Timeline, The Lady in Blue - Javier Sierra

April 2, 1602. María Coronel y Arana is born in the village of Ágreda. She will pass into history with the nickname of the Lady in Blue thanks to the mysterious evangelization of the southwestern United States. She never physically traveled outside her native village.

July 22, 1629. A group of Xumanos Indians arrive at the San Antonio mission from the New Mexico interior to ask the Franciscans to bring the Gospel to their village. An expedition of twenty-nine Indians is at that moment resting at San Antonio, and they relate how a young, mysterious Lady in Blue foretold the arrival of priests to their region. The priests accede to their requests.

July 1629, a few days later. The friars Juan de Salas and Diego López set out in the company of a band of Xumano Indians in the direction of Cueloce, a Hopi village more than 180 miles from Isleta. There they preach the Gospel and baptize the first of the tribes visited by the Lady in Blue.

August, 1630. Fray Alonso de Benavides arrives in Madrid, the seat of the Spanish government under Philip IV, in order to deliver an account of his assignment as Chief Guardian of the province of New Mexico and of the miraculous conversions which he has witnessed. That same summer he will begin to write his celebrated Memorial, which will be published by the Royal Printing House.

April, 1631. Padre Benavides meets face to face with sor María Jesús de Ágreda. The encounter takes places in the nun's monastery, in the Spanish village of Ágreda. He becomes convinced that this nun is, in fact, the Lady in Blue for whom he is searching. Sor María will go so far as to give him the garment she wore when traveled to America.

May, 1631. Padre Benavides writes a letter to the Franciscan missionaries working in New Mexico, revealing what he has discovered about the Lady in Blue. His message will ultimately be printed in Mexico City, in 1730, under the unwieldy title, "Everything taken from the letter that the Reverend Father Fray Alonso de Benavides, at that time Guardian of New Mexico, sent to the monks of the Holy Mission of Saint Paul in that kingdom, from Madrid, in the year 1631."

February 12, 1634. Pope Urban VIII receives a version of the Benavides' Memorial with amplifications by the Franciscan, in which he includes the outcome of his conversations with María Jesús de Ágreda and his conclusion that she was only person responsible for the apparitions of the Lady in Blue in America.

April 2, 1634, Rome. At the Pope's express order, Fray Alonso de Benavides delivers a new report on the apparitions of the Lady in Blue in New Mexico to the Holy Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, also known as the Inquisition.

April 15, 1635. The Inquisition begins its interrogations of sor María Jesús de Ágreda. The material gathered will be placed in Vatican archives without a proceeding against the nun being undertaken.

January 18, 1650. The Inquisitors Antonio González del Moral and the notary Juan Rubio arrive at the Ágreda monastery to interrogate the Lady in Blue, who is by now the Prioress. Over the course of several days, the nun cooperates with the Inquisition for the second time, bringing to light many of the mystical phenomena she had experienced during her lifetime, among them her bilocations to America. She is never condemned.

May 24, 1665. María Jesús de Ágreda dies at age 63 in the monastery her family founded. After her funeral rites, her notes, letters, and manuscripts are placed in a strong box sealed with three locks in order to assure the proper use of her legacy. The notes concerning her visits to America are not among them. She herself burned them years before, when she tried to erase her "manifestations" from her memory. With their destruction, history loses materials of incalculable scientific and cultural value.