Garabandal is a village in Northern Spain in the diocese of Santander. Our Lady of Mount Carmel reportedly appeared there from 1961 to 1965 to Conchita Gonzalez, Jacinta Gonzalez, Mari Cruz Gonzalez and Mari-Loli Mazon. It became famous for the Miracle of the Host. Reportedly an angel was giving communion to Conchita and the host could appear on her tongue visibly. Ghost hunters should be interested in a host that acts like more like a ghost of a host than a host! Spooky communion? That is a jaw-dropper.
Despite being declared to lack credibility by the diocese, the claims still have their supporters today. Books and pamphlets still appear. Probably next to the Mormon faith which deserves first prize for cherry-picking, these disciples also need an award for keeping things back. You will be told only what they want you to know.
Let us quote from a rather good resource called The Mystery of Garabandal: Fantasy or Fraud? Ghost or God? This book by LR Walker is highly recommendable.
“In many of these cases, unexplainable exchanges took place between the visionaries and the strangers. One night, some in the crowd tsked-tsked disapprovingly when a brazen pilgrim threw in a powder compact to be blessed. However, the offending object was kissed first by the Virgin, who noted, “That belongs to my Son.” Mari-Loli offering rosaries to the Virgin Conchita later explained that it had served as a secret pyx during the Spanish Civil War, carrying the consecrated host (a piece of bread that Catholics believe has become the body of Christ), to prisoners who were about to be executed. There are many such recorded instances of the visionaries recounting stories they “could not possibly have known” about various rings, rosaries and medals, then returning the object unfailingly to the correct owner who confirmed the visionaries’ account and, doubtless, became a true believer.””
COMMENT: No evidence, no affidavit is offered to back up any of this. Loli made the explanation up. The absurdity of the lying is made apparent by how it is not blessed any more. Church doctrine is that anything can be blessed for a serious enough reason but that the blessing can be removed. Churches can get deconsecrated and become bars.
Psychic knowledge? This compact thing is the best anybody can come up with? The visionaries were acting like psychic charlatans without using New Age occult terminology.
Notice how people were supposedly amazed by all the psychometry and we read that each one “and, doubtless, became a true believer”. It shows nobody really was listening to them at all. They just assume they became stalwart converts.
“In contrast to apparition sites like Lourdes, Garabandal does not seem to be a place of numerous spectacular physical healings”.
COMMENT: While Lourdes does report claims of miraculous healing and those healings are more suspect than anybody lets on, it remains odd that nobody wanted to link Garabandal with healing. It is a sign that people were hiding doubts.
“By early 1963, a short eighteen months after the apparitions had commenced, the denials began. Conchita’s description of the denials in her diary is odd. She simultaneously denies and affirms the apparitions.”
COMMENT: It depends on what split-personality you want to believe.
“The Denials Begin “We even went one day to confess it (that they had made it up). 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.” If they felt inside such peace, joy and intense love for both Michael the Archangel and the Virgin Mary, why did they confess to making the apparitions up? The explanation is not very enlightening. “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.” Conchita says she was “surprised” to be denying the Virgin when her conscience was at peace that she had seen her. So where was this denial coming from?
A commission of doctors then came to the village and questioned Mari Cruz, Jacinta, and Mari-Loli, who not only denied seeing the Virgin, but said that Conchita had performed the Miracle of the Host herself. In her diary, Conchita explained the betrayal this way: “Obviously, they didn’t know what they were saying at the time. And they allowed themselves to be controlled by the devil.” The gaps in this diary narrative make it sound as though the denials sprang fully formed from thin air for no reason and with no explanation except as a trick of the devil. In reality, the fissures in the girls’ relationships, along with their parents’ rivalries, may be traced at least as far back to the Miracle of the Host, about six months earlier. After that time, a divide appeared more starkly between those who believed in Garabandal and those who did not. The believers, including those who were reduced to tears at the sight of the Miraculous Host, were more convinced than ever; the disbelievers were more skeptical than ever before.”
COMMENT: At least nobody can say there is no evidence against the apparitions or against the miracle of communion.
“Conchita finally confessed that Loli and Jacinta were going to bury a statue and then “find” it under the Virgin’s direction—perhaps a stunt concocted by two girls who were tired of hearing about Conchita’s miracles, both big and small. However, Jacinta claimed Conchita conceived of the prank and talked them into it. Jacinta would admit later that whenever she and Mari-Loli queried the Virgin about a miracle, Mary never promised one, but said, rather, “They will believe. They will believe.” Jacinta insisted that Conchita had given them the idea of a miracle that they, too, would participate in.
Conchita, playing her own prank, gave some toothpowder to Mari-Loli and Jacinta claiming that it would help them levitate. Conchita said she was only joking, but Mari-Loli, apparently hoping it was true, ingested so much powder that she got sick to her stomach. This incident does lend credence to the idea that the other girls followed Conchita’s lead, and Conchita did in fact seem to be the mischief-maker of the group. At the end of an apparition, she would sometimes repeatedly make the sign of the cross wrong in order to force the Virgin to stay a while longer. Mary wouldn’t leave until Conchita finally made the sign of the cross correctly. From these pranks that the girls were either plotting (the buried statue) or already executing (levitation powder), the unfortunate rumor of “Loli and Jacinta’s miracle” began to circulate through the village. The rumor apparently gained a momentum of its own and the die was cast. At the time, the failure of Loli and Jacinta’s miracle to materialize by the end of 1962 was sharply disappointing and was taken as evidence of the falsity of the entire affair—something which made the much-maligned bishops’ skeptical pronouncements appear eminently wise and reasonable.”
COMMENT: Good to see honesty in this author here.
“Mari-Loli’s own father, a respected leader and businessman in the village, called the upcoming apparition “pure lies,” and Mari-Loli herself questioned Conchita’s prediction of another apparition.”
COMMENT: The Bible bans listening to anybody who claims their voice is also God or Heaven’s voice but who messes around with predictions. Moses taught that a prophet who gets all right but one thing should be discarded. Jesus himself validated this teaching in Matthew 5.
“Jacinta’s own mother believed in the apparitions when Jacinta was in a trance, but didn’t believe if Jacinta wasn’t in a trance.”
COMMENT: Jacinta could surely fake trances at times. Nobody was flashing lights in her eyes or putting a needle in her on every occasion to test her. The mother clearly knew the girl was a complete fraud and that was undeniable but didn't want her stigmatised too much. To compromise, they decided to pretend to think that some of the apparitions were real.
“Conchita—grieving over the crumbling of her religious vocation, filled with anxiety about her future, tormented by spiritual doubt about the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and fresh from meeting with doubting Mari-Loli and the unbelieving young Garabandal pastor—unburdened herself to the skeptical priest in confession that she herself now had doubts about the apparitions as well. But how could anyone know what Conchita said in the confessional? The young priest responded by refusing to give Conchita absolution unless she confessed to the village and the pilgrims that she had deceived everyone.”
COMMENT: Good to know this. She never confessed in this way so she broke the terms of her confession.
“In order to fulfill this condition, Conchita made arrangements to meet with the Bishop. On August 30, 1966, Bishop Puchol Montis, his Vicar General, a secretary, and the young Garabandal pastor arrived on the doorstep of Conchita’s school. The interview with this intimidating entourage lasted seven hours, with a break for lunch. During this interview Conchita said that she no longer remembered seeing the Virgin, but her diary was true, the Miracle of the Host was true, the Messages of Garabandal were true, and the Great Miracle would come. In a 1980 BBC documentary, Conchita said that she spoke with the bishop for “many hours,” and although she admitted to the Bishop that she couldn’t remember seeing the Virgin, she also told him that she didn’t know who had given her the June 18, 1965 message: “I didn’t invent the message.””
COMMENT: This level of lying and incoherence is quite alarming. All the girls had to say was that they were seeing something but didn’t think it was who it said it was. But no, one minute they said they saw no visions and then the next that some of the claims, eg a few of the messages, were true.
“Conchita explained the fake ecstasies in her diary this way: In the early days of the apparitions, the girls sometimes had already received two calls and wanted to stay together for the coming apparition, but were forbidden to be out on the streets after dark by their parents. Consequently, the girls would “look above as though we were seeing the Blessed Virgin. In this way we were able to stay together in the streets. Then the Blessed Virgin would appear to us while we were together.” The girls would stumble and trip when they kept their eyes fixed heavenward while faking it (unlike the genuine ecstasies), and they were rebuked by the Virgin Mary for pretending to see her as soon as she really did appear. But that wasn’t the only occasion when the girls simulated ecstasies. Villager Pepe Diez recalled some “extremely rare” instances when pilgrims traveled long distances, arrived exhausted, and were deeply disappointed when no apparitions were forthcoming. Some of these pilgrims relentlessly badgered the girls to kneel and pray and attempt to “bring on” an ecstasy for them. “It was, on the part of the little girls, a kind of compliance toward these people,” Pepe Diez noted. The girls were essentially reduced to performing for “apparition tourists.”
Yet Pepe noted the striking differences between the real and simulated ecstasies. “In fact, when the ecstasies were false, the girls had to move along flat roads, where they could walk easily, whereas in real ecstasies, they would go over all kinds of terrain without stumbling over any objects frontwards or backwards, in very difficult positions, with an ease...Moreover, the false ecstasy never lasted more than five minutes, maybe ten...the real ecstasies lasted sometimes four to five hours, on very difficult roads...without any sign of fatigue.” Still, this admission by the girls to occasional faking was devastating—something which Conchita was painfully aware of. When asked if she realized that her “inventions” and “little deceits”—along with her own doubts—clouded the truth about the apparitions of Garabandal, she replied: “It is very possible that could be. Don’t think that I haven’t thought about it.”
And then came this damning development: All four girls, after the interviews with the bishop in the fall of 1966, agreed to “recant.” The text that they signed was: “I did not see the Virgin.” Meanwhile, the parents also were told to sign, but Conchita’s mother, livid about the seven-hour interrogation, yanked her daughter out of the convent school and refused to sign: “I saw what I saw, I am not signing.” Jacinta’s mother—who had screamed uncontrollably the first time she saw her daughter in ecstasy—said she would only recant if Jacinta could fall into an ecstasy right then and there in front of the bishop. When Jacinta said it was impossible, her mother also refused to sign.
All four girls, after the interviews with the bishop in the fall of 1966, agreed to “recant.” The text that they signed was: “I did not see the Virgin.”
COMMENT: Jacinta’s mother was clearly abusive…and unhinged. Parental abuse and threats may explain the erratic behaviour of the visionaries.
Pepe has joined the ranks of those who keep grief vampire psychics and mediums in business. “They couldn’t have been faking all the time.”
There is no rationality in saying that an ecstasy is probably real if it lasts for more than ten minutes. The Virgin can appear for two minutes if she wants.
There is no footage or evidence that the visionaries ever did anything superhuman with this going over rough terrain without stumbling. We all see people managing that who know the route. And they were children for heaven’s sake. No record or tape was made to document any 5 hour ecstasy in full and correctly. This leaves gaps for some funny business.
“Consider the difficult case of Mari Cruz, the one who is most often described as denying the apparitions occurred. When the other three girls at various times over the years renounced their denials, Mari Cruz reportedly stood fast and insisted that she had never seen the Virgin or the angel. In the early years, some observers believed Mari Cruz was under family pressure to deny the apparitions since “Mari Cruz, while denying, was constantly looking fixedly at her mother.” At the same time, her mother was explaining away the apparitions as “arising from illness.” Yet years later, Mari Cruz still denied the apparitions. In a 1984 interview, Mari Cruz said that Conchita suddenly went into ecstasy that first time and put it into the other three girls’ heads that they had also seen the angel. This echoes the Commission’s belief that Conchita was the charismatic instigator who cast a spell on the other, more impressionable girls. Mari Cruz also agreed with the Commission’s suggestion that the crowds pressured the girls into continuing their charade. In the 1984 interview, she said that the girls were forced to continue the apparitions because miracle-hungry crowds began to descend on them almost instantly, badgering the girls for a message similar to Lourdes or Fatima. (Due to this crowd pressure, the girls had repeatedly pressed the Virgin Mary to give “proof” as she had done at Lourdes and Fatima. The Virgin’s response was the Miracle of the Host.)
COMMENT: The famous Miracle of the Host was clearly a stunt for the pleasing of apparition tourists.
FINAL WORD
Garabandal is a good study for those who wish to learn about True Believer Syndrome. Devotees believe in it despite the Church and spend a lot of time promoting it and setting up the prayer groups. The energy put into this would not be done for the resurrection of Jesus or the Catholic doctrine that contraception is immoral. Even if you think it is wrong to dismiss Jesus, this is compatible with raising concerns about how human nature likes twisted reasons for supporting faith. If you had no problem with Jesus, you could still have a problem with how his disciples respond to him.