Background Marian apparitions, Spain and the Second Vatican Council as she would have appeared as
Our Lady of La Salette in 1846. This initiated a series of
apocalyptic Marian apparitions, warning modern man of a coming great chastisement. A series of
Marian apparitions starting in the 19th century have led to what Magnus Lundberg calls Marian Apocalyptic Movements. These apparitions typically feature the
Virgin Mary bearing an important
eschatological message that warns humanity of a coming chastisement from God for its sinful behaviour and
apostasy which will be followed by a period of peace and virtue for the faithful. When humanity then returns to its sinful ways, a more fearsome chastisement culminates in a final
world war that marks the end of the world. Some of these apparitions have been investigated by the
Roman Catholic Church and declared worthy of belief and veneration. Palmarians regard several as important steps on the way to the appearance of Our Lady of Palmar, specifically those of
La Salette (1846),
Fátima (1917),
Ezkioga (1931),
Heroldsbach (1949),
Ladeira do Pinheiro (1960),
San Damiano (1961), and
Garabandal (1961). The apparitions of El Palmar de Troya took place in Spain at a time of religious and political upheaval, during the final decade that
Francisco Franco was
Caudillo of the
Spanish State. The government had been established in the aftermath of the
Spanish Civil War and during the war the nationalists identified themselves as engaged in a "
Crusade against the
Second Spanish Republic 1919-1939, international communism and freemasonry." Before and during the Civil War, many
Catholic clerics were killed by the republican side and in some places the
Catholic Church had to go underground. After victory, under Franco,
National Catholicism was adopted in Spain, whereby
Spanishness and Catholicism were presented as being inseparable. In the worldview of
Francoism, Spain was a "providential nation, being a faithful Catholic bulwark against
liberalism,
Freemasonry,
Protestantism and
communism". Spain was a
confessional state and this broadly had the support of the church; however, by the 1940s, there was some concerns about the power of the state subordinating the church and after the
Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the high episcopacy, particularly Cardinal
Vicente Enrique y Tarancón began to push against Franco for "reforms" and the creation of a more modern state. This was not unanimous and some Spanish priests belonging to the
Hermandad Sacerdotal Española backed Francoists against the new liberal-leaning line of the
Spanish Episcopal Conference and the Vatican. Following the Second Vatican Council, which took place between 1962 and 1965, there emerged a new openness to
religious liberty,
ecumenism,
interreligious dialogue and on the back of it, introduced in 1969, a
New Order of Mass. These changes scandalised traditionalists within the Catholic Church and an insurgent
traditionalist Catholic movement emerged pushing back against this. Prominent early figures included Frenchmen such as
Georges de Nantes, who founded the
Ligue de la contre-réforme catholique and Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre who founded the
Society of St. Pius X (which became by far the most prominent). The early Palmarian themes were a part of this
milleu, with direct and indirect relationships with the traditionalist Catholic resistance worldwide, including the SSPX. According to Lundberg, traditionalists refused to believe that "a true Catholic hierarchy would make such changes, and saw
modernist, masonic and communist conspiracies". A common traditionalist theme of decrying "infiltration", raised questions about the complicity of the
Pope himself: Lefebvre diplomatically criticised Pope Paul VI, but still considered him a true Pope. At the opposite end, by 1971,
sedevacantists emerged who claimed that Paul VI was a non-Catholic
antipope leading a new heretical religion, an early example of which is
Joaquín Sáenz y Arriaga.
Apparitions of Our Lady of Palmar and Devotion to the Holy Face in the mantle of
Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Her alleged appearance at
Palmar de Troya from 1968 onwards formed the basis of the Palmarians. On 30 March 1968, four Spanish Catholic girls, aged 12 and 13—Ana García, Rafaela Gordo, Ana Aguilera and Josefa Guzmán—reported that the
Virgin Mary had appeared to them in the field of
La Alcaparroa farm, close to the village of
El Palmar de Troya, which at that time was a district of the municipality of
Utrera, in the
province of Seville,
Andalusia, Spain. On 11 April 1968, a devout Catholic woman named Rosario Arenillas reported seeing the Virgin Mary with the mantle of
Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the same place. On 20 May 1968 a neighbor from Utrera named María Marín also said she had seen the Virgin in the same place. On 6 June 1968, María Luisa Vila from
Seville went to the farm and said she had a mystical ecstasy in which
Jesus Christ administered communion to her and, according to witnesses, when she opened her mouth there was a
bloody host inside. In the summer of 1968, Antonio Romero, Manuel Fernández, José Navarro, Antonio Anillos and Arsenia Llanos also said they suffered
mystical ecstasies there. On 15 October 1968,
Clemente Domínguez and
Manuel Alonso Corral visited the site for the first time. Manuel "Manolo" Corral worked in an insurance brokerage that
Serafín Madrid used to finance his charitable works. When Corral became involved in the situation at Palmar de Troya he was expelled from the insurance company (belief in the apparitions were strongly opposed by
José Bueno y Monreal,
Archbishop of Seville, who refused to examine the seers or even open up any enquiries). On 15 August 1969, the two men attended a
Holy Mass celebrated by a
Jesuit priest there and during it María Luisa Vila said she had a vision of the Virgin (
Josemaría Escrivá, founder of
Opus Dei, drawn to mystical phenomenon, held a long interview with Vila who he had met previously at
Jerez de la Frontera,
Cádiz). Later they ran into María Marín and
Nectario María who said they had a vision of Jesus Christ. After this point, Domínguez and Corral visited far more frequently. There they talked with the visionaries and witnessed their ecstasies and on 14 September 1969, both declared that they had an appearance of a luminous cross. of
Jesus Christ would become a prominent aspect of the Palmarians. On 30 September 1969, Rosario Arenillas and Domínguez said they had a vision of Jesus Christ and
Padre Pio. A few days later María Luisa Vila declared that she had the same vision. On 8 December 1969, Domínguez claimed to have a vision in which the Virgin and the angels gave him a Dominican habit and on 10 December 1969, Domínguez said that
Dominic de Guzmán had appeared to him to recommend praying the
Rosary and the
Pater Noster. On 10 December 1969 he also said that
Joseph appeared to him. On 12 December 1969, Domínguez said he had another vision of Dominic and next to him he said he saw the
Holy Face of Jesus. Then he said that Dominic had given him the message that he should expand devotion to the Holy Face, the
Stations of the Cross and the
reparative communion on the
first Thursday of each month, to repair the outrages to the divine face of the Lord. Domínguez and Corral began to carry a portrait of the Holy Face for prayers in which ecstasy occurred. Domínguez claimed to suffer
stigmata of the
Holy Wounds during his visions, such as a cross-shaped cut on his forehead and cuts on his hands. These visions and stigmata, according to Domínguez himself, also occurred in the boarding house in Seville where he lived. At one point he revealed a 10-centimeter cut on his side, which was a supposed stigmata, representing where Jesus Christ had been pierced in his side by Roman soldier
Longinus with the
Holy Lance. On 16 July 1970, a supposed Marian apparition told him that the waters from a well in the area were miraculous and that it produced healings. A
mastic tree in the area became the main location associated with some of the visions and on 2 February 1970, the believers put a picture of the Holy Face on it (in Palmarian discourse this is called the "Sacred Place of the Lentisco"). A large number of people were drawn to El Palmar de Troya, with 40,000 people witnessing one of Domínguez' mystical ecstasies and his stigmata. As part of their quest to spread the message, throughout the 1970s, the duo, often joined by their ally, Carmelo Pacheco Sánchez (1948–1997), they travelled throughout Spain and Western Europe, before eventually making annual trips across the Atlantic to
Latin America and the
United States. The traffic was not all one way, as pilgrims came to visit El Palmar de Troya from many different countries in the Catholic world, with
Irish people and
German-speaking people (
Germans,
Austrians and
Swiss people) being overrepresented. They went to
Rome several times, first on 8 July 1970, where Clemente jumped over a barrier, avoiding
Swiss Guard, to kneel before a procession of Pope Paul VI and present a letter (taken by a priest). Corral claimed later the Palmarians met with Cardinal
Alfredo Ottaviani who informed Paul VI. Earlier, on 27 December 1969, they attempted to deliver a letter to the Spanish head of state, Francisco Franco, asking him to read a secret from God to the Spanish nation as part of his end-of-year speech. By 1974 Domínguez and Corral were able to purchase the 15,000 square meter plot of land at
La Alcaparroa. Following an alleged apparition of Jesus Christ on 30 May 1975, the devotees of Palmar were requested to construct a sanctuary at
La Alcaparroa. Along with the money from donors, a loan was taken out from the Central Bank of Utrera in the name Francisco González, Carlos Girón and Manuel Alonso.
Foundation of the Carmelites of the Holy Face . Although there were a few ordained priests of the
Roman Catholic Church who were supporters of Our Lady of Palmar and the direction taken by Domínguez and Corral, the majority of those associated with the movement were at that point
laymen, as were most of the pilgrims. The nucleus of an organisation began to develop through cenacles (prayer-groups), where the participants referred to themselves as Marian Apostles, or Apostles of the Cross (also Cross Bearers). On 30 November 1975, just ten days after the death of Spanish head of state, Francisco Franco, Domínguez claimed to have a vision of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, announcing that a new religious order would be founded by the Palmarians. This order would be a synthesis of "the best" elements of all previous
Catholic religious orders and they were to be the "Apostles of the Last Times" (a reference to the prophecies of
Louis de Montfort, a noted Mariologist). With Domínguez himself as General, the order was revealed to the world as the Order of the
Carmelites of the Holy Face on 22 December 1975. It was announced that it would have three classes;
friars (for the
priests and
brothers),
religious sisters and
tertiaries (i.e. — laypeople), each wearing a Carmelite habit and a
brown scapular, with the images of the Holy Face of Jesus and Our Lady of Palmar. A major issue that facing the order at the beginning was that it wished to have more ordained priests and indeed consecrated bishops (both Domínguez and Corral wanted this for themselves in particular, as they were officially laymen). They could not rely on the assistance of the local ordinary, Cardinal
José Bueno y Monreal, of the
Archdiocese of Seville, due to his blanket opposition to anything to do with El Palmar de Troya. Nevertheless, it was ideologically important for the Carmelites of the Holy Face, to receive legitimate
holy orders using the old rite of ordination, from a verifiable bishop of the Catholic Church with (in the Catholic view) undoubted
apostolic succession, in communion with Pope Paul VI. The most visible bishop publicly associated with traditionalists was Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre of the
Society of St. Pius X and the Palmarians had a significant sympathiser within the society, in the form of Maurice Revaz, a canon of the Swiss
Abbey of Grand-Saint-Bernard who was teaching at the
International Seminary of Saint Pius X at
Écône,
Switzerland. Revaz asked Lefebvre if he would go to El Palmar de Troya for this purpose, but he declined, pointing them instead to the exiled Vietnamese Archbishop
Ngô Đình Thục with the words "He is orthodox and he is not at present occupied. Go and seek him out. He will most certainly agree with your request." , a prelate of the
Roman Catholic Church, ordained and then consecrated clergy for the Carmelites of the Holy Face in El Palmar de Troya. Revaz, along with the McElligotts, an Irish Palmarian family who had property in Switzerland, drove from Switzerland to Rome to approach the Vietnamese archbishop. Revaz and Thục were already familiar with each other as they had both previously met as pilgrims to El Palmar de Troya in 1974. The background of Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục is that he was previously made the
Archbishop of Huế,
Vietnam by
Pope John XXIII, but due to the
1963 South Vietnamese coup d'état which killed several close members of his family, he was living in exile in
Rome. In 1968, Paul VI had made him the Titular Archbishop of
Bulla Regia. Outraged by the murder of his relatives and deeply
anti-communist, he was in good standing in Rome but increasingly disillusioned with their "diplomatic" approach to communism and started to draw closer to traditionalism in his exile. Revaz convinced Thục that the Virgin Mary sent him to render her a service and that they must leave immediately to
Andalusia, he agreed and the party took a three-day car journey to El Palmar de Troya and Thục was celebrating the
Pontifical High Mass there with the Carmelites of the Holy Face by Christmas Eve 1975. While in El Palmar de Troya, on 31 December 1975, without the permission of the local ordinary at Seville, Thục ordained five men of the Carmelites of the Holy Face to the priesthood, conferring holy orders on the two Spaniards; Clemente Domínguez (who took the religious name Ferdinand) and Manuel Alonso Corral (who took the religious name Isidore), the two Irishmen; Paul Gerald Fox (who took the religious name Abraham) and Francis Coll (who took the religious name Gabriel), as well as the Frenchman; Louis Henri Moullins (who took the religious name Zacarias). Following this, the now Father Ferdinand claimed to have a vision from the Virgin Mary declaring that the Carmelites of the Holy Face needed to have bishops consecrated and as proof of this an alleged
miracle was performed, as she had placed the
Infant Jesus in his hands (invisible to the human eye), which Domínguez then passed to Archbishop Thục, who supposedly felt the weight of the Infant in his hands and agreed to the consecrations. On 11 January 1976, in a five-hour ceremony through the night, Thục consecrated five Palmarians to the
episcopacy, including two men who he had just ordained as priests (Domínguez and Corral), in addition to three priests who had previously been ordained to the priesthood by the Roman Catholic Church, before the visions of Our Lady of Palmar;
Camilo Estévez Puga (1924–1997; a Spaniard also known as Leandro), Francis Bernard Sandler (1917–1992; an American Catholic convert from
Rabbinic Judaism who was a
Benedictine and had served as a parish priest in Sweden, also known as Fulgencio) and finally Michael Thomas Donnelly (1927–1982; an Irish priest from
Belfast from the
Company of Mary, who within two months left the Palmarians). as a true Pope, but claimed that he was a suffering
victim soul for the church, held prisoner and drugged in the Vatican by
Masonic infiltrators. The Vatican, through first Cardinal Bueno, then their Nuncio to Spain
Luigi Dadaglio and finally
Franjo Šeper's
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, quickly moved against Thục and the Palmarians. They did not question the validity of the orders as such, but essentially declared that they were canonically illicit or irregular, due to not having permission, that they were
ipso iure suspended from exercising their powers and
ipso facto excommunicated. The Palmarians for their part, declared their loyalty to Pope Paul VI and argued that the claim of excommunication was illegitimate, claiming that in 1938,
Pope Pius XI had granted Archbishop Thục the special power to ordain priests and bishops without requiring further permission. Regardless, in the eyes of the Palmarians, the Roman Curia was categorised as being packed with masonic infiltrators, who were supposedly drugging Pope Paul VI and holding him hostage in the Vatican. In relation to this, Domínguez had another vision in January 1976, where it is claimed Jesus Christ told him to consecrate more bishops and create an episcopal college for Pope Paul VI to come and govern the church from El Palmar de Troya. With Thục now fading into the background, the Palmarians under their own initiative between 1976 and 1978 had consecrated 91 additional bishops (mostly Irish and Spaniards, over 40% split almost evenly between these two nationalities, with the rest from mostly German-speaking Europe, as well as English, Nigerians, Argentines, Australians and many more different nations). In May 1976, a major incident occurred while five Palmarian bishops were returning from a trip to
Derval,
Brittany,
France, as there was a serious automobile crash in the
Basque Country. The glass from the windshield shattered and went into the eyes of the General of the Order, Domínguez. Not only was he completely blinded by the incident, but the damage was such that he had to have his eyeballs surgically removed at
San Sebastián hospital. The party had gone to Derval to deal with a crisis where a couple of Palmarian bishops there had gone across to the mystic, Pierre Poulain. According to the Palmarians, the devil attacked the car, after Poulain cast a
black magic spell on his rival Domínguez. The Spanish media began to call him the "blind-seer." After months of silence, Domínguez reported a vision of Jesus Christ in September 1976, in which Christ is quoted as saying "No one should think that the palm-tree is lying down. It is more upright than ever because victory is found in the passion and crucifixion. Then comes the resurrection." Christ is then quoted as saying that he is preparing Domínguez to be a future Pope. God had thus allowed the blinding as a trial, a test of faith and a cross to bear, if he prevailed, he would prove himself worthy of the Papacy.
The Holy See at El Palmar de Troya Reign of Pope Gregory XVII the Very Great .
Clemente Domínguez claimed to have been mystically crowned Pope of the Catholic Church by Jesus Christ in an apparition. He took the name Pope Gregory XVII. Pope Paul VI died on 6 August 1978 and according to the Palmarians (who consider him a
Christian martyr), the Pope was supposedly "vilely murdered by the traitors of the Roman Curia" (specifically, they claim he was poisoned to death by
Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal
Jean-Marie Villot). This supposed Vatican "Antipope" was in place for only a month before being replaced by
Pope John Paul II. (In his
Twenty-Fourth Document on 24 October 1978, Domínguez used his claimed authority to "
excommunicate and anathematise the Antipope Cardinal Wojtyla", who is described as a "
marxist spy" who infiltrated the church as a youth, stating in addition, "we hurl excommunication also at all followers of this Antipope"). These Roman "Antipopes" were called precursors of the
Antichrist by the Palmarians. From 1978 until 1997, Palmarian Church leadership consisted of the following: Pope Gregory XVII at the very top, with the role of
Secretary of State held by Cardinal Isidore (Corral) underneath and the number three position in the hierarchy was held by the Vice-Secretary of State, Cardinal Elias (Carmelo Pacheco Sánchez). All three were Spaniards, which led to some complaints from the membership, but they simply insisted that they were the most suitable men for the jobs as "three
apocalyptic bulls who attack heretics with their mystical horns." The dynamic was that the Pope was the charismatic visionary and seer, while Corral, who he relied on to record everything, was the intellectual
éminence grise. Some of the Palmarian bishops and laymen were unwilling to take the leap of accepting the claims of Domínguez to the Papacy and the Holy See moving to El Palmar de Troya, deciding to leave (some reconciled with Rome, others drifted away from religion). Some examples include Palmarian bishops, Maurice Revaz (who took the religious name Hermenegildo) and
Alfred Seiwert-Fleige (who took the religious name Athanasius). Domínguez and twelve Cardinals in 1979 made an apostolic journey from El Palmar de Troya to the
Holy Land, passing through places outside of Spain which had a significant number of Palmarian faithful such as
Switzerland,
Austria,
Germany,
Liechtenstein,
France,
Great Britain and
Ireland. Between 1978 and 1980, a total of forty-seven pontifical documents were published, before the opening of the First Palmarian Council. These covered the
canonisation of over 1,000 new saints, the promulgation of various
Mariological and
Josephine dogmas, excommunications of "heretics", anathemas against freemasonry (especially), communism and capitalism, declarations of new
Doctors of the Church, declaring as anathema anyone who "dare to condemn the marvelous work of the
Holy Inquisition," calling on all nations to enact the
death penalty for
abortion (a "monstrous crime"), condemnations of the Vatican "Anti-Papacy", declaring the
New Order of Mass anathema and stating that although the
Holy Ghost convoked the
Second Vatican Council, he was expelled from it by the majority of apostate bishops who were agents of freemasonry and even though some Catholic truths were present in the documents, due to Pope Paul VI being "drugged" and questions as to the authenticity of his signature on the documents, these aspects alone "invalidates the Council." During this time, there had been a decline in numbers in the Palmarian Church and even among those who remained a significant number of believers, both religious (bishops and nuns) and sympathetic laymen, began to quietly doubt the Pope's
mental health and conduct, questioning in particular the orthodoxy of the proposals of the Second Palmarian Council on the Bible (to be "purified" with "
The Sacred History or Holy Palmarian Bible") and other aspects, considering them rash changes. This group also raised concerns about the more intense application of the Palmarian Moral Code (also known as "The Norms"), which they accused of moving the Palmarian Church away from the traditional moral and pastoral Catholic theology to a coercive rigorism, which induced extreme
scrupulosity and forced family members to cut off all communications (i.e. - social
shunning) with those who had been "legitimately excommunicated", rather than seeking their reconciliation through dialogue with those who had fallen away. Some even set up in
Paraguay for a while. Others, such as, Ex-Fr. Guido María (Robert McCormack) and Ex-Fr. Dámaso María (Juan Marquez), moved away from Palmarianism completely, declaring it a fraud and accusing the Church of perpetuating psychological abuse, with the dawning of the
internet became vocal anti-Palmarian activists.
Palmarian Catholic Church in 21st century , the headquarters of the Palmarian Church, was completed in 2014. Following the death of Pope Gregory XVII in 2005, as his Palmarian Secretary of State, Manuel Alonso Corral (Fr. Isidore María), automatically ascended to the Palmarian Papacy. He chose as his Papal name,
Pope Peter II, which had so far been avoided by Catholic Popes since the time of
Peter the Apostle. Having been the discreet intellectual power behind the throne of the previous Pontificate, not claiming any visions himself, Pope Peter II's Papacy was mostly defined around defending Palmarian Orthodoxy in Papal documents. Though he did in 2006 define as dogma the doctrine of the birth of the
Antichrist into the world at the millennium and the circumstances of his birth to the “Anti-Mary.” The
leitmotif of his Papacy was a deeper sense of Palmarian identity over national ones and a more rigorous focus on the need to uphold “
The Norms”, with Palmarians increasing required to cut themselves off from the "moral depravity of the surrounding world", for the Palmarians, a “world totally dominated by
Satan.” During this time, the Palmarian Church did not actively seek to grow its membership and avoided even having an
internet presence, suffering from members leaving and also a shortage of religious vocations. Pope Peter II died on 15 July 2011, after a long illness. Fr. Sergio María (born
Ginés Jesús Hernández), as the previous Palmarian Secretary of State under Pope Peter II, ascended to the Palmarian Papacy next in 2011 as Pope Gregory XVIII. Lacking the charisma of Domínguez and the intellectual polish of Corral, Pope Gregory XVIII was instead characterised as a “managerial Pope”, an administrator, rather than a visionary or theologian and looked to uphold the basic teachings of traditional Palmarian Catholicism. His style was highly authoritarian and militaristic, characterised by some critics as “unpredictable” and “angry”. During the early years of his Pontificate, strengthening
“The Norms” even further was of central focus and this became increasingly hardline and controversial, with a harder stance on
shunning family members who became apostates (including splitting up families, as well as expelling teenagers from homes), regulating that Palmarian schoolchildren should not play or talk with non-Palmarian classmates and making it an excommunicable offense to leave property in a will to apostates or “public anti-Palmarians.” In terms of religious developments in the reign of Pope Gregory XVIII, in 2012, the annual celebration of Palmarian
Holy Week was moved to a
permanently fixed date, with
Holy Friday always falling on 25 March, inline with the teachings of
The Sacred History or Holy Palmarian Bible. An extensive six-volume Palmarian
Lives of the Saints was published and the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Crowned Mother of Palmar would be completed by 2014. In 2012, Pope Gregory XVIII had declared a
Third Palmarian Council, which mostly focused on codifying issues relating to
“The Norms”. Internet use was banned in 2012 and the Pope claimed that, “newspapers, radio, TV and the Internet", were controlled by "Freemasons and Zionists.” Between 2013 and 2016, publications were less frequent from the Palmarian Papacy, typically focusing on defending Palmarian claims and critiquing the statements of
Francis in the Vatican, or "Antipope Pancho", in the words of Pope Gregory XVIII. Toward the end of his reign, in 2016, claiming to be following the Roman model of the
Swiss Guard, Pope Gregory XVIII set up his own Palmarian Papal Guard, consisting mostly of German-speaking Palmarians, they dressed in red berets and khaki uniforms reminiscent of the
Carlist requetés. In the last few months of his reign, Pope Gregory XVIII relaxed some of the harshest rules in a document entitled
The Easing of Several Norms, citing "morbid scruples" some of the rules had driven the laity to and eschewing "extremism." There was a major defection on 22 April 2016, as Pope Gregory XVIII announced that he was abdicating from the Palmarian Papacy due to losing the faith. The Papacy passed automatically to his Palmarian Secretary of State, Fr. Eliseo María (born
Joseph Odermatt). A Swiss Palmarian and the first non-Spanish Palmarian Pope, he took Pope Peter III as his Papal name. It transpired that Ex-Pope Gregory XVIII had been involved in a relationship with an ex-Palmarian nun, Nieves Triviño and had absconded from El Palmar de Troya to marry her. Hernández was declared “Ex-Pope Gregory XVIII the Apostate” by the Palmarian Church, accusing him of stealing assets belonging to the Church and being extremely vainglorious, stating he was corrupted by lust (comparing him to the decadent Borgia
Pope Alexander VI), stating also that a Pope should be a father not a tyrant. Although acknowledging that no heresy was to be found in the
Third Palmarian Council, Pope Peter III declared that it had now been erased, as it had instituted many more “unnecessary Norms”, that Hernández was motivated by pride. This essentially rolled back
The Norms to where they were in 2011. Hernández spoke to the Spanish media, including
El País, defending himself and downplaying his mistress, claiming that, through study he had concluded that the original apparitions of
Our Lady of Palmar had been genuine, but that they had been hijacked by Clemente and Manolo for financial manipulation. A serious incident occurred on 10 June 2018 at the
Cathedral-Basilica of Our Crowned Mother of Palmar in El Palmar de Troya. While most religious were inside celebrating Holy Mass, two would-be thieves in balaclavas scaled the walls of the compound with a telescopic ladder, armed with a knife, two clown masks, cable ties, duct tape, two pairs of pliers and a crowbar. allowing the general public to view its religious beliefs, modes of worship and public works. During the
COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, there were a number of positives cases in the compound, including 4 deaths due to the virus, which drew media attention. Fr. Benjamin María was demoted as a consequence on 13 February 2021, with Fr. Abraham María raised to Palmarian Secretary of State and Fr. Jesús María (Alfredo Leonardo Villalba), an Argentine former military policeman raised to Palmarian Vice-Secretary of State. ==Doctrine==