Our Lady of Good Success: the Virgin asks Abbess Mariana de Jesús Torres for a statue, Quito, 1610

Quito, early in the seventeenth century. The Real Monasterio de la Inmaculada Concepción stands in the city's historic centre, founded in 1577 by nuns who came from Spain. One of them was Mariana de Jesús Torres, born in Biscay in 1563. She became abbess in 1594.

Devotional accounts say her visions began on 2 February 1594. Praying in the upper choir, she heard a sweet voice call her name. A most beautiful lady stood in an aura of light, the Child Jesus on her left arm. "I am Mary of Good Success, the Queen of Heaven and Earth."

On 21 January 1610 the Virgin returned with the archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. She repeated a request. She wanted a statue. She even named the sculptor, Francisco del Castillo.

Mother Mariana still hesitated. Then came 2 February 1610, the feast of the Purification. She saw the Queen of Heaven standing in glowing light within an oval frame of glimmering stars, wearing a magnificent golden crown. Mariana begged her not to look at her so severely, and promised to obey. The Virgin gently reproved her for doubting, assuring her there would be no danger of idolatry.

The statue was to show her as she appeared, with the Child on one arm and the abbess's crozier and the convent keys in her right hand. It would sit above the abbess's chair. Then the Virgin had Mariana remove the cord from the waist of her habit. Mary held one end at her forehead, and Mariana touched the other end to her foot. The cord was too short, yet it stretched to the exact length.

16 January 1611, three o'clock in the morning. The sculptor was away, buying the last paints. Mariana saw a great light filling the church and choir. In the devotional telling, the Virgin entered the statue as sunlight penetrates a transparent crystal, and the statue came to life and sang the Magnificat. A heavenly choir woke the convent, and the sisters found the statue bathed in a celestial light.

Francisco del Castillo fell to his knees, saying it was made by angelic hands. Bishop Salvador de Ribera blessed it on 2 February 1611.

Every account of these visions comes from devotional sources. They trace back to a biography written in 1790 by Fr. Manuel Sousa Pereira, about 155 years after Mariana's death. Critics say no document from the time has been found. Even the date is disputed. Some sources place the statue request in 1599.

Fr. Charles Grondin of Catholic Answers notes that most claims lack supporting documents, and that a coronation honours devotion to an image without confirming an apparition. Jeffrey Peters went further in 2018, calling it a false prophecy and pointing to anachronistic warnings about Freemasonry. The Buen Suceso title itself came from Spain, where an image was found at Traiguera in 1606.

Bishop Salvador de Ribera approved the apparitions up to 1611. In 1906 Mariana's tomb was opened and her body was reported incorrupt. Her cause for canonization opened in the 1980s. In 1991 the statue was canonically crowned "Reina y Patrona de Quito." It still stands in the upper choir, above the abbess's chair, and every 2 February Quito holds a procession in her honour.