The Consecration of Russia
The apparitions of Fatima are all about the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is the will of God that this devotion be recognized and promoted in the Church by the authorities of the Church. Our Lady’s request of consecrating Russia has to be considered in this light.
Establish the Devotion to My Immaculate Heart
On July 13, 1917, Our Lady appeared to the three seers for the third time. She asked souls again to pray the rosary for peace in the world and the end of war “because only [she] can obtain them.” She announced a miracle to come in October so that “all will be able to see in order to believe.” She taught a short prayer to the children to direct their intentions, especially when offering a sacrifice for sinners. Then, opening her hands, she showed them hell, a frightening vision whose effects can still be seen on the faces of the children in the famous photograph that was taken just after the apparition. She then revealed the will of God: “In order to save them, God wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.” Then came a series of announcements as consequences of docility to her will: the conversion of many souls, peace, the end of the war, and a second war as a sign to recognize God’s chastisement by means of famine and persecutions against the Church and the Holy Father. Here comes the first mention of the consecration of Russia.
“To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the communion of reparation of the first Saturdays. If they listen to my requests, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If not, she will scatter her errors through the world, provoking wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and it will be converted and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world.”
Consecration and Communion
From the beginning, Our Lady makes it clear that she requests both acts: consecration and the communion of reparation. Both requests are the conditions for the result: the conversion of Russia. Both are practical expression of the devotion that God wants to establish. One is to be done by the authorities, the other practiced by the faithful in the world.
On June 13, 1929, in Tuy, Our Lady, as she had announced, came to ask for the consecration: “The moment has come when God asks the Holy Father to make, in union with all the bishops of the world, the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means.”1
One year later, on May 29, 1930, Our Lord made the request as Sister Lucy reported it: “The good God promises to make an end of the persecution of Russia if the Holy Father deigns to make and orders to be made by all the bishops of the Catholic world, a solemn and public act of reparation and consecration of Russia to the Most Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, His Holiness promising, with the help of the end of this persecution, to approve and recommend the practice of the reparatory devotion.”2
The request was then passed on to Pius XI, and later to Pius XII.
As for the union of the bishops with the act of consecration by the Pope, Sister Lucy gave these indications to the Papal Nuncio in Lisbon, Archbishop Sante Portalupi, on March 21, 1982: “The Pope should convoke all the bishops either in Rome or in another place....or he should order the bishops of the whole world to organize, each one in his own cathedral, a public solemn act of reparation and consecration of Russia to the Most Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.”3
Therefore Our Lady asks for
- the Pope
- to order the bishops of the whole world
- to consecrate with him
- Russia
- to the Most Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary
- with a public act of reparation
- and the promise to approve the reparatory devotion of the first Saturdays.
Pius XII three times,4 Paul VI once,5 and John Paul II four times6 attempted to respond to the requests of Our Lady. Neither an act of reparation nor the promise to approve the reparatory devotion was ever associated with the act of consecration despite the fact that this reparatory communion is already a traditional devotion recognized in the Church since Leo XIII with indulgences granted by St. Pius X and Benedict XV.7
The attempt by Paul VI in 1964 and the first two by John Paul II in 1981 cannot even be called consecrations.8 John Paul II’s attempts were not made to the Immaculate Heart of Mary or the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Only John Paul II tried to involve the bishops in 1982; Paul VI could have easily ordered all the bishops gathered at Vatican II to unite them to his act, but he didn’t!
Only once, by Pius XII in 1952, was Russia explicitly named. In the seven other attempts, Russia was never named, although it was sometimes designated by circumlocutions used in the formula.
There Is Still Hope
It is heartily painful to see how the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart Mary has not been realized yet as Our Lady requested it. However, the fruits obtained by the partial compliance to her requests should encourage doing so.9 Almost one century after the apparition of Communism with its wars and destruction, atheistic and Marxist dialectics has spread to all minds as well as the eternal damnation of millions of souls because of it. Recourse to the Immaculate Heart of Mary with both consecration and reparatory communion is still offered and prophesied as the solution. Indeed, in the message of Fatima, there is an announcement which is not conditional and which is a source of great hope for us: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”
1 MCIL, p. 464. TVF2, pp. 292-294 & 345.
2 MCIL, p. 405; TVF2, pp. 170, 294, & 331-332; TVF5, p. 232.
3 TVF4, pp. 419-420. Caillon, p. 30.
4 Oct. 31, 1942; Dec. 8, 1942; and July 1952.
5 Nov. 21, 1964, on the closing day of Vatican II’s third session, Paul VI made a special prayer to Our Lady. Bishop Proença Sigaud had presented to the Pope a petition signed by almost a third of the Council Fathers requesting the consecration. The pope just said: “To your Immaculate Heart, O Mary, we entrust the human race” [universum genus humanum commendamus].
6 June 1981, Dec. 1981, May 1982, and March 1984.
7 See the previous article, “The Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
8 The word used on these occasions was “entrust” and not “consecrate.”
9 Shortly after the consecration of the world in 1942, the German armies suffered defeats in the decisive battles of El-Alamein and Stalingrad as well as the U-boats in the Atlantic from January 1943 on. Sister Lucy wrote on Feb. 28, 1943, to Bp. Gurza and on May 4, 1943, to Fr. Goncalves that...God would put an end to WWII because of this act of consecration even though, because it was not complete, it would not cause the conversion of Russia. It is possible to see the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 as some consequences of the consecration of John Paul II in 1984.
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