New Zealand's bishops are asking Catholics to offer special prayers for everyone caught in the Ukraine war by going to their local parish church on Friday to pray the Rosary.

Bishop Stephen Lowe, the Bishop of Auckland and Secretary of the NZ Catholic Bishops Conference, says visiting a church next Friday to pray the Rosary would be a show of solidarity for everyone caught in the Ukraine war.

"All over Ukraine, people are having to flee their homes because of the war.

"Leaving our homes here in Aotearoa New Zealand to go to our local church to pray on this special day would very much be showing solidarity to the people having to leave their homes in Ukraine.

"Normally we would have a Mass or advertise a time for the Rosary but with the current Covid-19 restrictions imposing a limit of 100, we are hoping people will visit their local church throughout the day.

"The bishops too will also be heading to their respective cathedrals to pray the Rosary on Friday in support of Pope Francis.

"What is important is leaving your homes on Friday to visit your local church, at a time that suits you. We will be asking all churches to be open from 7am to 7pm so as many people as possible can visit at different times during the day, in keeping with the Covid-19 restrictions."

Lowe says prayers would be offered for everyone: those who have been wounded or killed; the people caring for the wounded; refugees and for those caring for them.

"And we will pray that the Russian leadership and soldiers may have a change of heart."

Lowe says during Lent, which is about change, the conversion of the heart, "Christ calls us to love our enemies and to embrace each other as brothers and sisters.

"And as we pray for Ukraine we also remember those caught in other conflicts, including Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere."

Acting as the Universal Pastor of the Church, Francis will renew the consecration urged at Fatima more than 100 years ago.

The actual prayer of consecration will take place in St Peter's Basilica at around 6:30 pm on 25 March (Rome time); the feast of the Annunciation.

To watch the whole ceremony, international media recommends setting an alarm for 5:00 am on Saturday 26 (NZ time), or tune in at around 6:30 am Saturday to watch Pope Francis recite the prayer of consecration.

The entire service will be broadcast across Vatican News' channels—radio, YouTube, website, and Facebook—and accompanied by English-language commentary.

Source

• Catholic.org.nz
• CruxNow
• Image: Angelus News

"With regard to the international phenomenology, they are very similar," Hoser says.

"These [Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje] are certainly the three greatest pilgrimage sites. Here [at Medjugorje] we have two and a half million pilgrims a year."

Hoser's comparison of Medjugorje with Lourdes and Fatima has raised hopes that official confirmation of Medjugorje as may be possible.

"Lourdes is a great shrine based on the dogmatical truth about the Immaculate Conception and it tells us about the identity of the Mother of God, Hoser says.

"Fatima gives us a look at the contemporary history of the world, the current as well as the future."

Medjugorje's most important characteristic is "the power of grace" he says.

Between these three sites, Hoser says "there is a kind of spiritual solidarity and bondage."

"The power of grace that is felt here, the power of God's words here proclaimed, make us witnesses to many radical transformations that are happening here.

Hoser notes Medjugorje has become "the confessional of the world" .

It offers 35 confessionals with priests hearing confessions in seven different languages, with "a constant line of penitents at all hours."

Many priests say the confessions make them believe there's a supernatural grace in Medjugorje.

In regard to the apparitions of Our Lady some citizens have allegedly experienced over the past 30 years since they were children, Hoser says the Church's position continues to be "let's wait and see."

"In general terms, the message of peace that emerges from the Medjugorje phenomenon is always valid," he says.

Source

• Crux Now
• Total Croatia News
• Image: kirche-und-leben.de

The RosaryCoastToCoast website opens with a "clarion call to arms":

"We are at war. A war without borders. No one is exempt. The bloodless battle affects us all… No man is exempt. No woman excused. The fight has come full force."

Now there is "a clarion call of the Holy Spirit to engage in spiritual warfare through prayer, fasting, and sacrifice."

Our Lady gave a clarion call at Quito, LaSalette, Fatima, Akita and other apparitions. Read more

One hundred years ago, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children in a field in Fatima, Portugal.

She brought with her requests for the recitation of the rosary, for sacrifices on behalf of sinners, and a secret regarding the fate of the world.

Every local bishop since has approved the apparitions and deemed them worthy of belief, the highest recognition a Marian apparition can receive from the Church.

Miracle researcher Michael O'Neill told CNA that the Fatima apparitions could be considered the "gold standard of Marian apparitions."

"It has everything you've ever wanted to look for in a Marian apparition. It's got these secrets, the prophecies... you also have a feast day in the general Roman calendar, the approval of the local bishop, and of every pope afterwards, you have the canonization of the visionaries and the basilica that was built, so all the hallmarks of a Marian apparition are there," he said.

O'Neill records the details of Fatima, other Marian apparitions and all things miraculous on his site, miraclehunter.com.

This year, Pope Francis visited the apparition site on May 12-13, the 100th anniversary of the first Fatima apparition. The visit included the canonizations of two of the child visionaries, who died just a few years after the visions.

But even though it's been 100 years, "the messages of Fatima are as relevant today as they were in 1917," O'Neill said.

"The essence of the message is a call to conversion, and that's something that's as important in our life in modern times as it was when Mary appeared in 1917. I think this 100 year anniversary is a great opportunity for us to revisit the devotion and to re-incorporate it into our lives today."

Historical context

In 1917, the country of Portugal, like most of the rest of the world, was at war. Continue reading

Sources

• Catholic News Agency article by Mary Rezac
• Image: Schoenstatt.org

The Family Pilgrimage was organised by the Centre for Marriage and Family (CMF) to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of the Blessed Mother to three shepherd children Lucia do Santos, Francisco and Jacinta Marto at Fatima, Portugal during the height of World War I. Continue reading

Activities include a pilgrimage to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Meadowbank (Auckland)

Click here for more information

Like I said, I wasn't born yet, and I've discovered some incredible facts about the assassination attempt in St. Peter's Square while reading Fatima Mysteries, a new and beautiful book by Ignatius Press. Here's some facts I've not read anywhere else.

1. Twenty thousand people were there. The scene that day must have been traumatic for so many people, but especially those close to the incident — 20,000 people!

2. The shooter wasn't that clever. He had a passport in his pocket with a fake name and was quickly identified as a man sentenced to death just a year earlier in Turkey.

3. He apparently spared a child's life. Perhaps it was a merciful act, perhaps another motive. But John Paul II reached out and cuddled an eighteen-month-old.

The shooter, Mehmet Ali Agca, waited for the child to be returned to his mother before pulling the trigger.

4. The weapon was popular among assassins. The gun was produced en masse by the Nazis when they seized a Belgian factory. The Browning Hi Power 9mm was powerful, light, reliable, well-made. Hence, a favorite for toting assassins.

5. John Paul II said "no" to a bulletproof vest. A year earlier he was quoted in Ireland saying that "danger is an occupational hazard." That's just plain awesome.

6. Two shots were taken. Boom, boom. One after the other. Agca was "certain he would kill the pope."

7. A sad ending for the Swiss Guard. A young Swiss Guard member Alois Estermann threw himself on the pope. He was practically famous and became the commander of all the Guards in a future year.

In another future year, he and his wife were murdered and the murderer committed suicide. Pray for them all, now. Lord have mercy on us poor sinners. Continue reading

Sources

• EpicPew article by Shaun McAfee, founder of EpicPew
• Image: Marist Messenger

Contrary to a common prejudice, a scientific perspective does not rule out miracles, and the event at Fatima is, in the view of many, particularly credible.

As regards miracles in general, the usual prejudice against them takes one of two forms. The first is to claim that a scientific worldview excludes miracles, wrongly defined as breaking the laws of nature or, specifically, physics.

This prejudice rests on a misunderstanding of the scope of scientific laws, which describe how simple, idealised systems behave in isolation.

Such laws enable us to perform extraordinary feats, such as the final voyage of the Cassini spacecraft now taking place through the rings of Saturn.

But such laws say nothing about what happens when a system is not isolated, especially when a free personal agent intervenes.

To give an example, if I throw an apple in the air, its trajectory will approximate a parabola that can be predicted from its initial position and momentum, but that prediction says nothing about whether or not I choose to catch the apple.

And if I can intervene to change the trajectory of an apple then presumably God, who is all-powerful, can do the same and much more.

Hence there is no real problem with miracles from the perspective of scientific laws, since to describe how a system behaves in the absence of intervention says nothing about whether an intervention can or does take place.

A second form of the prejudice is to claim that a combination of natural causes can and should be found to explain what appears to be miraculous, reducing the miraculous to the providential.

To give one of many examples, it is not uncommon for clerics and teachers of a certain age, who find the miraculous mildly embarrassing, to claim that Jesus's feeding of the 5,000 was simply a matter of people being shamed into sharing the food they already had. Continue reading

• Fr Andrew Pinsent is research director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford University and a priest of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton

They say doctors, some of them non-believers, said Lucas's recovery could not be explained.

Pope Francis canonised the siblings on Saturday at Fátima.

Lucas was five when he fell 6.5 metres out of a window. By the time he arrivced at hospital he had suffered two heart attacks and was in a deep coma.

Doctors diagnosed a severe traumatic brain injury and a "loss of brain material" from Lucas's frontal lobe.

They said Lucas had little chance of survival. If he did live, they said he would be severely mentally disabled or even in a vegetative state.

Lucas's father Joao Baptista and his mother Lucila Yurie, appeared before reporters at the Catholic shrine in Fatima, Portugal, on Friday.

They have never discussed their son's miraculous cure with the press before.

After being told their son would be unlikely to recover they began to pray to Jesus and Our Lady of Fatima, to whom they said they have "a great devotion".

They also asked the nuns at the Carmelite convent of Campo Mouro to pray for their boy.

When the nuns got the message, Lucas's father said one of them "ran to the relics of Blessed Francisco and Jacinta, which were next to the tabernacle.

She also felt the impulse to pray the following prayer: ‘Shepherds, save this child, who is a child like you'…she also persuaded the other sisters to pray to the little shepherds to intercede for him.

"In the same way, all of us, the family, began to pray to the little shepherds, and two days later, on March 9, Lucas woke up and began to speak, even asking for his little sister."

On the 11th, he left the ICU and was discharged from the hospital a few days later.

"Since that time, Lucas "has been completely well and has no symptoms or after effects.

"He has the same intelligence (as he did before the accident), the same character, everything is the same."

Source

• Thestar.com
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: ToronotStar

Jacinta and Francisco Marto, who died in 1919 are now "Saint Jacinta and Saint Francisco". (The third "child", their cousin Lucia, died in 2005.)

Thousands of pilgrims lined Francis's route and tossed petals as his motorcade drove past. Up to a million visitors were expected.

Francis told the people of Portugal that he regarded his visit to Fátima as a pilgrimage of "hope and peace" where he would "present himself to Mary".

He asked for their support in this, saying "I need to feel you close, physically and spiritually, so that we are one heart and one mind".

He also said he hoped Catholics would continue to take notice of the message of peace the children reported 100 years ago

Last Saturday 13 May was the 100th anniversary of the first of our Lady's appearances to Saint Jacinta, Saint Francisco and their cousin Lucia. She was to appear five more times in the following months.

They said she revealed to them three secrets.

Later Lucia wrote these messages down. They foreshadowed the Second World War, hell, the rise and fall of communism and the death of a pope.

Our Lady also urged the children to pray for peace and turn away from sin.

Pope St John Paul II credited Our Lady with saving his life when an assassination attempt was made on him on 13 May 1981.

Source

• The Guardian
• Vatican Radio
• BBC News
• Image: CTV News

After canonising Saints Jacinta and Francisco, Francis spoke to the sick, reminding them "whenever we experience a cross," Jesus "has already been there ahead of us." Read more

And so, let's play the game to the extremes, and ask: What happened in the coming week a hundred years ago?

Among a few things, three poor shepherd children in Portugal received a visitation from a woman clothed in light.

They were confused by her presence but over the course of several monthly encounters, came to understand that the heavenly woman was the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ.

The location was the small city of Fatima, which was named after the favored daughter of the Prophet Mohammed during the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.

The timing was during the Great War, an event of massive destruction to human life and well-being.

The religious sentiment was atheistic, the political environment communistic, and nihilism was quickly growing as the air breathed by many.

In summary, therefore, it would seem that Fatima in 1917 would have been an uncommon place in an unlikely time for the Blessed Mother of Jesus Christ to make a house call.

Before diving into those state of affairs, we should probably ask the obvious question: Are visits like this common?

I mean, we did just say that the Blessed Virgin Mary, who historically lived in the first century of the common era, came and appeared to three children in the early twentieth century. Do things like this happen?

For those who have no faith or spiritual openness, very few things can be said to convince them that such occurrences are possible.

For persons of faith, there is at least the acceptance that such apparitions could happen. Usually, the believer's own temperament and history, combined with the actual story and message of the spiritual event, usually determine whether she will accept this specific supernatural event or not.

And so, did Mary make a visit to Fatima one hundred years ago? Continue reading

Sources

• Crux article by Fr Jeffrey F Kirby, a Catholic priest of the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina.
• Image: Republika

The Catholic Church in Portugal says it has assembled over 15,000 pages of testimony and documentation to support Lucia's case.

Lucia was one of three shepherd children who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in the town of Fatima 100 years ago.

Lucia's cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who also witnessed the apparitions, died when they were aged nine and 11 of pneumonia. They were beatified in 2000.

The case for Sister Lucia's beatification is the first step toward canonisation as a saint.

The documentation will be sent to the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

The Catholic bishop of Coimbra, Virgilio Antunes, said the documentation on Sister Lucia took eight years to compile. It includes information from 11,000 letters she wrote as well as some 61 witness statements.

If the Vatican congregation's experts agree Lucia lived a virtuous life, her case will be sent to the pope, who signs a decree attesting to the candidate's virtues.

Pope Francis is to visit Fatima in May, to mark the centenary of Our Lady's visitation to the children.

Source

• Catholic Herald
• Yahoo News
• Image: The Call to Fatima

Mary appeared there six times, once a month from May through October.

Most people know about the Miracle of the Sun during that October 13 apparition that was witnessed by at least 70,000 people.

But are other little-known or forgotten facts connected with the Fatima apparitions . Read more

It will mark the 100th anniversary of Our Lady's appearance at Fatima, Portugal.

Pope Francis has granted the opportunity from 27 November 2016 until 26 November 2017. Read more

Some dispute the number, but there was certainly a very large crowd. Look at photograph of the crowd.

View photograph of the event

Read an eye witness account

Many attempts have been made to explain what happened

Here are ten "scientific" explanations for what happened.

View photograph of the event

Desde la Fe, the weekly of the archdiocese of Mexico, wrote of a statement from Sr Lucia dos Santos.

This comes as Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced his intention to promote same-sex marriage in the country, the Catholic News Agency reported.

The Mexican paper recalled comments Cardinal Carlo Caffarra made to the Italian press in 2008, three years after the death of Sr Lucia.

Cardinal Caffarra was asked about a prophecy of Sr Lucia that spoke about "the final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan".

The cardinal said several years previously, he had written to Sr Lucia's bishop, asking for her prayers.

This came after St John Paul II had commissioned Cardinal Caffarra to plan and establish the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family

The cardinal received an unexpected response, bearing Sr Lucia's signature.

"In that letter we find written: ‘The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about marriage and the family'," the cardinal said.

"Don't be afraid, she added, because whoever works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought against and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.

"Then she concluded: ‘nevertheless, Our Lady has already crushed his head'."

Cardinal Caffarra added that "speaking again with John Paul II, you could feel that the family was the core, since it has to do with the supporting pillar of creation, the truth of the relationship between man and woman, between the generations".

"If the foundational pillar is damaged, the entire building collapses and we're seeing this now, because we are right at this point and we know it."

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: The Call to Fatima

Portuguese production company Imaginew said Mourinho will be the voice of the Pontiff in four languages - Portuguese, English, Spanish and Italian, the Catholic Herald reported.

These are "the languages of the countries where he [Mourinho] has already been a champion", the company said.

The film, called Fe, is being made to mark the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to three children in Fatima.

It is scheduled to premiere on May 13, 2017, the centenary of the first apparition.

The choice of Mourinho has been approved by the Vatican, according to reports in Portugal.

Rui Pedro Oliveira, who signed Mourinho for the voiceover for Imaginew, said the football star manager took up the offer "without reticence or demands".

Mourinho is expected to donate his fee from the film to a charity for underprivileged children.

The 52-year-old Portuguese manager, who is regarded as one of the greatest football bosses of all time, has spoken of his Catholicism.

"I believe totally, clearly," he told the Telegraph in an interview last year.

"Every day I pray, every day I speak with [Jesus]. I don't go to the church every day, not even every week. I go when I feel I need to. And when I'm in Portugal, I always go."

He said he prays for his family life and for happiness.

"But I can say the reality is I never go to the church to speak with him about football. Never!"

He and his wife Tami support several causes including a Catholic food programme in Setúbal, Portugal.

Mourinho's first job was teaching children with Down's syndrome and with mental disabilities.

From there he went on to coaching 16-year-olds before entering professional football.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• The Telegraph
• Image: Givemesport.com

Such claims, expressed in recent articles, were described by the Vatican as "pure inventions" and "absolutely untrue".

The claims relate to when the Pope emeritus was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Vatican said Benedict "confirms decisively" that "the publication of the Third Secret of Fatima is complete".

Continue reading