By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Part 5
This final article on the role of our Lady in the New Evangelization will look at how Pope Francis has promoted this Marian dimension during his own pontificate, as well as some prophetic announcements which are relevant to understanding how the Church will evangelize in the future.
Pope Francis has shown himself to be very supportive of Fatima, and indeed he arranged for his pontificate to be consecrated to Our Lady of Fatima on May 13, 2013, by the cardinal of Lisbon on his behalf, on the 96th anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady at Fatima in May 1917.
It is also significant that the Marian Day in Rome for the Year of Faith was centered on Fatima, and was celebrated on October 12/13, 2013, the anniversary of our Lady’s final apparition at Fatima, when the miracle of the sun took place. Pope Francis presided at the ceremonies and ensured that her statue was brought to St. Peter’s from Fatima.
And we can see in the message of Fatima an actualization of what Pope Francis proclaimed in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, “The Joy of the Gospel” (n. 284), that Mary “is the Mother of the Church which evangelizes,” especially since the subject of this exhortation is given as “The proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world,” that is it is intimately concerned with the New Evangelization.
Regarding this program and how it is going to be carried out, St. Louis de Montfort, the author of the famous True Devotion to Mary, wrote of the “great saints of the latter times,” who by their word and example, “shall draw the whole world to true devotion to Mary.” He also described how they would, “imbued with the spirit of Mary, . . . work great wonders in the world, so as to destroy sin and to establish the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, her Son, upon the ruins of the kingdom of this corrupt world.”
In other words, the New Evangelization must have a strong Marian element; otherwise it simply isn’t going to work, which is also in effect what our Lady said at Fatima.
Before her death in 1876, St. Catherine Labouré, the seer of the Rue du Bac in Paris, made the following fascinating prediction, one which certainly seems to equate with our Lady’s words at Fatima: “Oh, how wonderful it will be to hear, ‘Mary is Queen of the Universe….’ It will be a time of peace, joy, and good fortune that will last long; she will be carried as a banner and she will make a tour of the world.”
More recently, St. Maximilian Kolbe, the great martyr of Auschwitz, summed up the situation succinctly when he said that mankind “will find true happiness only when Mary Immaculate reigns over the whole world.”
And indeed, Pope St. John Paul II himself said in Crossing the Threshold of Hope: “Christ will conquer through [Mary], because he wants the Church’s victories now and in the future to be linked to her.”
Regarding how the World Apostolate of Fatima, as the Public Association of the Faithful specifically and officially entrusted by the Church with spreading the Fatima message, can contribute to the New Evangelization, Stanislaw Cardinal Rylko, the president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, said, “Your charism is intimately intertwined with the New Evangelization. . . . The content of the message has precisely a Christological significance. It is the profound love of Mary for Jesus . . . who is concerned for the destiny of her sons and daughters.”
Thus, genuine Marian devotion, as contained in the message of Fatima, in reality provides a blueprint for the whole Church for the foreseeable future, and particularly regarding to the promotion of the Five First Saturdays devotion which is sadly neglected at present. This devotion was linked with the conversion of Russia by our Lady in July 1917, and indeed she returned twice to visit Sr. Lucia in the 1920s, firstly promote this devotion, and then to ask for the collegial consecration of Russia.
The collegial consecration was accomplished in 1984 by Pope St. John Paul II, in union with a moral totality of the world’s bishops, but the Five First Saturdays devotion, the rosary, and the Fatima message generally, need to taken up with much more enthusiasm if we are to see the conversion of Russia, and a great revival of the Church.
When enough Catholics do this, then we will enter upon a time of true evangelization and ultimately world peace.
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk.)
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