Our Lady of Good Success

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The Prophecies Approved by the Church

Luis Cadena y Almeida
Postulator for the Cause of Madre Mariana

For those who doubt the truth of the apparitions of Our Lady of Good Success and the marvelous life of Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres, we present excerpts from the foreword of the book titled The Prophetic Message of the Servant of God Mother Mariana Francisca de Jesus Torres, written by the postulator for her cause of beatification, Msgr. Luis E. Cadena y Almeida. (1) The aim of his work is to show that the many prophecies of Our Lady to Mother Mariana have been fulfilled, even to the minute details. The book has the imprimatur of the Vicar General of the Archdiocese Gabriel Diaz Cuevo.

In the Foreword, he describes the Franciscan biographers of Mother Mariana, the mysterious silence that enveloped the Prophecies for three centuries, and finally, the emergence of knowledge of Our Lady of Good Success and the Prophecies at the beginning of the 20th century. He explains how an ecclesiastical commission was established to study the book The Admirable Life of Mother Mariana by Fr. Manuel Sousa Pereira, and found it to be “authentic and worthy of belief.”

Below we have transcribed excerpts from that Foreword.
With the initiation in our days of the Cause of Beatification of the Servant of God Mariana Francisca de Jesús Torres y Berriochoa, it behooves us to know about her edifying life and the prophecies she received from the Blessed Virgin of Good Success. Toward this end, we rely on the incalculable Franciscan contribution, the friars who dedicated their services to make this great religious sister known. This nun is called to shine – from the golden pedestal of the altars – because of her exemplary practice of the virtues and her generous correspondence to the gifts received from divine liberality.

Prophetic message, Our Lady of Good Success

In this work, the Postulator for Mother Mariana's cause shows the many prophecies that have been fulfilled
Included among those Franciscan priests who have helped to make her known are Fr. Antonio Jurado, Fr. Francisco Angûita, and Fr. Juan de la Madre de Dios Mendoza, who, as Spiritual Directors of Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres, obliged her to write her Autobiography. They realized the great returns of spirituality and asceticism knowledge of her life would produce in the soil of the privileged Monastery of the Immaculate Conception, which nurtured this precious flower in its maternal bosom.

At the death of Mother Mariana, the 10th Bishop of Quito, the austere and learned Msgr. Pedro de Oviedo, preached at the Funeral Mass for the holy religious. Having intimate knowledge of the workings of her soul, he praised her as a “masterpiece of God” and thanked God, “the Giver of all goods,” for this marvelous gift to his Diocese and the American Continent. This same Bishop testified to Mother Mariana’s heroic virtue the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin of Good Success, her charism of prophecy and the many miracles worked by this Servant of God. …

After her death, there were other Franciscans who wrote the biographies not only of Mother Mariana, but also of the other founding Mother, so that their memory and names should endure through the centuries. … The lives of Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres and the angelic young religious Sister Zoila Blanca Rosa of Mariana de Jesus were written by Fr. Martin Ochoa.

A century passed, and in the years 1760-1770, another Franciscan known for his virtue and wisdom, Fr. Bartolemé Ochoa de Alcano y Gamboa, having at hand new data and copious documentation, launched to the public the Biography of Rev. Mother Mariana Francisca de Jesus Torres y Berriochoa, a work that was well received not only by the Franciscan monks, sisters and members of the third order, but also by various religious circles of Spain, Portugal and, certainly, Quito and South America.

In the year 1790, this cycle of trusted and venerable historians closed with a golden clasp. Fr. Manuel Sousa Pereira, a Franciscan with an incalculable wealth of facts, information and documentation, wrote a biography inspired by a supernatural spirit. Fr. Pereira left one manuscript in the Library of the Greater Monastery of St. Paul of Quito and another to the religious of the Monastery of the Conception. It was titled The Admirable Life of the Rev. Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres, A Spaniard and one of the Founders of the Royal Monastery of the Immaculate Conception of the City of St. Francis of Quito. (2)

Incorrupt body of Mariana

The incorrupt body of Mother Mariana and three other Founding Mothers are displayed in a glass case inside the Convent Chapel
Then, from 1790 to the first years of the 20th century, the name and memory of the Servant of God were wrapped in a mantle of terrible silence, hidden and unrevealed, a silence as heavy as her tombstone.

Suddenly, on February 8, 1906, 271 years after her death, the virginal and incorrupt body of this blessed spouse of Christ was found in her first tomb that was in one of the walls of the lower choir of the Convent. The body was removed and placed in a glass sarcophagus at the feet of her Blessed Mother in the small Chapel of the Virgin of Carmen [inside the Convent], where it remains today.

That year marked the resurrection of the gratitude and love of our city for its guiding Angel, the Servant of God Mother Marian Francisca de Jesus Torres, the cornerstone and vital nucleus of the cult and devotion to the August Mother of Good Success. Her name and memory, shaking off three centuries of dust and oblivion, has become firmly established in the hearts of her thankful and devoted Ecuador.

Since the middle of this [twentieth] century much as been said, both pro and con, about the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin of Good Success to her daughter Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres, a Founding Mother and elected Abbess of the Royal Monastery of Immaculate Conception of Quito in the year 1593 at age 30. Some, the credulous and weak-hearted, were shocked by the prophetic messages by the Mother of God, many that had been fulfilled with verifiable dates in History. Others, the skeptics and incredulous, shook their heads and dismissed the prophecies, not wanting to know such things that might agitate the stagnant waters of their consciences. Among the different opinions, both pro and con, were the voices of high and low clergy.

Our Lady of good Success

The miraculous statue of Our Lady of Good Success
In order to answer those objections, Cardinal Carlos Maria de la Torre, a Prelate known for his lucid and serene spirit and his ardent devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, entered the picture. The Cardinal appointed a Commission made up of learned priests versed in History and Theology to study the original manuscript of the apparitions and prophecies written by Fr. Manuel Sousa Pereira, OFM, titled The Admirable Life of the Venerable Mother Marian a Francisca de Jesus Torres.

The Commission carried out its assignment with all diligence, impartiality and appeal to orthodoxy, and ended by declaring that these sources were “authentic, untampered with, and worthy of belief.”

On this basis, and for lack of another writer of more capacity and verve, I humbly present my work The Prophetic Message of the Servant of God Mother Mariana Francisca de Jesus Torres. In it I faithfully compare each prophecy with what happened in history, relating the details of its exact fulfillment, so that no doubt remains that what was maternally revealed by the Blessed Virgin of Good Success about the details of her Convent, the Church and Ecuador was transmitted by that Servant of God with unequivocal exactitude and fidelity and have been carefully conserved in the archives of the Conceptionist Order.
1. The Spanish title is Mensaje Profético de la Sierva de Dios Sor Mariana Francisca de Jesús Torres y Berriochoa, published by the Archdiocesan Press, Fundacón de la Misericordia, in Quito in 1985.
2. The original Spanish title is La Vida Admirable de la Rvda. Madre Mariana de Jesus Torres, española y una de las Fundadoras del Monasterio Real de la Limpia Concepción de la Ciudad de San Francisco de Quito.
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Posted May 27, 2011

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