The Great Warning or the Illumination of Conscience

At Garabandal, the Warning is announced to Conchita González at the Pines on 1 January 1965. She never had a vision of it: the Virgin announced it to her by word of mouth, and the visionary then described it in fragments, across letters and interviews spread over twenty years^[1]. The oldest and best established words draw an event that is both outward and inward. In a letter of 2 June 1965, Conchita reports what the Virgin told her on 1 January:

“The Blessed Virgin told me on the first of January that a warning would be given before the miracle so that the world might amend itself. This warning, like the chastisement, is a very fearful thing for the good as well as for the wicked. It will draw the good closer to God and it will warn the wicked that the end of time is coming and that these are the last warnings. [...] No one can stop it from happening. It is certain, although I know nothing concerning the day or the date.” Conchita González, letter of 2 June 1965, in Pelletier.^[2]

On 14 September 1965, answering eighteen questions, Conchita states that the Warning will be like a revelation of our sins, giving the Spanish fragment herself, es como si revelase nuestros pecados, and that it will be seen and lived equally by believers, non-believers and people of every religion^[3]. The same interview adds, hiding nothing of the felt harshness: it will be a purification for the Miracle, a sort of catastrophe, to the point that one would prefer to be dead rather than undergo it^[4]. Three months later, in a written report of 10 December 1965 on the apparition of 13 November, she holds together the harshness and the merciful purpose, in a Spanish preserved by his editor’s note:

“It is like a punishment. We shall see what we have done with our sins. I think it will do us much good, to those who do not despair, for our sanctification.” Rendered into English from the Spanish preserved by Pelletier.^[5]

In October 1968, questioned by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Froelich, Conchita adds that the Warning is something supernatural, inexplicable by science, which will be seen and felt, and she names it a correction of the conscience of the world^[6]. The comparison of two stars colliding, often attributed to the Virgin, is her own: she gives it as a personal example in February 1977, then in August 1980, specifying that at that moment each person will see his soul, the harm done and the good left undone, without physical damage^[7].

The priest and historian of the dossier, Eusebio García de Pesquera, gathered these fragments into a synthesis that he presents as such, and not as a continuous quotation from Conchita. His formula has been much used, provided it is quoted for what it is, an author’s summary:

“It will not come as a chastisement, but as a prodigious means of salvation. [...] It will be a phenomenon of universal scope; all will be affected, wherever they may be. [...] All will see it in the sky and at the same time each will feel within himself the cruel experience of what sin truly is: the loss of God. [...] It will certainly take place before the Miracle.” Pesquera’s synthesis, rendered into English from the French edition.^[8]

Conchita, without a precise date, goes in the same direction when she says: “It will not kill us. It will be a ‘correction’ of our conscience”^[9]. This is the reference description: universal, interior, simultaneous, painful because it shows sin as the loss of God, and ordered to conversion. The other witnesses gathered below reach this core very unevenly: some really describe an interior illumination, others speak of outward warnings or a sign in the sky, and recent anthologies have often melted these differences into a single scenario. This article keeps them distinct.

Recent prophetic language readily blends five realities that the Catholic faith distinguishes. Separating them prevents almost every confusion in this dossier.

The hoped-for Warning and the taught particular judgment

The Warning, as the mystics describe it, would be a merciful anticipation: to see one’s soul as God sees it, but during one’s lifetime, with the possibility of repenting. The particular judgment, for its part, is a teaching of the Church: at death, each person receives his eternal retribution, purification, heaven or damnation, according to his works and his faith^[10]. One is hoped for through private revelations; the other is taught. Confusing them turns a private hope into a dogma, and a dogma into a mere image.

The Last Judgment and the return of Christ

The Last Judgment is the final manifestation, when Christ will come again in glory and the dead will rise^[11]. The glorious return of Christ closes history; it is not to be confused either with an interior illumination in the course of history, or with the era of peace spoken of by the patristic tradition of the seven ages. The distinction comes down to a sentence this encyclopedia repeats: the end of time is not the end of the world. The last days have already begun with the coming of Christ^[12], and what is awaited before the end of the world is a purification and a restoration, not annihilation.

The Great Miracle and the conditional Chastisement at Garabandal

At Garabandal, the Warning precedes a Great Miracle visible at the Pines, on a Thursday evening, which Conchita must announce eight days in advance, and a Chastisement that is only conditional, which would not take place if the world converts^[13]. Mari Loli Mazón ties the first two events together in time, with three dated formulations that must be quoted without being merged: the Warning and the Miracle are within the same year (27 July 1975, a period of twelve months according to the note of the Spanish editors); the Miracle will take place within the year following the Warning (February 1977); both will take place within twelve months, the Warning being a purification and a preparation to return to God (29 September 1978, an interview transcribed only by a devotional site)^[14]. None of these formulas says “less than a year” word for word, and none gives a date.

The three days of darkness

The popular tradition of the three days of darkness, often attached to the Warning in the compilations, comes from another thread: outward darkness, not interior light. The Blessed Anna Maria Taigi is the example treated below: her verifiable texts speak of darkness, never of an illumination of conscience. Keeping the two threads apart is a condition of honesty: one and the same article may mention both, but it cannot present them as a single prophecy.

The Church says nothing about a universal Warning, and this silence has a precise meaning. The pontifical texts published on the Holy See’s website do not describe a universal illumination of conscience. What the Church says, she says of private revelations in general, and this is the framework that applies here.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church recalls that private revelations do not belong to the deposit of faith and that their role is to help people live the definitive revelation more fully in a given age of history^[15]. Benedict XVI, in the exhortation Verbum Domini, specifies that an ecclesial approval means only that the message contains nothing contrary to faith and morals and that a prudent adherence is possible, without any obligation to make use of it^[16]. The Norms of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of 17 May 2024 add that, as a rule, neither the diocesan Bishop, nor the Episcopal Conferences, nor the Dicastery will declare that these phenomena are of supernatural origin, even when a nihil obstat is granted^[17].

A clear position follows, and it is the one of this article. Nothing obliges anyone to believe in a Warning to come. Nothing forbids hoping for it with prudence either, when the voices that announce it do not contradict the faith and bear fruits of conversion. What the Church always asks for is discernment: to verify the exact status of each phenomenon, never to put a private revelation into the mouth of the Magisterium and never to make it the centre of one’s Christian life. Two neighbouring articles treat this discernment for its own sake: Should we believe in private revelations? and Can we believe in an unrecognized private revelation?, with the complete grid in Criteria for discerning supernatural phenomena.

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” Gospel according to Saint Matthew 24, 36.^[18]

Several passages of Scripture are brought close to the Warning by commentators. None of them describes, in its primary sense, a universal illumination before the end of time: most of them aim at preaching, the end of life or the Judgment. Presenting them as parallels, and never as proofs, is the only honest way to quote them. The translations follow the liturgical translation in use in the Church (AELF).

The first parallel comes from the Gospel according to Saint John: the Paraclete, when he comes, will convict the world in respect of sin, of righteousness and of judgment^[19]. The second comes from Simeon’s prophecy to Mary: the Child will be a sign of contradiction, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed, a word the Marian tradition readily rereads in the light of a manifestation of consciences^[20]. The Gospel according to Saint Luke also promises that nothing hidden will remain unknown and come to light^[21], and the first letter to the Corinthians announces that the Lord will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and make manifest the intentions of hearts^[22]. The letter to the Hebrews describes a living word of God that judges the intentions and thoughts of the heart, before which every creature is laid bare^[23]. The Book of Revelation, finally, describes at the sixth seal a cosmic upheaval in which each seeks to hide from the face of him who sits on the throne^[24], and the prophet Joel announces the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh, taken up by Saint Peter on the day of Pentecost^[25].

Taken together, these texts say something true and permanent: God sees hearts, his word lays them bare and the Spirit convicts the world concerning sin. They do not say that a single, dated event will bring this about for all the living before the Parousia. The step that leads from the texts to the Warning belongs to private revelations and their commentators; Scripture, for its part, chiefly calls each person to let himself be enlightened by the word of God from now on.

The witnesses are not equal and do not say the same thing. They are presented here in the chronological order of their announcement, each with what he says exactly, his source and his ecclesial status in one clear sentence.

Garabandal: the source of the word Aviso

Garabandal is the source of the vocabulary of the whole dossier. It is there that the Virgin is said to have announced a Warning (el Aviso) before a Great Miracle, with the interior description given above. The ecclesial status must be stated exactly: the notes of the bishops of Santander from 1961 to 1968 conclude that the supernatural character of the facts is not established (the formula non constat de supernaturalitate; as early as 26 August 1961, nothing obliges one to affirm the supernatural character of the facts), those of 1962 and 1967 going as far as a natural explanation, while the doctrine was not censured in 1965^[26]. Bishop José Vilaplana reaffirmed this non constat after a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of 28 November 1992 (a form letter known under several dates, which should not be given a single certain year), then Bishop Manuel Sánchez Monge declared in 2022 that Rome’s assessment remains in force: there are no signs of supernatural character^[27]. On 19 September 2024, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández said orally, in answer to a press question, that Garabandal might fall under the curatur of the 2024 Norms, glossed by him as the absence of public worship with private prayer possible: an oral and conditional assessment, without decree, paragraph 19 of the Norms asking only that the bishop not encourage the phenomenon^[28]. To date, neither the Dicastery nor the bishop of Santander has issued any new written decision on this dossier.

Medjugorje: warnings on earth, not an interior illumination

At Medjugorje, ten secrets were entrusted to the visionaries and have never been disclosed. The oldest written source that speaks of warnings is the letter from Fr. Tomislav Vlašić to John Paul II of 2 December 1983, which summarizes an account by Mirjana without word-for-word quotations: it is therefore Vlašić’s summary, and not Mirjana’s word, that must be quoted.

“Before the visible sign is given to humanity, there will be three warnings to the world. The warnings will be events on the earth. Mirjana will be a witness to them. Three days before one of the admonitions, she will inform a freely chosen priest. Mirjana’s testimony will be a confirmation of the apparitions.” Summary by Fr. Tomislav Vlašić, published by René Laurentin in 1984, rendered into English from the French text.^[29]

Mirjana herself, in an interview published by Jan Connell in 1990, says in English that there will be events on the earth as warnings to the world before the visible sign is given to humanity (translation noted)^[30]. The decisive point is this: these warnings are described as events on the earth. No text from Medjugorje describes them as an interior illumination of conscience. Linking them to the Warning of Garabandal is an interpretation of commentators, and it is presented here as such. The role of Fr. Petar Ljubičić, informed ten days beforehand according to interviews with Mirjana of 1996 and 2001 with a public announcement three days beforehand, is reported; Mirjana herself relativized it in 2016 and 2018, and he should not be presented as designated in a definitive way^[31]. René Laurentin, though favourable to the dossier, wrote of the secrets that it would be imprudent to hold them as words of the Gospel^[32].

The status is that of the Note of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith The Queen of Peace of 19 September 2024, approved by Pope Francis on 28 August 2024: a nihil obstat for the spiritual experience, without any declaration of supernatural character, the faithful not being obliged to believe in it^[33]. The Note never mentions the secrets or warnings; no word about them should be attributed to it. What it does say and what illuminates this article is found elsewhere: the messages about the last time and about the promised sign are to be received only as an appeal not to put off conversion, with the word of the apostle: now is the favourable time, now is the day of salvation^[34]. The neighbouring article For 150 years we have entered a new era holds the same prudence: the tenor of an illumination of conscience cannot be attributed to the secrets.

Maria Esperanza at Betania: consciences shaken, a great day of light

Maria Esperanza (1928-2004), visionary of Betania in Venezuela, is counted among the witnesses of the Warning for a word the anthologies attribute to her: the consciences of this beloved people must be violently shaken so that they may put their house in order, a great moment is approaching, a great day of light, the hour of decision for mankind (translation noted)^[35]. The chain of transmission must be stated: the word is quoted by Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi, taken up by Mark Mallett in 2019 and updated in 2021; it is therefore quoted here from that chain of transmission^[36]. Another word reported by the same relay says that the justice of God will begin in Venezuela^[37]. The nuance matters: Betania speaks of consciences shaken and of a great day of light, without describing the how. To shake is not to illuminate, and the parallel with the Warning of Garabandal is, here again, an interpretation of commentators.

Her status, for its part, is the most favourable on this list: the apparitions of Betania were declared authentic by Bishop Pío Bello Ricardo of Los Teques on 21 November 1987, in consultation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the cause of beatification of Maria Esperanza was opened on 31 January 2010: she is a Servant of God^[38]. This recognition concerns Betania; it does not turn every reported word of the visionary into a teaching of the Church.

Don Stefano Gobbi: like a judgment in miniature

Fr. Stefano Gobbi (1930-2011), founder of the Marian Movement of Priests, never names the event Warning. His interior locutions, gathered in the Blue Book, describe an enlightening of consciences that commentators have brought close to Garabandal. The most quoted text is no. 383, at Heede on 22 May 1988:

“By his divine Love, he will open the doors of hearts and enlighten all consciences. Each man will see himself in the burning fire of divine Truth. It will be like a judgment in miniature.” Don Stefano Gobbi, Blue Book, no. 383, rendered into English from the French edition.^[39]

The same image returns at no. 478 (Milan, 2 October 1992: there will be like a reduced judgment and each will see his own life and all his actions in the very Light of God), at no. 521 (Berlin, 22 May 1994) and at no. 546 (Vacallo, 4 June 1995: like a smaller judgment that will open the door of your heart to receive the great gift of divine Mercy)^[40]. The expression judgment in miniature is Gobbi’s own contribution to the vocabulary of the dossier: it says exactly the shared intuition, a particular judgment anticipated and merciful, without using the word of Garabandal.

The status calls for the same precision. The 1998 English edition bears an edition imprimatur from Bishop Donald W. Montrose of Stockton, which stands as a judgment of doctrinal conformity for that edition^[41]. But a letter from Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, apostolic nuncio to the United States, of 7 December 2000, reports the opinion of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: these texts are not the words of the Blessed Virgin, but Fr. Gobbi’s private meditations^[42]. His cause of beatification was opened at Como on 1 May 2024 (Servant of God); it concerns his life, and not the supernatural origin of the messages^[43].

Saint Faustina Kowalska: a sign in the sky, and a soul that sees itself

Saint Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938) is often quoted among the prophets of the Warning. Her Diary says two distinct things, which must be kept distinct. At paragraph 83, Jesus announces a sign in the sky before the day of justice: every light will be extinguished, darkness will reign, the sign of the cross will appear and great lights will spring from the wounds of the Saviour to illuminate the earth for a time, shortly before the last day^[44].

“Before coming as a just Judge, I come first as a King of mercy. Before the day of justice arrives, a sign will be given to men in the sky.” Jesus to Saint Faustina, Diary, paragraph 83, rendered into English from the French text of the official edition.^[45]

This is a cosmic sign linked to the return of Christ as judge, and not an interior illumination of conscience. The parallel with the Warning is the work of later authors; it is presented as such. At paragraph 36, Saint Faustina recounts something else: a personal experience in which she saw at once the state of her soul as God sees it^[46]. This is not a prophecy of a universal event; it is the testimony of a soul that saw itself in the light of God, and it is as such that it illuminates, below, the second reading of the Warning. The status is known: notification of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of 15 April 1978 lifting the prohibitions of 1959, canonization on 30 April 2000; the Diary remains a private revelation^[47].

Sulema: books without a known imprimatur, a Church that remains neutral in her account

Sulema, born in El Salvador in 1954, lives in Sherbrooke, Quebec, with her husband and says she receives, in French, her second language, messages from the Virgin Mary and from Jesus^[48]. Her books are titled Je viens vous préparer à cet événement : l’illumination des consciences (I come to prepare you for this event: the illumination of conscience), published by Éditions Christian in Sherbrooke (first edition in 2012, then two volumes in 2012-2013), then by Éditions du Parvis in Switzerland in three volumes (volume 1, sixth edition in June 2019; volume 2, third edition in May 2016; volume 3, second edition in May 2015)^[49]. She identifies her subject with Garabandal herself in an interview with the review Stella Maris: illumination of conscience or warning, as it was said at Garabandal, it is the same thing^[50].

On the imprimatur she is sometimes credited with, the facts must be stated with respect and without a tone of correction. Her books bear no known imprimatur: the records of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and the publisher’s sheets for Éditions du Parvis mention neither imprimatur nor nihil obstat^[51]. The preface by her spiritual director, Fr. J. Rubén Riveros, as the publisher presents it, notes that there is no assertion contrary to the Catholic faith^[52]: this is the opinion of a priest, and not an imprimatur, which only the Ordinary of the place can give according to canon 824 of the Code of Canon Law^[53]. Fr. Guy Giroux is presented as spiritual counsellor of the work^[54]. Sulema herself said in 2013 that her publisher had sent a book to the archdiocese and that she saw the Church remaining neutral, without having condemned or forbidden the distribution of the book^[55]. The archdiocese of Sherbrooke has issued no statement on the subject. The imprimatur sometimes mentioned in connection with anthologies on the Warning concerns the book of Christine Watkins, which quotes Sulema in its revised edition, and it is contested: the detail is given in the section on the anthologies. An imprimatur, whatever it may be, never says that messages come from Heaven; it says only that a text contains nothing contrary to faith and morals.

Luz de María de Bonilla: an interior and personal Aviso, with cosmic signs

Luz de María de Bonilla publishes her messages on her official website, in annual volumes. Her description of the Aviso is one of the closest to Garabandal in vocabulary, with cosmic additions of her own. In a message attributed to the Virgin on 10 August 2018, she writes that the Aviso is interior and personal, that it will allow the conscience to show what each one’s life and action have been, an act of mercy so that each may come to see himself as he is (Spanish quoted in the note, translation noted)^[56]. A message attributed to Christ on 18 September 2017 announces that each will find himself alone before his own conscience and that his acts will be revealed to him, even those he does not remember^[57]. Her messages add signs in the sky, a cross and a circle from which a ray of light would descend, and a heavenly body of the Aviso: this cosmic register and the material recommendations that sometimes accompany it are mentioned here soberly as a difference, and are not taken up, because the preparation this article proposes is only that of the heart.

The status must be stated without shortcut. Bishop Juan Abelardo Mata Guevara of Estelí in Nicaragua granted on 19 March 2017 an imprimatur to her publications, declaring that he had found in them no doctrinal error against faith, morals and good customs (Spanish text in the note)^[58]. This is a doctrinal judgment, without recognition of the supernatural origin of the messages. His competence under canon 824, which reserves the imprimatur to the Ordinary of the author or of the place of publication, is presented here as an open question, the author not being settled in that diocese; his later letters are signed as bishop emeritus after the acceptance of his renunciation on 6 July 2021, a quality that does not figure among the Ordinaries of the place in the sense of canon 134^[59]. This imprimatur therefore does not amount to an approval of her messages.

Pedro Régis at Anguera: seeing one’s whole life as in a mirror

Pedro Régis, at Anguera in the state of Bahia in Brazil, uses a variable vocabulary in which the revelation of the conscience is called Aviso, great grace, Miracle or Sign, unlike Garabandal, which distinguishes the Warning from the Miracle^[60]. Two dated and numbered messages are enough to place him briefly. Message no. 2,852 of 19 June 2007 says that God will allow each to see his whole life, that everything will be shown to him as in a mirror and that God will give the chance of repentance, in a phenomenon presented as a Warning from God (Portuguese quoted in the note, translation noted)^[61]. Message no. 2,510 of 16 April 2005 announces that a great warning will be given to humanity^[62]. A pastoral letter from Archbishop Zanoni Demettino Castro of Feira de Santana, of 13 May 2024, warns against his public stances against the magisterium of Pope Francis, without any decision on the supernatural^[63]. He is quoted here briefly and without being put forward.

The reliability of this article lies also in what it removes. Four names appear in almost every anthology on the Warning; their texts, reread at the source, do not say what they are made to say. Correcting them gently, texts in hand, makes the whole more credible than the compilations that line them up without verification.

Saint Edmund Campion: the Judgment, a commonplace of all preaching

At his trial in Westminster on 20 November 1581, accused of having announced the invasion of England by the pope and the king of Spain, the Jesuit Edmund Campion answered that he had spoken of the day when the terrible Judge should reveal all men’s consciences and test each according to his religion (English quoted in the note)^[64]. This is the Judgment of God, preached in every pulpit, and Campion adds that God knows he meant nothing else. The present-tense forms circulated by the compilations, of the kind “I pronounce” or “such is the day which I proclaimed”, appear neither in the State Trials nor in Richard Simpson’s biography: they turn a defence in the past into a prophecy. Campion offers neither private revelation nor announcement of an event before the end of time.

Blessed Pius IX: a great prodigy for the deliverance of the Church

In June 1871, answering the young people of the Cercle Saint-Pierre who had come to offer him ceremonial fans, Blessed Pius IX is reported to have said, according to a press account given in roughly these terms, that the heart of God is preparing to accomplish, at the moment he has chosen, a great prodigy that will fill the world with astonishment^[65]. The context is the Roman Question: Rome occupied, the pope calling himself a prisoner, and the expectation of an outward deliverance of the Church by an intervention of God. Nothing in this reported remark describes an interior illumination of conscience. The long English version circulating, in which the prodigy would be preceded by the triumph of revolution and by extreme sufferings of the Church, corresponds to no published text of the pontificate of Pius IX.

Élisabeth Kindelmann: an outpouring of grace that will blind Satan

The Journal of Élisabeth Kindelmann (1913-1985), foundress of the Flame of Love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, does not speak of a Warning. It announces an outpouring of grace comparable to Pentecost that will blind Satan (13 April 1962; 27 March 1963)^[66]. The imprimatur of Cardinal Péter Erdő of 6 June 2009 stands as a judgment of doctrinal conformity, and not as a recognition of a supernatural origin^[67]. The outpouring of grace she describes can nourish the hope of a renewal; it does not describe each person seeing his soul as God sees it.

Blessed Anna Maria Taigi: darkness, never an illumination

The Blessed Anna Maria Taigi (1769-1837, beatified by Benedict XV in 1920) is placed by the anthologies among the prophets of the Warning, whereas her texts never speak of an illumination of conscience: they speak of darkness. The long quotation circulating in English, with three days and three nights of intense darkness, blessed candles and the prohibition on opening the window, is attributed by some sites to a book entitled Private Prophecy or Private Prophecies (Rome, 1863). Jimmy Akin, of Catholic Answers, verified in 2023 that no book of that title exists on Archive.org or on Google Books, and that the mention of the three days appears only around 1863-1864, more than a quarter of a century after the death of the Blessed, by her spiritual director Raffaele Natali^[68]. His conclusion is that no word-for-word quotation, especially a long one, can be attributed to Anna Maria Taigi without a document written in her lifetime. In her lifetime she described a mystical sun in the shape of an orb in which she said she saw the future, which her beatification process recorded without judging the validity of the revelations: a beatification process verifies non-contradiction with the faith, not the validity of the revelations^[69]. The long quotation is therefore not taken up here as a word of Anna Maria Taigi; it is only mentioned as an attribution without a written document from the lifetime of the Blessed.

Since 2019, the theme has circulated chiefly through one book: The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience by Christine Watkins (Queen of Peace Media, September 2019), a collection of testimonies and notices on prophets of the Warning^[70]. The 2019 edition, known through its Polish translation of 2020, lines up Campion, Taigi, Pius IX, Faustina, Heede, Kindelmann, Garabandal, Gobbi, Matthew Kelly, Janie Garza, Maria Esperanza, Luz de María and Fr. Michel Rodrigue; six names were added in the revised edition, among them Sulema and Gisella Cardia, as the Spanish Dipon edition of 2022 shows^[71]. The previous section showed what several of these notices are worth at the source. An anthology is therefore read as a starting point, never as a proof: each name calls for its own verification.

The imprimatur sometimes put forward for this book calls for the same verification. It was read on the copyright page of The Warning: The Concise Revised Edition (The Mary Foundation, December 2020): imprimatur of Archbishop Emeritus Ramón C. Argüelles of Lipa in the Philippines, dated 22 May 2020^[72]. Sulema does not appear in the first edition of 2019; her notice was added in the revised edition, verified in the Spanish Dipon edition of 2022, which bears no imprimatur^[73]. This imprimatur, if it held, would therefore bear on Christine Watkins’s book, and not on the messages of Sulema. Its validity is contested: Kevin Symonds, on 29 July 2020, objects under canon 824 §1 that a bishop emeritus is not the Ordinary of the author or of the publisher, and that no censor is named under canon 830^[74]. The publisher has issued no public answer to this criticism.

These anthologies moreover blend voices that their bishop has disavowed, which must be named without ever quoting their messages. Fr. Michel Rodrigue was disavowed by the bishop of Amos; a letter from Bishop Gilles Lemay of 14 July 2020, reproduced by Kevin Symonds, says that Fr. Michel never submitted to him any of his locutions and visions for discernment or approval (English quoted in the note)^[75]. Gisella Cardia, at Trevignano Romano, was declared non-supernatural in 2024 by the decree of her bishop confirmed by the Dicastery. The case of “Maria Divine Mercy”, pseudonym of a presumed Irish visionary, serves as a school of discernment: the archdiocese of Dublin declared on 15 April 2014, in a text taken up on 16 April by the Irish Episcopal Conference, that these messages and alleged visions have no ecclesiastical approval, that many of their texts are in contradiction with Catholic theology and that they should not be promoted or made use of within Catholic Church associations (English quoted in the note)^[76]. This voice contributed to spreading the theme on the Internet, with a site titled TheWarningSecondComing.com noted by Jimmy Akin in 2013^[77]. The compilation by Jean-Claude and Christiane Laflamme, Messages phares vers l’illumination des consciences (Éditions du Parvis, 2021), makes Campion a prophet of the Warning and attributes the two stars to the Virgin in 1962: two attributions that the sources deny, as we have seen^[78]. The right tone for reading these books is that of discernment, without mockery: to give thanks for the conversions they may have accompanied, and to verify every claim before repeating it.

Two readings of the illumination of conscience coexist, and this article does not decide between them. The first expects a single, universal and simultaneous event, in the course of history, as Garabandal and its heirs describe it. The second brings this illumination close to what each will live at the moment of his death, at the particular judgment, when man is placed in the full light of Christ and sees his life as God sees it^[79]. The Church teaches the second reality; she does not teach the first. Presenting both without deciding is not an evasion: it is the exact position called for by the state of the sources.

The personal experience of Saint Faustina at paragraph 36 of her Diary gives the second reading a concrete face: a soul, in her lifetime and by grace, sees at once the state of her soul as God sees it^[80]. Prudently, and only as an analogy, one can still bring this close to the “life review” reported in some accounts of near-death experiences, in which people say they reviewed their entire life in a light of love and truth. The analogy helps to imagine what “seeing oneself as God sees us” can mean; it proves neither a universal event to come, nor the content of any prophecy. In both readings, the practical conclusion is the same, and it is the subject of the last section: do not wait to convert.

No one knows the day. The Gospel says so without detour: of that day and hour no one knows, but the Father alone^[81], and the risen Christ refuses the apostles knowledge of the times and seasons the Father has fixed by his own authority^[82]. Every date, every year and every countdown are therefore excluded from this article, under the standing rule of this encyclopedia on prophecy.

One reasoning remains, and one only, which can be set out because it is conditional from beginning to end and tied to the only source that allows it. If Garabandal is right, the Warning will come before the Great Miracle; now Conchita González must announce that Miracle eight days in advance; all this would therefore take place in her lifetime, that is, at most within a few decades. Four conditions keep this reasoning in its place. It is stated in the conditional and tied to Garabandal, never as a fact nor as a prophecy of this encyclopedia. It contains no year, no date and no countdown, and Conchita’s age is never presented there as an hourglass: Conchita, Jacinta and Mari Cruz are said to be alive according to the last sources consulted in October 2026, without further precision^[83]. The exact status of Garabandal is recalled right beside it, in the section devoted to it: supernatural character not established, without condemnation of the doctrine. And the prudence the dossier calls for is named: Joey Lomangino, to whom Conchita had written on 19 March 1964 that he would see the very day of the Miracle, died blind on 18 June 2014 without having seen it^[84]. Outside this reasoning, no time frame is put forward. The only permitted conclusion is the one Benoît repeats: we shall see.

Preparation does not consist in living while waiting for an event. That would be a pity, and it would miss the only certain good in this dossier: to love God from now on. One must always remain prepared, and this preparation is that of the heart, never that of stockpiling. No material instruction therefore has its place here: no stores, no place of refuge, no protective object to acquire. The new ark is Mary: one does not take refuge in a place, one takes refuge in a heart, and one lets oneself be formed by her in prayer and trust.

Concretely, preparation is ordinary Christian life, lived without delay. Daily prayer, which places the heart before God each day. Regular confession, preceded by a serious examination, which is already, on a small scale, an illumination received in mercy rather than dreaded in anguish. The examination of conscience each evening, like a small illumination of every day: to review one’s day in the light of God, to give thanks, to be sorry, to ask pardon and to decide on one step for tomorrow. The Eucharist, which nourishes this life. The Chaplet of Divine Mercy and the words of Saint Faustina, “Jesus, I trust in you”, which hold together the truth about oneself and boundless trust. Charity towards one’s neighbour, for it is on love that each will be judged. The Catechism sums up this vigilance by quoting the apostle: now is the favourable time, now is the day of salvation^[85].

“Watch, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. [...] Therefore you must also be ready, for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Gospel according to Saint Matthew 24, 42-44, rendered into English from the French liturgical text.^[86]

“Before coming as a just Judge, I come first as a King of mercy.” Jesus to Saint Faustina, Diary, paragraph 83, rendered into English from the French text of the official edition.^[87]

If a Warning is to come, it will find ready the one who already loves. If it does not come in the expected form, nothing will have been lost: a life of prayer, confession and charity waits for no event to bear its fruit. It is on this hope, and not on an expectation, that this article ends: what matters is to love God here and now.

Related Ignispedia articles

• Garabandal: the source of the word Aviso, Conchita’s description and the exact status of the dossier at Santander.
• Medjugorje: the ten secrets, the Note The Queen of Peace of 2024 and the real place of warnings in its texts.
• Saint Faustina Kowalska: the Diary, the sign in the sky of paragraph 83 and mercy before judgment.
• Blessed Anna Maria Taigi: what her texts say of darkness, and why the long quotation circulating rests on no text from her lifetime.
• Should we believe in private revelations? and Can we believe in an unrecognized private revelation?: the framework of discernment that applies to this whole dossier.
• Criteria for discerning supernatural phenomena: the complete grid, with the 2024 Norms.
• The last things: particular judgment, Last Judgment and return of Christ, not to be confused with the hoped-for Warning.
• The glorious return of Christ: the Parousia, the end of history.
• The examination of conscience, Confession and How to make a good confession?: the daily preparation proposed by this article.
• Near-death experiences: the reported life review, quoted here as an analogy and never as a proof.
• Marian apparitions have multiplied since the nineteenth century, For 150 years we have entered a new era, Mary prepares us for the end of time and The messages and prophecies of the Virgin Mary: the neighbouring pages of this dossier in the summary.

Reference sources

The complete references, with edition and page, are given in the notes below. The magisterial texts quoted are the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the exhortation Verbum Domini of Benedict XVI and the Norms of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of 17 May 2024 with the Note The Queen of Peace of 19 September 2024, all published by the Holy See. For Garabandal, the reference source for the words of the visionaries is Joseph A. Pelletier, Our Lady Comes to Garabandal (1971), read with the synthesis assumed as such by Eusebio García de Pesquera, Garabandal, faits et dates (Résiac, 1992).