Our Lady of Good Success
- Mary Prays
- May 12
- 7 min read
Quito, Ecuador · 1594 – 1634
TLDR
Over forty years, Our Lady appeared to a cloistered nun in Quito and delivered the most detailed prophecies in the history of Marian apparitions, describing with precision the moral and spiritual crises of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She called herself "a star for the shipwrecked" and promised that her hour would come when she would "dethrone Satan, trampling him under my feet." She told Mother Mariana, "I have come to dissipate the darkness of the night of your soul," and promised that the devotion would not become widely known until the very century it described.
Year | 1594-1634 |
Location | Quito, Ecuador |
Visionary | Ven. Mother Mariana de Jesús Torres |
Apparitions | Multiple (40 years) |
Church Status | Bishop approved (1611); Archdiocesan Sanctuary (1991) |
Key Message |
Detailed prophecies about 19th-20th centuries. "A star for the shipwrecked." |
The World She Entered
At the edge of the Spanish Empire, high in the Andes, a young convent was struggling to survive.
In the late sixteenth century, Quito was a colonial capital still finding its footing. The Catholic faith had taken root in Ecuador, but the soil was unsteady. Political rivalries, moral corruption, and growing hostility toward the Church were already present beneath the surface. And within the walls of the Convent of the Immaculate Conception, a community of cloistered nuns was facing its own trials: rebellion from within, pressure from without, and the constant temptation to abandon the sacrificial life they had been called to.
It was into this struggle, quiet and hidden from the world, that Our Lady came. Not for a single visit or a season, but for forty years. She came not with a message for the people in the streets but for a woman behind convent walls, and through her, for centuries that had not yet been born.
What she revealed about the future, about our times, is one of the most detailed and astonishing prophecies in the history of Marian apparitions. And she gave it four hundred years before any of it came to pass.
To Whom She Appeared
Mariana Francisca de Jesús Torres was born in 1563 in Spain. At the age of thirteen, she left her homeland and crossed the ocean with her aunt, Mother María de Jesús Taboada, and four other Conceptionist sisters to found a convent in Quito under the authority of King Philip II. She took perpetual vows on September 21, 1579, and when her aunt died in 1594, Mariana succeeded her as abbess.
From childhood, Mariana had lived a deep and hidden interior life. She was a mystic and a victim soul, someone who offered her own suffering in reparation for the sins of others. She received the stigmata, endured the dark night of the soul, and on more than one occasion was brought to the edge of death by the weight of what she carried. She never sought attention and lived the strict discipline of her order with a quiet, steady faithfulness that only those closest to her could see.
Her written account of the apparitions was preserved at the command of her superiors and approved by the Bishop of Quito, Pedro de Oviedo, who knew her personally and directed her spiritual life.
She died on January 16, 1635, shortly after the last apparition. When her casket was opened in 1906, her body was found incorrupt and giving off the fragrance of lilies. The bodies of the six founding sisters are all still incorrupt and can be venerated in the convent to this day.
How She Appeared
The apparitions began on February 2, 1594, the Feast of the Purification of Our Lady, and continued over the course of forty years, with the final apparition occurring on February 2, 1634. Our Lady appeared to Mother Mariana within the convent, often during prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, and spoke to her at length about the present trials of the community and the future trials of the Church and the world.
In her first apparition, Our Lady came to console Mother Mariana after an extended period of spiritual darkness. Her opening words were:
"Why do you fear, my daughter? Do you not know that I am with you in your tribulation? I am the Mother of Heaven whom you invoked. I have come to dissipate the darkness of the night of your soul."
She appeared carrying the Child Jesus in her left arm and a crosier in her right hand, explaining that she carried her Son to restrain the hand of Divine Justice and the crosier because she herself wished to govern the convent as its Mother and protector.
She told Mother Mariana:
"It is because you are a religious soul who loves God and His Mother that I speak to you now. I have come from heaven to console your afflicted heart."
And she declared the name under which she wished to be honored:
"I am the Queen of Victories and the Mother of Good Success, and under this invocation I desire to be known throughout time."
What She Said
Our Lady asked Mother Mariana to have a statue made in her likeness, a statue that would serve as a source of comfort and strength for the faithful in the dark times to come. She described its purpose with tenderness:
"When tribulations of spirit and sufferings of body oppress them and they seem to be drowning in a bottomless sea, let them gaze at my holy Image, which will be for them a star for the shipwrecked."
When the sculptor struggled to complete the face of the statue, tradition holds that angels descended and completed the work during the night. The statue was formally enthroned and blessed by Bishop Salvador Ribera Ávalos in 1611, who gave his full approval to the apparitions that had occurred up to that point.
Our Lady also spoke to Mother Mariana about the nature of heaven and the tragedy of souls who do not seek it:
"Oh, if only human beings knew what heaven is and what it is to possess God, how differently they would live, sparing no sacrifice in order to enter more fully into possession of it!"
She spoke of the qualities that make souls dear to God:
"That child-like simplicity which makes souls so dear to my Divine Son and to me, their Mother."
And she made a promise about the faithfulness of the small souls who would carry the faith through the darkest times:
"In every age there will be souls of great virtue, merit, and holiness, and these holy souls will divert great calamities."
The Prophecies
What sets Our Lady of Good Success apart from nearly every other apparition is the specificity of her prophecies about future centuries.
She told Mother Mariana that from the end of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth, the world would enter a period of profound moral and spiritual crisis. She warned of the corruption of customs, the attack on the sacraments, the loss of vocations, the weakening of the priesthood, and the assault on innocence, particularly among children.
She described these times with a sorrow that moved Mother Mariana to tears and, on one occasion, to death itself. Mother Mariana was given the choice between remaining in heaven or returning to earth to suffer for the sins of the twentieth century. She chose to return.
Our Lady also prophesied events that have since come to pass: the proclamation of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility, the consecration of Ecuador to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the martyrdom of a "truly Catholic president," fulfilled in the assassination of Gabriel García Moreno in 1875.
But the prophecies did not end in darkness. Our Lady made a promise of triumph:
"This will mark the arrival of my hour, when I, in a marvelous way, will dethrone the proud and cursed Satan, trampling him under my feet and fettering him in the infernal abyss. Thus the Church and Country will finally be free of his cruel tyranny."
And she assured Mother Mariana that the devotion to Our Lady of Good Success would serve as a shield between Divine Justice and the world:
"This devotion will be the shield between Divine Justice and the prevaricating world, to prevent the release of God's formidable punishment that this guilty earth deserves."
The Heart of Her Message
Our Lady of Good Success is one of the most extraordinary apparitions in the Church's history, and also one of the least known, exactly as Our Lady intended.
She told Mother Mariana that the full knowledge of these apparitions would not become widely known until the twentieth century, the very time the prophecies described. She wanted the message to arrive when it was needed most.
She is telling us, across four centuries, that no matter how dark the times become, God's plan will succeed. Her Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Church will be renewed. The darkness will not have the last word.
Mother Mariana lived the last forty years of her life carrying the weight of what she had seen, offering her suffering for people she would never meet, in centuries she would never live to see. She died on the ground, in imitation of St. Francis, surrounded by her community, professing her faith one final time.
The miraculous statue of Our Lady of Good Success remains in the upper choir of the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Quito. On January 7, 1991, the shrine was elevated to an Archdiocesan Marian Sanctuary, and on February 2, 1991, the statue was solemnly crowned. Pilgrims come from around the world to pray before the image that Our Lady asked to be made, the star for the shipwrecked, the shield against the storm.
She told us what was coming. She told us it would be hard. And then she told us she would win.
That is the message of Good Success. Not that the world will be easy, but that the outcome is already decided, and it belongs to her Son.
Sources and Further Reading
The details of the apparitions of Our Lady of Good Success are drawn from the written account of Venerable Mother Mariana de Jesús Torres, preserved at the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Quito and approved by Bishop Pedro de Oviedo of Quito. The devotion received episcopal approval from Bishop Salvador Ribera Ávalos in 1611. The statue was solemnly crowned in 1991. All excerpts of Our Lady's words are from Mother Mariana's recorded testimony.
For those who want to go deeper:
History · Apostolate of Our Lady of Good Success (Official)
The Prophetic Words of Our Lady of Good Success · Apostolate of Our Lady of Good Success
Our Lady of Good Success: A Message for Our Time · Catholic Exchange
Our Lady of Good Success · Home of the Mother
Quito, Ecuador · The Miracle Hunter
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