Posted on 07/14/2025 1:00:18 PM PDT by ebb tide
The message of Fatima relates to the “practical apostasy of our time,” Cardinal Raymond Burke said this weekend.
Offering Mass on Sunday to mark the 108th anniversary of the third apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, Cardinal Burke homilized about the importance of the First Saturday devotions and the import of the message of Fatima for current times.
“The message speaks about the practical apostasy of our time that is the going away from Christ by so many in the Church and the violence and death which are its fruit,” he said.
Expanding on his commentary about individuals within the Catholic Church, Burke added:
Many – while they may not directly espouse heretical teachings – in practice reject the truth and love which flows unceasingly and immeasurably from the glorious pierced heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Instead they embrace the confusion, lies, and violence of contemporary culture. Their lives contradict the most fundamental truths of the faith.
Burke’s Mass took place at the headquarters of the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima in New Jersey, forming part of the annual celebrations held by the Marian movement to commemorate the apparitions of Our Lady to the three young visionaries of Fatima in 1917: Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto and Venerable Lucia dos Santos. The Blue Army, founded in 1947, is a prominent international body dedicated to promoting the message of Fatima and in 2010 was recognized by the Vatican as a Public International Association of the Faithful.
Sunday’s Mass served to particularly highlight the July 13 apparition of Our Lady to the three children, during which she showed them a vision of hell and imparted to them the three-fold secret.
Explaining the vision of hell to the children, Our Lady of Fatima said:
You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate 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 persecutions 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.
Burke also, now 77, has long been a champion of the apparitions of Fatima, the messages given there and the devotion of the First Saturdays.
The topics of the third secret and the Consecration of Russia have marked a particular element of conflict in the life of the Church. In 2000, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s CDF published what he described as the “entirety” of the Third Secret of Fatima, a point hotly contested by numerous Fatima scholars and clerics.
More recently, in 2016, Father Ingo Dollinger – a personal friend of Ratzinger – told LifeSite’s Maike Hickson that Ratzinger had told him in 2000 that “there is more than what we published.”
READ: Archbishop Viganò: Third Secret of Fatima has not yet been fully published
Dollinger reported that he had been told by Ratzinger that the published part of the Secret was authentic and that the unpublished part of the Secret speaks about “a bad council and a bad Mass” that was to come in the near future. The Vatican, in a rare intervention, issued a statement reportedly from then Pope Emeritus Benedict, contradicting Fr. Dollinger’s statement and declaring “the publication of the Third Secret of Fatima is complete.”
Similar peculiar Vatican workings were on display regarding the consecration of Russia, which popes repeatedly refused to do despite Our Lady of Fatima’s repeated request.
READ: Why the Vatican previously refused to consecrate Russia as Our Lady asked?
The request was made by Our Lady in 1917, then repeated in 1929. Despite this, the popes did not heed the request. Though Pope Pius XII made a consecration of the Church and humanity to the Immaculate Heart, he did not fulfill the specific request, despite being faced with the global catastrophe and bloodshed of the Second World War.
Sr. Lucia received a revelation from Our Lord in 1943, responding to this action of Pope Pius XII: “Because of the act of consecration made by His Holiness, He [Christ] promises that the war will end shortly. But since it was incomplete, the conversion of Russia is postponed.”
Particularly, the famous 1984 consecration, defended by many as having finally fulfilled the request, did not in fact name Russia. Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes confirmed in 2017 that in 1984, John Paul II actually “held back [from mentioning] Russia explicitly because the Vatican diplomats had urgently asked him not to mention this country because otherwise political conflicts might perhaps arise.”
Speaking at a Fatima conference in 2017, Burke commented – as many scholars have argued – that while he did not doubt John Paul II’s intentions, “it is evident that the consecration was not carried out in the manner requested by Our Lady.”
Pope Francis famously made a consecration of Russia and Ukraine, one which Burke defended as meeting the requirements. Speaking after the 2022 consecration, Burke said:
Now he [Francis] himself made no mention of Fatima and never claimed that he was trying to fulfill what Our Lady asked of us at Fatima; but nevertheless, the prayer will be heard, I believe, and Our Lord will respond to it.
Debate has continued, however, and other prelates – such as Bishop Joseph Strickland and Bishop Bernard Fellay – have attested the 2022 consecration did not meet the requirements. Some Fatima experts have additionally joined their voices to this number, urging Pope Leo XIV to make a consecration as required.
Dollinger reported that he had been told by Ratzinger that the published part of the Secret was authentic and that the unpublished part of the Secret speaks about “a bad council and a bad Mass” that was to come in the near future.
“Bad council and bad Mass” Ping
Jesus said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The fruits of Vatican II have been rotten, resulting in a defective Mass. Seems pretty clear to me.
It seems to me that Jesus Christ said it many years before.
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