The apparition of the Most Holy Mary “lasted long enough for everyone to be perfectly aware of her,” the website states. When the procession ended, a record was drawn up that was declared by the highest local authority, the president of the Court, and “other qualified witnesses”, a process recorded to this day in the Archbishop’s Archive of Quito, he adds.
As Father Vargas Ugarte wrote in his History of the cult of Mary in Latin America and its most celebrated images and sanctuaries, not all those present were able to see the apparition, “perhaps because they could not distinguish it or because they were not allowed to see it.” For his part, Father Jaramillo pointed out that some observed at the feet of the Virgin “another lump formed from a cloud, which resembled a priest.”
After the event, the then Bishop of Quito “unexpectedly recovered his health”, and not only authorized the cult of Our Lady of the Cloud, “but also ordered the erection of an altar” in gratitude to the Mother of God and “to commemorate” her appearance. The prelate, who was very devoted to the Virgin Mary and the Rosary, died six years later, in May 1702.