Our Lady of Grace of Cimbres — Chronology

Chronology

Key events in chronological order. A ? flag marks dates not yet verified against a primary source.

1. 1676 ?

   Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

   An Oratorian mission is founded on the Serra do Ororubá

   Fr. João Duarte do Sacramento of the Congregation of the Oratory founds a mission among the Ararobá on the Serra do Ororubá and names it for Nossa Senhora das Montanhas — Our Lady of the Mountains. The Xukuru join the settlement in the 1690s. Two things in this chronology begin here: the Marian dedication of the place, which is older than 1936 by two and a half centuries and belongs to a different devotion; and the Indigenous village that becomes Vila de Cimbres. The 1676 date is the one local historiography gives and is not verified against a primary document here.^{[28] [15]}

2. 8 decades with no recorded events (1680–1759)
3. 17621762-04-03

   Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

   Cimbres is raised to a vila

   The settlement is elevated to the status of vila under the name Cimbres, the sixth in Pernambuco, with a term covering territory now divided among more than twenty municipalities. Pesqueira, in the valley below, is made a vila on 13 May 1836 and takes the municipal seat from Cimbres; from 1913 the municipality is definitively named Pesqueira and Cimbres is one of its districts. By 1936 Cimbres is a village that had once been the head of the region and no longer was.^[28]

4. 14 decades with no recorded events (1770–1909)
5. 19101910-12-05

   Floresta, Pernambuco, Brazil

   The Diocese of Floresta is erected

   The diocese that will judge the Cimbres reports is erected as the Diocese of Floresta, in the Pernambuco sertão; its see moves to Pesqueira and it is renamed on 2 August 1918. It is a young, poor and thinly staffed diocese: in 1936 it is twenty-six years old, and the priest who conducts the inquiry is the bishop's secretary rather than a canonist or a commission.^[11]

6. 19181918-08-02

   Pesqueira, Pernambuco, Brazil

   The episcopal see is transferred to Pesqueira

   The Diocese of Floresta (created 1910) is transferred to Pesqueira, taking in the parishes of Pesqueira and Cimbres among others; the Diocese of Pesqueira is the ecclesiastical authority over all later events in this chronology.^{[1] [11]}

7. 19341934-01-13

   Pesqueira, Pernambuco, Brazil

   Adalberto Accioli Sobral is appointed bishop, ending a fourteen-month vacancy

   After the death of Bishop José Antônio de Oliveira Lopes on 24 November 1932 the see stands vacant for fourteen months. Adalberto Accioli Sobral is appointed on 13 January 1934 and governs Pesqueira until his transfer on 18 January 1947. The reported apparitions fall two and a half years into his episcopate, and every ecclesiastical act and non-act of the 1936–37 period is his.^[11]

8. 19361936-08-06

   Sítio Guarda, Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

   First reported apparition

   Maria da Conceição Silva (16) and Maria da Luz Teixeira de Carvalho (13) report seeing a woman with a child on a rock of the Serra do Ororubá while gathering castor beans; in later reported dialogues the figure, asked who she was, answers 'Eu sou a graça' ('I am the grace'). Pilgrims begin arriving the next day, per the shrine's account.^{[1] [4] [8]}

9. 19361936-08-15 ?

   Pesqueira, Brazil

   The Diocese of Pesqueira opens an inquiry

   After the reports reach the diocese, Bishop Adalberto Accioli Sobral designates his secretary, Fr. José Kehrle, to investigate the events and draft an opinion (parecer) on the credibility of the accounts, following canonical procedure. Devotional transcriptions date Kehrle's first recorded interrogation of Maria da Luz to 15 August 1936.^{[1] [9]}

10. 19361936-08-20

    Sítio Guarda, Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    Kehrle examines the seers on the mountain

    Fr. José Kehrle goes to Sítio Guarda in person and conducts the first on-site examination, having already sent up a written note of questions built on an exorcism formula ('Quem pode mais que Deus?') because, on his own account, he feared a diabolical event. He separates the girls, questions them apart, and puts his questions in German and Latin — languages neither could read — with the answers returned in Portuguese; the accounts give some 123 questions on this day. Kehrle reported seeing nothing himself. This is the method the whole case is argued from, by its defenders and against its doubters alike.^{[15] [1] [19]}

11. 19361936-08-31

    Sítio Guarda, Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    Mass gathering at the site; clergy divided

    On a date the seers said the apparition itself had appointed, a crowd gathers at the site — the shrine says more than 5,000 pilgrims, Kehrle's account as narrated in the devotional literature says more than 3,000. Kehrle attends with his brother, Fr. Luiz Kehrle, and with Msgr. Elyseu Duarte Diniz; his diary records the message 'Brazil is saved, communism is not coming any more'. The same day Diniz, after questioning the girls separately, declares he believes none of it, an early sign of the split Kehrle's diary describes among clergy and faithful. Ione Paiva, the tradition's principal narrator, says in a 2025 interview that the word 'communism' enters the record through Kehrle's questions rather than through the reported messages; readers of the political material should weigh that.^{[1] [8] [15] [29]}

12. 19361936-09-10

    Sítio Guarda, Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    The parish priest and the Franciscan question the seers; a doctor is called in

    Fr. Manuel Marques, parish priest of Cimbres, and Frei Estevão von Roettger OFM question the seers on the mountain in Latin and German. Marques then tells Artur Teixeira in front of witnesses to take the girls to Pesqueira to be examined by a physician; Dr. Lídio Paraíba examines both and certifies in writing that their physical and mental condition showed no abnormality. The medical certificate is the one piece of non-clerical documentation the 1936 inquiry is reported to have produced, and it has not been located.^{[15] [17]}

13. 19361936-10 ?

    Sítio Guarda, Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    A second examination, commissioned by the bishop, reports against the reports

    Kehrle's diary records that in October Bishop Sobral sent the Franciscan superior together with Fr. Urbano de Carvalho, rector of the college, to examine the events on the spot. They climbed the mountain with the girls, nothing appeared, they concluded the accounts were untrue and reported so to the bishop. This matters for how the inquiry is described: the diocese did not receive one favourable opinion, it received a favourable one from its secretary and an adverse one from two examiners it sent afterwards. No document from either examination has been located; both are known only through Kehrle's diary as printed in the devotional literature. The month is Kehrle's; no day is given.^{[15] [19]}

14. 19361936-10-20

    Sítio Guarda, Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    Police destroy the enclosure at the spring and detain the seer's father

    A police detachment under a sergeant, acting in the name of the regional delegado of Pesqueira, destroys the fence and door built around the spring and places Artur Teixeira — Maria da Luz's father and the owner of the land — under arrest, to be taken to Pesqueira and from there to the chief of police in Recife. He is questioned by the regional delegado, found not to be at fault, and released the same night. This is the detention the diocese's own 2021 pastoral letter recalls; Kehrle's diary supplies the date and the sequence. Who ordered it was disputed at the time: the town said the bishop, and Kehrle was instructed by the bishop to say from the cathedral pulpit that this was a rumour. The order, if written, would be in the papers of the Pesqueira police delegacy or of the Pernambuco chefia de polícia, which this project has not seen.^{[15] [3] [19]}

15. 19371937-02-26 ?

    Sítio Guarda, Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    The last reported apparition at Sítio Guarda — and the accounts diverge on it

    The 2016 UNICAP study, following Kehrle's diary, dates the last reported appearance at Sítio Guarda to 26 February 1937, with a written message that ends 'Eu aparecerei em outro monte' ('I shall appear on another mountain'); reports then shift to a place called Alagadiço near Alagoinha, still in the Diocese of Pesqueira, and Kehrle sends questions there through Maria da Luz. The devotional accounts do not agree with each other: the narrated video series dates the end to 26 December 1936, Ione Paiva says February 1937 with about forty apparitions in all, and the shrine counts thirty-nine after the first. A date of 11 February 1937, which circulates in search results, was not found in the text of any source reached. The dataset records the divergence rather than choosing among them.^{[15] [19] [29] [32]}

16. 19371937-06 ?

    Pesqueira, Brazil

    Kehrle consults Germany, and both investigators are moved out of Pesqueira

    Uncertain whether the events were of God, Kehrle writes to Friedrich Ritter von Lama in Germany — the writer and confidant of the stigmatic Therese Neumann — asking him to put the question to her; the reply reaches him in June 1937 and is reported as favourable. He forwards it to the bishop and receives back a letter that answers nothing about the apparitions and everything about authority: those who oppose the bishop 'não poderão contar vitória', for whoever is not with the bishop is not with the Church. Around the same time Kehrle and Frei Estevão are notified of their transfers out of Pesqueira. The bishop's letter is quoted in the devotional edition of Kehrle's papers and is the nearest thing to a written episcopal position on the case located for this period — and it is a private letter about obedience, not a ruling on the reports. The Kehrle–von Lama correspondence is a documentary lead that has not been traced to an archive.^{[15] [19]}

17. 19401940-06-12 ?

    Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil

    Maria da Luz enters religious life

    Maria da Luz is presented by Sra. Basinha Galindo and enters the postulancy of the Religiosas da Instrução Cristã (Damas da Instrução Cristã) at Recife; the shrine's biography dates the entry to 12 June 1940, the start of the noviciate to 14 January 1941, and the temporary vows at which she took the name Irmã Adélia to 14 January 1943, while Catholic press gives her perpetual profession as 1946. She had asked Kehrle beforehand to impose on her, as a penance, silence about the apparitions — she feared the congregation would not accept a seer — and she kept it for forty-nine years. Her fellow seer Maria da Conceição remained a laywoman. The formation dates rest on the shrine's account alone; the earlier reading of this entry, 'December 1940', came from a different devotional source.^{[25] [9] [6] [1] [29]}

18. 1941

    Pesqueira, Brazil

    Kehrle's favorable report is completed — and no ruling follows

    Fr. José Kehrle completes his 'Manuscripto', a diary-report concluding favorably on the reported apparitions; it becomes the principal source for later study. No formal diocesan judgment is documented: the 2023 academic study of the case concludes the cult was legitimated by devotees 'without major institutional interference from the local Curia or the Roman Curia', and describes strategies of silencing by the hierarchy — Kehrle kept his opinion unpublished under obedience. Devotional literature (Heralds of the Gospel) goes further, reporting a campaign of suppression that included police pressure and roughly fifty years of imposed silence on the seers and on Kehrle; that characterization is theirs. The manuscript itself has never been published as such, but two devotional editions now carry it in print: Ione Paiva's book, which reproduces its material alongside Irmã Adélia's own writings, and Ana Lígia Lira's 'O Inquisidor de Cimbres' (2021), which its author states is a full transcription of the diary together with Maria da Luz's letters. Collating those printings against the archive copy is the outstanding task on this case.^{[1] [10] [19] [16]}

19. 1942 ?

    Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    An image of Nossa Senhora das Graças is enthroned in the chapel

    Per the shrine's own history, an image of Nossa Senhora das Graças donated by Odete Berardo is enthroned in the small chapel that Arthur Teixeira de Carvalho, Maria da Luz's father, had built near the site. Single devotional source; date unverified elsewhere.^[8]

20. 2 decades with no recorded events (1950–1969)
21. 19781978-08-06

    Buíque, Pernambuco, Brazil

    Fr. José Kehrle dies at Buíque

    Kehrle — born at Rheinstetten, Germany, on 19 May 1891, in Brazil from 1909, ordained in 1914, made a monsignor in 1964 — had been moved to Buíque in 1947, where he served as priest and unpaid physician and built a chapel, a school and a maternity hospital, all under the title Nossa Senhora das Graças. He dies there on 6 August 1978, the anniversary of the first reported apparition, and is buried in the chapel he built. He never published the report he wrote in 1941; the coincidence of the date is a staple of the devotional accounts and is recorded here as a date, not as a sign.^{[23] [1] [15]}

22. 1985

    Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    Irmã Adélia breaks a forty-nine-year silence

    Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1984 and, on the accounts of those around her, given a short prognosis after metastasis, Irmã Adélia asks her superior's leave to tell her community about 1936 and then joins a congregational pilgrimage to Sítio Guarda — her first return. She abandons treatment afterwards and lives a further twenty-eight years. That she was cured is what the congregation, her companion Irmã Viviane and her secretary Ione Paiva report, and what the Catholic press repeats; it is recorded here as a report, with its reporters, and no Church act has declared it. From this point organised pilgrimages of hundreds begin arriving, the first from Fortaleza brought by Frei Marcos Queiroz Câmara, and the case enters public circulation for the first time since 1937.^{[6] [8] [25] [29] [15]}

23. 19851985-08-31 ?

    Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    The earliest dated report of a cure attributed to the site

    The earliest cure account the 2016 UNICAP study can date is Maria Eunice do Rego Barros's, from the pilgrimage of 31 August 1985; the study states in terms that it has no testimonies from the period of the apparitions themselves and that the reports begin here. Further accounts it collects are dated 1986 to 1989 and are attributed to named individuals. Against that stands Kehrle's own diary, which claims that a register kept at the Guarda in 1936 already held some six hundred testimonies — a register nobody in the reachable literature has produced. What is recorded here is that cures were reported, by whom and when: this dataset makes no finding that any cure occurred, and no bishop or dicastery has recognised one at Cimbres.^{[15] [19]}

24. 1986 ?

    Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    A reported episcopal statement at the fiftieth anniversary

    Reporting on Pesqueira politics in 2020, Brasil de Fato states that at the 1986 jubilee of the reported vision Bishop Manuel Palmeira da Rocha 'admitiu o testemunho das duas crianças como verdadeiro'. No text of any such statement has been located, and the diocese's 2021 pastoral letter — which reviews the whole history — presents itself as the Church's first response. The claim is recorded as reported, with its reporter and its date; it is not treated as a Church act.^{[27] [3]}

25. 19881980–1993 ?

    Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    The site is decreed a sanctuary — under a bishop whose dates do not fit the reported year

    The shrine's own history states that Bishop Manoel Palmeira da Rocha of Pesqueira decreed the site the Santuário de Nossa Senhora das Graças on 20 October 1998, and the regional press repeats it. He cannot have: Palmeira da Rocha governed Pesqueira from 14 March 1980 until 26 May 1993, and the bishop in 1998 was Bernardino Marchiò. Ione Paiva, who was present, says instead that she and Irmã Adélia received the sanctuary licence from Palmeira da Rocha in 1988 and that his signed decree is reproduced in her book. Either the year or the bishop in the received account is wrong. This dataset records the act as falling in Palmeira da Rocha's episcopate, leaves the date unresolved, and notes that the decree text has not been reached — a copy is said to be printed in a book that is not sold.^{[8] [11] [30] [26]}

26. 19991999-01-17 ?

    Arcoverde, Pernambuco, Brazil

    Maria da Conceição Silva dies at Arcoverde

    The elder of the two seers — born at Sanharó on 23 February 1920 to José Manoel da Silva and Jesuína Maria da Conceição, and living with the Teixeira de Carvalho family from about the age of thirteen — dies at Arcoverde and is buried in the Cemitério São Cristóvão there. She stopped reporting the apparitions during 1936, returned to her family, was married by her father in a marriage that did not last, and lived in poverty; the shrine states that no beatification cause has been opened for her. The date rests on the shrine's biography alone and other devotional sources give 22 January; her life after 1936 is the thinnest-documented part of this record.^{[24] [31] [1]}

27. 20012001-04-30

    Pesqueira, Brazil

    The Xukuru Indigenous Land, which contains Cimbres, is homologated

    The Brazilian presidency homologates the demarcation of the 27,555-hectare Terra Indígena Xukuru on the Serra do Ororubá (decree published 2 May 2001). Vila de Cimbres and the sanctuary lie within this territory — the shrine's later history unfolds on demarcated Xukuru land, whose people also keep an older Marian devotion of their own, 'Mãe Tamain' (Nossa Senhora das Montanhas).^{[12] [13] [1]}

28. 20132013-10-13

    Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil

    Irmã Adélia dies at Recife

    Maria da Luz Teixeira de Carvalho — Irmã Adélia — dies at Recife aged 90, in the congregation she had entered in 1940. She had spent the last twenty-eight years speaking about the 1936 events after forty-nine years of silence, and had worked in poor communities of Recife throughout. The date is the one the Church acts of 2024 are anchored to: the diocesan phase of her cause was deliberately closed on its eleventh anniversary.^{[25] [6] [1]}

29. 20212021-10-02

    Aldeia Guarda, Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    Pastoral letter recognizes the 'presumed apparitions'

    Bishop José Luiz Ferreira Salles of Pesqueira signs, at Aldeia Guarda, a pastoral letter on the 'presumíveis aparições de Nossa Senhora da Graça': it states the reported events show 'elements, traces and signs that signal the great probability of the supernatural character' of the experience, finds the messages 'in deep consonance with the truths of the Christian faith', permits the devotion, and reserves interpretation of the events to the Church's magisterium and the diocesan bishop. Catholic press describes it as the Church's first official declaration on the case in 85 years. Read against the norms the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith would publish three years later, this letter already has the shape of their ordinary favourable outcome: it permits the devotion and speaks of the "great probability" of a supernatural character without declaring one. That is close to what art. 17 of the 2024 norms calls a "Nihil obstat", and it is why this rung records a judgment on the devotion rather than on the apparitions.^{[4] [2] [33]}

    The English Wikipedia list of Marian apparitions gives 13 October 2021 for this act — the Fátima anniversary, and a natural day to promulgate. The date carried here, 2 October, is the day the letter was signed at Aldeia Guarda per the Catholic press report cited. Signing and promulgation are different acts and both dates may be right; the disagreement is recorded, not resolved, and the letter itself would settle it.

30. 20232023-07-31

    Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil

    Irmã Adélia's papers are handed over for the cause

    Ione Paiva, who had kept them for some four decades, formally donates Irmã Adélia's diaries, letters, photographs and personal effects to the Instituto das Religiosas da Instrução Cristã in Recife, to serve the beatification cause. In the 2025 interview she describes six large boxes, more than ten diaries among them, and says the diaries went on to Rome and that material she was asked not to print was reserved for the Dicastery. For a case whose central problem is that its documents are unpublished and unlocated, this is a dated transfer of custody and the second archive — after the diocesan archive of Pesqueira — that would have to be consulted to settle it.^{[21] [29]}

31. 20242024-02-22

    Rome / Pesqueira

    Nihil obstat for Irmã Adélia's cause; she becomes 'Serva de Deus'

    The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints grants the nihil obstat for opening the beatification cause of Irmã Adélia (Maria da Luz), who thereby receives the title Servant of God. Sources differ on the exact day — 22 February (feast of the Chair of St Peter, per Canção Nova) or 23 February 2024 (per other Catholic press). The act concerns the seer's cause, not the apparitions themselves.^{[7] [5]}

32. 20242024-10-13

    Pesqueira, Brazil

    Diocesan phase of Irmã Adélia's cause closes

    The diocesan phase of the beatification and canonization process of Irmã Adélia, opened on 10 March 2024, is closed on 13 October 2024 — the eleventh anniversary of her death — and the acts are sent to Rome, per Catholic press.^[6]

33. 20242024-10-17

    Rome

    The acts reach Rome and the Roman phase of Irmã Adélia's cause opens

    A delegation delivers the closed diocesan acts to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, opening the Roman phase: present are Sister Eulália Maria, superior general of the Instituto das Religiosas da Instrução Cristã, Sister Cleonice Santos, provincial, the postulator Frei Jociel Gomes, and Prof. Dr. Carlos André Moura, president of the cause's historical and archival commission. The delegation had been received in the general audience of Pope Francis the previous day. The cause remains about a person; nothing in this act touches the 1936 events.^{[22] [6]}

34. 20262026-08-06

    Aldeia Guarda, Cimbres, Pesqueira, Brazil

    Ninety years: the shrine as it now stands

    The ninetieth anniversary of the first reported apparition is marked at the shrine and covered by the Pernambuco secular press. What has been built at the site over the intervening decades is modest and mostly by donation: a chapel below, a 365-step stairway with a handrail up to the rock where the reported figure was seen, retaining walls, shelter for pilgrims, and the Mirante do Cruzeiro viewpoint opened in 2005 at 744 metres. Mass is celebrated in the open beside the chapel; the annual feast falls on 31 August; Fr. Mailson Régis de Queirós CSsR took over as rector in January 2026. The site remains inside the demarcated Xukuru Indigenous Land.^{[26] [8]}

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