The Consecration Has Been Done?

MOSCOW. May 6 (Interfax) - Executive Secretary of the Russian Conference of Catholic Bishops Igor Kovalevsky has admitted that some of the steps taken by Vatican representatives in Russia could be qualified as proselytism (conversion of the Orthodox population to Catholicism).

"Certain facts cause surprise and may be interpreted as proselytism. However, this has not been done deliberately," Kovalevsky told a briefing following the first session of a joint working group for relations between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches

"The Catholic Church has no plans of pursuing missionary activities in Russia. Russia is not New Guinea or some African country where it is necessary to preach Christianity. Russia is a country with more than one thousand years of Christian culture," he said.

"The Vatican is not pursuing any proselytism policy. It has no goal of making Russia a Catholic nation," Kovalevsky said.

The Russian Orthodox Church, however, has expressed skepticism over the Vatican representative's remarks.

Well, folks, there you have it. "The Vatican is not pursuing any proselytism policy. It has no goal of making Russia a Catholic nation." Although this is not really shocking news whatsoever, this statement is nevertheless a reminder of the state of apostasy that has seized the Church in the wake of the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions that began to be ushered in during the pontificate of Pope John XXIII and thereafter. Sure, yes, the way was being paved in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the Modernists and their fellow travelers. However, it was not until 1958 that the Modernists began to come out into the open to take advantage of the "opening up to the world" desired by Pope John XXIII. The Second Vatican Council and the Consilium that planned the synthetic concoction known as the Novus Ordo Missae helped to propagate novelties and innovations that were alien to the whole patrimony of the Church, including the very language used in official church documents and by popes in their various pronouncements. Let's be brutally frank: to assert that the Catholic Church is not interested in the conversion of souls from Orthodoxy to Catholicism is to assert a belief that is alien to Catholic truth and representative of the sort of syncretist, pan-Christianity specifically condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos in 1928.

The religion of modernity and Modernism being spouted by Pope John Paul II and his functionaries has devastated the vineyard of Christ's true Church. This religion of modernity and Modernism has accepted as an irreversible, if not actually desirable, fait accompli of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King. Pronouncements by the popes prior to 1958 mean next to nothing. There are minimal footnotes to any pre-conciliar document or pronouncement emanating from the Vatican since 1965, with that trend becoming increasingly noticeable in the twenty-five years and nearly seven months of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. The Holy Father is constantly apologizing for the "errors" committed by the Church in the past. It causes one to wonder if everything that every pronouncement and pastoral practice of the Church prior to 1958, including a strict fidelity to the words of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to bring everyone into the true Church was misguided and in need of "correction" and/or apology in light of the "new insights" we have gained into man and the world (see Gaudium et Spes, for example, and Paragraph 15 of the 1997 version of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal).

When you think about it, however, the errors of modernity and Modernism are really the errors of Russia. How ironic that the executive secretary of the Catholic bishops' conference in Russia is quoted as saying that the Church has no desire to make Russia a Catholic nation. One of the most important fruits of the actual consecration of Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart by a pope and all of the world's bishops is the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith, the same sort of miraculous, widespread and almost instantaneous conversion that took place in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America after Our Lady appeared to Saint Juan Diego on December 9, 1531. That a representative of Catholic bishops is denying the necessity of converting Russia is to prove that the Holy Father has had no intention to faithfully fulfill Our Lady's Fatima requests, which is why he has avoided naming Russia and has substituted the word "world" instead in his various attempts to circumvent Our Lady's specific requests.

There are several reasons for this. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has given a good deal of empirical evidence that he really does not believe in the Fatima message. How can he? How can a man understand properly the Triumph of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart when he states that all of our hearts have been made immaculate and it is that "triumph" that Our Lady was talking about at Fatima? How can any Vatican official or a representative of the Church in Fatima, Portugal, claim with a straight face that the Fatima message was about "inter-religious dialogue," no less attempting to turn Fatima into a quite active center of religious indifferentist, making room for Baal and his friends, as I noted in a column in The Remnant six months ago? The prophecies of Anne Katherine Emmerich are being proved true by the very words and actions of the Holy Father and his functionaries as a veritable new world religion, one that disparages the doctrines and traditions of the true Church, is posited as representing an unbroken link to the past.

This disbelief in the Fatima message was more or less expressed by Pope John XXIII himself when he read the Third Secret of Fatima in 1960. According to the late Silvio Cardinal Oddi, Pope John said, "This is not for our time." Over twenty years later, however, Luigi Cardinal Ciappi, O.P., who was for many years the theologian of the papal household, said that the Third Secret of Fatima dealt with apostasy within the Church, starting at the very top. Please tell me how not seeking the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith is not apostasy.

Another reason for the failure to consecrate Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart is Pope John Paul II's desire to visit Russia before he dies. Laboring under the delusion that Bolshevism ended when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was dissolved on December 25, 1991, the Holy Father believes that he will help to foster a rapprochement between the Russian Orthodox Church, which has fiercely persecuted Roman Catholics over the centuries, and the Catholic Church that will serve as a sort of model for similar arrangements with other Orthodox churches in the East. Thus, Our Lady's specific requests must be ignored and de-constructed of their actual meaning. After all, modern man has a "better way" than to believe so simplistically that all it is going to take to solve the problems of modernity is to actually consecrate a country to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Indeed, Pope John Paul II admitted in Crossing the Threshold of Hope in 1993 that he had given little thought to Our Lady's Fatima message prior to his being shot and nearly killed in 1981 on the sixty-fourth anniversary of Our Lady's first apparition to Sister Lucy and her two cousins, Blessed Jacinta and Francisco Marto, on May 13, 1917. How can a priest in Europe, of all places, which had been so convulsed by events that could have been prevented if Our Lady's words had been heeded, live thirty-five years of his priesthood (1946-1981) without giving much thought to Our Lady's apparitions in Fatima? Little children in Catholic schools in the United States were taught to foster devotion to Our Lady's Fatima requests. What sort of intellectual pride is it that prevents a priest and a bishop and an archbishop and a pope from paying careful attention to an actual appearance of the Mother of God to warn about the dangers posed by the spreading of the errors of Russia? Indeed, for all of Pope John Paul II's opposition to crimes against the inviolability of innocent human life, he does not seem to realize that it was in Russia under Vladimir Lenin that abortion on demand first reared its ugly head under state sponsorship in the year of 1918. Abortion is thus very much one of the errors of Russia that crystallize the problems of modernity.

Indeed, the errors of Russia are really the errors of modernity and Modernism. That is, the errors enshrined in Bolshevism are the crystallization of false philosophies and currents that began to issue during some aspects of the Renaissance before taking full bloom in the aftermath of the Protestant Revolt and the subsequent rise of Freemasonry. These errors include the deification of man, the denigration of the necessity of belief in the Incarnation of the God-Man and His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross as absolutely essential for the right ordering of men and their societies, the promotion of international organizations as the secular substitutes for the true Church, and the ultimate arrogation unto the State of all matters pertaining to life and death without regard for the Deposit of Faith the God-Man had entrusted to the Catholic Church. These errors have influenced every nation in the world, including the United States of America (as I noted in an article in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos in June of 2000, an article that I will endeavor to put in the "Golden Oldies" section of this website once I complete a lot of important work for Christ the King College), bar none. These errors have influenced the true Church in countless numbers of ways, including the prayers contained in the Novus Ordo Missae.

The devil knows all of this. As is pointed out in The Devil's Final Battle, which was edited by Father Paul Kramer (who has done outstanding work concerning the absolute right of all priests to offer the Traditional Latin Mass without any permission from the Vatican or a local bishop), the devil's minions in Freemasonry do not need a Freemason on the Throne of Saint Peter. No, all they need is someone who will speak in a religious indifferentist sense about a "civilization of love" rather than about the Social Reign of Christ the King. They need popes and bishops and priests and nuns to exalt the international organizations and ideologies that are meant to undermine and replace the Faith rather than to speak in the clearly unambiguous language of Catholic tradition. Even absent a consideration of actual infiltration of the ranks of hierarchy, there is ample proof that the errors have metastasized at a rapid pace within the Church, thus making her an accomplice, either witting unwitting, in the spread of the errors of Russia in all aspects of popular culture.

That is why, you see, that the problems plaguing the Church and the world are intertwined and why they will not be ameliorated until and unless some pope actually does consecrate Russia with all of the world's bishops to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Father Nicholas Gruner has been right all along. Despite all of the protestations of others that the consecration has been accepted by Heaven, the statement of the executive secretary of the Catholic bishops' conference in Russia proves that the Vatican has no interest--and I mean no interest--in the conversion of Russia whatsoever.

This is not the first time that there has been a failure on the part of the Church to heed a warning from Heaven. Sister Magaret Mary Alacoque pleaded with King Louis XIV and the bishops of France to do as Our Lord had told her He wanted done: to consecrate the entire country of France to His Most Sacred Heart. The year was 1689, one hundred years before the French Revolution, which can be seen as a punishment upon France for the failure to do exactly what Our Lord wanted done. King Louis XIV permitted the bishops of France to consecrate Paris to the Sacred Heart, but not the entire country. This is eerily similar to the repeated efforts of Pope John Paul II, who has gone to Fatima several times since his 1981 assassination attempt and who beatified Francisco and Jacinta (while permitting the Third Secret of Fatima to be misrepresented and deconstructed of its actual contents), to consecrate the "world" to the Immaculate Heart of Mary without publicly stating the word "Russia." Indeed, even the word "consecrate" has been replaced by the word "entrust," thereby further disobeying the Mother of God. Just as France has not yet recovered from the effects of the disobedience of a worldly king and the bishops eager to cater to him in the latter part of the seventeenth century, so will it be the case that the Church herself--and thus the world--will continue to suffer as long as this pope and his successors to refuse to do exactly what Our Lady said must be done to effect the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart.

We never despair in the face of the problems that face us. We are Catholics, people who know that our own sins are responsible (to one extent or another) for the sad state of the Church and the world. We know that the jaws of Hell will never prevail against the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Our Lord upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. That does not mean, however, that the Devil will not win a few battles in the larger life of the Church, just as he wins more than a few battles in our own lives. The final victory though belongs to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady is with us during these unprecedented times in the history of her Divine Son's Church. It is thus important to rededicate ourselves to her patronage, especially during the month of May, which belongs to her. As her consecrated slaves, we must give her everything we experience on a daily basis, trusting that she will use what we give her in ways that may only become manifest to us clearly in eternity, please God we persevere until the point of our dying breaths in states of sanctifying grace.

We must pray to Our Lady of Fatima so that some pope--and we pray it is Pope John Paul II--will actually do what she said must be done to stop the errors of Russia. We may never live to see this done, sad to say. However, we must believe that Our Lady wants to use us as instruments to help bring this about, especially as we pray her Most Holy Rosary and keep the five First Saturdays.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us, pray for the Pope, pray for the bishops, for a re-conversion of the hierarchy so that Russia may converted once and for all to the one, true Church that is the Catholic Church. % 0D

Two Patrons for True Ecumenism

By Brother Francis, M.I.C.M.

Two great saints, Josaphat (martyred, 1623) and Andrew Bobola (martyred, 1657), who shed their blood in the same century and for the same cause, we propose as patrons for true ecumenism. The "ecumenism" we hear so much about since Vatican II is a new phenomenon in the Church; and neither of our two saints would have recognized it as truly Catholic. It is certainly not the cause for which, with true Christian charity, they were happy to shed their blood. Modern ecumenism is originally a Protestant movement whose principles were condemned by many popes, most notably in the Encyclical Mortalium Animos of Pope Pius XI in 1928.

By true ecumenism, we mean that bond of doctrine and government that unites into one body all Catholics in every country, race or nation, throughout the inhabited world (ecumena). In action, true ecumenism seeks to bring all men to that unity which is already a reality in the Catholic Church. It is true ecumenism that ought to be the core of the devotion and prayer intentions of every true Catholic.

St. Josaphat (1582-1623)...

Josaphat Kuncewicz was born to a family of the Eastern Rite. During his early youth, many Christians of that tradition, cooperating with the grace of their baptism, sought to regain unity with the Catholic Church under the authority of the Pope in Rome. This movement led to the historic Union of Brest which took place in 1596, when our saint was about 14 years old. This Union was achieved during the pontificate of Pope Clement VIII, and with the enthusiastic support of Sigismond III, King of Poland (1587-1632). Needless to say, it was the occasion of great joy and celebration throughout Christendom. The Union adopted the principles of the Council of Florence (1439), an Ecumenical Council that for a time succeeded in uniting Christians of the East and of the West. Unfortunately, this was of very short duration. The Union of Brest, on the other hand, had more lasting results, and there are today millions of Catholics of the Eastern Rite who owe their Catholicity to it.

However, the Union of Brest also suffered opposition from many in the East, both in the hierarchy and among the people, who refused to accept the authority of the Pope. This faction was supported by schismatic Russia, the same Russia that later would become the center of world Communism.

St. Josaphat's family was one that shared the joy of the overwhelming majority in Christendom at the Union which unquestionably reflected the desires of the Sacred Heart, and the young boy was inspired with the vision of extending that victory for the Kingdom of Christ to all the people who remained outside the "one fold and one shepherd."

St. Josaphat loved the beautiful liturgy of the Eastern tradition in which he was raised, and defended it with all his energies. Were he living in our time in the West, he would be fighting against the Liberals of the Novus Ordo revolution that has been on-going in the wake of Vatican II. But beautiful liturgy benefits no one if it is offered outside of the True Church. Over and above his devotion to the traditional Eastern liturgy, therefore, the saint labored for the oneness of the Church, an intention for which Christ prayed, and for which the Holy Spirit works unceasingly in the hearts of all who cooperate with His grace.

With this ideal in view, St. Josaphat consecrated himself from his earliest youth to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who would protect his virtue and sustain his resolve. At the age of 20, he was received into the Basilian Order and became a monk in the monastery of the Holy Trinity in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. As a monk, he was exemplary in his obedience and mortifications, and in observing heroically the perfections of religious life. He would have wanted to remain in this humble state all his life, but was obliged against his will to accept the title and responsibilities of Archimandrite (superior) of his monastery, and later to be elevated to the archbishopric of the city of Polotsk in White Russia.

But no matter in what state or station, he never forgot his vowed dedication to fight for the oneness of the Church, a oneness that can only result from recognition of the unique authority of the pope. His great success in laboring for this end, and the many converts he was winning to the cause of unity, made him inimical to the antagonists of unity. Consequently, he was hated and persecuted relentlessly by many of those for whose eternal salvation he was inflamed with the fire of true love.

Eventually, as the Archbishop was making a pastoral visitation in the city of Vitebsk, on November 12, 1623, a band of his hateful enemies rushed him with axes and spears, and threw his slain body into a river. He became the victim of the spirit of schism, the fundamental error of Russia, which is still today the main concern of heaven _ as Our Lady let us know in her Fatima apparition in this century.

Here is how the Church officially remembers St. Josephat in the Breviary:

"Josaphat Kuncewicz was born of noble Catholic parents at Vladimir in Volhynia. When a child, as he was listening to his mother telling him about the Passion of Christ, a dart issued from the image of Jesus crucified and wounded him in the heart. Set on fire with the love of God, he began to devote himself with such zeal to prayer and other works of piety that he was the admiration and the model of his older companions. At the age of twenty he became a monk under the Rule of St. Basil, and made wonderful progress in evangelical perfection. He went barefoot even in the severe winter of that country; he never ate meat, drank wine only when obliged by obedience, and wore a rough hair-shirt until his death. The flower of his chastity, which he had vowed in early youth to the Virgin Mother of God, he preserved unspotted. He soon became so renowned for virtue and learning, that in spite of his youth he was made superior of the monastery of Byten; soon afterwards he became archimandrite of Vilna; and lastly, much against his will but to the great joy of Catholics, he was chosen archbishop of Polotsk.

"In this dignity he relaxed nothing of his former manner of life; and had nothing so much at heart as the divine service and the salvation of the sheep entrusted to him. He energetically defended Catholic faith and unity and laboured to the utmost of his power to bring back schismatics and heretics to communion with the See of blessed Peter. The Sovereign Pontiff and the plenitude of his power he never ceased to defend, both by preaching and by writings full of piety and learning, against the most shameless calumnies and errors of the wicked. He vindicated episcopal rights, and restored ecclesiastical possessions which had been seized by laymen. Incredible was the number of heretics he won back to the bosom of mother Church; and the words of the Popes bear witness to how greatly he promoted the union of the Greek and Latin churches. His revenues were entirely expended in restoring the beauty of God's house, in building dwellings for consecrated virgins, and in other pious works. So bountiful was he to the poor that, on one occasion, having nothing wherewith to supply the needs of a certain widow, he ordered his Omophorion, or episcopal pallium, to be pawned.

"The great progress made by the Catholic faith so stirred up the hatred of wicked men against the soldier of Christ, that they determined to put him to death. He knew what was threatening him; and foretold it when preaching to the people. As he was making his pastoral visitation at Vitebsk, the murderers broke into his house, striking and wounding all whom they found. Josaphat meekly went to meet them, and accosted them kindly, saying: "My little children, why do you strike my servants? If you have any complaint against me, here I am." Hereupon they rushed on him, overwhelmed him with blows, pierced him with their spears, and at length dispatched him with an axe and threw his body into the river. This took place on the twelfth of November, 1623, in the forty-third year of his age. His body, surrounded with a miraculous light, was rescued from the waters. The martyr's blood won a blessing first of all for his murderers; for, being condemned to death, they nearly all abjured their schism and repented of their crime. As the death of this great bishop was followed by many miracles, Pope Urban VIII granted him the honours of beatification. On the third of the Calends of July, 1867, when celebrating the centenary of the princes of the apostles, Pius IX in the Vatican basilica, in the presence of the College of Cardinals, and of about five hundred Patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops of every rite, assembled from all parts of the world, solemnly enrolled among the Saints this great defender of the Church's unity, who was the first Oriental to be thus honoured. Pope Leo XIII extended his Mass and Office to the universal Church."

St. Andrew Bobola (1591-1657)

St. Andrew Bobola was of a prominent Polish family, Catholic in the Western tradition. At the time of the Union of Brest in 1596, he was a child of five. With his pious family, even at that tender age, he must have shared the joy of the Catholic world. When St. Josaphat was martyred in 1623, St. Andrew was already a Jesuit, having been received into the Society of Jesus when he was about 19 years old.

One can imagine the contrast between the two saints. Seen in pictures we have of St. Josaphat, he could have been any archimandrite or prelate in Athens or in Damascus. St. Andrew, on the other hand, must have looked like any Jesuit in Paris or in Boston. Yet, despite differences in appearance accounted for by the culture and liturgical traditions of each, the two saints were inflamed with the same zeal for the one-ness of Holy Church. What thoughts and what aspirations arose in the heart of the young Jesuit at the news of the martyrdom of the archbishop, we can only surmise.

St. Andrew was ordained in 1622, one year before the martyrdom of St. Josaphat. The inspiring history of St. Andrew Bobola was recounted in a book published by St. Benedict Center in 1953 (now out of print). Extracts from the book, which bore the title Saints to Know and Love, are offered below, set off by quotation marks.

"In 1630, when he was forty years old, Andrew Bobola was appointed rector of one of the Jesuit colleges in Lithuania. He held this position for five years, and then asked leave to resign in order to become a full-time missionary. The request was granted, and Andrew Bobola began to do the work he had wanted to do from the time he entered the Jesuit Order, the work God had meant him to do, the work at which he would spend the rest of his life.

"Andrew Bobola went about his missionary labors with such fervor, love, and wholehearted dedication that God must have found it impossible not to be delighted with him and to make his work fruitful. Never did Andrew Bobola miss an opportunity to save a soul. He would overtake travelers on the road and walk along with them, in the hope of converting them or strengthening them in their Faith. He would seek out the sick to console them, and the dying to give them the Last Sacraments. Everywhere he would spread especial devotion to Our Lady and the Holy Eucharist, founding sodalities in Our Lady's honor. His favorite apostolate was to children, still uninfected with heresy and schism, to whom he would teach the Faith so strongly and lovingly that they would never forget it. The number of conversions was in the tens of thousands. At times he won from the Russian schism whole dioceses with their bishops. `The hunter of souls,' he was called by those who loved him; and by the schismatics, `the robber of souls.'"

Among the many enemies our "robber of souls" gained for himself were the Cossacks, a fierce tribe who had recently adopted the Eastern schism under Russian auspices. A band of Cossacks went seeking his life and caught up with him on the way to a town call Janow, when he was on one of his missionary journeys. The Cossacks tried to compel him to renounce the Faith. Failing that, they treated him to tortures so barbaric as to be described by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, which studied his cause for canonization, as "the most cruel ever recorded." Before death finally delivered him from their tortures, he uttered the following profession of faith:

"You may put my courage to the test, but if you do, you shall see what wonders God will work in my body this day. I believe and I confess that just as there is only one true God, so there is only one true Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and only one true Faith, the Catholic Faith, which Jesus Christ revealed and the Apostles preached. For that Faith I will gladly die, as the Apostles and so many martyrs have died before me."

The authors of Saints to Know and Love continue, "It is significant that Russian hatred of St. Andrew Bobola was so great, that even after they had killed him, the Russians would not leave him undisturbed. When he was beatified (in 1853), they ripped the pages containing his Office from the Breviaries. And as recently as 1922, Russian Communists, carrying on the tradition of the schismatics, opened the saint's sealed tomb and desecrated his body, then shipped it off to a medical museum in Moscow, to keep the Poles from venerating it."

However, in the very same year, 1922, a great famine began in Russia; and the Catholic world, under the leadership of the Pope, was pouring tons of provisions into the country. Two young American Jesuits were sent to Russia by Pope Pius XI in charge of the relief mission. Under these circumstances, the Jesuit Fathers, using their best diplomacy, finally persuaded the Communists to allow the removal of the Saint's body to Rome. When the Saint was canonized by the same pope, Pius XI, in 1938, his relics were returned in triumph to Poland, and were deposited in the great Jesuit church in Warsaw.

As recorded above, St. Andrew Bobola's last thought was that he was offering his life blood in imitation of the Apostles. And unquestionably, St. Josaphat bore the same thought when meeting his martyrdom 34 years earlier. When the cloud of paganism dominated ancient Rome, no two names were more hateful to the Romans that those of Peter and Paul. Yet, it is readily acknowledged nowadays that no two men ever loved Rome more than they. In the same way, the names of Josaphat and Andrew Bobola still remain the object of hate in the eastern world. But when the spirit of schism ultimately is driven out of the East, the names of those two saints will become universally loved and revered throughout the world.

St. Josaphat and St. Andrew Bobola, pray with us to hasten the arrival of that blessed day!

Dom Guéranger on St. Josaphat and the Conversion of Russia

Russia becoming Catholic would mean an end to Islamism, and the definitive triumph of the Cross upon the Bosphorus, without any danger to Europe; the Christian empire in the East restored with a glory and a power hitherto unknown; Asia evangelized, not by a few poor isolated priests, but with the help of an authority greater than that of Charlemagne; and lastly, the Slavonic race brought into unity of faith and aspirations, for its own greater glory. This transformation will be the greatest event of the century that shall see its accomplishment; it will change the face of the world.

Is there any foundation for such hopes? Come what may, St. Josaphat will always be the patron and model of future apostles of the Union in Russia and in the whole Græco-Slavonic world. By his birth, education, and studies, by the bent of his piety and all his habits of life, he resembled far more the Russian monks of the present day than the Latin prelates of his own time. He always desired the ancient liturgy of his Church to be preserved entire and even to his last breath he carried it out lovingly, without the least alteration or diminution, just as the first apostles of the Christian faith had brought it from Constantinople to Kiev. May prejudices born of ignorance be obliterated; and then, despised though his name now is in Russia, St. Josaphat will no sooner be known than he will be loved and invoked by the Russians themselves.

Our Graeco-Slavonian brethren cannot much longer turn a deaf ear to the invitations of the Sovereign Pontiff. Let us hope, then, that the day will come, and that before very long, when the wall of separation will crumble away for ever, and the same hymn of thanksgiving will echo at once under the dome of St. Peter's and the cupolas of Kiev and of St. Petersburg.

"The Most Cruel ever recorded" We caution our readers that the following description of St. AndrewBobola's martyrdom is of an extremely graphic nature. It describes in detail one of the cruelest martyrdoms in recorded history.

The Cossacks got down from their horses and immediately began their first "persuasive" attempts to convert their victim to the orthodox religion. Insults, threats, and praises, shattered themselves on the stony firmness of the Saint. Then they unclothed the aged ascetic, tied him to a hedge, whipped him with the terrible "nagaiche" until the blood came, and struck his face so hard that some of his teeth were knocked out. Blood issued from his mouth, accustomed as it was to speak only words of kindness and benediction, and flowed down through his hoary beard onto his throbbing chest.

Next they made a crown of fresh twigs from an oak tree and wound it tightly around his head. Then binding his hands, they fastened him between two horses and made him traverse the Via Dolorosa which led to Janow, some two miles away, raising him with blows from their whips and lances when pain and exhaustion felled him to the ground. To his body, marked with red furrows from the whipping and the green crown, they added two deep wounds and a cut from a sword thrust on his left arm.

As soon as the infamous train reached Janow, sarcasm, insults and invectives came from all sides against the noble head bent in agony. Some said: "There is a Pole, a priest of the Roman faith, who seeks to dissuade people from our religion and to convert them to his Polish faith." These words were the accusation, the evidence of his faults, and the testimony of his murderers to martyrdom.

A Cossack, perhaps the leader of the band, angered by the firmness of Bobola, unsheathed his sword and brought it down on the martyr, who instinctively bent a little and raised his right arm to defend his head. The blow severed three fingers from his right hand and almost struck his head. Our hero was spared that time only to be done to death, little by little, in slow torture.

One must not be horrified by the story of this martyrdom which is recognized by many as one of the most cruel that was ever recorded It is the epic of a hero and one should find words for it as clear-cut as a bas-relief, as clear-cut and strong as his faith. He accepted the torture of the executioners because it was pleasing to him; perhaps his greatest pain was for the tortures which they were inflicting on their own souls. He suffered, aided by the grace of God, without a sign of bewilderment or weakness. Their one desire was that they might glory in the defeat of the apostle of Pinsk. He suffered without asking for pause because he was the happy giver and he made his sad offering to his Crucified Lord with the aristocratic beauty of true love that gives of itself without stint or complaint.

Between two lines of horror-stricken people, curious and terrified, they brought him to a butcher's shop in the market place, dragging him by one foot, stretched him out on the butcher's table, and then locked the door.

And so the torture continued. A new refusal to embrace the schism and they charred the body already covered with festering sores. While they were splitting the tips of his fingers by forcing sharp splinters under the nails, they cried out in mockery: "With these hands you make God, but we will treat you better than Jesus was treated."

As they tore the skin from his hands, they chided him saying: "With these hands you turn the pages of books in the church, but we shall turn your flesh." Again they tore the skin, now from the head and chest, remarking: "You put on the chasuble, but we shall adorn you even better; you have too small a tonsure on your head, but we shall make you a larger one."

Placing him face down, they tore the skin from his back and rubbed the live flesh with straw and wheat chaff, mutilated his nose and lips, two thumbs, and the index finger of his left hand, and cut out the palms of both. They even dug out one of his eyes. "Deny your Roman faith," they kept demanding, but the hero kept repeating the holy names of Jesus and Mary.

Then they witnessed something too supernatural to be confused with vain stoicism. This old man, who had found a mysterious strength to support his spasmodic tortures, was able to find the serene sweetness of the word which pardons and invites an offender to see his error. From that mouth, torn and full of blood, instead of denial or complaint, there was a mysterious urging for his torturers to be converted to the true church.

"You, rather, be converted. My dear sons, what are you doing? May God be with you and make you turn in your hearts against your anger."

But the murderers, cursing and blaspheming, only threw themselves upon him again with renewed fury. One cannot hear words of redeeming pardon in the fury of diabolical anger. In the words of this man, as in those of his Master, there was a charm to be avoided. His eloquent tongue had attracted thousands of souls and, cutting it off at the root, they pulled it out through an open cut in the nape of the neck.

Even after two hours of torture the butchers were not satisfied; on the contrary, the firmness of the Martyr and the sight of blood excited them anew to a paroxysm of cruelty. After hammering a butcher's awl into the body in the vicinity of the heart, they bound the feet of the dying saintly old man and hung him up, head down. He was bathed in the scarlet mantle of his own blood, the color worn on the feast of a martyr.

The Cossacks laughed. They laughed scornfully at the starts and convulsions of the dying man hanging there, saying: "See how the Pole dances." Finally, they cut the rope and ended it all with a blow of a cavalry-sabre . . . Suddenly the alarm was sounded. The Poles were coming. They had to flee. In a flash the land was rid of the Cossacks. The long looked-for calm had finally come, but Father Bobola was dead.

(From The Life of St. Andrew Bobola, by Fr. Louis Gallagher and Paul Donovan.)

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