On the 30th of March in the year 1968, the Most Holy Virgin of Carmel appeared for the first time to four girls from the village of El Palmar de Troya, Utrera, Seville, Spain, over a lentisk tree. Nothing is left of the tree of this first apparition, as the devotees cut off its branches as precious relics. In the exact spot a small wooden cross was set up, and about it the prayers were said and the seers received their heavenly visits. In this way the place chosen by the Most Holy Virgin in Her first apparition was kept in remembrance. Later the Holy Face of Jesus and the Image of Our Mother of Palmar were set up there.

Following the first four girls, there were other seers who had extraordinary ecstasies and received important heavenly messages.

This Sacred Place, which in the future was to become the See of the Holy Palmarian Church, had been prepared by the Most Holy Virgin Mary for over a century by Her numerous Apparitions in different places such as La Salette in 1846, Lourdes in 1858, Fatima in 1917, Garabandal in 1961, and many other places.

It was the Sacred Place of the Lentisco of El Palmar de Troya which gradually announced the worrying situation in the Catholic Church, the events to befall her in the future, the chastisements and catastrophes to take place for the whole of mankind, all of which could only by mitigated by prayer, by penance and by stamping out the so very harmful progressivism introduced into the Church, for example: giving out Holy Communion in the hand, receiving It standing instead of kneeling, many priests and nuns casting aside their sacred habits…

The destruction of the Church by way of the adulteration of traditional teaching, changes in the liturgy, the abolition of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the dethronement of the Most Holy Virgin Mary and of countless Saints from the churches, led to the spiritual ruin of an immense number of Church members.

The Most Holy Virgin, as Mother of the Church, after so many warnings, appeared in this village from where, as Divine Shepherdess and Doctress, She finally made ready to renew the Church, given that the Roman Church was on the way to apostasy. From then on there were innumerable apparitions both of the Most Holy Virgin and of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Eternal Father and of a great number of Saints, who gradually prepared for coming events in Holy Mother Church.

The continual messages received by the numerous seers, public miracles, cures and other mystical phenomena in El Palmar, drew an ever-increasing flow of pilgrims, not only from Spain, but as well from all parts of the world, in search of tradition and truth – no longer to be found in the roman churches.

The principal seer chosen by God to spread everywhere the transcendent messages which were to be given in El Palmar was a young Sevillian, born on the 23rd of April in the year 1946, who was to become the great future Pope of Holy Mother Church with See in this Sacred Place: Gregory XVII. Clemente Domínguez y Gómez, as principal seer of El Palmar, was not simply an important recipient of messages; rather the Most Holy Virgin Mary accompanied Her appeals with the countless mystical phenomena She conferred upon him, evident signs which confirmed the truth of the apparitions: wonderful ecstasies, conversions, miraculous cures, stigmatizations, mystical communions and so forth. The stigmata he received were a perfectly clear sign for anyone who humbly wished to acknowledge the Truth. From that time, Clemente Domínguez was to fulfil one of the most difficult missions any person can have; yet, by the help and strength of God and of His Most Holy Mother, he bore up and battled on with tenacity and valour in defence of the Truth.

Very numerous were Clemente’s journeys preaching on El Palmar, inviting the world to get to know the one place of salvation in the face of the decadence, confusion and darkness reigning in the Roman Church. Despite the attacks, criticism and calumnies launched against him, he was faithful to the mission commended to him, and gave himself with valour and vigour to the hard task of making known Heaven’s words.

The continuous prayer joined to constant penance which the Lord and the Most Holy Virgin requested in this Sacred Place, and which its devotees zealously practised, were not long in producing their fruit.

A few years after that first Apparition, the spiritual basis was organized in the most important Religious Order of the Last Times. The Ordinations and Consecrations of the members of the new Church Hierarchy in its different branches produced an Episcopal and Apostolic College which grew to have a considerable number of members to help safeguard Holy Catholic Tradition in this Sacred Place. In the place chosen to preserve the purity and vitality of Catholicism and thus become the See of the future Papacy, not only did Palmarians prepare themselves spiritually but as well necessarily began materially to construct a Temple to God where true worship was to be rendered, ever more decadent elsewhere in the world.

So then, in this same Sacred Place where the Most Holy Virgin Mary became visible in that first Apparition, and at Her maternal petition, today’s Cathedral-Basilica of Our Crowned Mother of Palmar was built. Great were the efforts made by the first Palmarians so that this dream might become reality, and their faith and trustful prayer met with a response from Divine Providence.