Although skeptical on his first visit to the area, believing satanic elements might be involved, he realised on his second visit, after studying the visionaries in ecstasy, that something very special was happening.
On the 8th August, 1961, he was among the crowd observing the girls at the pine grove where the visions often took place. Suddenly his face became tense and falling on his knees, he cried out loud : ‘Miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle!’
The four girls could see Fr. Luis, even though normally when in ecstasy they would see only the vision and each other. The Virgin told them that the priest was seeing her and a miracle, too. Conchita later wrote in her diary that the Virgin seemed to say to him, ‘You will soon be with Me.’
Fr. Luis left by car that same night with his travelling companions. They paused for a while at Cosio, three miles down the mountain road from Garabandal, where he went to meet the parish priest and said : ‘Don Valentin, what the children are saying is true, but I ask you not to repeat what I have just told you, for the Church can never be prudent enough in this kind of event.’
On the way home it was clear that Fr. Luis was overwhelmed with joy, repeating the words : ‘I am so happy! What a wonderful favour the Virgin has bestowed on me! How fortunate we are to have a Mother like that in Heaven! There is no reason to fear the supernatural life. The girls have shown us how we must act with the Blessed Virgin. There’s no doubt in my mind that the things involving the girls are true. But why should the Blessed Virgin have chosen us? This is the happiest day of my life!’ The final time he said this, he lowered his head to his chest, made a slight coughing sound, and then died.
He was just thirty-eight. The news spread fast. Everyone was shocked. The next day, when the Virgin appeared to the girls, she told them that she had appeared to Fr. Luis as well as to them and had shown him a preview of a great Miracle to come, after which he had died of joy. This was not the end of the priest’s involvement with Garabandal, however.
Just eight days later, on 16th August, the Blessed Virgin said to all four of them, ‘Fr. Luis will come and speak to you now.’
As Conchita recorded in her diary, ‘A moment later, he called us one by one. We didn’t see him but only heard his voice. It was exactly like the one he had on earth.’
Fr. Luis spoke to the children and gave them some advice, as well as messages for his brother. More importantly, he sent a consoling message through them to his elderly mother, for whom news of his early death had come as a geat shock. ‘Be happy and content,’ he said, ‘for I am in Heaven and see you every day.’ What a comfort that must have been to her.
Almost three years after his burial in the Jesuit cemetery at Ona, on 14th July, 1964, Our Lady told Conchita during a locution (a voice without an accompanying vision), that on the day after the Great Miracle, the body of Fr. Luis will be removed and found to be as incorrupt as on the day he died.
A statement that caused no little controversy, for in 1977 his tomb was opened and all that was found was a skeleton. But, it has been pointed out, Our Lady’s prophecy concerned only the day after the Great Miracle, so it remains to be seen whether yet another miracle is to take place!
And the Great Miracle itself? That is something we shall consider in the next article: -Garabandal and the Grea