La Cuenta De La Dolorosa De Colegio De San Gabriel En Ingles

Our Lady of Quito
Queen of Ecuador

We are going to relate a prodigious event that occurred on April 20th, 1906 in the capital of Ecuador, and which the ecclesiastical authorities, after meticulous examination, declared to be a miracle. But before, for a better understanding of this, we recall the historical circumstances.


Ecuador was the first nation that officially consecrateditself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on March 25, 1874 and on August 6, 1892 to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
In the solemn consecration of 1874, read by the very important representative of the Church, Archbishop Checa y Barba, and afterwards by the president of the nation, García Moreno, was sealed an irrevocable pact: “Prostrate before your divine presence, all the public powers of the Churchand of the State offer and consecrate to Thee now and for always the republic of Ecuador as Thy exclusive possession and property.”[1] The pact was sealed with the blood of the president, assassinated on August 6, 1875, the First Friday, in the same church of the consecration and the same day on which he had noted in his spiritual diary: “Lord Jesus, show me what it is that I ought to do today forThy love.” Also in the same church, on Good Friday of 1877 the Archbishop was poisoned to death.
At the death of Garcia Moreno a moderate liberal, Antonio Borrero, was elected, but General Veintimilla, an extreme liberal, who was defeated in 1883, rebelled. There was a moderately lawful era until 1895. Then, an extreme liberal, General Eloy Alfaro rebelled, and remained in power for twentyyears taking part in revolutions. He was a dictator from 1895 to 1901 and from 1906 to 1911 thanks to another revolution. Finally he returned to rebel against his successor in 1911, but was defeated and lynched in 1912. General Leónidas Plaza, a companion of the former, governed from 1901 to 1905, and returned to power in 1912-1916 by another rebellion… and so the countless rebellions continued.In 1895 General Alfaro “a model of infamy” promised Pope Leo XIII to maintain harmony with the Vatican, but in the following year he broke the Concordat. He expelled the Jesuits from the Amazon region, where they had founded 152 villages. He forbade the establishment of new religious congregations in the country.
In 1900 the Ecuadorian Congress decreed the secularization of convents. Itrestricted the freedom of teaching, and the colleges were unable to give examinations. In the state schools it suppressed the teaching of religion. It revoked the decree of the National Consecration to the Sacred Heart.
In 1901 the government seized part of Saint Gabriel’s College from the Jesuits. The following year General Plaza established civil marriage and divorce. In 1904 he forbadenovitiates, and deprived the religious institutions of their goods, the slogan being: “Independence from Spain, independence from Rome.”[2] In 1906, Alfaro reached the point of a complete rupture with the Church. He forbade Bishop Riera, the consecrated bishop of Portoviejo, to enter into his diocese. The constant persecution forced the number of students in Saint Gabriel’s College to be reduced from 400 to150. Not content with this, a decree was already prepared, to expel the Jesuits from the college they were operating since 1862, and it was one of the few Catholic colleges that remained. (It is the usual hellish technique: the best way to de-Christianize a country is to prevent its youth from receiving a Catholic education and formation).


Intervention of the Virgin

The Virgin chosethe same college dedicated to one of the Archangels: Saint Gabriel.
The place was the dining hall of the boarding students, 72 feet (lessened by a partition to 43 feet) by 23 feet, on the first floor of the college.
The picture, a color oleograph[3] (20 inches long by 16 inches wide) of the Sorrowful Heart of Mary (Our Lady of Sorrows with her heart pieced with seven swords), printed in...