Revisited Again in Light of the Passing of His Holiness Pope John Paul II
Reprinted with kind permission: by Geoffrey
A. P.Groesbeck
April 2005
For
many years, some followers of Garabandal theorized that Pope John Paul
II’s reign would see “the end of the times”. Although plausible on the
surface, this scenario did not come to pass as some expected. While the
pope’s passing is in many ways the end of an era or epoch – especially
if considered from a moral perspective – there is nothing to indicate that
his demise marks the fulfilment of any particular Garabandal prophecy tied
to the warning or miracle.
The Facts
One of the more startling prophecies of Garabandal
concerns the three popes who would follow Blessed Pope John XXIII (1958-1963),
and especially the last of the three: John Paul II (1978-2005). According
to some conjectures, John Paull II supposedly would witness the great miracle
at Garabandal, and the end of his reign supposedly would usher in “the
end of the times” (el fin de los tiempos, in the original Spanish).
The careful reader will note the use of the adjective
“supposedly” twice in the previous sentence. This is deliberate. While
one can speculate that Pope John Paul II may indeed have witnessed the
miracle before his death – or will witnes it after death from Heaven --,
this is speculation, not fact. It may be that he will see it, yet it also
may be for another to see it. We simply do not know.
What is certain, however,
is that by the end of his reign a very definite end of the present times,
or “era”, had come about. In fact, one can argue convincingly that this
time already had come, long before his death.
But first, let us turn
to the aspect of the prophecy that deals with a pope seeing the miracle.
That we do not know for certain if it was or will be Pope John Paul II
needs to be underscored. For many years, some of Garabandal’s most prominent
promoters have linked the pope who will see miracle as the same one whose
reign will see the end of the times. Although plausible, we repeat, this
scenario is not necessarily so.
The Original Dialogue
To understand the matter better, we need to go back and visit the events as they actually unfolded, in time and in their proper context. A careful reading of the dialogue as originally related by Conchita herself yields some very interesting information, which in its subtlety easily can be confused. For this, we first turn to the original Spanish text, as it appears in Se Fue con Prisas a la Montana, the Spanish-language predecessor to She Went in Haste to the Mountain.
On 3 June 1963 — the day
of the passing of Pope John XXIII — after learning that the village bells
were tolling for the pope, Conchita made a startling remark to her mother
Aniceta: “For sure…now there remain no more than three [popes]!” (Seguramente…
Pues, ya no quedan mas que tres!)1 Although this was the
first time that Aniceta had heard this announcement, it appears that Conchita
had made mention of this more than six months earlier to others. She perhaps
first was told this on 20 December 1962, as indicated by a letter that
Conchita’s aunt Maximina sent to friends that same day.2
Naturally, Aniceta was
shocked, and asked if this meant the end of the world was approaching (?Quiere
decir que viene ya el fin del mundo?). Conchita’s response was that
the Virgin did not say “the end of the world”, but rather “the end of the
times”. Further, after being asked if these two were not the same, she
answered only: “Well, I don’t know that.” (Pues, no lo se.)3
Subsequent recorded comments
by Conchita on the matter are few. We know that some days later (probably
5 June) she mentioned three times to three women that there would be only
three more popes (Digo tambien que ya solo quedan tres Papas.)4,
after which would come “the end of the times”. Here she added that, again,
she did not know what this enigmatic phrase meant.5 At least
four other times Conchita repeated this statement (once to no less eminent
a personage than Fr. Lucio Rodrigo, then a professor of moral theology
at the Pontifical University at Comillas).
One person to whom Conchita repeated this message
was Mother Maria des Nieves de Garcia, the headmistress of the school Conchita
attended briefly in Burgos. In this conversation, which took place on 1
November 1966, instead of noting that she did not know whether “the end
of the times” was the equivalent of “the end of [all] time”, Conchita drew
a finer distinction.
According to Mother des
Nieves’ own notes, Conchita earlier had asked the Virgin if these two events
would be one and the same. The reply was emphatically that they would not
be. Specifically, the Virgin mentioned that there would be two more popes
after the then-current pontiff (Paul VI, 1963-1978), and then the end of
the times.6 We do not know when Conchita was told this, except
that it obviously was after Paul VI had been made pope.
Later Comments and Confusion
Since the last of these early conversations with others, we know of no additional comments by Conchita on the matter. However, if any had been made, it seems likely they would have been disseminated quickly amongst the Garabandal community. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it therefore seems safe to say that Conchita’s remarks as recorded by her former headmistress (and others) 37 years ago hold true, and with nothing new added to them. If so, we can state with assurance at least the following:
1. Pope John Paul II is the last of the explicitly
referenced three remaining popes subsequent to Blessed Pope John XXIII.
2. The end of the times — but not the end
of time itself — will coincide with the end of his pontificate.
That “the end of the times”
is a momentous benchmark of some sort is obvious. One anecdotal suggestion
of just how seriously Conchita takes this prophecy is revealed by her reaction
upon hearing of the death of Pope John Paul I, whose brief reign of 36
days ended on 28 September 1978. An acquaintance of hers, with her on that
same day, noted that the visionary became visibly agitated after hearing
the news of the pontiff’s passing.7 Surely, that John Paul I’s
death would provoke such a strong reaction is not something to be taken
lightly.
On the other hand, in an
attempt to buttress a belief that the present pope will be the last one
(and in this case, of all time), some have attempted to link — erroneously
— Conchita’s comments with the so-called prophecies of St. Malachi (Malachy),
an eleventh-century Irish monk. These alleged predictions of St. Malachy
are spurious, the work of a Belgian monk, Arnold de Wion (or de Wyon),
who wrote them six centuries after St. Malachy died.8
An Attempt at Clarification
Where, then, does the prediction that a pope will see the miracle come from, and can we claim to know which pope it is who will see it?
According to Fr. Garcia
de Pesquera9, sometime in September of 1962, Conchita made the
statement that the pope — whoever it would be at that time — would see
the miracle to come, whether he was in Garabandal or elsewhere. This prediction
was made roughly three months before the Virgin told her of the three remaining
popes. The Blessed Mother did not say in this earlier dialogue that the
pope who would see the miracle also would be the last of the three popes
to follow then-Pope John XXIII.
We note with equal interest
that in the apparition of December that same year, the Virgin made no mention
of the third (or any) pope seeing the miracle. In other words, her comments
regarding a pope seeing the miracle were delivered in September of 1962,
with no reference to who that pope would be. And in her later comments
regarding the number of remaining popes, no mention was made of one of
them being the one who would see the miracle.
From this, a number of
conclusions arise, amongst them the possibility that any future pope could
see — or could have seen — the miracle. This would include popes Paul VI,
John Paul I, John Paul II, or anyone who follows.
It is probably safe to say that neither Paul VI
nor John Paul I saw the miracle, as surely some mention would have been
made of it. We know, of course, that Fr. Luis Andreu and St. Pio saw the
miracle, but we also assume that no one else has seen it, including any
pontiff. If Pope John Paul II was to have been the last pope of all time,
it would have been a logical necessity that he would have see the miracle.
If, however, he is not
the last pope, but instead the last pope of the[se] times, it does not
follow that he must ipso facto be the pope to witness the miracle.
So do we have a right to
infer that our beloved late pope did or will see the miracle? We do not.
It may seem plausible, but there is no direct link between the miracle
to come in Garabandal and which pope will see it.
Here we turn again to She
Went in Haste to the Mountain. On page 486, there is a very important
sentence written in 1963 by Fr. Luis Lopez Retenaga, as a summation of
what was definitively known regarding who this pope will be: “The Virgin
did not say specifically which pope.”10
What We Know for Certain
To the above two conclusions now can be added the following third one.
3. There will be a pope who will see the
miracle to come.
It seems beyond all doubt
that neither popes Paul VI nor John Paul I saw the miracle, and likely
not John Paul II, either, which leaves one of his successors as the one
who will see it.
The temptation to assume
it would have been John Paull II is admittedly strong. If he is the third
pope after Blessed Pope John XXIII, some say, then he is the chosen pope.
But this does not follow from Conchita’s words. All we know for certain
is that a pope will see the miracle.
We can combine this certainty
with the fact that John Paul II’s reign marks “the end of the times”, a
phrase that can mean many things, as will be discussed later in a subsequent
article. But we cannot say that therefore this pope must also be the one
who will see the miracle, because we do not know whether there will be
another pope after “the end of the times”.
We repeat: If there is
a successor to the late Pope John Paul II, this means only that John Paul
II’s reign saw the termination of a certain epoch (i.e., “the end of the[se]
times”). It does not mean that he saw the miracle, any more than it means
he was the last pope.
The crucial point is that
the phrase “last pope” is inextricably linked with “the end of the times”.
This is nothing more than a re-stating of our original two conclusions.
And if the end of the times means an end to a specific era or epoch (as
Garcia de Pesquera and others argue11), and not an end to time
in an eschatological sense, there is no contradiction in saying that there
will be a successor pontiff and therefore that another will see the miracle
instead of the present pope.
End Notes
1. Garcia de Pesquera, Fr. Eusebio, O.F.M., Cap., Se Fue con Prisas a la Montana, 1972, p. 224.
