Mary, Mediatrix of All Grace

Mary, the Mediatrix of All Grace (María, Mediadora de Toda-Gracia; María, Tagapamagitan ng Lahat ng Biyaya), also known as the Our Lady of Lipa, is an alleged Marian apparition that occurred within the Carmelite Monastery of Lipa, Batangas, Philippines. The event occurred to a former Carmelite postulant, Teresita Castillo. The original statue associated with the apparition is currently enshrined at the monastery.

The apparitions were declared as Non-supernatural after an investigation by six Filipino bishops headed by the former Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Rufino Santos on 11 April 1951. The case was reopened again in 1991 by the local bishop. On 12 September 2015, the Archbishop of Lipa, Ramon Arguelles, against explicit direction from the Holy See and the Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, formally declared approval of the apparitions, citing them as supernatural and worthy of belief.

Pope Pius XII declared the apparitions as fraudulent in 1951. On 11 December 2015, the Vatican re-declared the apparition as Non-Supernatural. A finalized copy of the verdict was received on May 31. Ultimately, Archbishop Arguelles retracted his declaration of supernaturality on 1 June 2016, citing to the original decision by the Holy Office as Non-Supernatural.

Name
The Blessed Virgin Mary is honored under the title Mediatrix of all graces. It has its mystical origins in Belgium where devotion under this title began.

Claims of Marian apparitions
Prior to the Marian apparitions, Teresita Castillo claimed to have encountered the Devil on several occasions under demonic torture. On 18 August 1948, Teresita Castillo— who then a postulant at the monastery—noticed a heavenly odour, and upon entering her room saw a beautiful lady in white who spoke to her: ""Do not fear my daughter, He who loves above all things has sent me. I come with a message…""

The lady asked Castillo to wash and kiss the feet of her prioress, and drink the used water afterwards. The lady said that the washing was a "sign of humility and obedience".

According to the account, on 12 September 1948, Castillo was in the convent garden and noticed a vine shaking without any wind blowing. She then heard a woman's voice that instructed her to visit the garden for 15 consecutive days. The next day, September 13, Castillo came to the spot at 5:00 P.M., knelt down and intended to say the Hail Mary. In the middle of the prayer, wind came, the garden vine moved, and a beautiful lady appeared. Castillo described the lady as having her hands clasped in prayer and holding a golden rosary in her right hand. The lady asked her to pray for priests and nuns.

On September 14, rose petals began to shower within the monastery, and some of the nuns noticed rose petals outside their hallways. Again at 5:00 P.M, the lady appeared once more at the vine and said "I wish this place to be blessed tomorrow." "At what time, Mother," asked Castillo. "Anytime your Mother Prioress wants, my child. I forbid you to forget the incidents of these fifteen days." Then the lady vanished.

The prioress, Mary Cecilia of Jesus, decided to consult with Alfredo Obviar, Auxiliary Bishop of Lipa and spiritual director of the nuns. The bishop instructed the prioress to demand proof from the lady that she is from heaven.

Days after the first shower of rose petals, total blindness affected Castillo. Mary Cecilia of Jesus then heard a woman's voice telling her to kiss the postulant's eyes so that the latter will recover her sight. In the presence of Obviar, the prioress lifted Castillo's veil and kissed the postulant's eyes. Immediately, the girl recovered her sight, and Obviar no longer doubted the apparitions.

Description of the apparition
According to Teresita Castillo, the Virgin Mary was slightly stooped and dressed in white, with a narrow cloth belt about her waist. Her face was radiant, and her statues often show her dark hair flowing down her back beneath a white veil. Her hands are clasped on her breast, and a golden rosary hangs from her right hand. She is shown barefoot on clouds about two feet above the ground.

Later events
According to a later interview with the prioress, Mother Mary of the Sacred Heart and Sister Mary Balthazar were ordered to burn several boxes containing leaflets, novena booklets, rose petals, and other paraphernalia pertaining to the apparition, including Castillo's personal diary. The sisters were also ordered by the bishop to throw the image of the Virgin into a bonfire, but they instead hid it out of piety.

Castillo herself in an interview said she had met the Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines Cardinal Egidio Vagnozzi in 1951, and told him that she had already left the monastery to seek medical treatment. Vagnozzi strongly disapproved, called Castillo the Devil, and asked her to leave his presence, even trying to shove her out the door. Castillo burst into tears and begged for his blessing, which he withheld.

The current archbishop of Lipa, Ramón Argüelles, noted that auxiliary bishop Obviar and Bishop of Lipa Verzosa, who were on the commission, were forced to leave the investigation due to their lack of jurisdiction over Lipa. In a televised interview with ABS-CBN, Argüelles said no documents were compiled or even reached the Holy See in 1951, causing its immediate rejection. In 1991, a petition to approve the apparition began once again.

The apparition allegedly prophesized an "invasion" by China of the Philippines and the world, with money as the instrument "leading the people of the world to destruction." According to Cardinal Ricardo Vidal, through his 2014 letter to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, it was one of the apparition's "secrets" revealed to Castillo. The apparition happened roughly a year before the Communist takeover of China; Vidal wrote the letter two years after the start of the Scarborough Shoal standoff.

Rejection by the Holy Office
An initial investigation report in 1951 was signed by six Roman Catholic bishops and declared the Lipa apparitions a fraudulent and Non-supernatural. One bishop later recanted on his deathbed, and a secondary investigation was opened in 1991.

On 21 May 1990, then-Lipa Archbishop Mariano G. Gaviola, allowed the veneration of the namesake Marian image after forty years of being banned from the public. On 17 April 2005, Archbishop Argüelles publicly declared that he found no objection to the devotion under this Marian title. The Archdiocese of Lipa currently endorses Marian devotion to this title, which is not expressly prohibited as long as it does not counter church doctrine. In Batangas province, local bishops often tolerate the devotion in public.

On 12 September 2015, Argüelles formally released the canonical results of the investigation launched by the archdiocese, declaring the Marian apparitions to be Supernatural in character and worthy of pious belief.

In 11 December 2015, the Holy Office decreed through Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller overruled the Archbishop and rejected his 2012 decree declaring that the alleged Marian apparitions in Batangas in 1948 were supernatural. Arguelles himself disclosed the ruling through an archdiocesan communiqué on May 31. In its decree, the Congregation stated that Pope Pius XII had made a definitive confirmation in 1951 against the supposed apparitions declaring that they "were not of supernatural origin," which the local authority had no authority to overrule.

On March 19, 2024, in a circular, Archbishop Gilbert Garcera of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lipa stated that "the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith upon the fervent request of Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, revealed the 1951 decree rejecting ‘Lipa apparition’.In a letter to Bishop David, Cardinal Fernandez of the DDF said he was not only providing a copy of the 1951 Vatican decree on the Lipa apparition, but also furnishing them a copy of the letter “in which Sister Mother Mary Cecilia of Jesus, OCD, then the superior of the convent where the known events occurred, confessed guiltily to having deceived the faithful about the alleged apparitions in Lipa and consequently asked for forgiveness.”

“This fact definitively and directly confirms the non-supernatural nature of the events in Lipa,” Fernandez said.

Evidence of the existence of the decree has legal implications in the region. In December 2022 Harriet Demetriou, former justice of the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan, filed a perjury complaint against Dominican exorcist priest Father Winston Cabading for claiming under oath that the 1951 decree existed. The case is pending. ‘Give me the document, let me examine it. If it’s valid, if it’s really authentic, then I will submit myself. Who am I to fight the Pope?’ Demetriou told Rappler.

However, “The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines has deemed it necessary to ‘revisit the case’ (not reopen investigation) because, as admitted by the 2015 letter sent by Cardinal Müller, some lapses in the communication of Rome’s decision had been committed in the process,” in a surprise turnaround CBCP president Bishop Pablo Virgilio David told Rappler.

Marian cult and veneration


Former Philippine Ambassador to the Holy See, Mercedes Arrastia Tuason, is a devotee of the apparitions, and displayed a large statue of Our Lady Mediatrix of All Grace in her consular office in Rome.

Emma de Guzman, purported visionary, stigmatist and foundress of the church-sanctioned "La Pietà" International Prayer Group, said that Mary had declared herself to be "the Mediatrix standing in front of the Mediator".

In 17 January 2015, Pope Francis venerated a replica of the image at the residence of the Archbishop of Palo.

The pious veneration of Mary under this title is tolerated within the Archdiocese, but further studies or speculations on the authenticity of the apparitions is suppressed by Catholic authorities.