Spanish Bishops
In 1941, Spain, which had recently suffered so terribly under the wrath of Communism during the Spanish Civil War, was the subject of a Heavenly message to Sister Lucy. This message lamented the evils afflicting the Church in Spain and offered the remedy for them.
Interestingly, Sister Lucy only wrote about the divine communication a year and a half after she had received it. With her usual humility, she had been reluctant to reveal the message and only revealed it after the Bishop of Gurza, who was her principal spiritual director and to whom she had made vague references of the message, urged her to. Lucy, therefore, wrote the following to the Archbishop of Valladolid:
With the permission of my superiors, I have the custom of remaining in prayer in the chapel until midnight from Thursday to Friday. In these hours of very great recollection, the Good Lord has the habit of communicating Himself so intensely to my poor soul that I do not doubt His presence in any way. Ordinarily, after having confounded me in my own nothingness and my own misery by making me feel what there is in me that displeases Him, He continues by lamenting other things which, in the poor world, cause Him such pain.
On June 12, 1941, He complained especially about the coldness and laxity of the clergy in Spain, both secular and regular, and the indifference of the sinful life of the Christian people.
And he continued thus: If the bishops of Spain gathered each year in a house especially chosen to make their retreat, and if, with a common accord, they decided on the course to follow in leading the souls confided to them, they would receive enlightenment and special graces from the Divine Spirit.
‘Make it known to the Archbishop (of Valladolid) that I ardently desire the bishops to meet in a retreat to arrange among themselves and determine with a common accord the means to be employed for the reform of the Christian people and to remedy the laxity of the clergy and a great part of religious. The number of those who serve Me in the practice of sacrifice is very limited. I have need of souls and of priests who serve Me by sacrificing themselves for Me and for souls.’
Lucy further wrote in a letter of February 28, 1943: “If the bishops of Spain take into account Our Lords desires and undertake a true reform among the people and clergy, good! If not, (Russia) will again be the enemy through which God will chastise them once more.”
Therefore, through this message we see that Our Lord abhors laxity and indifference among His faithful, especially among the clergy and religious, and he greatly desires action and strong leadership from the bishops. If His requests are followed, the people will be reformed and the Faith will be revived. By the early part of the Twentieth Century, the Church in Spain had grown indifferent and had yielded to the liberal, Masonic tide that had been sweeping across Europe: the result had been the horrible civil war. However, though communism was expelled from Spain, the danger had not completely passed by 1941. The Spanish Church still contained many evils, and Our Lord warned that if the bishops failed to reform their clergy, religious and lay people, they would be punished through Russia once again. If this was true of Spain in 1941, imagine how Our Lord views the modern-day Church, in which the evils that afflicted Spain in 1941 have multiplied and spread.
Spanish and Portuguese Bishops
In a letter dated February 28, 1943, Sister Lucy addressed issues that concerned both Portugal and Spain. She wrote:
The Good Lord will allow Himself to be appeased, but He complains bitterly and sadly about the very limited number of souls in the state of grace, disposed to deny themselves according to what the observance of His law requires of them.
Here is the true penance which the Good Lord requests today: the sacrifice which everybody must impose on himself to lead a life of justice in the observance of His law.
And He desires that this law be clearly made known to souls, for many give to the word penance the sense of great austerities, and as they feel neither the strength nor the generosity for that, they get discouraged and let themselves go into a life of lukewarmness and sin.
From Thursday to Friday, being in the chapel with my superiors permission, at midnight, Our Lord told me: The penance that I request and require now is the sacrifice demanded of everybody by the accomplishment of his own duty and the observance of My law.
The Bishop of Gurza, to whom the letter of 1943 was addressed, saw to it that this message was spread throughout Portugal and Spain, and as a result many benefited from its instructions. Through this message we see that God does not ask us for difficult and austere penances. He desires of us sacrifices that we can all perform, namely the observance of His laws and the fulfillment of our duties as determined by our state in life.
Portuguese Bishops
At her convent, Sister Lucy had been informed of Heavens desire1 that Portugal be solemnly consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and she had, through her bishop, Bishop da Silva, convinced the Portuguese bishops to take this decisive action. Thus through a common retreat made by the bishops in 1931, they determined to collectively and solemnly consecrate Portugal to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
This consecration took place on May 13, 1931, during which Cardinal Cerejeira declared to Our Lady:
The Shepherds chosen by Your Son to watch over and feed in His name the sheep He has acquired at the price of His blood in this Land of Holy Mary, whose name cannot be pronounced without pronouncing Your own — come today — as the official and consecrated representatives of their flocks, and in an act of filial homage, of faith, love and trust — to solemnly consecrate the Portuguese nation to Your Immaculate Heart. Take it from our fragile hands into Your own; defend it and guard it as Your own property; make Jesus reign, conquer and rule in it. Outside of Him there is no salvation.
Thus, the request of Heaven, made known through Gods messenger Sister Lucy, was fulfilled by this beautiful act made by all of the Portuguese bishops. The benefits obtained through the Portuguese bishops obedience were truly miraculous: the country was converted and underwent a Catholic Renaissance; the government, which only recently had openly displayed its hatred toward Christ and His Church by every means in its power, underwent a miraculous political and social renewal; and Portugal was miraculously spared from the communist terror that consumed Spain during its civil war, and from the horrible Second World War.
Pope and all Catholic Bishops
We can see from the example of the Portuguese Bishops that when God desires something from His Shepherds, He will reward the world greatly for their compliance. The pitiful state of Portugal at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, godless and full of hate, would surely have been revisited upon that country if the bishops had not given Portugal into the hands of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. Yet in return for the bishops humble act of compliance, God miraculously transformed Portugal.
At the apparition of Tuy in 1929, God asked for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the Pope in union with all of the bishops of the world. Our Lady of Fatima said that if the Consecration of Russia was done, Russia would be converted and there would be peace. This peace would be a worldwide extension of the peace Portugal experienced after its 1931 consecration. However, if the Pope and the bishops did not obey the request, Our Lady said that Russia would spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church and of Holy Father, the martyrdom of the good and the annihilation of nations. Thus we see that the fate of the world lies upon this decisive act of obedience.
At Rianjo, Spain in August 1931, Our Lord communicated to Sister Lucy His dissatisfaction with the Popes and the Catholic bishops failure to obey His command to consecrate Russia. He said:
Make it known to My ministers, given that they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My requests, they will follow him into misfortune. It is never too late to have recourse to Jesus and Mary.
In another text Lucy wrote that Our Lord complained to her:
They did not wish to heed My request! Like the King of France they will repent of it, and they will do it, but it will be late. Russia will have already spread its errors in the world, provoking wars and persecutions against the Church. The Holy Father will have much to suffer.
The reference by Jesus to the King of Frances disobedience and punishment is as follows:
On June 17, 1689 the Sacred Heart of Jesus manifested to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque His command to the King of France that the King was to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart. For 100 years to the day the Kings of France delayed, and did not obey.
So on June 17, 1789 the King of France was stripped of his legislative authority by the upstart Third Estate, and four years later the soldiers of the French Revolution executed the King of France as if he were a criminal.
In 1793 France sent its King, Louis XVI, to the guillotine. He and his predecessors had failed to obey Our Lords request that France be consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and thus misfortune had befallen both the King and his country.
Now, after more than seventy-five years, another consecration requested by God Himself, the solemn public Consecration of Russia, has still not been performed. In the meantime, we see that the prophecies predicted by Our Lady of Fatima are being fulfilled, and the Pope and bishops will be punished if they continue delaying the execution of Gods requests.
In the vision of the Third Secret of Fatima, released by the Vatican on June 26, 2000 the Pope and bishops were shown the results of ignoring Our Lords requests. The vision depicts a bishop dressed in white, who is shot and killed by a band of soldiers while he is kneeling at the foot of a large wooden cross atop a hill, after having traversed a half-ruined city filled with corpses. The execution of the bishop dressed in white is followed by the execution of many bishops, priests and laity. This prophetic vision of death and destruction should serve as a warning to those who persist in delaying the requests of God, for Our Lord warned Sister Lucy that if the bishops continue to do this, “they will follow him (the murdered King Louis XVI of France) into misfortune.”
Notes:
1.In The Whole Truth About Fatima, Volume II: The Secret and the Church, Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité tells us: “We know that this decision [to consecrate Portugal to the Immaculate Heart of Mary], on which depended the future of their country, was made by the bishops in the course of their retreat in common. … Who took the initiative for this act which corresponded so exactly to the great Secret, which at that time had not yet been divulged? Father Alonso tells us, very significantly, that it was Sister Lucy herself who inspired the whole idea. When and how did she come to know about this desire of Heaven, commanding her to ask that all the bishops of the country solemnly consecrate Portugal to the Immaculate Heart of Mary? We do not know, and undoubtedly only the great work [still suppressed by the Bishop of Fatima] of Father Alonso will be able to furnish the complete answer.” (p. 389).
We must here make a distinction concerning the consecration of Portugal: it was not particularly requested by Our Lady. We know from Sister Lucy’s letter to Father Umberto Pasquale, in which she wrote “Our Lady of Fatima, in Her request, referred only to the Consecration of Russia”. See the first entry for May 12, 1982 in “Appendix: A Chronology of the Fatima Cover-up“, The Devil’s Final Battle. See also Frère François de Marie des Anges, Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph, pp. 218-19.