became Jesuits and were
ordained priests. The oldest is José María. He is married and lives in Mrs. Andreu, who gave four of her sons to God, became
a religious in the month of October 1961.
She took the habit on March 19, 1962.
She made her perpetual vows on March 19, 1965. On
this occasion, His Holiness Paul VI asked all of her sons to come from their
mission lands in order to participate in the solemn occasion. The Pope himself payed the travel expenses
for Fr. Marcelino to come from Several days after the death of Fr. Luís
María Andreu, the Virgin told us that we were going to speak with him [We have questioned Fr. Ramón María
regarding these conversations that the girls had with Fr. Luís María after his
death: Question:
Father, were you present during any of these conversations? Response: Yes,
I attended the first ones. Question: What
effect did they have on you? Response: When they told me, I was disconcerted. The first news of this was given to me by a
gentleman from ─ Oh,
good. Then, we
are going to speak with Fr. Luís? This
completely confused me and I thought that it was a simple case of suggestion
with the girls. In this moment, I
thought of leaving Garabandal. Question: Why
did you stay? Response:
Because some of the people I had come with wanted to stay. Question: And
what happened then? Response: I was stupefied when I heard some of these
conversations. In one of them, the girls
repeated everything that Fr. Luís María had told them about his death and his burial. For example:
when they described the way he had been shrouded, they repeated the
names of the attending priests and what they had placed on him. They knew some of the variations. They didn’t put a cap on him, and he held a
crucifix in his hands instead of a chalice.
They also knew the correct reason why they did this. In
another of these conversations I also heard them talking about how my brother
had died without making his final profession.
At the same time, they talked about when I did it, of the place and the
other companion who did it with me. This
was a subject that I had not thought about and as a result it was truly
astonishing for me to hear it exactly as it had happened. I also witnessed and heard the children say
sentences in other languages, like the Hail Mary in Greek, as Conchita writes
in her diary. Question: And
what do you think of all of this? Response: That it continued to be a very extraordinary
thing. I have limited myself to reporting
the things I saw myself. If you refer to
proof of the facts, I have to say that within the Church there are those who
have the obligation of studying them and verifying them, and I am only waiting
for this to happen. We
have a letter that the Father gave us to read and photocopy that refers to
something we have asked about. “Only
two words to tell you that I have spoken with Fr. Luís and he told me to tell
you that you are acting very well and that he wants you to come here but that
you should continue to obey the Bishop. He also told me how to say Jacinta and Cruz in
French. He told me how to write
them. It is like this: Loli—MARIE DES DOULEURS; Cruz—MARIE-CROIX Jacinta—JACINTHE;
MARIE-CONCEPTION. Well, I
won’t write anymore because J’AI UN APPEL.
Conchita
González sends her love. Goodbye. He taught me this song in French: Espoir,
Espoir. Au ciel estoilé, Parait et sourit Notre Mére. Espoir,
Espoir. Marie a parlé. Son FILS entend
notre priére. If
you don’t understand it in French, Fr. Luís told me what it says. It begins:
Hope. Translator’s note: We will write down the translation of these
songs: Hope, Hope. In
the starry sky Our Mother appears and smiles, Hope, Hope.
Mary has spoken. Her Son listens to our prayers.] On August 15th, the Feast of Our Lady,
there were many tourists who had come to amuse themselves and they were causing
scandal. That was the day that the Virgin told us we would talk with Fr. Luís
María Andreu. But since there was a
scandal, he didn’t come. At 4 in the
morning on the next day, at the same time that Fr. Luís had died, the Virgin
appeared to me in my kitchen and said to me: “Father will not come
today, but he will come tomorrow.” On the next day between 8 and 9 at night, the Virgin appeared to us,
smiling very much as usual, and she said to the four of us: ─ “Fr.
Luís will come now and speak to you.” After a while he came and called us one
after the other. But we didn’t see him;
we only heard his voice. It was exactly
the same as when he spoke on Earth when he would give us advice. He also told us something for his brother
Fr. Ramón María Andreu. He taught us
words in French and how to pray in Greek.
He also taught us words in English and German. After a while, we didn’t hear his voice anymore. Then the Virgin spoke to us and stayed with
us for a moment before leaving. The Virgin told us that day: ─ Tomorrow
you will here a voice, do not be afraid, but follow it. On the next day, and at the same time as on the previous day, the Most
Holy Virgin appeared to the four of us.
For several minutes she was smiling very much. But she didn’t say anything to us. After a few minutes, darkness came upon us,
and we heard a voice call us. Then Mari
Cruz said: ─ Tell
us who you are; if you don’t, we will go home! While we were hearing the voice, it was
very dark. [We
can’t give any precise details about this voice. Its meaning is unclear to us. In any case, this voice represented something
that frightened the girls.] We didn’t see the Virgin. But afterwards she came and she said to us: ─ Don’t
be afraid. And she spoke to us for awhile. That night was the first night she kissed
us [Conchita
remembers this with a feeling of happiness.
During the ecstasies, it was very usual to see the girls placing their
faces to receive kisses from the Vision, then to see them kissing the Vision. This generally happened when the Vision was
about to end, and they were saying goodbye.
It was very frequent that the ecstasies would end with the girls blessing themselves at the same time with the
kiss.] one by one. And then she left.
The next day,
at almost the same time, the Most Holy Virgin appeared to us again and told us
to pray the Rosary [The girls have prayed the Rosary in Garabandal many
times during their ecstasies. On some
occasions it was simply prayed. Other times it was sung. Sometimes during their ecstatic marches they
would stop in front of the doors of different houses in the village. Sometimes they went up to the room of a sick
person during an ecstatic march. These
Hail Marys that the girls prayed have been recorded on tapes, and so have some
of the songs that they sang that invited the people to prayer and penance. When they pray the Hail Mary in ecstasy it is
extremely slow and with a slight trembling in their voices. In the recordings that exist, we can hear the
noise of the footsteps of those who accompanied the girls through the village
while they prayed the rosaries.] We said this as though no one told us, but
she said to us: ─I’ll lead and you answer. She prayed very slowly, saying: ─ Holy
Mary. We also said: ─ Holy
Mary. Then we prayed: ─ God
has blessed you, Mary, the same as when we pray the Rosary, but very slowly.
When we reached the Salve, she asked us to sing it, so we sang it. When we finished praying the Rosary, she gave
us a kiss and before she left she said to us: ─ I’ll
return tomorrow. As she had said, she came. And she told us the same thing as on the
previous day: ─ Recite
the rosary. And we began the rosary. That
night we went to the places where the Virgin had appeared to us at the
beginning. After our ecstasy, the people
said that we had gone up to the Pines, and that we had gone from pine to pine
praying on our knees… Until this time, the four of us had been
together in the ecstasies: Jacinta,
Loli, María Cruz, and As Mari
Cruz already had an apparition earlier and had gone to bed, we asked the Virgin
to teach us some songs to sing to Mari Cruz.
We would compose a word, and then the Virgin would aid us with the others
in the following way: Get up Mari Cruz, The good Virgin comes With a basket of flowers For the little girl. Mari Cruz, Mari
Cruz, How sad you make us. Pray very much to the Virgin So that she will return to you. Mari Cruz, Mari
Cruz, Don’t you smell the lilies? The Virgin brings them for you So that you will be good. That night the Virgin stayed with us from 9
at night until 7 in the morning. That
night we played ‘los tios’ (hide-and-go-seek)
with the Virgin. Two of us hid and the
other two searched for us. During one of our apparitions, Loli and I
came down from the Pines with many people.
And we saw something like fire in the clouds. It was seen by the people who were with us and
also by those who were not. When it was
over, the Virgin appeared to us and we asked her what that thing was. She told us: ─ I
came in it. It
was the Feast of Our Lady of the Pillar during another day of our apparitions,
at which Loli and I were present. While
we were looking at the Virgin, a star with a very long tail was seen beneath
the Virgin’s feet. Several people saw
this. We asked the Virgin what it meant,
but she didn’t answer. At times the three of us wanted to be
together. As our parents didn’t allow us
be out of our homes at night, sometimes when we went outside after the
rosary—after already having had two calls—we looked upwards like we were seeing
the Virgin. [Conchita’s explanation is clear. When the girls were asked why they pretended
before actually falling into ecstasy, they invariably responded: “It is because we wanted to be together. Sometimes the Virgin scolds us for doing
this.”], And so we went together down the street. Then our parents and the people followed us. And later the Virgin came, and we were
together. We never faked the entire ecstasy. When we were together, when one of us lost her
shoe, the Virgin would say to the other: ─ Put
her shoe on. And one of us would put the shoe on
the other. And when we were alone, if we lost our
shoe, we went the whole apparition without it.
And at the end, the Virgin would ask us where our shoes were. In our apparitions, we would ask the Virgin to perform a miracle. She didn’t say anything to us; she
smiled. We told her: ─ Perform
a miracle so that the people will believe, since no one believes. But She continued to smile. The Angel, St. Michael, gave us
unconsecrated hosts from the beginning of the apparitions. We had eaten at the time, [Conchitawas referring to the Eucharist fast, which
was then three hours] but he gave them to us all the same. This was to teach us how to receive Communion
properly. One day he told us that we were to come to
the Pines on the next morning—without eating anything—and that there should be
a young girl with us [This was done from the very beginning. In some of the apparitions the Virgin only
permitted one girl to go with them. The
people in the village called these girls child witnesses because they were the
only ones who could closely witness the apparition and hear what the girls were
saying. They were very small, about six
years old, when the apparitions began.
The two girls who were preferred and almost always went were Sari and
Mari Carmen, Jacinta and Loli’s sisters.]. And we brought the girl. And we did as he told us. When we came to the Pines, the Angel appeared
to us with a golden chalice. And he told
us: ─ I
am going to give you Communion, but today these are consecrated Sacred
Hosts. Say the “I Confess…” We prayed
it, and afterwards he gave us Communion.
And after receiving Communion, he told us to make our thanksgiving to
God… And after we making our thanksgiving, he told us to pray the “Soul of
Christ” with him. We prayed it. He said to us: ─ I
will give you Communion tomorrow too.
Then he left. When we told this to the people, some of them did not believe—especially
the priests, since they said that an Angel could not consecrate. When
we saw the Angel again, we told him what the people had said. And he told us that he had taken the Hosts
from the tabernacles on the Earth, and they were already consecrated. Afterwards, we told this to the people. But some of them still doubted. He gave us Communion for a long
time. The
Most Holy Virgin told the four of us, Loli, Jacinta, Mari Cruz and I, to go
pray the rosary in the Cuadro. Some days we went at June 22nd
As we had so
often insisted that the Virgin and the Angel
perform a miracle, on June 22nd, when I was receiving Holy Communion
from the hands of the Angel, he told me: ─ I
am going to perform a miracle. Not
I: God, through my intercession and
yours. And I asked him: ─ And what is it going to be? And he told me: ─ When
I give you Holy Communion, the Sacred Host will be seen on your tongue. I thought it over and asked: ─ Surely
when I receive Communion from you, the Host is seen on my tongue! And
he told me that it wasn’t so, that the people around me didn’t see It; but that
on the day when he would perform the miracle, It would be seen. And I said to him: ─ But
that’s very small! And he smiled. After telling me this, he left. On
the following day, as there wasn’t a mass in the village, after reciting a
rosary in the cuadro, I went to pray a Station at the church. And before I went inside, the Angel appeared
to me, smiling very much, and he spoke to me as usual: ─ Pray
the “I Confess” and consider that you are about to receive God. Then he gave me Communion and he told me to say the “Soul of Christ”
with him. I did it. When I had made my thanksgiving, I
asked the Angel: ─ When
is the miracle going to be? He told me: ─ The
Virgin will tell you that. June 19th After that, he
left. This apparition took place
on June 19th. After the Angel told me
that he was going to perform a miracle, I told it to the other girls: Loli, Jacinta, and Mari Cruz. I told them that the Angel was going to
perform a miracle for us. At night on that date, when asking the Angel when miracle would be, the
Virgin came. She came smiling very much
as usual. And I said to her: The
Angel St. Michael told me that through his intercession and mine, God Our Lord
is going to perform a miracle… She didn’t say anything to me and I said: ─ When
is the miracle? ─ On
Friday the 29th you will hear a voice that will tell you. And I said to her: Whose voice will this be? But she didn’t say anything to me.
The first person I told that the Angel was going to perform a miracle
was a priest: Fr. José Ramón García de
la Riva [This
priest is the pastor of Barro, near Llanes, in the Archdiocese of That same day, I also communicated
this to Loli, Mari Cruz, and Jacinta. July 18th
Friday came, and as the Virgin
had told me, I felt a voice while I was at the Pines which told me: ─ July
18th will be when the miracle or “little miracle” as you call it, will
occur [A
“little miracle.” This is a diminutive
expression used in the region where Conchita lives.]. After
the voice told me the date, I went and told my mother and my Aunt Maximina. I told them that the Angel was going to
perform a little miracle, and I told them what it would be. They responded: ─ If this miracle really happens,
then everyone will believe… I
make this explanation, but from then on I did not tell anyone else outside of
the people I have already mentioned. On
one day on which the Angel brought me Communion I used the occasion to ask him: ─ When
will I be able to tell the people that the miracle is going to happen and of
what it will consist? ─ Two
weeks before, he responded. When
the apparition ended, the people from the village asked me if the Angel had
told me anything about the miracle (since I had already told the people in the
village that the Angel was going to perform a miracle), but they didn’t believe. July 6, 1962
When the day
arrived in which I had to announce the date, I told the people of the village and I
wrote letters [We
will put a part of one of these letters here from ─ It
probably won’t happen!... ─ he told me ─. A
man named Eustaquio Cuenca was in the village and told me the same thing as Fr.
Valentín: not to write any more
letters. And I said to them that the
Virgin and the Angel had told me to announce the miracle. But in spite of that, the people of the
village didn’t believe it. When July 18th arrived, the village was
full of people. Everyone wanted to see
the miracle. There was a festival in the
village, and next to my house there was a dance. There were two things together: some were praying the rosary, and others were
dancing. Some of these people wanted to stop the dancing, since they were
afraid that if there was a dance, there wouldn’t be a miracle. And at one time, a man among those who wanted
to stop the dancing, Ignacio Rubio, [Conchita refers to a gentleman from Andalucía, born
in Córdoba; he came to Garabandal frequently, especially at the beginning.]
asked me if I wanted the dancing to stop.
I answered: ─ Dance
or no dance, the miracle will happen… And then they didn’t argue about the
dancing anymore. When
night came the people were upset. But
since the Virgin and the Angel had told me that the miracle would come, I had
no fear, since neither the Virgin nor the Angel had ever told me a thing would
happen without it happening. At 10 at night, I had a call, and at 12, another. At ─ Pray
the “I Confess” and think of Whom you are going to receive. I did this. And afterwards he
gave me Communion. And after giving me
Communion, he told me to say the “Soul of Christ,” and to make my thanksgiving,
and told me to hold out my tongue with the Sacred Host until he left and the Virgin
came. And I did this. When the Virgin came she told me: ─ They
all still do not believe. [We can consider this fact as one of the most
important among the events that have taken place in Garabandal. It was The people who are quoted as saying that Conchita was
in her house when the Angel appeared are:
her mother, her brother, Cetuco (Aniceto), and her cousin Luciuca,
daughter of Antonia and Tomás. Antonia is
Aniceta’s sister. They live in Cabezón de la Sal. Luciuca was about 11 years old when the
miracle of the Communion occured. María
del Carmen Fontaneda is also cited as a witness. There were
many witnesses present that day. Because
of them, we have a definite report of the event. Conchita fell into ecstasy in the upper bedroom of her
house. She descended the stairs in this
state and went out into the street. She
turned to the left until she came to a small road where she fell on her
knees. In this state and with her hands
extended downward she put out her tongue, which had nothing on it. Suddenly, in a fraction of a second, the Form
appeared. It was similar to those that
are given in Church, but it seemed thicker.
It was white. All who looked saw
it, and the girl remained with her tongue out for two minutes or more. Mr. Alejandro Damians y Damians is one of the principal
witnesses of this event. He is Catalán,
and he had the good fortune of taking the most interesting photograph that has
been made of these events. He told us
himself how this took place. He left He tells how
he filmed it: “I held the handle firmly, trying with all of my might
not to displace that privileged location in which I was situated, and I
succeeded. “The pushing
finally decreased and then stayed relatively calm. “A little before “With this light and the large number of lanterns that
lit the road, we could clearly distinguish that Conchita had her mouth open and
her tongue out, in the classic attitude of receiving Communion. It was more beautiful than anything. Her expression and her gestures, far from
provoking laughter as the most trifling sign of ridiculousness would, displayed
a mysticism that was impressive and moving. “Suddenly, without knowing how, without realizing it
and without Conchita changing her expression in the least, the Sacred Form
suddenly appeared on her tongue. It was
totally unexpected. It did not seem that
it had been desposited there, but you might say that it appeared there with a
greater velocity than the human glance can perceive. “I carried the camera on my wrist. Without paying attention to the protests and
without remembering my cousin’s instructions, I pushed the record button and I
filmed the last instants of Conchita’s Communion. Mr. Damians
tells how he was pushed and fell to the ground. When he developed the film, he found about 70
photographs of 8mm in black and white, very bad technically, but sufficiently
clear to see the presence of a host on the child’s tongue. One of these photographs is the one that is so
frequently exhibited in almost all of the publications about Garabandal. The Bishop of Santander, Fr. Eugenio Beitia Aldazabal,
was interested in this film and wrote to Mr. Alejandro Damians asking for a
copy of it and saying that “it could be of great interest and do a great
service for the Church.” This film proved that what those present saw was not a
hallucination, and that what they saw in the child’s mouth was real. One of the other witnesses is Benjamín Gómez, who lives
in Pesues. He says that he is a man not
given to insolence toward the Church and that he had the luck to see this event
very closely. We have some
facts from an interview in Question: Did you see the child well? Response: Perfectly.
She was very close to me. Question: Were you about a meter away? Response: No, much less. About a palm’s width. Question: Did you see how she stuck out her tongue? Response:
Yes. I saw how she arrived, and
how she knelt with her hands extended downward.
I saw how she stuck out her tongue.
I want to say something here. Her tongue was clean, empty. I
was surprised and I looked. I could see
very well because as I said, I was very close, less than a palm’s width
away. I looked at her tongue tranquilly;
it was not hurried. I looked up and saw
nothing. A cousin of mine who was behind
me touched my shoulder so that I would change places with her so that she could
see. I turned my head for a moment, and
when I turned back, the Form was on her tongue. Question: And what did the Form look like? Response: Oh! That…is very difficult to say. It was white, but a white that is not of this
world. Sometimes I have looked for a
comparison but I haven’t found anything that resembles it, except from far
away. It is like when it snows. When it snows and the sun comes out and
reflects on the snow. But when that happens
it hurts your eyes, and this kind of
white did not hurt the eyes. Question: What size was it? Response: I want
to say something here: to make a
comparison it was about two 25 peseta coins, one on top of the other. Question: Do you believe that the girl could have
placed it in her mouth with her hand? Response: Not
at all. We would have seen.
That girl didn’t move. Question: Do you believe that she hid it in her mouth
and then put it over her tongue? Response: She couldn’t have done that. I looked inside of her mouth and there was
nothing there. Another witness of this event is the stone mason of
Garabandal, named José Luís Diez. The
principal difficulty of this event was given by Conchita, according to what Dr.
Bonance made evident. All who saw the
Form on the girl’s tongue said that it was a little thicker than normal. Only Conchita said that it was the same as in
all of the Churches, like the other times the Angel had given her communion,
and the times Fr. Valentín had given her Communion. If the girl had wanted to conceal a trick she
had done, it does not seem logical that she would say that she had received a
host that was different from how the others had described it. Conchita acted according to the truth. In another point in her diary, the girl makes an
allusion to this miracle and the explanations that the people gave. When the Virgin arrived after the girl
received Communion she said: “Everyone
still does not believe.” The girl wrote
a comment about this in her diary.] Afterward, she told me to pray a rosary,
and I did. Some
saw this miracle that God Our Lord did through the intercession of the Angel
St. Michael completely, but others only saw the Form on my tongue. In that moment, they believed firmly in what
they had seen, and those who did not see it believed because of the reports
from those who had seen it. After a few days had passed, the people
began to doubt and everyone said that I had put the Form on my tongue; there
were other similar comments. A Franciscan priest, Fr. Justo, didn’t
believe what he had seen. And he said to
the people that he hadn’t seen it, that it was a lie, that it was I who had
done this. After two or three days, a
letter arrived for me from this same priest, asking my forgiveness for thinking
badly of me. He told me that it was the
devil who had tempted him. A few days after this letter arrived, three
priests came from Fr. Justo. He had
explained to them the things that had happened here regarding the Most Holy
Virgin. These priests told me that this
Franciscan priest had passed many sleepless days and nights thinking about the
Sacred Form, but finally he had reacted well and he accepted what happened; he
believed everything. The Most Holy
Virgin announces the miracle to me The Most Holy Virgen has foretold to me a great miracle that God Our
Lord is going to perform through her intercession. Since
the chastisement is very great, as we merit, the Miracle is also immeasurably
great, as the world needs. The Virgin has told me the date of the
Miracle and what it will be. I should
tell people eight days before it happens so that they will come. The Pope will see it from where he is, and so
will Padre Pío. The sick who attend the
Miracle will be cured and the sinners will be converted. Those who see this great Miracle that God Our
Lord will perform through the intercession of the Most Holy Virgin will not
doubt. And now, all will await this
great day of the Miracle to see if the world will change and the chastisement
will not come. At the beginning of it all, the Virgin told
the four of us—Loli, Jacinta, Mari Cruz, and I—that we would contradict each
other, that our families wouldn’t get along well, and even that we would deny
that we had seen the Virgin and the Angel. [About
this announcement, which refers to the denials and the manner in which they happened,
we will say much more later, taking into account other documents in this book.] Obviously, we were very surprised that she
told us these things. And everything
that the Virgin told us at the beginning happened during the month of January,
1963. [In order to understand Conchita’s statement,
we have to take into account the date on which this was written, which is late
in the year 1963. What she says is only
a part of what was announced.]. We came to contradict each other and we
even denied that we had seen the Virgin. We
even went one day to confess it. But we
felt inside that the Angel and the Most Holy Virgin had appeared to us, since
they had brought a peace and internal joy to our souls, and a great desire to
love them with our whole hearts. For
their smiles and their speech and what they told us made us love them, love
them very much, and give ourselves completely to them. [In these
paragraphs written by Conchita, we see the psychological analysis that she
makes interiorly, incomprehensible for her youth and lack of education. At the same time she shows us some key
elements that correspond to the discernment of spirits. She does this in a descriptive form, that is
to say, she describes her interior life of which she has been an object. Because of this we do it with such security
and accuracy]. When we went to confession, it was without thinking about it, without
believing that it was a sin. We went
because the parish priest told us that we should go to confession. We
doubted a little, but a doubt of a type that seems from the devil, who wants us
to deny the Virgin. And afterwards, we told our parents that we hadn’t seen the Virgin; but
that the calls and the Miracle of the Sacred Host were true. In
my heart, I was surprised to say these things when my conscience was completely
calm about having seen the Most Holy Virgin. The parish priest, Fr. Valentín Marichalar, gave us ten rosaries and
five Our Fathers for penance. And after we had said this, in a few
days the Virgin appeared to us again. Ceferino, Loli’s father, had told a
commission of doctors to come; their names were Alejandro Gasca, Félix Gallego,
and Celestino Ortiz [Dr. Alejandro Gasca was the senior doctor in Penilla
and the director of the center in Reinosa.
Dr. Félix Gallego was the doctor in Requedjada-Polance. Dr. Celestino Ortiz Pérez was the doctor in And after that day, they didn’t have any more apparitions. I had apparitions on the same night, and
until January 20th. [This refers to the year 1963] After that I
didn’t see her again. [Conchita
talks from the perspective of the date on which she writes. In reality a greater crisis of doubts and
denials would take place in the summer of 1966, as she will tell later]. Now
Loli and Jacinta have come back to reality, to believing that they have seen
the Most Holy Virgin. Really, how could
they not believe?
Mari Cruz
still continues saying that she hasn’t seen the Most Holy Virgin [Mari Cruz
was the first to stop having the ecstasies.
She has also stayed in a state of doubt and denial the longest. For this purpose, we will quote a letter from
Mari Cruz in which she confides her feelings about having a different schedule
for visions than the other girls, and also her reaction to the comments made by
the people: “The people don’t like me because I see the Virgin
less, but I want what She wants. It has
been 18 days since I’ve seen her, but I love her as I do when I see her.” This letter was written September 19, 1962.]. I also
doubted a little that the Miracle would come.
And one day, while in my room doubting if the Miracle would really come,
I heard a voice that said: ─ “Conchita,
do not doubt that my Son will perform a Miracle.” I felt this inside, but as clear as if I had heard through my ears; or
even clearer. It was without words. It left me a peace… a joy! More than when I see Her. The
first person to whom I told this was Plácido.
Later, he told it to the others. [Plácido Ruiloba is a gentleman from In a locution there are no words in the grammatical
sense. It cannot be said that the Virgin
or Our Lord employs Spanish or French words, or words from any other
language. They arrive directly at the
faculty of understanding and feeling. As
a result, it is more profound, more certain, and less subject to error. Yet it is problematic for the child to
translate into words what has been communicated without them. As a result, in different instances she uses
different words to describe what happened. At the same time she explains something that happened
without words, she gives very valid notes for the discernment of spirits, for
example: peace, security, fullness,
increasing love, etc.]. They
could be called a voice of joy, a voice of happiness, a voice of peace. And then, I didn’t doubt anything again. [Conchita
speaks in 1963. She would not mention
the doubts that would come in the summer of 1966.]. But the days passed. And the
voice didn’t return. That made me
suffer. But I understand: how could God go on giving me such happiness
so often, without meriting it? The
locutions did me much good. Because it
was as if the Most Holy Virgin were within me.
What happiness!... At the end of the month, again I heard that voice of interior happiness
without words, in the Church. I
prefer the locution more than the apparitions, since during the locution I have
her in my very self. Oh, what happiness with the Most Holy Virgin within me! And what shame, to be so bad! But that is the world. But I like even more to have Jesus within me... Jesus, who gives me the cross to purify me,
and also to see if I can do something for the world with my crosses. With the help of God,
since alone I am nothing. A prayer that I say to Jesus is: Oh, My Jesus!!! [This diary is unfinished. It is absolutely certain that Conchita wrote
more, but her discretion as well as her mother’s have made the rest a permanent
secret, at least for the moment. We
don’t want to force this delicate matter and so we are limited to discussing
other more interesting things that have taken place from this date until the
time this book was published.]
Principal points in the history of Garabandal from 1963 to 1966 Locution on
On Since
Conchita left the Church saying that she had had an interior locution, a priest
asked her to relate the circumstances in writing. Then the girl took a piece of paper and a
pencil and wrote these lines spontaneously with great ease. We have transcribed them here from the text:
“I was making my thanksgiving and praying
for things. He answered me… I
asked Him to give me a Cross since I was living without suffering—except the
suffering of not having a Cross. And he answered: ─ Yes. I will give it to you. And with much feeling, I went on
praying. And I said to Him: Why is the miracle coming? To convert many people? He answered: ─ To
convert the whole world [This sentence confirms what the miracle and the four
Messages of Garabandal announced; they have a general and universal
character. It is a call that is directed
to all of humanity.]. ─ Will
Russia be converted? ─ It
also will be converted, and so everyone will love Our Hearts. ─ Will
the chastisement come afterwards? He did not answer me. ─ Why
do you come to my poor heart, without my meriting it? ─ I
certainly do not come for you; I come for all. ─ When the Miracle comes, will it be as if I were
the only one who had seen the Virgin? [The
preoccupation of Conchita before this “Great Miracle” is that of not remaining
the only privelaged one. It is not that she
tries to avoid the responsibility, but she charitably wants her three
companions to participate in this grace.
This desire has been manifested in several of her conversations with the
Vision.]. He answered me: ─ By
your sacrifices, your patience, I will allow you to intercede for the
accomplishment of the miracle. And I said to him: ─ Wouldn’t
it be better for me to be with all the others; or if not, that You don’t use
any of us to intercede? He told me: No. ─ Will
I go to heaven? And He answered me: ─ You
should love much and pray to Our Hearts. ─ When
will You give me a Cross? And He didn’t answer me: ─ What
will I be? [This
is another of Conchita’s worries—her destiny.
That is,to discern the designs God has for her life. For awhile now, she has been questioning
whether she has a religious vocation, and she frequently asks the apparition
about it, but—according to her own words—the Virgin has never responded in the
affirmative. In the same way, during this locution Our Lord keeps
his silence when asked the question “What will I be?” Conchita has always received confirmation of
her suffering and of the cross, wherever she is.] He didn’t answer me. He only
told me that everywhere that I would be, I would have much to suffer. I said to Him: ─ Am
I going to die soon? And He told me: ─ You
have to stay on earth to help the world.
[This seems to be a clear announcement
of a “concrete” vocation; it is a call to live in the world and not in a
convent]. And I said to Him: ─ I
am very small. I couldn’t help in
anything.
And He told me: ─ With
your prayers and sufferings, you will help the world. ─ When
does one go to heaven? When one
dies? [This
question seems rather childish.
Conchita’s lack of education makes some of her questions seem simple, as
though they don’t correspond to her age.
In contrast, the response is profoundly astonishing.] He said to me: ─ One
never dies. (I thought that we didn’t go
to heaven until we were resurrected). I
asked Him if St. Peter was at the gate of heaven to receive us. He told me no. While
I was in this conversation, in this prayer with God, I felt myself out of the
world. [This
sentence, where Conchita mixes the sublime prayer and conversation, is a
precious contribution to the discernment of spirits.]. Jesus also told me that “Now His Heart should be loved.” Concerning priests, He told me that I must
pray much: “So that they would be holy
and fulfill their duties; so that they would make others better; so that they
would make Me known to those who do not know Me, and so that they would make Me
loved by those who know Me and do not love Me.” [The
theme of priesthood is presented frequently, as one might realize. In the fourth and last Message this allusion
is so precise that it is very clear to some people. At any rate, this paragraph contains a
summary of the apostolic activities of a priest.] (Signed): Conchita González
Principal points in
the history of Garabandal from 1963 to 1966 MESSAGE OF Six months
in advance, that is at the end of 1964, Conchita had announced—from the
Vision—that on This
long wait permitted many foreigners to know the prophetic announcement and enabled
them to come to Garabandal in time:
French, Belgians, Germans, and a great number of Americans
attended. Naturally, many Spanish people
were present as well. At about Conchita received a message for the whole
world. The exact text is the following: The
message that the Most Holy Virgin has given to the world through the
intercession of the Angel St. Michael: [In relation to the apparition of ─ Do you know, Conchita, why I did not come on June 18
to tell the last Message that you had to tell to the whole world? Because it made me very sad to say these
things to my children on earth.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to say them for your good, so that you
will do what the messages say, and all will be for the glory of God.] The Angel has said: [After this moment, it is the Most Holy Virgin who
speaks through the Before the cup was filling up, now
it is overflowing. Many priests are on the road to perdition and
they are taking many souls with them. [When Conchita was questioned about this sentence in
the message, she clarified it without any hesitation and repeated it many times
when they asked: “The Angel has told me
that many Cardinals, Bishops, and Priests are on the road to perdition and that
they are taking many souls with them”
When the Angel told me this—Conchita continued by saying—this made me
very embarrassed, and the Angel repeated it to me a second time: “Yes, Conchita, many Cardinals, Bishops, and
Priests…etc.”.] The Eucharist is given less and less
importance. [This
was already in the message on
With our own efforts we should
avoid the wrath of God. If we ask pardon with sincere hearts, He
will forgive us.
I, your Mother, through the intercession of the Angel St. Michael, ask
you to amend your lives. You are already in the last warnings.
I love you very much and do not want your
condemnation. Ask us sincerely, and
we will give it to you. You should make more
sacrifices. Think of the Passion of Jesus. (Signed): Conchita González 18-VI-1965 .
Principal points in the history of Garabandal from 1963 to 1966 APPARITION ON
First, we reproduce one of Conchita’s letters, written
to Fr. Alba, S.J. from AVE MARÍA! Dear Everyone:
I understand
from these two girls who have arrived in our group that you cannot come here
even though it is your desire. I send
you my affectionate greeting, and I promise you my poor prayers in front of the
tabernacle and the Virgin. I
hope that your desire is to love God and His Mother more and more (it is our
desire as well) and to overcome our faults. I ask for your prayers for myself and my
friends, [Conchita
makes an allusion to her three friends:
Loli, Jacinta, and Mari Cruz.] since we need many to be very
humble and to give Jesus what he asks.
Pray so that one day we will be nuns in the service of God, so that we
can help people who need it. This is our
desire, but we are very weak, and need you to help us [Conchita has
already said during the Apparitions that she wanted to enter the convent.].
The Virgin
told me on January 1, 1965, that the Catholic Christians who don’t think about
the other world, of heaven or hell, should think about it so that our lives can
be more united with Christ, and so that we should think and meditate more on
the Passion of Jesus. We should do it,
but not only do it ourselves, we should make others do it. Then we will see how we feel at the doors of
happiness with God, and we will accept our crosses with joy and love for God. With
much affection for all, and in union of prayers. (Signed): Conchita
González P.D. I say this, [This is a
type of Post Script, for which Conchita is responsible.] that
believing in the apparitions accomplishes nothing if we don’t fulfill the
message, or if we don’t follow -X- Reproduction of a letter from
Conchita to Fr. Gustavo Morelos (México), in which she announces that she has
had a locution (8-XI-65), that she will have an apparition at the Pines
(Saturday the 13), and that she will give the Most Holy Virgin an object to
kiss, telling her that it is for Fr. Morelos. HAIL MARY!
San Sebastián de
Garabandal, November 8, 1965. Reverend
and dear Fr. Morelos: See, before receiving your response,
I’m writing to you again to say that I have had a locution from the Virgin and
she has told me: “Go to the Pines on Saturday and you
will see me there. Bring me many
religious objects and I will kiss all of them so you will distribute them, and
through the use of them my Son will work prodigies.” I will give you one of the kissed
objects. When I give it to be kissed,
I’m going to tell Our Mother that it is for Fr. Morelos. I have finished my
diary, but I am going to begin another. Pray for me so that I
will go to the convent soon and so that I will be good. IN
(Signed): Conchita González
“On
Saturday, November 13th, as announced by the Virgin during a locution in the
Church, I saw her in the Pines. It was a
special apparition to kiss religious objects and then to distribute them
afterward; they have great importance. I had a great desire for that day to come, so that I could once again
see the one who has caused the joy of God within me: the Virgin with the Child Jesus in her arms. It
was raining, but that didn’t matter to me.
I went up to the Pines and I carried many rosaries with me, which had
been given to me so that I could distribute them. As the Virgin had told me in the locution, I
brought them for her to kiss. I went up to the Pines alone, very sorry for my faults, and saying to
myself that I would not fall into them any more, since I was sorry at the
thought of presenting myself to the Mother of God without ridding myself of
them. When
I arrived at the Pines I began to take out the rosaries I carried, and while I
was taking them out, I heard a very sweet voice, the voice of the Virgin, which
is distinguishable from all others, and it called me by my name. I answered:
“What…?” And in this moment I saw
her with the Child Jesus in her arms.
She came dressed as usual and was smiling broadly. I said to her: ─ “I
have come to bring these rosaries to be kissed.” And She said to me: ─ “I
SEE THAT.” When I brought them I was chewing gum, but when I saw her, I stopped
chewing and put it on a tooth. She knew
that I had the gum and said: ─ “CONCHITA,
WHY DON’T YOU THROW AWAY YOUR GUM AND OFFER IT AS A SACRIFICE FOR THE GLORY OF
MY SON?” I was ashamed, and I removed my gum and threw it on the ground. Afterward, she said to me: ─ “DO
YOU REMEMBER WHAT I TOLD YOU ON YOUR SAINTS’ DAY—THAT YOU WOULD SUFFER MUCH ON
EARTH? …WELL, I AM TELLING YOU AGAIN. HAVE CONFIDENCE IN US, AND OFFER IT WILLINGLY
TO OUR HEARTS, FOR THE GOOD OF YOUR BRETHREN, BECAUSE IN THAT WAY YOU WILL BE
MORE UNITED WITH US.” I said: ─ “How
unworthy I am, Oh Our Mother, of so many Graces I have received from You, and I
come here today carrying the small cross I have now.” She said to me: ─ CONCHITA,
I DO NOT COME ONLY FOR YOU, BUT FOR ALL OF MY CHILDREN, WITH THE DESIRE THAT
THEY WILL COME CLOSER TO OUR HEARTS.” And she asked me: ─ “GIVE
THE OBJECTS TO ME, SO THAT I MAY KISS ALL THAT YOU CARRY.” And I gave her everything. I carried a Cross with me and she kissed
it, then said to me: ─ “PASS
IT OVER THE CHILD JESUS’ HANDS.” I did
it and He didn’t say anything. I said to
him: ─ “I
will bring this cross with me to the convent,” but he didn’t say anything [It can be
seen that this persistent silence on the Virgin’s part to Conchita’s question
about her religious vocation, like the clear words of Our Lord in the locution
of February 13, 1966, are proof that God had a very special and particular
vocation reserved for this girl.].
After kissing the objects, she said to me: ─ “MY
SON WILL ACCOMPLISH PRODIGIES THROUGH THE KISSES I HAVE GIVEN HERE. DISTRIBUTE THEM TO OTHERS…” ─ “Of
course, this is what I will do.” After this, she asked me to say petitions for the others, as they had
asked me. I did, [Conchita and
the other girls have said frequently that during the ecstasies the glance of
the Most Holy Virgin was directed towards those who attended the
apparitions, and it sometimes rested
longer on one than on the other. With a
mother’s regard she said: “All of these
are my children.”] and she
said to me: ─ TELL
ME, CONCHITA, TELL ME ABOUT MY CHILDREN; I HOLD ALL OF THEM BENEATH MY
MANTLE. I said: ─ It
is very small; It will not cover all of them. She smiled.
─ “DO YOU KNOW, CONCHITA, WHY I
DIDN’T COME ON JUNE 18 TO GIVE THE MESSAGE TO THE WORLD? … BECAUSE IT PAINED ME TO SAY IT, BUT IT HAD
TO BE SAID FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, AND FOR THE GLORY OF GOD IF YOU FULFILL IT. I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH AND DESIRE YOUR
SALVATION IN ORDER TO UNITE YOU AROUND THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY
SPIRIT. IS IT TRUE, CONCHITA, THAT YOU
WILL RESPOND TO ME?” I said to her: ─ “If
I always see you, yes, but if not, I don’t know, because I am very bad...” ─ “DO YOUR PART AND WE WILL HELP
YOU, AS ALSO MY CHILDREN LOLI, JACINTA, AND MARI CRUZ…” She had only been there a short time, when
she also said to me: ─ “THIS
WILL BE THE LAST TIME YOU SEE ME HERE, [It is difficult to say what this sentence means: “I will not come to the Pines again” or “You
will not see me in Garabandal anymore”… At the moment Conchita does not know
the meaning of these words.] BUT
I WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU AND WITH ALL MY CHILDREN.” After that she added: ─ “CONCHITA,
WHY DON’T YOU VISIT MY SON MORE IN THE TABERNACLE? WHY DO YOU ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE CARRIED AWAY
BY LAZINESS SO AS NOT TO VISIT HIM WHEN HE WAITS FOR YOU DAY AND
NIGHT?” As I have already written, it was raining a
lot and the Virgin and the Child Jesus were not wet. When I was seeing her, I didn’t realize that
it was raining, but when I stopped seeing her, I was wet. I said to her: ─ “Oh,
how happy I am when I see you! Why don’t
you bring me with you now?” And she
answered me: ─ “REMEMBER
WHAT I TOLD YOU ON YOUR SAINTS’ DAY… WHEN PRESENTING YOURSELF BEFORE GOD, YOU MUST
SHOW YOUR HANDS FULL OF GOOD WORKS DONE FOR YOUR BRETHREN AND FOR THE GLORY OF
GOD. NOW YOUR HANDS ARE EMPTY.” Nothing more. I had passed this
happy time with my Mother in Heaven and my best Friend [This is an
expression that is used frequently by Conchita.] and with the Child Jesus. I have stopped seeing them, but I continue to
feel them. [This
is surely a reference to the locutions.] Once
again there is left in my soul a peace and a happiness and a great desire to overcome
my faults so as to love with all my strength the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
since they love us so much. Previously, [The
word “previously” applies to the previous Apparitions and locutions.] the
Virgin told me that Jesus did not send the punishment to discourage us, but to
reprimand us for not paying attention, and to help us. He sends the warning to purify us, so that we
will see the love He has for us in the miracle.
For this reason, He wants us to fulfill the message. The
“warning” will be seen and will happen in all places and be felt by every person;
it is like a punishment. It will be seen
what has been caused by our sins. I
think that it will bring much good, not so that we will be discouraged, but for
our sanctification. For Fr.
Morelos. I
have received your letter, and I am answering it today. [This referes to the account of the Apparition.]
I did not send this before because I couldn’t.
I hope you pray for me, because I need it. Many greetings from my mother and
Serafín. IN (Signed): Conchita González
He returned to his country on November 7th, and to his great surprise
he found a letter from Conchita, dated the 8th of the same month. In it she announced that she would have a visit
from the Virgin in the Pines, a document that was reproduced in the previous
pages. What
interested the Father most about this letter was the promise that Conchita
made: that when she saw the Most Holy
Virgin, she would give an object to be kissed, saying: “This object is for Fr. Morelos.” The Father anxiously awaited Conchita’s account of her meeting with Our
Sweet Mother. Finally,
on a very significant day, December 25th, the Father had in his hands the
letter, which we reproduced here: On
Conchita’s
Locution with Our Lord in This is the
reproduction of part of a letter from Conchita written to the Reverend Fr.
Gustavo Morelos, in which she relates this event: Copy
of Conchita’s Locution on
February 13, 1966 On Sunday, February 13th, [February 7th: Conchita entered the convent of the Barefoot
Missionary Carmelites in I asked:
And how does one feel your call to be a nun? He told me:
Don’t worry about this; you will not feel it. I said:
Then you don’t love me, Jesus? He said: “Conchita, you ask me
this? Who has redeemed you? Do my will and you will find my
love. Examine yourself well. Think about others more, and don’t pay
attention to temptations; if you are faithful to my love, you will conquer many
temptations. Be intelligent in what I
have told you, spiritually intelligent.
Don’t close the eyes of your soul, and don’t be deceived by anyone. Love humility, simplicity, never think that
what you have done is much. Think about
what you still have to do, not to gain Heaven, but for the world, to accomplish
my divine will, that your soul will be prepared. Whoever has a soul disposed to hearing me
will know my will.” “I want to tell you, Conchita, that before the Miracle you will suffer much; there will be very few who believe you. [A clear allusion to the doubts that she would suffer very soon, and the anxiety which would result in her own family’s suffering.] Your own family will believe that you have deceived them. I want all of this for your sanctification, and so the world will accomplish the Message. I want to warn you that the rest of your life will be a continual suffering. Do not be disturbed. In suffering am I with Mary whom you love so much.” I asked
Him if On the other hand, through conversation, Conchita
affirmed that she had been received by Cardinal Ottaviani with affability and
marvelous goodness but that she had been submitted to questioning that lasted
more than two hours, the interview having been recorded by the secretary of the
Cardinal. There are two principal facts that the public
knew: that Conchita was very happy and
that His Holiness Paul VI recognized Conchita in the crowd during a public
audience. He detained her. He called her and in a clear and strong voice
said: “Conchita, I bless you and with
you the whole Church.”] and
He told me: “DON’T WORRY ABOUT WHETHER
THEY BELIEVE YOU OR NOT. I WILL DO
EVERYTHING. BUT I WILL ALSO GIVE YOU SUFFERING; WHOEVER SUFFERS FOR ME, I AM WITH
HIM.
Principal points in the history of Garabandal from 1963 to 1966 CONTRADICTIONS
AND RETRACTIONS From the
beginning of the Apparitions, the Vision had announced to the girls that there
would come a time when they would contradict themselves and that they would
also deny that they had seen her. The
girls repeated this frequently. To
be more precise, we will transcribe some of the the texts in which they
announce the future retractions, and it is perfectly explicit: on page 60 of the manuscripted diary of
Conchita, the following passage from 1963 reads like this: “From the first days of the Apparitions,
the Virgin had told the four of us, Loli, Jacinta, Mari Cruz, and I, that we
would contradict each other and that our parents would not get along. She told us that we would even DENY that we
had seen the Virgin and the Angel. All
of this happened in January…We wondered about this, of course, because she had
told us…” In a letter addressed to William A. Nolan (from the “Besides
the Message, the Virgin told us many other things about the message. She also told us that we would contradict
each other very much.” According to a locution that Loli had in November of 1965, the Virgin
announced a period of doubts in these words: “She
told me that I have to suffer much in this world and that I will have many
trials; she said that I will doubt all that I have seen and that this will make
me suffer more than anything else.” In a locution on “I
repeat that you have much to suffer from now until the Miracle; few will
believe you. Your own family will
believe that you have deceived them. But
it is I who wants this, as I have told you, for your sanctification and so the
world will fulfill the Message. I want
to warn you that the rest of your life will be a continual suffering.” What has been accomplished with regard to
these announcements as of now? ─ Conchita
writes in her diary about Mari Cruz:
“Mari Cruz continues saying that she has not seen the Virgin.” This retraction goes back to 1963. ─ It
is said that Conchita denied for the first time at the age of twelve years old,
when she was brought to Santander at the end of July in 1961. It is said that on this occasion, she signed
a paper which stated that she had not seen the Virgin. We do not have any document or anything with
greater detail about this first denial.
It is possible to think beforehand that it has very little importance
compared to what follows. ─Loli and Jacinta, at the same time as Conchita, confronted two
periods of doubts and contradictions:
the first was in January of 1963, and the second happened in 1966. I
have here what it says in Conchita’s diary about the first period: “In the month of January of 1963, all that
the Most Holy Virgin told us happened.
We have come to contradict each other.
At first we began contradicting each other, but then we began denying that
we had seen the Most Holy Virgin. We
even went to confession. Yet inside, we
knew that the The second period of doubts began, at least
for Conchita, during Lent in 1966. This
began with strong tempations against her faith in the real presence of Jesus
Christ in the Eucharist. This was not
the first time. But, at the beginning of
Holy Week, these temptations became so violent that Conchita stopped receiving
Communion. The religious who were responsible for the
child’s education at the school, persuaded her to overcome these temptations and
receive Communion again by saying that to be tempted is not a sin. Conchita consented to receiving daily
Communion, but then she began to feel a force that impeded her from going near
the Eucharist; she had to be violent with herself in order to persevere. According to her own words, she expressed
herself like this: ─ It
seemed to me that they simply gave me a little piece of bread. These
temptations against the Faith were followed by doubts about the objective
reality of her Visions. Conchita
questioned whether it had not all been a trick of her imagination, or whether
she had been a victim of some psychological or mental disorder. At the same time, Loli and Jacinta were in
different places, kilometers from Conchita, and were suffering from the same
anguished interior phenomena about the reality of the apparitions. These doubts increased during the following
months. Before this, the three girls had
met in Garabandal. In the middle of
August, they decided to go and communicate their doubts and fears to the priest. I have a letter from Conchita here, written
to Fr. Morelos, dated The interview mentioned in this letter
between Conchita and the Bishop of Santander (Fr. Vicente Puchol) was very
long: it lasted seven hours, two in the
morning, and five in the afternoon.
Conchita was very happy with the way the Bishop treated her. She declared that all she had written in her
diary was true “except the fact that she had seen the Virgin and the Angel.”
She explained that all that had happened during the years of the
Apparitions was like a series of dark coincidences to her. She also said that the “calls” were true
because she remembered the sensation perfectly. This
visit from the Bishop of There was another interview between
Conchita and the Bishop, but this one was in These interviews between Conchita and the
Bishop of After this, many people had the opportunity
of speaking with the girl. When,
for example, Fr. Gustavo Morelos was present in January 1967, he showed
Conchita an image made in ─ Father,
the Virgin that we saw did not wear a crown, and her head was not tilted to one
side. She didn’t have a sash and she
carried the scapular in her right hand like a maniple. These
observations made by a different girl kilometers away is an eloquent proof that
the girls, even in a period of doubts and denials, carried within them an image
of the Most Holy Virgin that captivated their senses and their consciences. They also questioned Conchita about what
she called her “denials.” We have reproduced a particularly interesting dialogue: Question:
─ When
you said that you saw the Virgin, were you lying? Conchita: ─ No,
I told the truth. Question:
─ And
now when you say that you haven’t seen her, are you lying? Conchita: ─ No,
I’m telling the truth. Question:
─ Is
your conscience really tranquil about this matter? Conchita: ─ Yes. Question:
─ And
when you said that you saw the Virgin, was your conscience clear then? Conchita: ─ Yes, of course. Question:
─ In
which of these two instances was your conscience the most tranquil. Conchita:
─ When
I said that I saw the Virgin. Then my
conscience was completely peaceful. Now,
of course, I am peaceful, but at the same time I have “something deep within my
conscience.” Question:
─ Why
do you say now that you have not seen the Virgin? Conchita: ─ Only
the Most Holy Virgin knows why. She made
things this way… In a letter that Conchita wrote in November
of 1966, this passage can be read: ─ “I
continue thinking the same thing about my retractions, and I accept all of this
as a cross that Our Lord has sent to me.
Sometimes I think: if all of this has not been true, then it is not a
cross, or anything at all. In closing, we will cite from the writings of another Spanish
Theologian, the Reverend Father Lucio Rodrigo, about the retractions and doubts
of the girls. This
note is dated The reason is the following: if we have concluded that we believe in the
supernatural and divine character of these phenomena, it has not been because
we have based it upon what the girls have told us about their Visions in those
moments, whether it be during the moments of ecstasy or after, without
considering it in conjunction with the phenomena that we have attended, or that
others who have Faith affirm that they have seen. We have submitted this unity of facts to a
severe critical analysis and we have arrived at the conclusion that these
phenomena were not and could not have been invented by the girls, nor could they
have resulted from their imaginations with a pathological or demonic
origin. This does not exclude that some
occasional fact or isolated situation might have been the fruit of their
imaginations or an illusion. We add that this reasoning must always be
valid, although Conchita affirms that the other girls did it, but that all that
happened to her was nothing more than an able simulation performed by her, or a
game of illusion. For that reason, if our conclusions and our beliefs in the
supernaturality of the phenomena of Garabandal have not been founded in what
the girls said during the time of the Apparitions, but rather in the concrete
facts and real evidence seen by me and by other witnesses, it simply diminishes
what really happened or what happened in these Apparitions. No one has a right to destroy these facts or
what the girls might say in the future. They are having an
illusion now, but we are not.” Comillas, August 10, 1966 Fr. Lucio Rodrigo S.J. DOCUMENTS
Testimony of the Reverend Fr. Ramón
María Andreu. Regarding his visit to
Garabandal on Question: On Father: I would be happy to do so. I arrived in Garabandal on October 17th. During that day and October 18th, I saw an
immense multitude of people arrive in the village. This presented much taking into account the difficulty
of the way and that the day was an actual deluge. The distance from Cossío, which I traveled on
foot, is about six kilometers. That day I was happy and tranquil. I didn’t have any reason to be any other
way. During the months of August and
September, and including what had happened in October, I had been a witness to
many events in the mountain village. I
had many happy memories from those months.
Everything seemed good to me. Question: How were your relations with the Bishop of Father: My relations with the diocesan authority was
excellent. Fr. Doroteo Fernández,
Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese, had authorized me to go up to
Garabandal to say mass, to preach, and to hear confession as well. I had the opportunity to visit the Bishop on
various occasions. On these visits I
could disclose my personal opinions. The
same thing as it refers to me, happened also with Fr. Eugenio Beitia Aldazabal to
my brothers, Fr. Alejandro and Fr. Marcelino. Question: What was the most pressing motive for your
visit to Garabandal on October 18, 1961? Father: You know that the girls had announced that
the proclamation of the message would be on this day. I supposed that this would be important. Many people must have thought this because in
spite of the difficulties of this day of deluge, there were about five thousand
people who assembled in the village that day. Question: Conchita says in her diary that this immense
multitude went up to the Pines around Father: Yes, I ascended; I was among the last making
this laborious ascent. It was necessary
to travel 500 meters up the mountain, and on this day it was wet and
muddy. After awhile, I was covered in
mud. Some flashlights made light in
front and on the sides. The water ran
down every part of the mountain. During the ascent, I slipped continually, and I fell several
times. This happened to almost everyone. I
was halfway there when I suddenly felt a brutal, intense inner bitterness. It was a mixture of these sad feelings that
was difficult to define. In that moment,
everything seemed to crumble away for me.
It was an extreme impression of intense loneliness. The four girls were nothing more than sick
children. I asked myself: Why am I here? My brother had died, and that was all that
was definitively true. This painful
internal state worsened for a few moments.
I can say truthfully that never in my whole life had I felt such intense
desolation. I thought about abandoning that which had not yet happened; I felt like
it was nothing more than a sad village joke. I
was still for a little while. Sometimes
I looked at the sky. I know that at that
moment I would have liked for the miracle that the girls had announced to
happen. My deception was absolute. I changed places and stayed there for awhile; I cannot say how long it
was that I was alone, feeling people pass me going up to the Pines in the
darkness. It was dark and silent. I have never felt more alone. Suddenly,
a lantern shone in my direction. A
friend who was descending from the Pines recognized me. He came to where I was. ─ This
is marvelous, he said to me. I let him say this while I thought to myself that tomorrow he would
understand how absurd all of this was. I
descended to the village with him, without showing anything of what I was
thinking. We entered a house where they
were already waiting for us. After a
little while, Amaliuca, Loli’s sister, entered.
She came towards me and two others and said to us: ─ Loli
says that you, you, and you should come. I
heard her, but I didn’t want to go.
Finally, I said: I will do a work
of mercy; I’ll visit the sick. And I
decided to say goodbye definitively. Question: And did you go to Loli’s house? Father: Yes. I
went up to the attic of Ceferino’s house.
There were a number of people there, it was a group of 12 or 14, and
Loli was with them. The girl seemed
content, even happy. I was thinking
about the thoughtlessness of this girl and the others when Loli smiled and said
to me: ─ Sit
down. There was no
chair. But there was a type of cot in
the corner. I sat automatically on the
end of it. Loli sat next to me. She was 12 years old but she led the
conversation, which will live in my memory forever. ─ Among
the three of you, there is one who does not believe. She said:
Do you know who it is? ─ Yes,
I told her. Do you? ─ Yes,
I know, she answered me. The Virgin told
me. ─ When? ─ Just now,
when I was coming down from the Pines. ─ Tell
me who it is, I insisted. ─ I
don’t dare, was her response. If it was
one of the other two… ─ Yes,
it’s me, I affirmed. I don’t believe any
of it. A smile of intelligence appeared on Loli’s
childlike face and she added: ─ The
Virgin told us: The Priest is doubting
everything and is suffering very much.
Call him and tell him not to doubt, that it is true and it is I, the
Virgin, who is appearing. And so that he
will believe you, tell him: “When you went
up you were happy, when you came down you were sad.” I was stupefied; I looked at Loli, unsure
of what to say. And she added: ─ She
talked a lot about you to Conchita. In
that moment I got up; I was confused, but I understood then that I had not
arrived at my final goodbye. I took my two friends who were looking
fixedly at my face while they said to me: ─ What
did she say to you? What happened? Without responding to these
questions, I pushed them saying: ─ Let’s
go to Conchita’s house. Aniceta opened the door. My
greeting was this question: ─ Can
I see Conchita? She is already in bed, Aniceta said,
but you can go up. There
were no doors to open. I went up the few
stairs and I arrived at her room and called to her there, where Conchita was in
bed with her cousin Luciuca. Conchita
was 12 and her cousin was 11. As soon as she saw me she said before I
could open my mouth: ─ Father,
are you happy, or are you still sad? ─ I
didn’t know how to respond. I answered,
Loli told me that the Virgin spoke about me to you. ─ For
at least fifteen minutes, she answered. ─ And
what has she told you? ─ I
can’t say, was her response. ─ Then
I will remain the same as before, I commented in a loud voice. Conchita smiled and said to me: ─ There
is something that I can tell you: “When
you ascended, you were happy, and when you descended, you were sad. The Virgin told me everything you were
thinking and when you were thinking it.
You thought, now I’m going to I was left without words. The next day Conchita showed with her finger
on a photograph the exact spots on the mountain where I had been thinking each
one of these things. It was something important for me.
All that Conchita had said was true. She told me for the Virgin: “All of this has happened in advance so that
you will not doubt again.” I have experienced other moments of doubt, but none has been as
anguished as the one on October 18th.
Frequently, I have been given the news—including official
decisions—which have ended the matter.
But I have seen time and time again the same questioner stay open to it. The
experience of October 18, 1961 has served me in many ways: to question how the
girls, especially Conchita, could know so much detail about an internal
experience of mine, and then tell it to me with such clarity and sureness.
DOCUMENTS OFFICIAL BULLETIN FROM THE BISHOP OF OFFICIAL NOTE FROM THE BISHOPRIC OF We write this NOTA as part of our Pastoral
duty. The name of GARABANDAL and the
news of the happenings produced during these years in this small mountain
village in our Diocese has arrived to us through the means of social
communication, as well as to the whole country and the European continent. International agents have divulged graphic
information and special reports. They
talk of apparitions of Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, and of spiritual messages
communicating the Most Holy Virgin’s desires.
At the same time they ask us to authorize these happenings so that they
can be united with other venerable Marian devotions that are universally known. The Bishop of Consequently, it follows that this diocesan
authority renews the measures taken so that the atmosphere of confusion will
not increase because of the massive propaganda that exists outside of the
spirit and letter of the sacred canons and is promoted through news, newspaper
articles, magazines, graphic information, reviews in itineraries, and other
similar methods. We remember that according to Canon 1,309
Number 5: “By the same Law, books and pamphlets that refer to new apparitions,
revelations, visions, prophecies, miracles, or that introduce new devotions are
prohibited if they are published without observing the prescriptions of the
canons.” We make known that at the
present moment we have not granted “Imprimatur” any book, pamphlet, article, or
review on this matter. We extend this
prohibition as far as our diocesan authority reaches on the publication of
articles or information that has not been submitted to the censor of the
Diocese of We ask all of the faithful Christians to
abstain from worsening the atmosphere in San Sebastian de Garabandal with their
presence. This atmosphere has been created
by these apparitions and spiritual communications. We want to make clear that we have not found
anything deserving of ecclesiastical censure with regard to condemning either
the doctrines or the spiritual recommendations that have been promulgated because
of the events of Garabandal in so far as they are directed to faithful
Christians. On the contrary, they
contain exhortations to prayer and sacrifice, to Eucharistic worship, to
devotion to Our Lady under traditional praiseworthy forms, and to the holy fear
of God offended by our sins. They simply
repeat ordinary Church doctrine in these matters. We recognize the good faith and the religious
fervor of the persons who go up to San Sebastian de Garabandal, and who merit
the greatest respect. We want to support
their religious fervor so that, trusting completely in the Church’s Hierarchy
and its Magisterium, they might comply exactly with our publicly reiterated
recommendations. Regarding the priests, as a result of the
special importance that their intervention can have in the active form of their
participation and collaboration in the development of these facts, as well as
in the form of simple presence as a spectator, we PROHIBIT in an explicit and
formal matter their attendance without express license, to be obtained
personally in each case, from the diocesan authority. We declare that the
licenses are suspended “ipso facto” in the Diocese of EUGENIO, Bishop A.A. of
DOCUMENTS Part
of the original text of some of Conchita’s notes. “I would talk to you the whole day... but I
would bore you. In the darkness of this
silent night, and looking at the blue sky, I see your creation; the stars, the
moon… all of these things that you have made for our good. I feel very united with you when looking at
the sky… I want those who don’t know you and who are separated from you to
accept my prayers and for you to accept my prayers this night, and also my
timid and miserable sacrifices—so that these souls might be nearer to you,
Jesus, and to Mary, Mother of the Church, especially for those that don’t know
you.” “Why have you chosen me, knowing what I am,
to tell your sorrowful messages? It is a
very great grace, and you know, my Jesus, that I realize the responsibility
that I have. How will I fulfill it,
Jesus? I cannot enter within the message
and make them fulfill it, and some people believe that I have invented
this! Why do you let this happen? You already know, that it cannot be completed
like this, with them doubting. Oh, my
Jesus, we meditate on your five wounds so that we can offer sacrifices
happily. Forgive us Lord, because we are
joined to you…”
“I would like to visit you more.
I want to be your little light that calls and lights up for you and
grows brighter to give light to souls that want to come where you are. I also want to be the part within the door of
the tabernacle so I can be more united with You. I want to be so much, but I am nothing,
nothing, nothing. But since I am the
daughter of Mary, the Mother of God, I am redeemed with the Blood of Christ
Crucified, and because of that I am something.”
DOCUMENTS CONCHITA’S PRAYER— Mother, I ask you for this new year, Not to be vain. I ask you also for sincerity, gratitude and Love for You. Lord,
this is what I ask of you this year: Give
me the spirit of sacrifice, of prayer. Let
me receive Communion with more fervor, And
visit the Blessed Sacrament more often. Forgive
me, Lord. Thank
you for all of the good that you have given us. Thank
you for all of the good that you have given my family and Forgive
us for not always doing what you ask. Lord,
thank you for this new year and forgive me for last year. Lord,
I pray for all those that you have commended to me. Above
all for those who need you most. Lord,
I also pray for the souls in Purgatory. I
pray for all of the sick. For
those who spread the message; And
for those who don’t want to know anything about the message. I pray for everyone. I
also pray for those who write to me now, And
for all who have written to me telling me about their needs. Lord,
I tell You about them, Although
I cannot tell you about all of them, Lord,
you already know. Mother,
listen to all of us, Tell
your Son And
help and give them what they pray for, If
it is for the greater glory of you and Jesus And
good for our souls. Lord,
forgive those you have entrusted to me. Lord,
I pray so that your message will spread more and more And
that all who spread the message Will
do it for You. Lord,
thank you for them. Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit.
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