Conchita informed Joey about what the Virgin said to her: "The first thing he (Joey) will see will be the miracle my son will perform through my intercession, and from that moment on he will see permanently."

Conchita further explained that her understanding of the Virgin's term "new eyes" is the eyes as we know them - not necessarily the spiritual vision - and that Joey's new eyes "will be used for the glory of God."

So it seems that God wanted to publicly associate this blind man from Lindenhurst, New York, with the Garabandal event. Since 1963, Joey has traveled around the world spreading prayer, penance, and faith in God. Through his slide show, radio, television, he has been able to get millions of people to hear Garabandal's message. But what is Joey's reason for wanting to do all this? The prophecy about the new eyes - is that what makes you move? Or was it really touched in grace in a very special way?

This is the story of Joey, the apostle of Garabandal

Joey grew up in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge, the oldest of five children and one daughter from a low-income Italo-American family. Pasquale (named Charlie) Lomangino, Joey's father, was ill most of the time, and by that nature he had to retire when he still had about 300 clients in the ice and coal business. This problem persisted until Charlie's children were old enough to get the company back on the market. It was from there that the company again began to adequately provide so that the family could survive.

Charlie's firstborn was the boy of his eyes, a fully devoted considerate boy, in conclusion, a good boy. At school, Joey was a nice average student. But I almost never cultivated great friendships. His interests were only in employment, which after school was so helpful to support the family. At 10 he was already a big help in his father's work. At 12, he convinced his father to raise the price of ice from 5 cents to 15 cents, as his competitors had done years before. Spurred on by Joey's business acumen, the Lomangino company began to thrive. By this time Joey was 16, her family was well off, and the future looked bright

Then, on a hot day in June 1947, fate dealt him a blow that crushed family hopes. That day, when school was over, Joey ran home to change to help her father at work. Joey was driving his father's three-ton coal truck, and noticed that the left rear tire needed air. He then removed the tire to a nearby service station. "I had both knees on the tire," Joey recalls. "I was checking the air pressure and looking at the tire at that moment." Around that block, Charlie Lomangino, Joey's father, heard an explosion, but didn't mind it and went back to work. Today, a small deep scar is clearly visible on his face, that scar shows where the rim hit Joey when the tire burst. The bones of his lower forehead had been crushed and fractured, the nerves of smell and eyes cut, removing the power of smell and sight to Joey. He was in a coma for three weeks before waking up precisely on July 16 (Our Lady of Carmel) to total darkness.

The accident threw the family into poverty. There was no more ice and coal. Over time, he got a job on the quay and on average earned $ 1,200 a year. Charlie's children often lived on the charity of their neighbors. Joey remembers those days, actually seven long years of misery. Looking for a word that is neither "bitter" or "angry", Joey remembers that he was very sad. "It was a great sadness. I felt like I was trying to achieve something (financial security for her family), and then all of a sudden it all disappeared. I was sad. I was confused and sad.

Religion was not a comfort to him. Joey recalls: "I was not surrendered to God because I simply did not understand why people suffered. My parents were good people and they suffered so much. This was a sad mystery I accepted without anger, but without trying to understand either."

In 1949 Father Alfred Varrialle of St. Bernadette Parish in Brooklyn took Joey's arm to the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. In three years Joey earned a high school diploma as an honor student and a scholarship to St. John's University.

With Dagmar, his guide dog, by his side, Joey spent at St. John's for a year. Then, in 1954, the family fortune changed. David R. Filderman, a Brooklyn businessman, decided to lend Joey some money to take over a now-defunct sanitation company based in Farmingdale, Long Island. Joey got into business and after a year, he and his brothers had canceled their debt to Filderman.

In 1961, Joey Lomangino, 31, was financially successful and overworked. Under the doctor's orders, he traveled on vacation to Europe. He could not imagine that this morning when he boarded the plane for Europe, it would be the most important step of his life.

Joey clearly remembers that at that time he was simply not interested in the least - when his uncle from Bari, Italy, suggested they go to San Giovanni Rotondo in Foggia from northern Italy. "Joey, you are coming, aren't you? He is the pride of all Italy. You have to come see our holy priest." After much insistence, the two men made their way to the road, arriving in time for the 5 am Mass. , Mass that was celebrated by the famous stigmatized priest, Padre Pio. After the end of the Mass, Joey knelt for the blessing of the Priest. When he (Padre Pio) came to Joey, Padre Pio called him by name, touched his face, and blessed him. That was all.

And that was all, Joey had begun to experience a new phase in his life since coming to Rotondo. For two years Joey could not forget the presence of Padre Pio in his soul. By going to Foggia, Joey made a small opening in her heart to God. The work of inner transformation had begun. The Mass and the Sacraments were still only occasional events in Joey's life, but now he was facing the turmoil of conversion. He began to have lights of understanding - about the blindness and difficulties of the family that always weighed so heavily on him. He began to understand much by the grace of God that until then he could not understand.

When Joey returned to Italy in 1963, he specifically wanted to be back in the presence of that holy man, whose simple blessing had apparently done so many wonders in his soul. On the third day of his second visit to Rotondo, Joey knelt for confession. There was no division between him and Padre Pio, who grabbed his wrist and said, "Joey, confess to yourself." Stunned by this face-to-face meeting, Joey could not speak immediately. The priest said again, "Joey confesses to yourself."

So Joey started and said:

"Bless me, Father because I have sinned" ... but the priest interrupted him again.

"Joey, you're angry, aren't you?"

"No, Father, I work a lot, so I'm tired ..."

No, no, Joey, you're angry, aren't you? "

Since Joey was trying to find words to begin with, Father Pio began by telling him his sins in English. Joey recalls: "This is how this Italian priest began:" Joey, did you remember that day one night at a bar, a girl named Barbara, and the sin you committed? 'I said,' Yes, so that's when he started to describe in full detail, a list in English, with dates, names, named all the sins I had committed and the places I was when I had sinned. At that moment, I was a piece of water. "

Then at the end he said to me, "Joey, are you sorry?" I said, 'Yes, Father, I am.' Then Father Pius raised his hand in the air and said, '' I call Jesus and Mary to you. '' I said, 'To me? The priest calls Jesus and Mary to me? "He said, 'Yes'. When Padre Pio gave me the acquittal, my eyes began to roll in my head. I started rubbing my face, and my head kept going round and round and round. I felt something was happening to me, but I didn't know what it was. Suddenly my head was clear. Then Padre Pio touched my lips, kissed the wound on his hand, touched me on the cheek, and said, "Joey, a little patience, a little courage and everything goes." go well. "

"I was 33, but I felt like I was 16. I had a firm purpose of amendment. I was saddened by all the sins I have committed in my entire life. I felt so good and so clean that I just wanted to be alone. And since then, since February 16, 1963, I don't suffer, nor am I bothered anymore.

A few days later, Joey, along with 50 other men, was waiting outside the Rotondo cloister for Padre Pio. Suddenly Joey threw up his arms and fell backward to protect himself from what he thought in his darkness. it would be a blast coming at you. Suddenly Padre Pio was right next to him. "He touched me on the bridge of my nose." "Joey, don't be afraid." Although his olfactory nerve was damaged and cut 16 years ago due to the accident, Joey had at that moment regained his sense of smell.

Joey's friend, who had accompanied him to San Giovanni, had told him that after a week or so, they would go to Garabandal. Joey knew little of the apparitions at that time. He just wanted to be near Padre Pio. He convinced his friend to accept any decision that Padre Pio would make on this issue.

Joey then posed the question:

"Father, is it true that the Virgin Mary is appearing to four girls in Spain?" Padre Pio's answer was: "Yes." But Joey asked another question: "Dad, should we go to Garabandal?" The answer once again was simply, "Yes, why not?"

As soon as the American blind man left San Giovanni Rotondo, where he had begun to understand the meaning of his life. In February 1963, the time God chose for Joey Lomangino to enter Garabandal's events unfolded.