No Sign of Life and Then … (Tomas Trapiello)

Reprinted with kind permission from GARABANDAL JOURNAL / September-October 2007

Translated from Spanish by Dr. Edward Serrano

No Sign of Life and Then …

A letter dated July 1,1962, from Tomas Trapiello Velez, Brigadier of the Civil Guard in Cabezas del Villar, Avila, to Father Ramon Maria Andreu at the Residence of the Jesuit Fathers, Valladolid.

My sister Patrocinio who lives in Leon asked me to write to you to inform you of the details of my wife’s illness, which she told you about and whose healing she attributes to Our Lady of Garabandal. I don’t know if this was the case or not; I will limit myself to relating the facts.

I’ll begin by telling you I’m the father of four children and the pregnancies of all of them were very difficult and plagued with complications. Then the next pregnancy produced a dead fetus which had to be extracted. Through the intercession of the Sacred Heart of Jesus my wife survived, and the doctor couldn’t explain why. He warned her that a new pregnancy would be extremely dangerous and possibly fatal.

In September of last year she became pregnant again. We feared for her life, as she was still weak from the effects of her last pregnancy.

In her fifth month of gestation, my wife was exhausted, the volume of her abdomen had not increased, and she had none of the symptoms of pregnancy that she had experienced in her previous ones. Logically, we thought the fetus had died, as had happened in two previous pregnancies, one of which I have already mentioned.

We visited the doctor, he auscultated the abdomen but found no vital signs. He ordered a “Gailly Mainini” test which was negative to the presence of a pregnancy, which had been amply proven in September. Everything pointed to a dead fetus.

My sister was told of our situation and she sent us a religious card of Our Lady of Garabandal that had been kissed by the Virgin during one of her apparitions. She also sent an encouraging letter, asking us to put all our faith and trust in the Holy Virgin, and all would come out well. We all were fearful, remembering the tragedy of the last pregnancy and my wife’s miraculous survival, as I have already recounted. My wife frequently made the sign of the cross over her abdomen with the card and prayed to Our Lady of Garabandal, kissing it as she did so, as did I.

A month later my wife began to notice certain internal movements, and her abdomen began to enlarge. We returned to the doctor, who, after examining her and auscultating her, told us with joy and relief that the baby was alive, and a few days later all this was proven by X-ray

This is the doctor who, knowing about the poor health and weakness of my wife, had not wanted to extract the “dead fetus.” He had decided to wait for a normal delivery. Thanks to this providential decision the lives of the mother and the baby were saved.

When she was at term, although suffering some difficulties due to organic sequelae from previous pregnancies and fears of hemorrhage, she went to the Hospital Gomez Ulla in Madrid, to the military maternal ward, and easily delivered a baby girl on May 28, at 6:00 P.M. The baby weighed 500 grams more than the usual normal weight and today, thank God, that baby, with the name of Maria del Rosario, lives happily with us.

Clearly, this was not a normal case, and science cannot explain why the pregnancy showed no external or internal signs of life in the examination at the fifth month.

During all this time I was praying to Our Lord and Our Lady during my Communions and in front of the Blessed Sacrament. At the beginning it was for the life just beginning, which I consecrated to Them, and later, when there apparently was no baby, I kept praying, submitting myself to God’s holy will, but begging him to protect the life of my wife. However this happened; God favored us with a blessing for which we thank Him unceasingly.

Today thanks be to God, my wife is leading a normal life and recovering from her previous disastrous pregnancies. We both regard our new daughter as a gift from heaven delivered to us by the Blessed Virgin. We pray for God’s graces and blessings for her as well as for the rest of this family.

Signed: Tomas Trapiello

To Order:

GARABANDAL JOURNAL
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