After Our Lady asked for Russia to be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart, there came to the throne of Peter the great Pontiff, Pius XII. With fervent devotion to the Most Holy Virgin which so characterized him, he promoted Fatima. Once the Bishop of Leiria sent Pope Pius the first two parts of the Secret, he made them public, precisely when he consecrated the Church and the human race to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, on October 31, 1942. In his memorable radio message to Portugal, Pope Pacelli addressed the Catholics of that Nation with these words:

“In a tragic hour of darkness and disorientation, when the ship of the Portuguese State, losing the course of its most glorious traditions, perishing in an anti-Christian and anti-national tempest, seemed to race toward an inevitable shipwreck, unaware of the present dangers and even more so unaware of the future dangers, whose gravity among other things no amount of human prudence, no matter how adept, could then have foreseen, Heaven, which saw the present dangers and foresaw the future dangers, mercifully intervened, and from the shadows the light flowed; from the chaos order emerged, the tempest was transformed into calmness, and Portugal could find and rejoin the lost thread of the most beautiful traditions of the most faithful nation, in order to pursue, as in the days in which “in the little Portuguese home there were not lacking ardent Christians” to “diffuse the law of eternal life” (Camôes, Lusíadas, Canto VII, Octaves 3 & 14), in its glorious path as a crusader and missionary people.”

In January of 1944, Sister Lucia wrote down the third part of the Secret, which was given to the Bishop of Leiria and then consigned to Pius XII in 1957 with this note: “By express order of Our Lady, this envelope may only be opened in 1960 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon or the Bishop of Leiria.” Pope Pius XII chose not to read the text of the third part of the Secret which at Fatima the Virgin had entrusted to the little shepherd children, but what the Virgin had affirmed in the first two parts was enough to lead the Pastor Angelicus to act so as to stave off the disasters prophesied in them. As we know, the first part concerned the vision of Hell – demons and damned souls; the second part, on the other hand, was concerned with the request of the Virgin to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart and to promote Holy Communion in reparation on the First Saturdays of each month, with the promise of the conversion of Russia if obeyed. Otherwise, the errors of Russia, including atheistic materialism, would spread throughout the world and there would be terrible wars and persecutions against the Church. The way in which Pius XII made the Consecration was not in accordance with Heaven’s specific commands. In one of her writings, Sr. Lucia recalled the words of Our Lord:

“They did not want to heed My command! Like the King of France, they will repent of it and they will do it, but it will be late. Russia will already have spread her errors throughout the world, provoking wars and persecutions of the Church. The Holy Father will have much to suffer.” (Rianjo, Spain, 1931)

And here it is necessary to recall the disobedience of Louis XIV with regard to the orders of Christ Our Lord, Who in 1689 had asked the French king, through the mediation of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque to insert the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the coat of arms and royal insignia; to construct a shrine in Its honor, where It would receive the homage of the Royal Court; and to use his authority with the Holy See to obtain a Mass in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The king refused.

That disastrous disobedience, which among other things would have asked for King Louis to be humble and to trust in God, and perhaps to listen less to his Jesuit counselors – was punished with the French Revolution and the end of the Kingdom.

Certainly, Pius XII did not want to disobey the Virgin but he found himself in a difficult historical and political moment in time. Thus, he chose to keep from explicitly mentioning Russia in the Act of Consecration. In a 1936 letter, which then-Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli had written to Count Enrico Pietro Galeazzi, along with a terrible prophecy, we also have an idea of the concern of the future Pius XII with the content of the Fatima message:

“Let us suppose that Communism is one of the most conspicuous instruments of subversion used against the Church and the Tradition of Divine Revelation. Then this means that we will be witnessing the invasion of all that is spiritual: philosophy, science, law, education, arts, media, literature, theater and religion. I am concerned about those things which the Virgin Mary confided to little Lucia of Fatima. This insistence on the part of the Good Lady concerning the perils which threaten the Church is a divine warning against the suicide which represents the alteration of the Faith in its liturgy, in its theology, and in its soul.”

“I feel around me that innovators desire to dismantle the Sacra Cappella; to destroy the universal flame of the Church; to refuse her honor; and to fill her with guilt on account of her past history. Behold, I am convinced that the Church of Peter will have to vindicate her past; otherwise, she will dig her own tomb. I will fight this battle with all my strength, within the Church, as well as outside her ranks, even if the forces of evil one day might be able to profit from my person, actions, and writings. All the human heresies which alter God’s Word will always appear full of light. A day will come in which the civilized world will deny God Himself, when the Church will doubt like Peter. She will then be tempted to believe that man has become God; that His Son is only a symbol, a philosophy like many others. In the churches, Christians will seek in vain the red lamp where Jesus awaits them; like the sinful and tearful woman standing before the empty tomb, they will cry out, ‘Where have they taken Him?’”

On July 7, 1952, ten years after the first Consecration to the Immaculate Heart, Pope Pacelli addressed the Apostolic Letter, Sacro Vergente Anno, to the peoples of Russia, concluding his message on the Feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius with these words:

“Moreover, in order that our prayers and yours may be more readily heard, and to give there a singular confirmation of our particular benevolence, only a few years ago we consecrated the entire world to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mother of God. So, too now, in a most special way, do we consecrate all the peoples of Russia to the same Immaculate Heart in the sure trust that with the most powerful patronage of the Virgin Mary soon our votive prayers will happily come true, so that we, you and all those of good will constitute a bulwark for true peace, for fraternal concord, and for the freedom due to all peoples and, in the first place, to the Church, so that through the prayers we raise together with your prayers and those of all Christians, the salvific reign of Christ, which is a “kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace” might triumph and be strengthened with stability throughout the whole world.”

Those years of the Second World War brought great calamities to Italy and to the entire world, but in the midst of that sorrow and difficulties the faith and the charity of the People of God did not fail to bear witness to a re-flourishing of spiritual rebirth, devotion and apostolic activity, also thanks to the exalted example of Pius XII. Among my contemporaries, perhaps there are still those who were able to witness the frequent prodigious flights of doves at the feet of the Pilgrim Madonna, accompanying that statue wherever it went. I recall with great emotion the processions in honor of the Virgin of Fatima, which brought together so many to pay public honor to the Queen of Heaven along the streets of our cities. They used to call it, “the pilgrimage of wonders.” Likewise, I recall the closed windows of the Communists’ houses when the Madonna’s statue passed by. That deaf hostility to the Virgin’s message of warning and of hope appeared still more evident before the windows adorned with the tapestries and drapes of Catholic homes, which at that time constituted the absolute majority of the homes in Italy.

Pope Pacelli intended Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, Archbishop of Genoa, to be his Successor, or perhaps Cardinal Cicognani. There are also some who maintain, as for example Benny Lay does in his book, Il Papa Non Eletto, that this was in fact the outcome of the voting in the Conclave of October 26, 1958, in the face of which the forces of Masons and exponents of progressivism succeeded in exerting pressure on the Electors so that they would force Siri to refuse the result of the vote and that therefore the Conclave could proceed to a new vote and to a new candidate.

Going beyond how the actual events unfolded, from that Conclave emerged Cardinal Giuseppe Roncalli, the Patriarch of Venice, whose Modernist sympathies and whose ties to Masonic circles were able to manifest themselves much more than one had initially believed possible. Those sympathies, it pains one to recall, led Roncalli to convoke the Second Vatican Council and not to condemn with the necessary firmness the opposition of progressive theologians to the cult of the Most Holy Virgin, which already was occasionally considered “excessive” and damaging to ecumenical dialogue.

The triumph of Communism in the first years of the decade of the 1960s and the prostration of the Vatican before the Soviet Regime also led Roncalli to consider the Consecration of Russia as inopportune and to minimize the importance of Our Lady at Fatima. It was said that prudence was necessary. As a matter of fact, in the “Acta” of the Pilgrimage in preparation for the Italian consecration to the Immaculate Heart, Roncalli’s message was not published, leading one to comment with frustration: “We cannot explain such an oversight” (cfr. Luciano Guerra, Giovanni XXIII e Fatima, in Moreira C.A – Cristino L. Enciclopedia di Fatima, Cantagalli, Siena, 2010, pp. 186-189).

Roncalli and Montini were, one after another, the most jealous custodians of the third part of the Fatima Secret. Certainly, John XXIII wanted to read it, perhaps even before 1960, and decided not to divulge it. Pope Paul VI, closing the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council, on November 21, 1964, entrusted the human race, but not explicitly Russia, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the same ceremony in which he proclaimed Our Lady as Mater Ecclesiæ – Mother of the Church. A similar failure occurred when John Paul II consecrated the entire world without mentioning Russia, on May 13, 1982, and again on March 25, 1984.

The requests of the Virgin, therefore, still remain unfulfilled precisely in a time of most serious crisis in the Church and of great tribulations in the world. At a moment, I would dare to say, in which the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the Pope and the bishops in communion with him seems not only difficult, practically speaking, but impossible at least from a human perspective.

However, since Divine Providence does not remain aloof to watch us participate in the abyss, even if we truly deserve it, and He multiples His interventions and prodigies on behalf of Christians, we can hope and believe that our delay in obeying Our Lady will permit us through her mediation and intercession before the throne of the Divine Majesty to see completely fulfilled the promise of Russia’s conversion and a period of peace for humanity before the coming of the Antichrist; the final tribulation; and the triumph of Our Lord. This will be the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary which the Virgin promised, despite the protracted disobedience of the Hierarchy.

The content of the third part of the Secret has not yet been given for us to know, except for what the Secretariat of State clumsily made known by order of John Paul II in the year 2000. Benedict XVI himself who, at the time, was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, confirmed that “he would commit a grave error who wanted to believe that the prophetic message of Fatima is already entirely fulfilled.” And furthermore:

“As for the new things which we can find in this message today, there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church, and that the Church thus has a deep need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn forgiveness on the one hand, but also the need for justice. Forgiveness does not replace justice.”

From Benedict’s words, we can determine that the content of this part of the Secret, still obstinately kept hidden by the Holy See, concerns the apostasy of the highest officials of the Church and the deviation from faith and morality brought on by events of these last 60 years, events which do not exclude either the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council or the New Mass, both of which are the primary cause of the present crisis, and both being ferociously defended against all reasonableness, not by champions of orthodoxy but by heretics and modernists who today have risen to the highest ranks of the hierarchy.

Our Lady, who is a loving and merciful Mother, deigned to return to us with new messages and admonitions. She did this with a poor sinner, with a militant Communist and Catholic apostate whom she converted and made into one of the most privileged witnesses of her words. Bruno Cornacchiola welcomed the message of the Virgin, which in substance repeats what she had said at Fatima and which the ministers of her Son did not want to reveal.

“I am the Virgin of Revelation. You persecute me. Now, enough! Enter into the holy sheepfold. What God has promised has remained immutable: The Nine Fridays of the Sacred Heart which you observed, moved by love of your faithful spouse, before you definitively embarked on the path of error, have saved you.”

Precisely, the Nine Fridays that Our Lord had entrusted to Saint Margaret Mary in order to diffuse its practice in the Church took place in an epoch of another one who was disobedient to the will of Heaven, namely, King Louis XIV. What a marvelous intertwining of graces and blessings, in which devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is accompanied by that devotion rendered to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in order to pour out on souls the supernatural gifts of repentance, conversion and reparation!

The Virgin of Revelation – this is the name that Our Lady had given to herself when she appeared at Tre Fontane in Rome, a place in which the severed head of Saint Paul, rolling on the ground, caused three fountains to emerge – predicted grave tribulations: “The Church will be left as a widow during these persecutions … many priest-sons of mine will be spiritually stripped on the inside and in their bodies on the outside, throwing away priestly external signs. Heresies will grow in number. Errors will enter into the hearts of the faithful. There will be spiritual and doctrinal confusion. There will be scandals and both internal and external conflicts in the Church herself. Pray and do penance!”

And, in speaking of her Spiritual Motherhood of Christ’s ministers, she says: “I am your Mother, and Mother of the pure clergy, Mother of the holy clergy, Mother of the faithful clergy, Mother of the living clergy, Mother of the united clergy.” This was an appeal to all the clergy to be pure, holy, faithful, living and united. And so it is that we can comprehend the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “The sufferings of the Church derive not from her external enemies but more so from within.”

Therefore, I give my encouragement to all of you, dear devout sons and daughters of Mary Most Holy, to be living and courageous witnesses of the requests of your and our Queen. Be the thorn in the side of your priests and your bishops, spurring them on to obey the will of Our Lady – whose desires must resound for all of us as grateful orders to be carried out – and to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart. May you be the Marian ferment which causes your communities to grow, which expands them, which gives them new life with the grace of the Holy Ghost. May you be the first to consecrate yourselves without any reservation to the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God.

And as the little shepherd children [of Fatima] offered their own life for the conversion of sinners, in a true spirit of expiation and propitiation, you, too, offer your tribulations, your sorrows, your daily trials and even your life for the conversion of wayward ministers and for the salvation of the good ministers. May your observance of the First Saturdays of the month in honor of the Immaculate Heart be a pious habit that you will renew for yourselves, for your loved ones, making it to be known and practiced, especially by those who are most in need of God’s mercy. I am sure that you will not fail to accompany the devotion of the First Saturdays with the devotion of the First Fridays in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, mindful of the fact that just as no one goes to the Father without the Son, so no one can reach Christ without Mary Most Holy.

To Her, our Patron and Sovereign, Mediatrix of all Graces and Co-redemptrix, we lift up our confident prayer, so that the Lord might touch the heart and soul of our Pastors, for the glory of the Most Holy Trinity, for the salvation of souls and the exaltation of the Holy Church.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

September 4, 2021
First Saturday of the Immaculate Heart of Ma