Betania Visionary Visits New York on Mission January 27, 2004 Maria Esperanza, the famous visionary associated with the Church-sanctioned apparition site of Betania, Venezuela has come to the United States on an undefined mission. The trip which begun on December 21 has included visits to various New York City locations such as the Mother Cabrini Shrine, St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. Esperanza's movements are closely heeded because the last two times she was in the U.S. were September 11, 2001 -- which she had foreseen in a vision -- and then last year at the onset of the Iraq war. It was Esperanza who in 1992 publicly told a group of pilgrims that she had seen "two huge towers with black smoke all around them" -- an apparent prophecy about terrorism at the Trade Center -- and who in December of 2000 and then the following March publicly warned that something "big" was about happen to the U.S. involving foreign interests "on American soil." She reissued a warning on August 25, 2001 that "something big," something that would shake the world, was about to occur -- just weeks before 9/11. Esperanza, 75, who suffers stigmata and experiences a wide array of charisms, is widely considered one of the most powerful mystics since Padre Pio. She believes that the next ten years will involve major events for the world, with special graces from Heaven. Before Christmas Maria told a New Jersey priest that she had received an "order" to come to the U.S., without offering details. She asked for prayers, foreseeing "many obstacles" in the current "mission." Esperanza, whose site of apparitions was approved by formal Church declaration in 1987, has experienced visions, locutions, and apparitions for seven decades, since she saw St. Therese the Little Flower as a young girl. On Good Fridays she has been known to suffer the stigmata while under the close observation of doctors, although in recent years the wounds have not visibly bled.