Our Lady of Good Success - Questions
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How Old Are the Copies of
the Books on Madre Mariana?
Hello TIA Team,
I recently have become interested in Our Lady of Good Success, and I have been reading as much as I can about that apparition. I have read Dr. Marian T. Horvat's Our Lady of Good Success, Prophecies for Our Times and Stories and Miracles of Our Lady of Good Success, as well as her translation of The Admirable Life.
I have also watched the three part documentary available on YouTube in which Dr. Horvat is interviewed. I understand that The Admirable Life is ostensibly written in 1790, but I also know that the manuscript that Msgr. Dr. Luis E. Cadena y Almeida had access to was not from 1790, thanks to Dr. Horvat's blog post titled, Is the Original Manuscript of Fr. Pereira Available?
My questions for your team are as follows:
My Spanish is rusty though and it might take a few weeks to arrive anyway, so I am months away from being able to read that book, at best, I am afraid. I will read it, slowly, with a Spanish dictionary in hand, but I thought I would reach out to you all first since you're the experts.
Thank you in advance for any help that you can provide!
K.J.C.
Dr. Horvat responds:
Hello K.J.C.,
May Our Lady and her Divine Infant encourage you in your devotion to Our Lady of Good Success.
The Conceptionist Convent is one wrapped in mysteries and secrets, and unfortunately great infidelities as well as heroic fidelity. The present Archbishop of Quito – Alfredo José Espinoza – is favorable to indigenous communist riots (2019, 2022, 2025), and is not friendly to research being done in the various Franciscan archives containing the old manuscripts.
He prohibits access to those that may house parts or all of the Bartholomew Ochoa manuscript, which was read and used by Fr. Manuel Sousa Pereira for writing the Admirable Life. The animosity goes to such point that the Curia archivists speak against Msgr. Cadena y Almeida and sabotage access to the originals of his books.
As far as I could find, Msgr. Cadena y Almeida only found parts of the Ochoa manuscript in the archives, and his notes on them have not been published. Although I have several friends who have seen them, they were not permitted to copy, print or spread them. So, answering your first question, I do not know how old the copy of Fr. Ochoa manuscript that Msgr. Cadena read was.
There were certainly copies of the Fr. Pereira manuscript, even Garcia Moreno had one, according to a good source, Dr. Francisco Salazar Alvarado, whose great uncle was Garcia Moreno’s Minister of War and trusted friend. According to what Dr. Salazar told me, the daughter of Garcia Moreno’s secretary received the manuscript from his widow after his death. This young lady became a Conceptionist nun after reading the content of that document. I believe it is her copy – typewritten by a nun – that I translated, but it certainly was known before 1906. I do not know when that copy was typewritten either. Here you have my answer to your second question.
When the bodies were discovered in 1906, Ecuador was still in Eloy Alfaro’s “Liberal Revolution” which started in 1895 and went to 1925, as predicted by Mother Mariana. It was an extremely anti-clerical government that promoted secular education, civil marriage, divorce, confiscation of Church properties and restrictions on monasteries and convents. The Conceptionists themselves were being persecuted – vocations were forbidden, and they often suffered from insufficient means to live. It is one reason why the discovery of the incorrupt bodies of the Founding Mothers received little attention at the time.
In addition to the persecution of the State, most of the documents of the Conceptionist Convent regarding their past were confiscated by Archbishop Carlos Maria de la Torre (from 1933-1967), who was liberal and tried to suppress the prophecies.
When those persecutions or confiscations took place, the Abbesses would order the nuns to copy the documents so that they would preserve their content within the Convent. So, to answer
your third question is difficult because it is almost impossible to track when one of the Abbesses of those long periods ordered a nun to typewrite the book of Fr. Pereira.
As a side note, it was Card. de la Torre who also ordered the miraculous statue to be returned to the Upper Choir when Our Lady was raising and lowering her eyes during the Miracle of ’41, converting many persons and doing much good. It is incomprehensible to me how he could have made this order.
I suggest that you purchase Mensaje Profético de la Sierva de Dios Sor Mariana Francisco de Jesús Torres y Berrichoa by Msgr. Cadena y Almeda. In it he gives many of the smaller prophecies of the 19th and 20th centuries that were fulfilled to the absolute last detail. Unfortunately, Msgr. Cadena’s hands were tied by the progressivist Prelates of his time, and he could not publish the full prophecies in his small books. But he did what he could to make the life of Mother Mariana known.
He most definitely had access to copies of Fr. Pereira’s manuscript and parts of Fr. Ochoa's, as well as many Convent documents and letters of the Abbesses. Again, these are carefully guarded by the Curia and Vatican, who do not want to promote these prophecies that point so strongly at Vatican Council II as opening a time of great crisis inside the Church. It is what Mother Mariana predicted would happen.
This is some little information I can give you. To delve deeper into the layers of complications, intrigues and mysteries in this important apparition you would need to spend time in Quito, have access to the archives and be very proficient in Spanish, as many of the documents are handwritten and in old Spanish.
In Quito the Conceptionist nuns, who are still under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese, cannot do anything without diocesan approval, again, as Mother Mariana predicted.
What I know for certain is that Our Lady of Good Success is willing to help all who come to her in these days, for her message is to give clarity in these confused days, and hope of a coming restoration of our Holy Church. She acknowledges that there will be doubters but gives her consolation as promised:
“A simple, humble faith in the truth of my apparitions to you, my favored child, will be reserved for humble and fervent souls who are docile to the inspirations of grace, for our Heavenly Father communicates His secrets to the simple of heart, and not to those whose hearts are inflated with pride, pretending to know what they do not or infatuated with empty science.” (The Admirable Life of Mother Mariana, vol. 2, pp. 39-40)
What I strive is to be among that number of the simple faithful.
Cordially,
Dr. Marian Horvat
I recently have become interested in Our Lady of Good Success, and I have been reading as much as I can about that apparition. I have read Dr. Marian T. Horvat's Our Lady of Good Success, Prophecies for Our Times and Stories and Miracles of Our Lady of Good Success, as well as her translation of The Admirable Life.
I have also watched the three part documentary available on YouTube in which Dr. Horvat is interviewed. I understand that The Admirable Life is ostensibly written in 1790, but I also know that the manuscript that Msgr. Dr. Luis E. Cadena y Almeida had access to was not from 1790, thanks to Dr. Horvat's blog post titled, Is the Original Manuscript of Fr. Pereira Available?
- How old is the manuscript that Msgr. Dr. Luis E. Cadena y Almeida had access to?
- Is that manuscript the same manuscript that Dr. Horvat used for her translation?
- What is the provenance of that manuscript? Was it discovered in 1906 when the bodies were discovered?
My Spanish is rusty though and it might take a few weeks to arrive anyway, so I am months away from being able to read that book, at best, I am afraid. I will read it, slowly, with a Spanish dictionary in hand, but I thought I would reach out to you all first since you're the experts.
Thank you in advance for any help that you can provide!
K.J.C.
______________________
Dr. Horvat responds:
Hello K.J.C.,
May Our Lady and her Divine Infant encourage you in your devotion to Our Lady of Good Success.
The Conceptionist Convent is one wrapped in mysteries and secrets, and unfortunately great infidelities as well as heroic fidelity. The present Archbishop of Quito – Alfredo José Espinoza – is favorable to indigenous communist riots (2019, 2022, 2025), and is not friendly to research being done in the various Franciscan archives containing the old manuscripts.
He prohibits access to those that may house parts or all of the Bartholomew Ochoa manuscript, which was read and used by Fr. Manuel Sousa Pereira for writing the Admirable Life. The animosity goes to such point that the Curia archivists speak against Msgr. Cadena y Almeida and sabotage access to the originals of his books.
The Masonic Liberal Revolution
fiercely persecuted the Conceptionists
There were certainly copies of the Fr. Pereira manuscript, even Garcia Moreno had one, according to a good source, Dr. Francisco Salazar Alvarado, whose great uncle was Garcia Moreno’s Minister of War and trusted friend. According to what Dr. Salazar told me, the daughter of Garcia Moreno’s secretary received the manuscript from his widow after his death. This young lady became a Conceptionist nun after reading the content of that document. I believe it is her copy – typewritten by a nun – that I translated, but it certainly was known before 1906. I do not know when that copy was typewritten either. Here you have my answer to your second question.
When the bodies were discovered in 1906, Ecuador was still in Eloy Alfaro’s “Liberal Revolution” which started in 1895 and went to 1925, as predicted by Mother Mariana. It was an extremely anti-clerical government that promoted secular education, civil marriage, divorce, confiscation of Church properties and restrictions on monasteries and convents. The Conceptionists themselves were being persecuted – vocations were forbidden, and they often suffered from insufficient means to live. It is one reason why the discovery of the incorrupt bodies of the Founding Mothers received little attention at the time.
In addition to the persecution of the State, most of the documents of the Conceptionist Convent regarding their past were confiscated by Archbishop Carlos Maria de la Torre (from 1933-1967), who was liberal and tried to suppress the prophecies.
Card. De la Torre confiscated all the documents
related to Mother Mariana & the prophecies
As a side note, it was Card. de la Torre who also ordered the miraculous statue to be returned to the Upper Choir when Our Lady was raising and lowering her eyes during the Miracle of ’41, converting many persons and doing much good. It is incomprehensible to me how he could have made this order.
I suggest that you purchase Mensaje Profético de la Sierva de Dios Sor Mariana Francisco de Jesús Torres y Berrichoa by Msgr. Cadena y Almeda. In it he gives many of the smaller prophecies of the 19th and 20th centuries that were fulfilled to the absolute last detail. Unfortunately, Msgr. Cadena’s hands were tied by the progressivist Prelates of his time, and he could not publish the full prophecies in his small books. But he did what he could to make the life of Mother Mariana known.
He most definitely had access to copies of Fr. Pereira’s manuscript and parts of Fr. Ochoa's, as well as many Convent documents and letters of the Abbesses. Again, these are carefully guarded by the Curia and Vatican, who do not want to promote these prophecies that point so strongly at Vatican Council II as opening a time of great crisis inside the Church. It is what Mother Mariana predicted would happen.
This is some little information I can give you. To delve deeper into the layers of complications, intrigues and mysteries in this important apparition you would need to spend time in Quito, have access to the archives and be very proficient in Spanish, as many of the documents are handwritten and in old Spanish.
In Quito the Conceptionist nuns, who are still under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese, cannot do anything without diocesan approval, again, as Mother Mariana predicted.
What I know for certain is that Our Lady of Good Success is willing to help all who come to her in these days, for her message is to give clarity in these confused days, and hope of a coming restoration of our Holy Church. She acknowledges that there will be doubters but gives her consolation as promised:
“A simple, humble faith in the truth of my apparitions to you, my favored child, will be reserved for humble and fervent souls who are docile to the inspirations of grace, for our Heavenly Father communicates His secrets to the simple of heart, and not to those whose hearts are inflated with pride, pretending to know what they do not or infatuated with empty science.” (The Admirable Life of Mother Mariana, vol. 2, pp. 39-40)
What I strive is to be among that number of the simple faithful.
Cordially,
Dr. Marian Horvat
Posted February 19, 2026
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