The Consecration of Russia

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“The Message of Fatima imposes an obligation on the church”. … Pope John Paul II

What is a “consecration”?

It is a ceremony by which a person, group of persons, or thing is set apart as sacred and dedicated to the service of God or another sacred purpose.

What is meant by “the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary”?

At Fatima, on July 13, 1917, Our Lady told Sister Lucy that “God is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church, and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the Communions of reparation and for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart ... In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, which will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.” Our Lady’s request is very simple: Russia—the fount of so much evil in the 20th Century—must be set apart and made sacred by its consecration to the Mother of God.

Why is it necessary to consecrate Russia in particular?

Because God wills it. As Our Lady told Sister Lucy at Fatima: “Russia will be the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the whole world if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that poor nation ...” And as Sister Lucy disclosed in her published memoirs and letters, Our Lord Himself confided to her that He would not convert Russia unless the consecration were done, “Because I want My whole Church to recognize that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that it may extend its cult later on, and put the devotion to this Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to My Sacred Heart.” Sister Lucy has explained that because Russia is a well-defined territory, the conversion of Russia after its consecration to the Immaculate Heart would be undeniable proof that the conversion resulted from the consecration and nothing else. The establishment in the world of devotion to the Immaculate Heart would thus be confirmed by God Himself in the most dramatic manner.

And what if the consecration of Russia is not done?

At Fatima, Our Lady warned that if the consecration were not done as She requested, then “Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be annihilated.” By the same token, the miraculous conversion of Russia after its consecration by the Pope and the bishops, and the resulting peace in the world, will be a sign of the power of God’s grace acting through ministers of His Church and the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

How exactly is this consecration supposed to be accomplished?

True to Her word at Fatima, Our Lady appeared to Sister Lucy at Tuy, Spain, on June 13, 1929, to say that: “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.” The phrase “by this means” is crucial, because it signifies that the consecration is not merely a symbol of the coming conversion of Russia, but the very means by which it will be accomplished. Thus, without the act of consecration there will be no conversion of Russia, and without the conversion of Russia, Russia’s errors will continue to infest the world, producing the persecution of the Church, the martyrdom of the good, the suffering of the Holy Father and ultimately the annihilation of nations forewarned at Fatima. Over the ensuing decades, Sister Lucy has explained time and again that the act of consecration requires that the Pope “choose a date upon which His Holiness commands the bishops of the entire world to make, each in his own Cathedral, and at the same time as the Pope, a solemn and public ceremony of Reparation and consecration of Russia ...”

Didn’t the Pope succeed in performing the consecration of Russia in 1984? No. As Sister Lucy herself declared in a September 1985 interview, the attempted consecration of March 25, 1984, did not satisfy Our Lady’s requests because “there was no participation of the bishops and there was no mention of Russia.” In consecrating the world in general on that date without mentioning Russia, the Holy Father himself acknowledged in the presence of tens of thousands of witnesses, both during and after the ceremony, that the people of Russia were still “awaiting our consecration and confiding.” The next day these statements were reported in the Pope’s own newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, and the Italian Bishops’ publication, L’Avvenire.

Wasn’t the consecration of the world by the Pope in 1984 enough to fulfil Our Lady’s request?

No. For her entire life since the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, Sister Lucy has insisted that Russia must be specifically mentioned. For example, in a 1978 interview with her confidant, Father Umberto Pasquale, and in a letter to Father Pasquale in 1980, Sister Lucy was asked the question: “Has Our Lady ever spoken to you about the consecration of the world?” During the interview, Sister Lucy answered: “No, Father Umberto! Never! At the Cova da Iria in 1917 Our Lady promised: ‘I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia ...’ In 1929, at Tuy, as She had promised, Our Lady came to tell me that the moment had come to ask the Holy Father for the consecration of that country.” And, in the 1980 letter (dated April 13 of that year), Sister Lucy confirmed what she had said in the interview, stating in her own handwriting that “Our Lady of Fatima, in Her request, referred only to the consecration of Russia.” Both the 1978 interview and the 1980 letter (photographically reproduced) were published in the May 12, 1982, Italian edition of L’Osservatore Romano. Does not our own common sense tell us that if Our Lady of Fatima requested the consecration of Russia, then Russia must at least be mentioned in the act of consecration? We might also reasonably ask what possible reason there could be for not uttering one simple word—Russia—in the act of consecrating Russia. No explanation has ever been given for this mysterious omission in the attempted consecrations of 1982 and 1984..

But doesn’t the “collapse of Communism” after the 1984 consecration ceremony show that Russia is beginning to convert and that the consecration must have been effective, despite its failure to mention Russia?

Hardly. In 1997 Russia enacted legislation which discriminates against the Catholic Church and in favor of Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. Catholic parishes are required to apply for an annual “registration” which can be revoked at will by any local bureaucrat, while priests and nuns are given only three-month visas which cannot be renewed. The Vatican has condemned the new law as a great setback for the Church in Russia. In all of Russia today there are some 300,000 Catholics—fewer than there were in 1917, the same year Our Lady came to Fatima and promised the ultimate conversion of Russia, which has yet to occur. The Russian Revolution, which has been exported in various forms to other nations, confirms Our Lady’s prophecy of the spread of Russia’s errors throughout the world. Today Muslims outnumber Catholics ten-to-one in Russia. Compare this with the true miracle of conversion which occurred after the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico in the 16th Century: within nine years some 9 million Aztecs turned from devil-worship and human sacrifice and were converted and baptized as Catholics. Yet in Russia today, more than 14 years after the supposed “consecration” of 1984, we see barely a trickle of converts, and fewer Russian Catholics overall than there were 80 years ago!

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But if the Pope feels he has done the consecration, what right does anyone have to question him?

The Pope has never publicly stated to all the members of the Church that he has performed the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On the contrary, the Pope’s words as quoted in L’Osservatore Romano demonstrate that he knows the consecration has yet to be done. In view of this, the faithful have every right to petition their Pope for the definitive consecration of Russia. In fact, the God-given right of the faithful to petition the Supreme Pontiff in matters affecting the good of the Church was infallibly defined as Catholic doctrine by two ecumenical councils: Vatican I (1870) and the Second Council of Lyon (1274), and is also guaranteed by the current Code of Canon Law (Canon 212). The good of the Church and the safety of the whole world demand absolute certainty that the requests of Our Lady of Fatima have been carried out. The matter will be settled only when the definitive consecration is performed, or when the Pope declares in an official, binding way to the whole Church that he has already performed the consecration in a manner sufficient to satisfy Our Lady’s requests. Neither event has occurred, and therefore the matter remains open to free discussion and petitions by the faithful, who have every right to address a matter of such obvious importance for the Church and the world.