Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notes: Part One, Post 18

Third Manifestation

While we were speaking with the girls they fell into a trance. It is very brief. We were next to them and we heard what they said very clearly. It’s the part of the dialogue that corresponds to the girls. I took the account that was made from the combination of his notes, and those from Fr. Cipriano Abad and Andrés Pardo. Fr. Luís made them four or five days before his death.

“Upon finishing these questions they had another Vision while the priests were near them.

Dialogue:

“Now bring the Child.” (They laugh, kiss, and offer smiles).

“The Child is very beautiful! Look at the Child’s crown.”

“Take it, don’t take me!—Why don’t you stretch a little more?”

“You return with the Child. You say that you won’t come again. Where do you have him? Is he sleeping?”

“How beautiful!”

“How old is he? Why don’t you say?”

“One?”

“You don’t want to tell us how old he is?”

“We can’t say how old he is?”

“He’s so small!”

(They had serious attitudes, and moved their lips).

“Can they go up?”

“We heard little Sari and the others.”

N.B.—There are no more facts from this Vision. We spoke with the girls and they told us the following: “The Virgin is happy because the people have obeyed (they didn’t ascend to the top). She has told us to pray the Rosary. She said if they want they can come to pray here. She said that they will see her until the morning.

The people ascended and prayed the Rosary, which the girls led.

Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notes: Part One, Post 17

Second Manifestation

It came suddenly. The girls stayed on their knees in front of the Pines. Next to the Pines, with their backs to the scene, on opposite sides, were the child “witnesses.” Jacinta and Loli were on their knees in front of them and facing the Pines.

In the distance we heard something the girls said, but we didn’t understand anything. One of their mothers said: “They’re crying.” We also heard the kisses that they gave in the air, as though they were kissing something.

After a few minutes, about four, the pastor called to Mari Carmen, a child witness. She came slowly and when she arrived we asked her: “What are they saying?” She answered indifferently: “That she shouldn’t tell them bad things.” Sometimes she spoke of these bad things or sad things, probably the announcement of the punishment for sins, which was in the message of October 18, 1961. It made them cry.

Jacinta and María Dolores were on their knees with their heads slightly lifted, looking at the same place. It’s as though they had their glance stuck to something. One of them inclined forward a little bit, but not much. They looked for stones, acted as though they were going to rub them on the grass, as though they were cleaning them a little bit. They offered them. One of them, Loli, seemed as though she was going to fall backwards. When Loli oscillated, the other girl threw her arm to her shoulder, but not always. All of this happened without them moving their glances or their faces. They never looked at one another.

One of the girls made a gesture of putting on a crown. She passed it to the other girl and that one put it on. Loli gave a slap, extending to fall backwards, and Jacinta grasped her. They looked for stones, feeling for them. The two girls offered them to the Vision. All of this happened without them removing their glances from what they were seeing in front of them.

They lifted their hands as though they were offering something. One of them crossed her arms. They lifted their arms as though they were taking something. We heard some kisses. They stretched out their arms, smiled, heard something and cried.

After 11 minutes they returned to the normal state. We ran to them and we observed that one of the girls still had tears on her face. We asked: “Why are you crying?” But they didn’t say why.

Upon asking who they had seen, they said: “Our Lady of Mt. Carmel,” and they also explained to us, saying: “We had the Virgin’s crown.”

Among the notes that I took on this same day, I have this observation: “When they’re not in the trance they’re absolutely normal girls. Their family members are nervous, not knowing what to do. The only ones who are calm are the girls.”

The summary that appears in Fr. Luís’s notes, combined with those belonging to Fr. Cipriano Abad and Andrés Pardo is this:

“I approached the children, running. I saw that Loli was crying. I asked her why she was crying. She didn’t respond to me. I asked her again: “Who have you seen?”—“We saw Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. We had the Virgin’s crown.” I asked her to ask the Virgin for a sign, for them to ask her. They didn’t respond.”

Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notes: Part One, Post 16

First Manifestation

This atmosphere of expectation lasted several long minutes until, suddenly, the commotion of the public that inundated the narrow streets of the village indicated that the girls were moving toward the fence or hoop that was in the road. The gesture of so many arms moving in the air indicated for us the direction of the place where the girls had begun the trance.

We ran through the road, jumping over the stones, and when we arrived there was a great group encircling the girls.

With difficulty, the priests attained an open road until they arrived next to Jacinta and Loli, who were the two that were thrust into the stony ground.

The aspect of the girls was the following: the head slightly raised. The eyes open. The glance of both fixed in front of them. Their faces were natural. The hands varied in attitude according to the different movements they made. The lips moved, pronouncing words. In front of one of the girls was a man with a knife, a doctor by profession, and it seemed that when he took the girls’ pulses he said this word: “Normal.”

A priest who was unknown to me took notes while kneeling next to the girls. During a few minutes he tried to understand what the girls said, but the noise that the people produced while pushing in a violent manner impeded hearing what the girls were saying in a low voice.

The noise made the falling of some stones that formed a little wall louder, where the public was trying to ascend.

The brigadeer of the Civil Guard and a number of other Civil Guards tried to impose silence. In the middle of the confusion Lolita’s father, always nervous, indicated that they shouldn’t go so near the girls and suddenly, exasperated, with a great voice he said: “Be quiet, please, but what is this?” “It cannot be like this, we don’t know what this is, or where we are.”

The reaction was that the silence was extended, even though it was still incomplete. In the middle of all of this tumult, the girls were completely away from it and they acted normally like a person talking alone with another person.

The sentences that those of us who were closer could match were small words and made almost no sense since we didn’t hear everything. It was more or less the following: “I already know—yes—no—I remember about the doctor. He wore a brown habit like the other day—no—yes—why? Yes—I don’t know anything—let’s go—yes—why are you smiling? Don’t go—huh? You haven’t been here any—yes—I didn’t know—you tell us so we know and so we don’t forget—I don’t know—what a shame! We do it worse—don’t go—wait a little.”

These sentences are incomplete because we can’t understand the majority of the things they said. Accompanied by the sentences, there were gestures: among the others they offered to kiss the rosaries that they had been given.

Suddenly, they returned to the normal state without a transition and getting up tranquilly, the two girls said at the same time that the Virgin had told them to go to the Pines. They said their parents, the priests, the religious, and the guards could go as well. They said that they could be in the Pines but far away. Everyone else had to be far away, very far away.

The movement to the Pines took place, during which the normality and tranquility of the girls was absolutely synchronized with their security in indicating the site where they should put the public, as well as the guards, priests, religious, and their parents.

When María Dolores was done going up the hillside where the Pines are, she returned and signalled with an arm gesture toward a trail on the hillside. She said: “Put them here.” The guards contained the multitude in a way that obeyed orders without exceptions.

Upon arriving at the Pines, the girls explained more clearly what they were going to do, and responded to our questions. We should put ourselves in the (?). In reality we were 20 or 30 meters away from the girls. The children had told the girls that we could see, but not hear. The same girls, Jacinta and Loli, looked absolutely natural and simple. There was no one there who formed a group of people that attended. Those who could witness the revelation were the parents of the girls, the priests, the guards, and the religious.

The Witnesses

Jacinta and Loli said in the moment that they returned to the normal state that they should be situated next to two girls, Mari Carmen and Sari. These two girls appeared to be 6 years old. The people of the village and the pastor said that they were “witnesses.” This wasn’t the first time that this happened. The “witnesses” were playing with Jacinta and Loli while they waited for the manifestation. The game was to run a little in an infantile manner, as if they were watching to see if one of the people who were not supposed to do so would come near. In reality the impression was that they had taken a pledge to complete an order that they had received. They controlled everything with their looks, collected small stones and put them on the ground next to the place where they should be displayed.

The seers demanded the presence of the child witnesses several times in the first weeks. It was always María del Carmen and Sari, two 6 year olds. On one occasion they wanted to switch these girls for older ones, 12 year olds, and the Vision said no, that she had said the younger ones should come.

We asked the “witnesses” what the “seers” had said and they repeated some words that they had heard, but they couldn’t understand the complete meaning of the conversation. This corresponded to the days on which the Virgin manifested the secret to the girls.

The interpretation is that it seems that Fr. Valentín could have some remote control over what happened in the trance, but without knowing what the girls were talking about. He knew that the conversation was about good things, but secret things. It seems that this corresponded to days and occasions on which the Vision was manifested to the girls in an oral manner as well appearing visually. The girls should make the message public on October 18, 1961.

Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notes: Part One, Post 15

Diario 4

4th Diary

July 29, 1961

Summary:

Ascent to the mountain. First manifestation. The witnesses.

Second manifestation. Third manifestation.

Fourth manifestation: according to Fr. Luís María Andreu, S.J.’s text. The same thing worked with Fr. Cipriano Abad’s notes and those of Fr. Andrés Pardo; they added clarifying notes.

Ascent to the Mountain

This day, July 29th, is the first day that I was in San Sebastián de Garabandal. Two days before I had received very vague news about what was happening there. When they invited me to go up, I responded that I didn’t have time to lose. Then the invitations were reiterated as was the pastor’s desire to find someone to tolerate the varied impressions that the phenomena were deriving, so I decided to accept. We went up in a group of four priests who were: Fr. Rufino, the pastor of San Sebastián del Valle (Vizcaya), Fr. Cipriano Abad, priests in Venezuela, my brother Fr. Luís, and I. Fr. Andrés Pardo came with us (he was a seminarian then) and some members of the Fontaneda family from Aguilar de Campoo.

During the somewhat laborious ascension we mixed points of humor, alluding to the apparitions. We finally arrived at the same place in San Sebastián de Garabandal. During the ascent, upon seeing our humor, an old man who was going down said: “Go up, go up, you will see how they already go down.” He seemed emotional.

After situating ourselves and waiting a little while at the edge, around 7:30 we felt a movement; there were around 500 people there who carried the news that two of the girls, Jacinta and Loli, had left the balcony where they had been playing quickly. We went up past the stones in the road where we waited, and after a few seconds our fellow priest, Fr. Rufino arrived, as did others. We asked him: “What has happened?” The answer was: “I was talking with a boy in the group and with two Carmelites and three countrymen about the events of the day. While we spoke, we watched Jacinta and Loli, who were playing with rosaries that we had entrusted to them for the Virgin to kiss. Suddenly, we observed that the girls disappeared from the balcony.” Some women corroborated what Fr. Rufino told us and added: “It had been the first call. There are two or three before the revelation.”

Among the people who went up, there was a member of the Civil Guard who brought a young girl with Down’s Syndrome. Another young person also carried a child whose legs were paralyzed and deposited him in the hoop. The paralyzed boy’s mother said that one of the girls had told them to go up. When the mother asked to where the girl responded: “We don’t know where we will go.”

Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notes: Part One, Post 14

Conchita in Santander

Before reconstructing what happened to Conchita in Santander, I’m going to cite what Fr. Luís wrote in his 2nd notebook, which represents a summary of what Fr. Valentín said:

“When Conchita went to Santander she told me two or three times when I asked her: ‘Whatever you prefer, stay or go’—‘I prefer to stay, but if you, my mother, the bishop, or my uncle the priest wants me to go, I’ll go.’

“When Fr. Luís and Conchita’s uncle who was a politician came, they went to begin the departure, but the others stayed in the vision and the uncle said: ‘Well, stay now,’ and she stayed and was docile.”

“When they left they went through the front door of the house, in my opinion, so the parents wouldn’t bother the girls.

What refers to the incident of the departure of Conchita to Santander can be summarized like this:

“Two doctors and two priests, one of them a canon, went up to San Sebastián de Garabandal around July 18th. The graphic report came into my hands, and it refers to these days, and shows in a photograph of the girls in a state of trance, with two priests standing with them, their arms crossed, observing, and the two doctors inclined over the children. According to the references that I have, a movie exists from this day on which they filmed, among other things, the moment in which the girls pass from one state to the other. According to what some doctors told me, the transition lasts a fraction of a second; we know this from relying on this numbered notebook and the film.

It seems in order to facilitate the observation of the girls and to find the origin of these phenomena, they thought of isolating the oldest of the four girls, Conchita, who was 12 years old, because according to the hypotheses that they formulated in the beginning, she was the strongest influence over the three younger girls.

The simplest way, it seems, to make the transition to Santander for the observation of the girl and her relationship to the other three, was to call Fr. Luís, her uncle and a priest. So they did this.

I don’t possess the exact information about what happened in Santander, only some of the happenings. One of the two doctors who had gone to San Sebastián de Garabandal around July 18th told me that he had performed a test on the girl to observe if they were compensating or if the columns they made reference to were the result of hysteria. He also told me that the girl left running and fell into a trance in the street. The same girl told me that she had gone to the beach, and that she had heard the Virgin without seeing her in the house on another occasion.

Other news that refers to Conchita’s time in Santander was given to me by Fr. Valentín and the brigand of the Civil Guard when I arrived in Cossío and San Sebastián de Garabandal for the first time on July 29th.

The first was Fr. Valentín. This was the first time I saw him. In Cossío, before I knew more than vague facts about what was happening in San Sebastián de Garabandal, he told me:

“Do you know the latest things that have happened?”

I didn’t know anything. He told me with emotion that Conchita had had an ecstasy in Santander and that at the same time the Vision had told this to the three remaining girls in San Sebastián de Garabandal. These girls became very happy and there are people who heard them.

One time in San Sebastián de Garabandal the brigand of the Civil Guard told me the store again, adding that the Civil Guard in Santander had called them to tell them that Conchita was having an ecstasy in the street in front of the Church—It was at the same time, he told me, that the three girls in San Sebastián de Garabandal had their ecstasies. The sentence the girls said was this:

“Oh, how wonderful, Conchita is also seeing in Santander!”

In the same line of references, Conchita knew that: “I saw the Virgin once and another time she spoke to me but I didn’t see her. She told me that she wouldn’t appear to me again because I went to the beach.”

Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notes: Part One, Post 13

“It’s the Joyful mysteries”—in the trance, she announced it smiling, as if it was a demonstration for someone that she doubted knew it.

“Medio entre dientes dijo algo de ‘secreto’ pero no pudo entenderse la frase.”

“Between her teeth she said something about a ‘secret’ but no one could understand the sentence.”

Mari Cruz also talked a lot, almost always accompanied by Conchita. The other two took part in the conversation, but with great intervals of silence.

In a certain moment, one of the attendees, an older person, censured one of the priests for smiling when he heard one of the festive expressions that the girls used. As though she’d heard it, Conchita said: “I don’t like the serious people, I prefer those who smile—they are kind—what is kind?”

Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notes: Part One, Post 12

The ending of the trance was abrupt and spirited, as if the current had been cut suddenly. The four girls lowered their eyes at the same time, recovered their normal attitude and voice (before they whispered) and they said at the same time: “We are going to pray the Rosary.” They did it like this upon continuing, the multitude in a chorus. During the trance, they did not stop speaking in a low voice, and above all Conchita spoke constantly without lowering her head, always with her mouth up and looking fixedly at the circle.

“I think I remember that at the beginning of them said: ‘Why haven’t you brought the Child?—What a shame!’ Then they talked about some priests who were present there or known to them, festively commenting about what had happened to them. That the pastor made circles in the sacristy, that they were good, and that the pulpit was very bad and almost fell.”

“Sometimes they laughed sincerely. They said that the pastor had scolded Conchita for wearing her long hair down (ordinarily she wore it in braids). Lolita commented: ‘Long hair like yours?—Michael’—or—‘Long hair like Michael’s.’ This could have seemed bad to the pastor, ‘Your name is Michael—my brother has the same name, but without the ‘St.’ My mother’s name is Aniceta—what an ugly name, she’s black,’ (her mother, who was at my side, is very dark) and she smiled when she heard Conchita—‘She only has two teeth—I see it when she eats.’”

Note: What is seen in this paragraph are some of the things the girls said during their trance. Not all of the things are put down with the same degree of certainty; there is some doubt about what she said about the long hair, about Michael, etc. We have to say these things about those allusions:

1st—On one occasion, one of the girls—I don’t remember which—told me, alluding to another: “That one has a brother named Michael, like the Angel, but he’s missing the “St.” She told the Virgin this and the Virgin laughed.

It’s possible that she was alluding to this occasion or that she had said this on other occasions as well.

2nd—A few days after this scene they cut off Conchita’s braids.

“Some people had a conversation about a movie they had seen ‘and what is a movie theatre?’ Conchita said—‘I’ve never been in a movie theatre.’ ‘Well! In Torrelavega I passed one—it’s a house.’”

“I’m from San Sebastián de Garabandal”—Conchita said—“but not from Vizcaya.” Lolita corrected: “Guipuzcoa.” “San Sebastián de Garabandal—think about it, it has a surname.” “It’s not like this?” (San Sebastián de Guipuzcoa). “Have you seen it?—Of course!—you’re in all parts—me, no. I am only here, and in the photos.”

“San Sebastián is very high, and it is difficult to go up—the sky is also high and everyone wants to go there.” (Conchita).

“At the beginning of the trance: ‘We are alone and grown up.’”

“She insisted several times. In reality they were squeezed into a large group with one row and among them there were several priests, but the leif motiv of the conversation was the following:

Note: There has been a frequent worry that the girls have always been in the presence of priests, and in general terms, they have always rejoiced to have them there and have had a special sympathy towards them, as for all religious.

“While talking about the priests present or known, Conchita remembered the Dominican—‘There is a priest who isn’t dressed like the others; he wears a white shirt—the neck isn’t like the others—he wears shoes with holes in them—but it’s an adornment—he’s very serious—he never laughs—the most he does is this (she smiles). I don’t know who this priest is—but he is very good.’ She repeated this with variations many times. During one of them she exclaimed, ‘oh!—Dominican!’ She seemed very satisfied at having solved the puzzle. She laughed. ‘Figuring it out was difficult—but in the end we got it!’ She said this to her interlocutor.

Time and time again she returned to the topic of the ‘Dominican.’ She seemed very satisfied. After a lot of idleness, “Well, I don’t remember anything else about the Dominican!” But she returned to it from time to time. Mari Cruz smiled: “She’s remembering the Dominican again.”

Note: This Dominican priest was also occasionally a topic of their conversations while having a trance. When I arrived on the 29th of the same month, the girls who stayed in Garabandal, the three, since Conchita was in Santander, had already talked about the Dominican priest as on the 31st of July and the 1st of August.

When she said: “She is thinking of the Dominican” it could be simply that she smiled or because she’d thought about him a lot, or because the Vision indicated a Dominican, or because the others had been thinking about him. So these girls laughed and said that the other had been thinking. On one occasion I saw them do this as a game, and when I reach this day I’ll explain it.

“I seem to believe that he is very far from here (the Dominican priest) when in reality he is a meter in front of her. Suddenly she was startled, ‘Oh, how fat! What was here? Were you hearing me?’ She repeated this variations at intervals: ‘And now, how do I return the rosary?’ She worried about this for a little while. Finally she said: ‘Good, I will put it in front of you and I will give it to you.’ When the trance ended, she gave it naturally and immediately.”