We have no reason to doubt there is a holy person, an incorrupt nun involved. She is a natural mummy.
The question is, did she receive certain revelations or were they later attributed to her? It's not like with St. Bridget of Sweden, who became famous all over Sweden and then all over Spain through her revelations, and whose Father confessor wrote them down (or actually two fathers confessor, Father Matthias, from Jönköping or Linköping, I think the latter, and
Alfonso Pecha of Jaén, he became her confessor only after retiring from the See of Jaén: on discussing his case, that of abdicating his episcopate, a Lutheran considered certain phrases about him as "typical hagiographical fiorituras" — "floskler", I replied it looked like a burnout). In this case, her canonisation was discussing her revelations, on two criteria: no deviation from dogma allowed, no predictions that were both unconditional and unfulfilled allowed. Even an atheist who studied them, my professor of Latin back then, Birger Bergh, considered it spooky how accurate her predictions were.
By contrast, those of Sr. Mariana de Jesús Torres, it seems the first now known printed edition is from 1790.
Could an older manuscript or forgotten edition be there? Could be. That would confirm they are absolutely from her. Meanwhile ... as the predictions mention "Masonic Sects" I think we should take a historic look at these. God is certainly capable of exact prediction, all times are laid out before Him, even as they are connected and involve free choices that we make one moment at a time. So, if something is suspicious about mentioning someone or something directly by name in a prophecy, it's because previous direct knowledge of the name could hinder or otherwise unduly influence the outcome. Prophecies are also not self fulfilling. Let's take a look at Isaias and Cyrus:
Who say to Cyrus: Thou art my shepherd, and thou shalt perform all my pleasure. Who say to Jerusalem: Thou shalt be built: and to the temple: Thy foundations shall be laid.
[Isaias (Isaiah) 44:28]
Thus saith the Lord to my anointed Cyrus, whose right hand I have taken hold of, to subdue nations before his face, and to turn the backs of kings, and to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut.
[Isaias (Isaiah) 45:1]
Why is this allowed? Because Isaias who certainly lived before Cyrus, wrote in Hebrew, a language which the parents of Cyrus did not speak. Anshan or Tall-e Malyan is three days walking distance from Shiraz, which is 2000 km from Jerusalem.* Cyrus' parents had no way possible to know naming their son would be a luck charm, and rival claimants to power had no way to know the name boded ill for their own keeping of it. This is why the Antichrist is NOT named by name in the Apocalypse, but only his gematria is given. I'd argue God knowing all of today as much in the day of Patmos as today, could very well have given his gematria in ASCII, and he** could have been born before that was a thing. If end times wait 4 decades more, this will with current lifespans not be possible. But as he is arguably an Apostate from Christianity, naming him directly would have been too clear, he could have been eliminated by someone who had read too many books about going back in time and eliminating Hitler before he came to power. Also, it would have been too clear in another way, since he was going to seduce "if it were possible even the elect" ...
We'll see how this applies to Masonic sects if the revelation is from 1590.
Lodges of Free Masons started out as a simple somewhat unusual type of guild. An artisan guild would usually in the Middle Ages be not just attached to a specific city, but even allowed to perform their craft
only inside it. A baker from Paris could not set up a shop in Lyons. A butcher from Lyons could not set up a shop in Marseille. A potter from Marseille could not sell his ceramics (directly, except through merchants) in Bordeaux. A cooper from Bordeaux could not come to Paris to make barrells. But a builder of Cathedrals or Castles needed to be able to move to where a Cathedral or a Castle was being built. These Masons were called Free, because they were not tied to a specific city (unlike a normal house mason, making private houses in it). Instead of a guild hall, outside where they came from, they had a lodge, a kind of wooden room that was hoisted unto the scaffolding of a building. I think, but could be wrong, when a Cathedral was built, several lodges were at work at the same time, even if only one of them provided the architect. In the jargon of freemasonry, such lodges are retrospectively called "operative lodges" and their members "operative masons" ... an operative mason is simply one who exercises the craft of building stone buildings.
These things existed all over Europe. However, a specific event in England was going to change their nature there. Elisabeth I made England a Capitalist country, where guilds were forbidden. Each craftsman became his contractor on any terms the law allowed, there was no guild to tell him "you can't build that cheap" or "you can't work that late at night" ... two craftsmen of the same trade were supposed to be rivals, not comrades with a common code. The one type of guilds that survived this (or somewhat better than the rest) were Lodges of Masons.
From the Deformation to 1688, England was in turmoil. Ireland and Scotland even longer. Many rich men were persecuted, and many of them paid to be members of an also persecuted, but less so, Masons' lodge. In some cases, the new members were Catholics, persecuted for Catholicism. And they were not always well catechised. In some cases, they were trying to restore Stuarts, succeeding with Charles II and failing with James III, perhaps failing, perhaps betraying with Charles III (not meaning the present ruler). Some of them were Catholics. Some of them were other religions persecuted by Anglicans or Puritans, and some of these may even have included witches and warlocks. In other words, the lodges did not always help Catholics to stay Catholics, they sometimes helped a Catholic veneer (more or less thin) to veil heterodoxy. When a Catholic or Catholic leaning was allergic to the available Protestant "orthodoxy" and cut off from actual orthodox Catechisms and priests, like Penny Catechism, like a priest martyred in Tyburn, he sometimes turned into something very heterodox.
In 1717, a few lodges were started into a united lodge that were explicitly denying the necessity of being a Christian in order to be part of their guild. Anderson's Constitutions. Desaguyliers. The latter was part of the persecuted Huguenots as a child and young man. When he noticed Newton had (to his satisfaction, not mine) proven Heliocentrism, and therefore put the Inquisitors of Galileo in the wrong, he made sure Bruno and Galileo were ever after part of the Masonic ideals, or "Great Men" ... their reply to both Plutarch and the Catholic hagiography. Anderson was a Scottish Calvinist.
However, a Stuartite lodge in 1688 or a Williamite one (there were lodges on both sides) or Anderson and Desaguyliers were not reading Spanish. Still less a nun from Quito. IF God chose to reveal the name "Masonic lodges" that would have no more effect on their doings than Isaias revealing Cyrus could have at Shiraz or more precisely at Anshan.
Meanwhile, for most of this time, the preparation of the fulfilment would have been very obscure over in Quito, where her texts are accessed. By 1790, this was not so. This could have been a reason if the revelations were genuine, to decide to publish them then.
On the other hand, by 1790, anyone could write the words "Masonic Sects" and even the idea of them trying to dominate society. Revd. Barruel (who gives another origin for Freemasons, which may or may not be true in complement to the one I gave, namely Templar origins) could not have written the whole history of Jacobins in 1790, since they were only coming into power later and were still a thing, but he could probably already have given his views of Masons, as found, presumably, in that work.
And if certain conspiracy theories are true, Masons could already have known what they were going to do in the 19th and 20th C. However, even that kind of conspirers doesn't control everything, so, they could not have known where they were going to be successful.
A shortage of baptisms and confirmations has certainly been the case in the 20th C. in USSR and in Albania. Perhaps less so in Ecuador. Girls remaining virgins until they marry have a shortage in Sweden and in the US. Again, perhaps less so in Ecuador. However, Ecuador has had Masonic governments. José María Velasco Ibarra was a Mason. His two successors are not explicitly stated as Masons, but also not as Catholics. Guillermo Rodríguez Lara, Jaime Roldós Aguilera. If the latter was a Catholic, that could be why he was assassinated, if the air plane crash was an assassination. Osvaldo Hurtado Larrea is however a (Novus Ordo, presumably) Catholic. León Febres-Cordero Ribadeneyra probably too. But Rodrigo Borja Cevallos is an Agnostic.*** Sixto Alfonso Durán-Ballén Cordovez probably a Catholic. Abdalá Bucaram, nothing noted. Rosalía Arteaga, a lady by definition can't be Mason. She also went to the Pontifical University. Fabián Ernesto Alarcón Rivera is a Catholic. Jorge Jamil Mahuad Witt is a Maronite, so a Catholic. Gustavo José Joaquín Noboa Bejarano was a Catholic. Lucio Gutiérrez is a Catholic. Alfredo Palacio was a Catholic, he died this year. Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado is possibly a Catholic and a Boy Scout. Lenín Boltaire Moreno Garcés is a Socialist. But even so a Catholic. Guillermo Alberto Santiago Lasso Mendoza is as Catholic as you can expect from Opus Dei and bankers ... Daniel Roy Gilchrist Noboa Azín is a Catholic, born arguably among Catholic exile Cubans in Miami. He is the current president.
I can understand the viewpoint that the predictions didn't come true if "these lands" refer to Ecuador. A best case scenario could be for them to refer to the US where the revelations have become popular. Some who are
very rejecting of Vatican II could also pretend that any Catholic accepting it were ipso facto a Freemason, which I think is over the top. I think the late Pope Michael I did not think so.
If a Freemason in 1790 wanted to reveal secret plans of the Lodges (by then meaning Speculative Lodges or what the Popes call Masonic Sects, having left the trade of Masons aside from 1717 if not earlier) why would he plant a text purporting to be a revelation in the previous centuries? Why would his superiors or pastors allow him to do so? Well, those damned Sects have a kind of Oath, which I have not taken and do not intend to take, of secrecy. Revealing the real source would have put a defector from Freemasonry at danger.
This would explain why much of the prophecies did occur, pretty much when expected, but not in "these lands" if that means Ecuador.
A third option would be, no, the source for the info is neither the Blessed Virgin, nor a defector, but a man like Barruel.
Both of these alternatives share the feature of Freemasonry (or what was labelled so in 1790, perhaps later more often labelled Socialist) being predictable on lines pretty closely resembling those of Barruel.
I'm of course presuming that the predictions are there in the first known edition from 1790.
But I cannot exclude the possibility that "these lands" means something other than Ecuador, and so also not that the predictions are really supernatural. I only know a few quotes of the revelations.°
However, that Pius IX did two things and suffered a third, whcih nails it for some, is also possible by accurate predictions about how freemasons would interact with him ... up to 80 years before it happened. He proclaimed the Immaculate Conception, as he should. A lodge started a campaign impugning it by contesting his authority to do so, he proclaimed Papal infallibility too ... by signing the vote of a council ... and the next step was easy enough. Garibaldi was already in action. He was indeed a Freemason and a Carbonaro. And a few decades later, in Romagna, a certain Alessandro Serenelli was finding a certain Maria Goretti too quaint for not relinquishing her virginity even when some pressure gave her an excuse. Garibaldi in 1870 obviously had raised the marital age from 12 to 18 for girls, from 14 to 18 for boys. And in many cases that extra waiting time proves difficult.
Does Italy count as "these lands"?
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Our Lady's Assumption
15.VIII.2025
Assumptio sanctissimae Dei Genitricis Virginis Mariae.
PS, if it had been "our lands" one could have made a case that it was those lands dedicated to Our Lord and Our Lady and in that case a large swathe of them actually did suffer what was said. "These lands"? Is the Spanish pronoun one which has different meanings in Spain and Latin America?/HGL
* On main roads, like shorter as the bird flies. ** My word "he" means the Antichrist, of course. Clumsy sentence, I know. *** Borja is the Spanish spelling for Borgia. ° From
Are The Apparitions Of Our Lady Of Good Success Authentic? and from
Chilling Prophecies of Our Lady of Good Success and I quoted the phrase "these lands" and cited specific predictions from memory.
