Born in 1972 in Itajai in the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil, Eduardo Ferreira found an image of Our Lady of Aparecida in the courtyard of the family house on January 6, 1983. On October 12, 1987, four days after his first communion, Eduardo and his sister Eliete were praying in front of this image when Eduardo saw a blue light emerging from it and illuminating the room. On February 12, 1988 he had his first vision of the Virgin, seeing her as if in a rose-filled grotto, holding a snake with her foot. Apparitions subsequently occurred almost daily until January 1, 1996, two months after the first message from Jesus in a hospital where Eduardo was working as a nurse.
Since February 1997 until the present day, the apparitions to Eduardo Ferreira have been taking place on the 12th of each month as well as occasionally at other time. Stigmatized on February 2, 1996, Eduardo came into contact with the Martins family, whose son Alceu Martins Paz Junior (born in 1977) also had mystical experiences, seeing the Virgin on July 9, 1996. After the two boys began evangelizing together, Eduardo received death threats, including from members of his family, and became homeless, eventually settling in São José dos Pinhais in the state of Paraná in 1997, where a sanctuary has been built.
Mary appears in these apparitions as "Rosa Mystica", a title under which she appeared to nurse Pierina Gilli in Montichiari-Fontanelle (1947), an event to which the Brazilian apparitions to Eduardo and Junior refer repeatedly. The apparitions have been marked by a large number of unexplained phenomena which resemble those observed in other similar sites: lacrimations of blood from a statue of the Virgin (as in Civitavecchia or Trevignano Romano), the "dance of the sun" (as in Fatima or Medjugorje), the image of Mary inexplicably "printed" in petals (as in Lipa in the Philippines in 1948) ... In the messages, we also find references to numerous Marian apparitions of the past. Some of these have been dismissed by the Church (Montichiari, Ghiaie di Bonate, Biding, Kerizinen...), but have nonetheless attracted growing interest on the part of serious researchers concerned with establishing historical truth and rehabilitating mystics who may have been unjustly condemned.
The principal themes of the messages to Eduardo Ferreira (more than 8000 to date) are convergent with the majority of other serious contemporary prophetic sources. They have gained considerable attention in recent months due to a long message received by the seer in Heede, Germany in 2015, the site of apparitions to four children just prior to World War II. This message, viewed over 3 million times on YouTube, seems to have predicted the present global health crisis.