(The consecration of Russia, and whether or not it has been done, or done correctly, is a convoluted and controversial topic, upon which readers may have different opinions. See also this recent theological reflection on what ‘consecrating a country’ might mean – Editor).
We must realize that we cannot coexist eternally, for a long time. One of us must go to the grave. We do not want to go to the grave. They do not want to go to the grave either. So what can be done? We must push them to their grave. – Nikita Krushchev
What an extraordinary confluence of events. Or is it? No sooner had we emerged from the Covid-19 miasma – almost – and from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s totalitarian Emergencies Act than Russia’s strongman Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Confirming there will be no return to normal.
Nor will there be any simple return to the pernicious old ideologies that have long been pushing Christendom to near extinction. In face of a possible nuclear apocalypse, where does wokeness go now? Or green guilt? Or ESG? Where will these fit in Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’? Are today’s generation of young Druids dedicated to reversing the natural order and “building back better” – according to the diktats of Klaus Schwab – about to find their plans disrupted as fuel prices rocket out of reach, as threats of global famine loom and as dark reports surface of the existence of U.S. bioweapon and chemical labs located across Ukraine?
Or has all this been part of the plan too? The plan Our Lady of Fatima warned the world about in 1917, mere months before the outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution in October of that year? The Bolshevik Revolution which, led by Vladimir Lenin, sentenced Mother Russia to atheistic communism after murdering the Romanov royal family and subjugating that nation into a network of gulags and related horrors while, at the same time, exporting its communism to the world through revolution, persecution, infiltration and the intentional corruption of every known human institution.
As I write, all signals point to a world suddenly perched on the edge of an abyss so potentially calamitous that Ukrainian bishops have petitioned Pope Francis to consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The Ukrainian Bishops Plea
Just as our Blessed Mother requested of the three children at Fatima more than a century ago as the First World War was coming to an end and Bolshevism was still unknown. It was a request many believe has yet to be fulfilled as media pundits casually discuss the potential for World War III as Ukrainian civilians are killed, their homes bombarded and nearly two million flee, mainly to Poland.
In a short appeal released on Ash Wednesday, March 2, the Ukrainian Roman Catholic Bishops addressed Pope Francis directly, urging him to complete the consecration of Russia as Our Lady of Fatima requested to bring an end to the current conflict:
“Holy Father! In these hours of immeasurable pain and terrible ordeal for our people, we, the bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Ukraine, are spokesmen for the unceasing and heartfelt prayer, supported by our priests and consecrated persons, which comes to us from all Christian people that Your Holiness will consecrate our Motherland and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Responding to this prayer, we humbly ask Your Holiness to publicly perform the act of consecration to the Sacred Immaculate Heart of Mary of Ukraine and Russia, as requested by the Blessed Virgin in Fatima. May the Mother of God, Queen of Peace, accept our prayer: Regina pacis, ora pro nobis!”
So far, there has been no public reply to their request. But the head of the Polish bishops’ conference has done what Pope Francis has so far avoided doing: He has publicly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and urged the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to use his influence with Vladimir Putin to demand an end to the war and for Russian soldiers to stand down.
In recent years a growing number of Catholics and high-ranking prelates have been asking Pope Francis to perform the consecration. In 2017, the centenary of Our Lady’s appearance at Fatima, Cardinal Raymond Burke made a number of public addresses calling for it. “Today, once again, we hear the call of Our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, in accord with her explicit instruction,” he said at the Rome Life Forum. “It is evident that the consecration (of Russia) was not carried out in the manner requested by Our Lady. Recognizing the necessity of a total conversion from atheistic materialism and communism to Christ, the call of Our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart in accord with Her explicit instruction remains urgent.”
Cardinal Burke repeated his request again in 2020, linking the global crisis caused by Covid-19 to the consecration not yet having occurred. “The consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is more needed today than ever,” he said. “When we witness how the evil of atheistic materialism, which has its roots in Russia, directs in a radical way the government of the People’s Republic of China, we recognize that the great evil of communism must be healed at its roots through the consecration of Russia, as Our Lady has directed.”
Fatima 1917
The consecration of Russia was requested by Our Lady of Fatima on July 13, 1917 during an apparition to the three children. She called herself “Our Lady of the Rosary” and asked people to pray the rosary, to do penance to convert sinners, to practice the First Saturday devotion, and that the Pope consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart.
She also predicted that another world war was coming, and provided the signs:
“The war is going to end. But if they do not stop offending God, another and worse one will begin in the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the communion of reparation on the first Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace. If not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing 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 she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”
But Our Lady’s request was not fulfilled, which meant that for the next 35 years, communists under Lenin and Stalin exported their doctrines around the world. And with a huge loss of life, including in Ukraine where in 1932-3 more than 4 million Ukrainians were starved to death as a result of Stalin’s forced famine. Yet despite the appearance of a great light on Jan 25-26, 1938, fulfilling Our Lady’s prediction, still there was no consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. So Russia’s errors persisted, sending many nations, including Russia, into gulags, into orgies of terror, mass murder and amoral bondage to the doctrines of demons that have so debased Western culture over the past century.
Then, in 1942, Pope Pius XII was prevailed upon to make a consecration of the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But this did not correspond to the stipulations given by Our Lady of Fatima. Ten years later, in an apparition to Sister Lucy in May 1952, Our Lady said: “Make it known to the Holy Father that I still await the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart. Without that Consecration, Russia cannot be converted, nor can the world have Peace.”
The Communist Map Grows
By which time, as the strength of the Free World continued to shrink, its perimeters had also contracted alarmingly as the boundaries of the Communist empire correspondingly moved forward.
In 1944, world Communism controlled an estimated 170 million people and some 8 million square miles of territory. By 1964, Communism controlled more than 16 million square miles of territory, 18 separate states, and more than 1 billion people. The countries under Communist dominion, outside the USSR itself, included Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Albania, East Germany, China, Mongolia, Tibet, North Korea, North Viet Nam and Cuba. By that year, Communism had also established footholds in Laos, Afghanistan, Zanzibar and Malaysia, and had drawn into its orbit a host of ‘neutrals’ too numerous to be listed here. And in those areas where a determined anti-Communist resistance remained, the Communists and their various allies – which included international media – remained relentlessly on the attack.
Particularly interiorly where Western countries have for more than a century been under insidious, manipulative and often violent assault by Communist influencers dedicated to removing all traces of Jesus Christ from the Public Square, from public institutions, from the popular culture and from the human heart and soul. To eradicate Christ’s Kingship and His Redemptive Salvation on the Cross, they have worked feverishly and specifically to remove prayer from schools, to secularize all of Christendom and to subject every aspect of the Lord God’s natural law to such public and persistent questioning that doubts arise, leading further to the incalculable loss of souls.
On March 25, 1984, Pope John Paul II made an “entrustment-consecration” of the world, including Russia, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary but he avoided the explicit naming of Russia as Our Lady had requested in order to avoid offending the Russian Orthodox or provoking the regime in Moscow. In 2017, German Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes confirmed that John Paul II withheld naming Russia because Vatican diplomats had warned him that political conflicts might arise as a result.
So no, Russia has not yet been consecrated, the so-called Fall of the Soviet Union notwithstanding. Yes, in 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated into 15 separate countries, but it can hardly be said that Russia has undergone a religious conversion. And the late Father Gabriele Amorth, former chief exorcist of Rome, confirmed this when asked how the consecration has not been made as requested: “A specific consecration has not yet been made.”
Thus the godless destruction continues apace as – with the carnage of Covid mostly behind us – the world now faces further devastation of one sort or another including what ‘Build Back Better’ might really mean: from flattening the curve to flattening the world itself, all in total defiance of the Word of God and in total denial of God Himself? Which, with amazing convenience, was seen most lately during the Covid-19 pandemic which for two years saw churches shut down and pastors jailed for public prayer while incomprehensible damage was inflicted with impunity by leftist activists tearing down public buildings and public statues while cultural propagandists worked overtime promoting every depravity known to Man as ‘freedom’.
Almost all of which can be connected in some way to Russia’s errors, entrenched in communist doctrine and spreading like typhoid through the infrastructure of the West and its once-Christian culture.
Putin the Inscrutable
Still the question remains: Why– after pundits spent months speculating over whether Putin would actually invade Ukraine – did he invade now? And, given his apparent lack of a clear endgame, what does he really want? What does victory look like for Russia’s enigmatic leader and how might his military campaign alter the landscape of Europe, the U.S., NATO and the wider international order?
For now, it’s apparent the Kremlin’s immediate goal is to drive Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – friend of Justin Trudeau and disciple of Klaus Schwab – from power and install in his place a friendly regime that meets Putin’s security demands and stays firmly in Russia’s orbit. Analysts speculate that such a government would immediately sever Kyiv’s growing ties with the West, end its quest to join NATO and empower Putin’s larger ambition to rebuild Russian influence across Eastern Europe and create a buffer against the West.
But will it? Toppling the Zelenskyy regime, maintaining full control over Europe’s largest country and its population of 44 million would require a massive, long-term military presence and Soviet-style repression. And Putin is already is facing growing protests at home, as the West’s intensifying economic pressure on Moscow increases the prospects of a drawn-out guerrilla war in Ukraine, for which the Russian population has shown minimal enthusiasm.
Has Putin, like his predecessor Napoleon, miscalculated? Or has his political demise long been on the cards anyway?
“Russia is now engaged in a war it cannot win,” Max Bergmann, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, wrote in an analysis earlier this month. “Russia’s military might be large enough to take the country, but it is not large enough to govern it.”
Indeed, any Russian attempt to take over all of Ukraine and govern it as a satellite state hearkens back to the failed invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. That campaign exposed the limits of a military as mighty as that of the Soviet Union. More recently, the disastrous end of the U.S. military’s 20-year effort to stop another insurgency in Afghanistan offers the Kremlin a second cautionary tale.
The world has largely rejected Putin’s claim to the Crimean Peninsula after Putin’s 2014 invasion as well, and the international community would likely follow suit if Russia tries to split Ukraine and claim half or embark on any other path that ends the Zelenskyy presidency.
And all this carries tremendous risks along with the ever-present potential for nuclear war.
International Women’s Day
Still, amidst all the ominous news, it was impossible not to be amused by the spectacle of International Women’s Day on March 8. How ironic, I thought, as I watched chirpy commentators praise this Communist feast day and its founder, Vladimir Lenin, who presided over the first official celebration of International Working Women’s Day on March 8 a century ago and who came to power, in part, by promoting the idea of women’s liberation and the transformation of the family: “Under capitalism the female half of the human race is doubly oppressed,” Lenin proclaimed. “The working woman and the peasant woman are oppressed by capital, but over and above that—they remain in ‘household bondage,’ they continue to be ‘household slaves,’ for they are overburdened with the drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking and stultifying toil in the kitchen and the family household.”
Was Lenin so far ahead of the curve that he was a feminist? Like our prime minister? Or like U.S. president Joe Biden who, to mark the day, suggested that women cannot “live up to their full God-given potential” without abortion-on-demand. “Every person deserves the chance to live up to their full God-given potential, without regard for gender or other factors,” Biden’s statement read. “Yet too often, in too many places, women and girls face obstacles that limit their possibilities and undermine their participation in economic, political, and social life.”
Indeed, in 1920, after their success in the Russian Revolution, it was Lenin’s Bolsheviks who first allowed women the right to abortion making Soviet Russia the first country on earth to legalize it. How very progressive! As was Lenin’s legislation of equal pay for equal work, part of a financial ideology that went on to ruin half the world’s economy. As did all of Bolshevism’s various dysfunctional ideologies go on to justify poverty, hunger and the murder of many millions for over a century.
It was Pope John Paul II who coined the phrase The Culture of Death of which International Communism has been a central player. Which may also be why, much to Vladimir Putin’s consternation, after a century of revolution and all manner of birth control, the Russian people are failing to reproduce in the numbers needed to keep their country functional and prosperous.
Which brings us back to the world and what happens every time it sentences itself to death with the implementation of communist doctrines and its deadly ideologies — including The Great Reset which incorporates all the same theories. Will the suffering Ukrainians be its first casualty? Or will that too be an overestimate of their powers and abilities which, being human, are doomed to fail anyway?
As for Our Lady of Fatima, she promised that Russia will be converted and that Her Immaculate Heart will triumph. I believe in her promise. Absolutely! The only question is: When? Might it be closer than anyone imagines?