Being successful in their fund raising endeavors, in 1974, Clemente and Manuel could eventually acquire the apparition site: the 15,000 square meter estate of Alcaparrosa and could thus physically control the site and develop the cult as they wished. After the purchase, they built a somewhat more elaborate shrine. It was a kind of hangar, covered in plastic, where images of Our Lady, The Holy Face, St. Joseph, Padre Pio and Saint Ferdinand were kept. They also constructed a high wall around the church compound, and housing for pilgrims was bought or built nearby (Alfaro 1975; Vidal 1976:103; El País May 12, 1976; Molina 2006:71-78, 100-04).

Continue reading “Schism at Palmar: Palmarian Bishops” →

The apparitions received no clear support from the local parish priests who visited Palmar de Troya on a regular basis, though one of the nearby curates publicly stated that that something “strange was going on in Palmar de Troya,” and he did not know what to believe. However, another, younger parish priest was more critical, but the basic way of handling the stories was silence (ABC 27 April 1968). Thus, although there was some initial clerical interest, or at least bewilderment, the Palmarian seers could not rely on local ecclesiastical support.

Continue reading “The Official Church Denounces the Appartions at Palmar de Troya” →

During the early 1970s, the Palmarian seer par excellence, Clemente Dominguez received new heavenly messages on a continuous basis. They were recorded by Manuel Alonso, written down, copied and distributed. Some of them were translated into English, French and German as part of the diffusion of the news beyond Spain’s borders. A newsletter, Ecos del Palmar, was printed from 1972 onwards. An obvious reason for the documentation was to spread the news to as many people as possible, looking upon them as a final word of warning from heaven. The group around Clemente regarded most Catholic bishops as apostates, whom together with the large majority of nominally Catholic priests, female religious and laypeople, needed to convert (Alonso and Canales 1976:145-58).

Continue reading “Spreading the News and Getting Money/ Apocalyptical and Traditionalist Contexts” →

By the end of 1969, Clemente Domínguez y Gómez (1946-2005) had become one of the most influential seers at Palmar de Troya. Later many would look upon him as the seer par excellence, while others would consider him a fake, or something in between. After failing to enter the priest seminary and not being accepted into the Dominican order, he became an office clerk, working for a Catholic company in Seville, from where he was fired. Clemente was not one of the pioneer seers at Palmar de Troya, but had visited the site in October 1968 without being convinced. However, reading texts and listening to lectures about the apparitions, from the summer of 1969, and on an almost daily basis, he went to Palmar de Troya together with his friend, the lawyer Manuel Alonso Corral (1934-2011), who also lost his job in the period (DH; PR; cf. Molina 1996: 31-40).

Continue reading “Clemente and Manuel Enter the Scene” →

Palmar de Troya, located about 40 kilometers south of Seville, close to Utrera, was settled in the 1930s. By the late 1960s, the town had about 2,000 inhabitants, most having relocated from other parts of Spain. The majority of them were day laborers on big agricultural estates, latifundios. Anne Cadoret-Abeles, who conducted anthropological fieldwork there in the late 1960s and early 1970s, noted the lack of communitarian spirit resulting from virtually all inhabitants being newcomers. The town had electricity but still lacked a medical doctor and running water, and its school remained undeveloped.

Continue reading “Early Apparitions at Palmar de Troya” →

Sacraments

Just as the Roman Catholic church, the Palmarians hold that Christ instituted seven sacraments. Nevertheless, they also teach that in this end-time the election to the papacy is an eighth, invisible sacrament, directly conferred by Christ (TM, chapter 34, volume 78-80).

The Palmarians have an exclusive soteriology; it is only possible to reach salvation within the visible Palmarian Church in union with the pope, where all divine graces are distributed since the end of the Roman era of the church. At present, the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Palmarian church is the mystical body of Christ and the Virgin. Therefore, the sacraments of other churches, including the Roman Catholic have no value whatsoever, as the Holy Spirit does not work through them. Thus, they are empty rituals and, in fact, sacrileges that bring damnation on those who administer and receive them.

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Mariology

If the Roman Catholic Church has made few infallible dogmatic pronouncements, the Palmarian popes have made hundreds, if not thousands. During his first days as the pontiff, Gregory XVII promulgated a series of new Marian dogmas. Many of them had been discussed in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries. In the Early Church, it was taught that the Mary was a (perpetual) virgin and the mother of God (theotokos). Thereafter, it would take a long time before the church made any other binding dogma on the Virgin. In 1854, the Holy See announced a new dogma, the Immaculate Conception, that the Virgin Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin. Finally, in 1950, Pius XII infallibly dogmatized the Assumption of the Virgin: that Mary at her dormition (she did not die) was brought to heaven in body and soul (For a summary on Mariology, see Pelikan 1996; for details, see Marienlexikon 1988-1994).

Continue reading “Palmarian Doctrines, Part II” →

Doctrinal Texts

From its foundation in 1978, the Palmarian Church has been very text centered. It has published many documents that can serve as sources for a study of their theology. However, because of the increasingly closed nature of the church, it is not easy to get access to the texts and very little is found in research libraries. They have to be acquired in other, sometimes, complicated ways. Palmarian documents have often been published in parallel English, Spanish and German versions, but there are translations into French, Portuguese, Polish and Italian as well. They give evidence of a successive doctrinal development from a rather typical, though clearly apocalyptically-centered Catholic traditionalism, to a very different belief system.

Continue reading “Palmarian Doctrines, Part I” →