Reflections from the First International Congress of Our Lady of Garabandal: A Call to Conversion and Faith

Albert Cortina highlights the importance of human values ​​and Christian virtues in times of change, inviting us to find refuge in the spiritual motherhood of Mary and to live the messages of hope of Garabandal

Rocio Ramo Grajera

During the “First International Congress of Our Lady of Garabandal”, held from October 17 to 19, 2024 in San Sebastián de Garabandal (Spain), Albert Cortina (lawyer, urban planner and writer), addressed the relevance of human values ​​and Christian virtues for our time.

Throughout his speech, Cortina emphasized the need for a deeper love for Our Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, highlighting her main role as a teacher, mediator, and advocate in the face of great and serious contemporary challenges.

Albert Cortina also explained how Garabandal’s main message is an urgent invitation to the conversion of our hearts, to prayer, penance, sacrifice, contemplation of the Word of God, and personal encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist.

The messages of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Garabandal (Warning or illumination of the conscience, Miracle to show all humanity the Mercy and Justice of God, as well as purification or Punishment, conditioned to our response and to how we have accepted to turn our gaze and heart towards our Creator), are messages of hope and salvation.


In this way, these messages of Our Mother are presented to us as a guide to travel through the Last Times of the Gentiles and the nations, before the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in a world and a humanity that will be totally restored.

Through his personal experience and reflections on faith, Albert Cortina stressed the importance of cultivating, among others, the virtues of humility, trust and hope, urging the audience to seek refuge and home in the spiritual motherhood of Mary.

His intervention not only focused on the spiritual vision of Garabandal, but also addressed the impact of anthropological, cultural, scientific and technological changes in today’s society that seeks to build a New World Order without God, based on bioideologies of dissolution of human nature, such as transhumanism and posthumanism, which seek to build a dehumanized society, and a “secular religion of man” that has accepted the old temptation of Satan that constantly whispers to us the idea of ​​”You will be like gods!” However, Our Mother gathers her children to be apostles of Jesus in our time, and driven by the Holy Spirit, let us contribute to the construction of the civilization of love and the Kingdom of God in the world.

In short, Albert Cortina’s presentation was a call to action, (“Do whatever He tells you!”, Mary asks us), inviting the participants of the Congress to strengthen their faith and to live in accordance with the human values ​​and Christian virtues that the Blessed Virgin teaches us, directing her messages to a humanity that urgently needs Jesus Christ, the true Light of the World.