The claim that Paul VI endorsed the alleged apparitions of Garabandal is usually presented through an accumulation of episodes: Conchita was summoned to Rome, Cardinal Ottaviani questioned her for more than two hours, the Pope gave her a particularly affectionate blessing, some religious received words of encouragement, and certain centers of dissemination obtained apostolic blessings. All of this, gathered without distinguishing the nature of each fact, creates the impression that there was a pontifical approval that the bishops of Santander refused to recognize. However, an examination of the sources allows us to reconstruct a far less conclusive story and, above all, requires us to confront the individual accounts with the official communications of the Holy See during the very pontificate of Paul VI. The question is not to prove that the Pope never felt any favorable impression toward Garabandal: a historical judgment cannot penetrate to that extent into the inner dispositions of a person. What must be determined is whether the documents allow us to affirm that he recognized the supernatural character of the events or ecclesiastically endorsed the movement that arose around them, which would be quite strange, since not only is there no pontifical approval, but there is also a communication from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that expressly denies that the Holy See had approved, even indirectly, that peculiar movement.
Conchita in Rome: a boost for Garabandal?
Doña Concepción González traveled to Rome, according to the most common reconstructions, between January 12 and 19, 1966, although some slightly extend those dates. She was accompanied by her mother, Aniceta, Father Luis Luna, and other people connected with the organization of the trip, including Princess Cecilia of Bourbon-Parma. Conchita was received by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, then pro-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, recently reorganized from the Holy Office. The interview should not be denied or reduced to legend: it appears in various favorable sources and in later statements by Conchita herself, who recalled that she had been questioned for about two hours and had been advised to keep what was said confidential. What those sources do not provide is the full record of the interview, with the questions, answers, and any eventual conclusions of the dicastery officials. And this distinction is fundamental: receiving a person to question them shows interest in knowing their testimony, not agreement with it; the body in charge of doctrinal discernment listens precisely to those who are involved in controversial phenomena; the audience constitutes an investigative procedure, not its favorable resolution. Nor can the cardinal’s cordiality be turned into recognition of the apparitions. Ottaviani could treat an adolescent in a complex situation with kindness without thereby admitting the supernatural origin of her experiences. Courtesy, attention, and charity are not canonical formulas of approval.
Favorable compilations reproduce a letter from Conchita to Father Gustavo Morelos, written after the trip, in which she expresses her satisfaction and explains that she cannot provide details because she had been asked to keep the matter secret. That should suffice, but here too, as in the ever-pilgrim Garabandalist methodology, an interpretative shift appears: the interviewee’s joy is used to supply the reserved content of the interview. But leaving a meeting happy may simply mean having been listened to or being grateful for the treatment received. Confidentiality also does not necessarily favor one of the hypotheses: if the content remains secret, it cannot be invoked as public proof of approval. Silence preserves only unavailable information; turning it into a space to house the desired conclusion is an understandable operation from the standpoint of enthusiasm, but insufficient and dishonest from the standpoint of history. The same applies to the claim that Conchita communicated to Ottaviani or to other people close to the Pope the date of the Miracle. Even granting that she did so, receiving a prediction does not amount to authenticating it. Proof would require knowing exactly what the interlocutor received, how it was recorded, and what judgment was made about it.
Does blessing one more pilgrim authenticate her “visions”?
The most repeated phrase is well known: “Conchita, I bless you and with me the whole Church blesses you.” Conchita herself confirmed it in an interview conducted by Jesuit Francis Benac in June 1978, later reproduced in Garabandal Journal. However, when describing the circumstances, Conchita spoke of the Pope advancing in the gestatorial chair, of people standing beside her, and of words that could be heard by those around. This is a relevant detail, because some accounts speak of a private audience with a small number of attendees, while others place the episode at the end of a general audience on Wednesday, January 19, 1966. Could the versions be calling “private” a brief personal exchange within a public event?
In the comments added to an edition of Conchita’s Diary, the Pope is also described as spotting her in the crowd while leaving in the gestatorial chair and giving her a blessing. But that passage belongs to the editorial explanation accompanying the text, not to an autograph entry by Conchita.
Moreover, even accepting, strange as it may sound, that Paul VI uttered that phrase, it does not declare the apparitions supernatural. The expression “with me the whole Church blesses you”—absolutely unusual in a Pope, and even more so in the verbal sobriety of Montini—would not recognize an apparition, nor authenticate a message, nor confirm a prophecy, nor modify the dispositions of the competent bishop. Popes bless countless people whose experiences, opinions, or projects they have not thoroughly examined. A blessing asks for God’s grace; it does not constitute a universal ratification of everything its recipient holds. If it did, the Pontiff would have to be credited with an immense number of contradictory approvals, deduced from brief encounters and gestures of courtesy. But the discussion about the authenticity of the phrase does not exhaust the problem: even if it were proven, what some want it to mean would still need to be verified.
“The most beautiful story of Humanity since the Birth of Christ” ¡Sic!
This claim about Garabandal attributed to Paul VI, adding a comparison with a new presence of the Virgin on earth, in an audience of Jesuit Xavier Escalada, supposedly accompanied by Father Pedro Arrupe, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, is upheld by publications of the “Difusora Mariana” of Mexico and the “Legión Blanca Peruana.” They also reproduce a letter from Father Ramón María Andreu, dated Valladolid, April 13, 1967, in which he confirms that Escalada and Arrupe were with the Pope, who supposedly gave permission to continue spreading the message. Leaving aside the difficulty of imagining that Montini would utter such a categorical phrase, and… precisely before Arrupe. And some versions add even more emphatic exhortations! To establish the value of Andreu’s letter, it would be necessary to specify how and through whom the content of the audience was learned and exactly which words he confirms. In any case, confirming that those two Jesuits were received by the Pope has nothing to do with a minimally serious methodology, which requires locating the declaration closest to the immediate interlocutor, specifying the date of the audience, and distinguishing the original account from its successive amplifications. The more exceptional a statement attributed to the Supreme Pontiff is, the less reasonable it is to establish it through a chain of references whose dependence is not clarified, and the most that is mentioned is an imprimatur granted on November 7, 1968, by Msgr. Alfonso Zaplana Bellizza, Bishop of Tacna, to a Peruvian publication that collected the words attributed to Paul VI; yet this does not prove that the bishop witnessed the conversation or verified its literalness. An imprimatur does not turn the one who grants it into an eyewitness nor replace the competent Ordinary’s judgment on an “apparition”: authorization to print a text and the historical authentication of each of its reports belong to different planes.
The abundant and peculiar Garabandalist literature records other papal blessings: one to centers in England and Ireland, requested in December 1968 and granted in March 1969; another to a Mexican organization in June 1969; and various encounters with groups of pilgrims carrying images or banners of Garabandal. Each episode would require examining its original support: petition, response, addressee, formulation, and context. It is not enough to know how its beneficiaries interpreted it. An apostolic blessing—hundreds are issued daily by the Apostolic Almonry and dozens by the Secretariat of State—does not constitute approval of the movement to which the petitioners belong, and still less, in this case, the authentication of controversial “apparitions” disapproved by the Ordinary. A distinction must also be made between blessing an image of the Virgin and recognizing the reality of a specific apparition represented in it. Mary’s motherhood and devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel do not depend on Garabandal: thanks be to God, they are much earlier.
On Garabandal, Rome always with the bishops of Santander
Against the favorable conversations attributed to the cardinal, then pro-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, there exists an official letter from him to the bishop of Santander, Msgr. Vicente Puchol Montis, dated March 7, 1967, with protocol 1065/64, in which he thanks him for his prudence and communicates that, after examining the documentation, the Congregation considers that the matter has been studied and resolved by the bishop and finds no reason to intervene. This letter was written after Conchita’s trip to Rome. Therefore, any reconstruction of Ottaviani’s supposed support must be confronted with his documented subsequent action; the 1966 interview cannot be selected as if the 1967 correspondence did not exist, which, if it does not constitute a declaration of the falsity of the “apparitions,” still less approves them: it recognizes the diocesan management and does not take on the cause through a substitute Roman investigation.
Two years later, on March 10, 1969, another letter from the new prefect, Cardinal Franjo Šeper, to the new bishop of Santander, Msgr. José María Cirarda, reiterated that no new elements had appeared that would justify direct intervention. The Congregation distinguished its appreciation for diocesan prudence from its own judgment on supernaturality, but considered the Ordinary’s dispositions sufficient to guide other bishops regarding pilgrimages and acts motivated by the supposed “apparitions.” Rome had not issued an autonomous sentence on the supernatural origin of the phenomena, but refraining from issuing such a sentence did not amount to approving them or granting indiscriminate freedom to promote them outside the bishop’s competence. The absence of a Roman declaration is not a Roman endorsement, still less when the same document indicates the pastoral orientation that must be followed.
A year later, on April 21, 1970, in another letter to the Archbishop of New Orleans, Msgr. Philip M. Hannan, Cardinal Šeper denied that there was an official private investigator of the Pope for Garabandal, rejecting claims that sought to place the verification of the phenomenon exclusively in the hands of Paul VI, to the detriment of the authority of the bishop of Santander: the Holy See had not approved, even indirectly, the movement, nor encouraged or blessed its promoters or centers. Such an evident institutional declaration should prevent the interpretation of an endorsement by the Holy See. Even if Paul VI had blessed one or several persons connected with Garabandal, that would not accredit an ecclesial approval parallel to the competent body during his pontificate.
The scarcely credible words attributed—only that—to Paul VI do not allow invoking him as a guarantor of the supernatural character of Garabandal. Even private sympathy would be different from a pronouncement. Veneration for the Pope requires respecting that difference. His authority is not honored by making a blessing speak as if it were a decree, nor by sidelining official communications when they prove less useful than individual accounts. All the more so since there is not the slightest documentary proof of such a fondness for Garabandal and Conchita on the part of an introspective Pope—Paolo Mesto according to the Italians—who during his visit to Fatima in 1967 did not wish to speak with Sister Lucia, with whom he barely allowed himself to be briefly photographed.
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