Our Lady of Palmar

The first four girls, allegedly seers of the Virgin Mary in El Palmar de Troya.

On 30 March 1968 four school girls from El Palmar de Troya reported having apparitions of "a very beautiful lady" on a tree near the Alcaparrosa field, just outside of the town in Spanish Andalusia, while they were picking flowers.[1][2] In the following year, several other people reported apparitions and visions of the Virgin Mary in the field. The alleged apparitions attracted large groups of Roman Catholics to the region from other parts of Spain and abroad.[3] Visionaries reported messages from the Virgin Mary, claiming she instructed people to pray the Our Father and the rosary, and for Catholics to return to worship in the Traditional form.[3]

On 15 October 1968 Clemente Domínguez y Gómez and Manuel Corral visited the apparition site for the very first time. On 30 September 1969 Domínguez y Gómez claimed to have a vision of Jesus Christ and Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. Later that year, on the eighth and fifteenth of December, he claimed to have visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.[3] He also claimed to experience stigmata and other Holy Wounds.[4] According to Domínguez y Gómez, the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ both communicated to him that the Tridentine Mass was the only correct form of Mass and that the Mass of Paul VI was blasphemy.[3] There were also warnings that Freemasons and Communists were infiltrating the Catholic Church.[5] Domínguez y Gómez went on to claim that Pope Paul VI was innocent, and that he was a victim of other Catholic leaders, who were holding him hostage in the Vatican.[3]

On 18 May 1970 Cardinal José Bueno y Monreal, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Seville formally denounced the apparitions as "collective and superstitious hysteria". The apparition site continued to attract Roman Catholic pilgrims and so, on 18 March 1972, Cardinal Bueno y Monreal reiterated his denunciation of the apparition and visions, forbidding Catholic devotion to Our Lady of Palmar.[3] Under his ruling, no Roman Catholic priests were allowed to make pilgrimages to El Palmar de Troya, and no acts of public worship or religious services were allowed to take place.[3]

On 30 November 1975 Domínguez y Gómez claimed to have a vision of the Virgin Mary and Christ announcing the foundation of a new religious order to reform the Church.[3] In 1975 they founded a canonically irregular religious order, the Christian Palmarian Church of the Carmelites of the Holy Face.[3] The order was denounced by the Archbishop of Seville who refused to ordain any priests or consecrate any religious sisters and brothers to the order. Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục ordained Domínguez y Gómez, Alonso, and two other men to the priesthood, and consecrated Domínguez y Gómez and others as bishops, granting the order Apostolic succession.[3] The papal nuncio to Spain, Luigi Dadaglio, declared Archbishop Thuc, Domínguez y Gómez, and all Palmaranian bishops excommunicated from the Catholic Church. The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome declared all clergy of the order suspended ipso iure.[3] The Palmarians did not accept this, adopting a thesis that the "true Pope Paul VI" was being drugged and held prisoner by freemason and communist infiltrators in the Vatican, with an actor taking his place in public.

In 1976 Domínguez y Gómez claimed to have received a private apparition from the Virgin Mary asking him to consecrate more bishops to the religious order. He also claimed to have been given messages from the Virgin Mary that Pope Paul VI would be succeeded by a valid pope and by an antipope, and that the Catholic Church would no longer be centered in Rome. After the death of Pope Paul VI on 6 August 1978, Domínguez y Gómez claimed to have been crowned by Christ as the new Pope of the Catholic Church, taking the papal name Gregory XVII and declaring that the Holy See had been transferred from Rome to El Palmar de Troya. Based on this claim of Rome having apostatised from the Catholic faith, the Palmarian Church claimed to be the Catholic Church and broke all contacts with what it claimed were Anti-Popes based in the Vatican City.[3] Domínguez y Gómez claimed to continue to have visions and witness apparitions of the Virgin Mary until 2000.

The Cathedral-Basilica of Our Crowned Mother of Palmar

In 1974 Domínguez y Gómez and Corral purchased the Alcaparrosa field and built an elaborate shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary, surrounded by a wall.[3] In 1978 construction began to build a larger church on the site. The shrine, known as the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Crowned Mother of Palmar, was finished in 2014 and is used as the cathedral and headquarters of the Palmarian Christian Church.

• The apparitions of the Virgin Mary in El Palmar de Troya