Your Eminence, you are heretical,
schismatic and scandalous.

“Satan roves freely through the Church” (Father Georges de Nantes)

THE Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena, presented by Cardinal Fernandez and approved by Pope Francis on May 4 2024, make a radical change to the procedures that have been used in the Church for centuries and proscribe a genuine discernment of spirits.

On the one hand, the cardinal prohibits his dicastery and the bishops of the world from recognising and proclaiming the supernatural character of any particular revelation, apparition or Eucharistic miracle. Furthermore, these new procedures no longer involve identifying the origin and nature of the “phenomenon”, and determining whether it is from God or the Devil. Discernment of spirits has therefore been removed from the procedure.

By imposing these new Norms, Cardinal Fernandez is bringing about a veritable revolution in the Church, since they profoundly alter the function and mission of her Pastors, who for two thousand years have been defending their flock against Satan’s most subtle stratagems. Cardinal Ottaviani, the last Pro-Prefect of the Holy Office before it was destroyed by the reformation of Vatican II, evoked this point against the neo-Modernists: “Jesus Himself warned us against ‘false Christs and false prophets’ who would arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect (Mt 24:24). Events of this kind have occurred since the earliest days of the Church (Ac 8:9). This is why it is the right and duty of the Church’s Magisterium to pass judgement on the truth and nature of facts or revelations claimed to be the effect of a special intervention of God”. ●

FIRST SCANDALOUS NOVELTY: 
THE SUPERNATURAL WILL NO LONGER BE GIVEN CANONICAL RECOGNITION

In his letter presenting the Norms, the Cardinal announces that the departments of his dicastery and all Catholic bishops are no longer authorised to make a positive doctrinal judgement on a preternatural manifestation, i.e. a manifestation that appears to be outside natural laws and that may have originated with either God or the Devil. Anything that is supernatural and divine can no longer be recognised as such.

There will “normally be no declaration on the supernatural character of the phenomenon discerned, i.e. on the possibility of affirming with moral certainty that it comes from a decision of God who willed it directly” (Presentation).

“As a rule, neither the Diocesan Bishop, nor the Episcopal Conferences, nor the Dicastery will declare that these phenomena are of supernatural origin, even if a Nihil obstat is granted”. (Art. 23)

“The Diocesan Bishop will also take care to ensure that the faithful do not consider any of the determinations as an approval of the supernatural nature of the phenomenon itself.” (Art. 22,2).

Eminence, you are scandalous. Yes, you are a stumbling block for the best bishops, theologians and faithful who know that Heaven can descend to earth, especially the Queen of Heaven, and that the hierarchical Church is assisted by the Holy Spirit to examine every preternatural manifestation and to pass judgement on it. Your proscription offends against and upsets our faith, because you seem to deny that there can be any certainty about the reality of an objective, physical appearance of a glorious body on this earth.

You are well aware of the break you are making with the traditional practice of the Church. You write: “In the past, the Holy See seemed to accept that Bishops would make statements such as these: “The faithful are justified in believing it to be indubitable and certain.” (Decree of the Bishop of Grenoble, September 19, 1851)”.

I beg your pardon, Your Eminence! Why do you say: seemed to accept? The Holy See did not seem to accept, it indeed accepted, since the Council of Trent had decreed that the responsibility for judging extraordinary phenomena fell to the local Ordinary. We will come back to this later.

In 1851, the Holy See accepted the judgement of the Bishop of Grenoble: Blessed Pope Pius IX had no reservations about this sentence (Louis Bassette, Le fait de la Salette, Cerf, 1955, p. 218 and 224). In the indult of 2 December 1852, the Pope even authorised a solemn feast and a liturgical office to commemorate "the Apparition of the Mother of God, in human form, at La Salette".

Cardinal Fernandez continues: “These expressions conflicted with the Church’s own conviction that the faithful did not have to accept the authenticity of these events.”

What is this alleged conviction of the Church? Where is it expressed? In the writings of Joseph Ratzinger? Certainly, your references and notes show this. You therefore present the assertions of a Modernist German theologian who did not believe in the Ascension as being the Church’s conviction.●

On the other hand, the Church’s “conviction”, or rather the truths taught by the Church on the subject of apparitions, are expressed precisely in all the episcopal decrees and judgements recognising the great apparitions of the last two centuries.

Let us quote the decree of the Bishop of Grenoble, dated September 19, 1851, for the 5^th anniversary of the Apparition of La Salette, which you mention. In it, Bishop de Bruillard affirmed that this apparition “bears in itself all the characteristics of truth, and that the faithful are justified in believing it to be indubitable and certain” (Art. 1). A similar statement was made in Bishop Laurence’s letter of January 18, 1862 recognising the apparitions of Lourdes.

Bishop de Bruillard continued: “That is why, in order to bear witness to God and to the glorious Virgin Mary of our deep gratitude, we authorise public devotion to Our Lady of La Salette. We allow Her to be preached and to draw the practical and moral consequences from this great Event.” (Art. 3) “We expressly forbid the faithful and priests of our diocese ever to speak out publicly, by word of mouth or in writing, against the Fact that we proclaim today, and which therefore demands the respect of all.” (Art. 5)

Finally, he concluded by exhorting the faithful to obey Our Lady: “We beseech you, our dearest brothers, in view of your heavenly and even earthly interests, to do seriously some soul searching, to do penance for your sins, and particularly for those you have committed against the second and third commandments of God”. A confraternity of reparation for blasphemy and the profanation of Sundays was soon be raised to the rank of archconfraternity, under the name of Our Reconciling Lady of La Salette, by the Pope himself, and enriched with numerous indulgences.

“We implore you, our beloved brothers: be docile to the voice of Mary Who calls you to penance and Who, on behalf of Her Son, threatens you with spiritual and temporal evils if you remain insensitive to Her maternal warnings and harden your hearts”.

Moreover, in 1854, in a long report, the new Ordinary of Grenoble, Bishop Ginoulhiac, replied rigorously, point by point, in forty-seven pages, to all the critical allegations in Father Déléon’s pamphlet against the Apparition, the authenticity of which his predecessor had proclaimed.

Cardinal Fernandez wants to put an end to what has been done “even recently”: “some Bishops have wanted to make statements such as: ‘I confirm the absolute truth of the facts’ and ‘the faithful must indisputably consider as true’, etc.”.

Your Eminence, you are certainly scandalous. Because, let us repeat, you are attacking and offending our faith, the faith of the Church in the divine truth of authentic celestial manifestations. And “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” (Mk 9:42).

FALLACIOUS PRETEXTS: THE MASDU WOMAN.

Your Eminence, you put forward inconsistent and fallacious pretexts to force the bishops to stop fulfilling one of the most important duties of their office: you suggest that certain trials were not perfect, that there were judicial errors, contradictory judgements, etc.

You, however, give only one single example of an apparition that gave rise to successive sentences that were so divergent. The dates given allow us to affirm you are referring to “Our Lady of All Peoples”, an apparition that is clearly diabolical, as Father de Nantes demonstrated.● Over the past seventy-five years, there has in fact been a series of contradictory statements on the subject: the 1956 episcopal condemnation was withdrawn, even though it had been confirmed twice by the Holy Office, and the alleged apparition was rehabilitated by two bishops, in 1996 and 2002 respectively, only to be condemned again by another bishop, etc.

It should be pointed out that a judgement on miracles, apparitions and revelations is only as good as the grounds on which it is based. A judgement pronounced by a bishop who is himself a heretic or an accomplice of heretics, who approves false apparitions or miracles, is obviously worthless.

Our Father called this alleged manifestation of Our Lady: the Masdu Woman, because her ‘revelations’ were so much in line with the conciliar novelties: her ‘messages’, fundamentally heretical, announced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, finally poured throughout the world (!) to bring about a new undifferentiated, humanitarian and Progressivist religion, which is what the Masdu is.

The episcopal rehabilitations of ‘Our Lady of All Peoples’ in 1996 and 2002 are in fact severe indictments of the conciliar reformation. The approval of her heretical ‘messages’ was the work of bishops disorientated by the spirit and heresies of Vatican II.

A BREAK WITH THE UNANIMOUS TRADITION.

These new Norms go against the unanimous tradition of the Church, illustrated by one of the decrees of the Fifth Lateran Council, which dealt with the question of the discernment of spirits during its eleventh session. The Constitution on Preaching, adopted on December 19, 1516, dealt at length with various ‘prophecies’, ‘revelations’ and ‘inspirations’. Its teaching and decisions appear to be a remarkable statement of the Church’s position on extraordinary mystical phenomena. On the one hand, there is extreme severity against all impostors who have the audacity to mislead the faithful with alleged inspirations from the Holy Spirit, and on the other, great care is taken not to hinder the truly privileged of God and their authentic divine revelations. When the Holy See or the Ordinary of a diocese “grants authorisation” to “publish and preach” a revelation, an apparition or a miracle, they propose them to the faithful as truly coming from God.

Fifty years later, in 1563, during its 25^th Session, the Council of Trent addressed the question of “new miracles”, the word “miraculum” being taken in its broadest sense to encompass all extraordinary supernatural phenomena. The Fathers of Trent charged the local Ordinary with immediate responsibility for the investigation and canonical judgement of all ‘miracles’ occurring in Christendom. The bishop concerned was only required to “consult the Supreme Pontiff” before handing down his final sentence.

The Council of Trent had laid down the procedure that had been followed for the last five centuries. The Church’s experience has thus been enriched by the theological memoirs of the canonical commissions of enquiry and the Pastoral Letters from the bishops passing judgement on the most important cases: the Eucharistic miracle of Faverney, the apparitions of the Immaculate Virgin to Saint Catherine Labouré, to Alphonse Ratisbonne, to the children of La Salette, to Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, to the children of Pontmain and then of Fatima, and the miraculous tears of the Virgin of Syracuse.

The hierarchical Church has thus pronounced reasoned and firm judgements on the authenticity of supernatural facts, leaving no room for doubt. She has sovereign authority in this domain, and it is her strictest duty to pass judgement on each case prudently and forcefully.

This is why, Your Eminence, we accuse you of being schismatic by breaking with this age-old tradition. By issuing new Norms that break with the Church's traditional rules for carrying out the necessary discernment of spirits, you are separating yourself from the Catholics of old who, for love of God and His Blessed Mother, wanted to know whether or not They had appeared again on our earth. Furthermore, you are also separating yourselves from the good Catholics of today, clerics and lay people, who expect the hierarchy to deliver clear verdicts on supernatural phenomena, particularly on the apparitions of Pontevedra in 1925 and 1926, in order to satisfy the Blessed Virgin’s urgent requests to console Her Immaculate Heart, so outraged.

Need we remind you that Father de Nantes accused Popes Paul VI and John Paul II of schism, not only schism shown by feeling and attitudes towards the best Catholics, but also schism shown by actions against the Church because these Pontiffs showed “a lack of interest and even disdain for all the traditional rites and institutions of the Catholic Church”.

We are levelling the same accusation at you, Your Eminence, because, as we shall see, you are renouncing your role as judge of determining what comes from God and what comes from the Devil in the Church, and you even claim to forbid all the bishops of the world from putting this discernment into practice.

SECOND SCANDALOUS NOVELTY:
THE DEVIL DOES NOT EXIST

The title of the document announced the astonishing novelty: it is no longer a question of discerning spirits to find out which Spirit inspires preternatural events, whether it is the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Satan, but of proceeding in the discernment of alleged supernatural phenomena, and of a supernatural which must remain presumed at best!

Satan is completely ignored in this document. If there is one mention of diabolical illusion, it is in the cardinal's introductory letter, inside and at the end of a quotation from Karl Rahner; one of the editors of the document must have objected to it being censored!

Whenever we would expect to see the Devil mentioned, we remain solely in the realm of possible human inventions or manipulations, but never in the realm of Satan's machinations.

“There is the possibility of believers being misled by an event that is attributed to a divine initiative but is merely the product of someone’s imagination, desire for novelty, tendency to fabricate falsehoods (mythomania), or inclination toward lying. Could the person in question be inspired by the Devil? This is never said.

“Declaring an event as “not supernatural” remains, but only when there are objective signs that clearly indicate manipulation at the basis of the phenomenon. For instance, this might occur when an alleged visionary admits to having lied or when evidence shows that the blood on a crucifix belongs to the alleged visionary, etc.” Certainly, a manipulation, yet the possibility of diabolical deception is never considered.

The cardinal lists the various reasons why a phenomenon should be “found to be not supernatural. This decision must be based on facts and evidence that are concrete and proven. For instance, if an alleged visionary admits to having lied or if credible witnesses provide elements of proof that allow one to discover that the phenomenon was based on fabrication, an erroneous intention, or mythomania.” And when a presumed visionary is the victim of diabolical possession or infestation?

There is no mention of such a possibility throughout the document. As if the Prince of lies never acted, as if he never disguised himself as an Angel of Light to deceive souls and lead them to Hell.

Among the negative criteria (Art. 15), not a word is said about the signs that unmask a diabolical manifestation. Yet psychopathological imbalance and simulation often go hand in hand with diabolical intervention. This was the case with Mother Magdalena de la Cruz at the beginning of the 16^th century and, in the 20^th century, with the visionaries of Ezquioga, in Spain, and above all with the visionaries of Medjugorje, but we will come back to this later.

The warnings of the Apostles are neglected and forgotten.

For example, the urgent recommendations of Saint John: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world”. (1 Jn 4:1) And this warning from Saint Paul to the Christians of Thessalonica: “The coming of the Lawless One by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved”. (2 Th 2:9-11)

It is the active and evil presence of the Prince of this world that has always been the raison d'être of the discernment of spirits by the hierarchical Church, a discernment absolutely necessary to preserve souls from all diabolical disorientation.

Having established the preternatural nature of a phenomenon, it is this second phase of discernment that is the most important and the most difficult: is it a divine phenomenon or a diabolical phenomenon? In fact, both answers are possible, since it has been proven that the “signs and wonders” of the Evil One sometimes bear a striking resemblance to those that authenticate true divine manifestations.

For Cardinal Fernandez, however, Satan does not exist. And so he becomes his accomplice: the Devil can act with complete freedom in the Church, for the loss of souls!

This is entirely in keeping with the spirit of the disastrous reformation decreed at the Second Vatican Council that abolished the Congregation of the Index and demolished the Holy Office. So much so that Father de Nantes observed after the Council: “Satan roves freely through the Church”.●

THIRD SCANDALOUS NOVELTY:
NOTHING PURELY DIVINE

According to Cardinal Fernandez, in extraordinary mystical phenomena, the supernatural is often mixed with dubious human elements. The prelate takes up a Modernist thesis developed by Karl Rahner and René Laurentin: “It may happen that the Holy Spirit’s action in a specific situation – which can be rightly appreciated – might appear to be mixed with purely human elements (such as personal desires, memories, and sometimes obsessive thoughts), or with ‘some error of a natural order, not due to bad intentions, but to the subjective perception of the phenomenon’ (II, Art. 15, 2). After all, ‘an experience alleged to be a vision simply cannot compel one either to accept it as accurate in every detail or to reject it altogether as a human or diabolical illusion or fraud.’ (Rahner).” (Letter of presentation)

“Some phenomena, which could have a supernatural origin, at times appear connected to confused human experiences, theologically inaccurate expressions, or interests that are not entirely legitimate.” (Art. 14)

So there are no apparitions as limpidly true and divine as was once thought. Ambiguity would be inherent in this relative, uncertain domain of extraordinary mystical phenomena; good and evil, divine and human, would be found everywhere, in varying proportions from case to case, and even varying over time for any given case.

An image will illustrate the absurdity of this theory. In his 15^th century treatise De distinctione verarum visionum a falsis, the wise Gerson shrewdly compared visions and revelations to different types of money: real money and counterfeit money. Cardinal Fernandez, on the other hand, claims that it is in the very nature of money to be more or less true and false at the same time!

This new theory is even more pernicious than it is absurd: by unduly devaluing the real gold coin of authentic divine apparitions by 50 % and by overvaluing, no less unduly, the false coin of doubtful or fraudulent apparitions by 50 %, we equalise them in an average assessment, which is as inaccurate for one as for the other.

It was obviously Gerson who was right, echoing the unanimous tradition of the Church: “Just as there is genuine money and counterfeit money recognised by the presence or absence of all the characteristics of true money, so there are true revelations and false ones recognised by the presence or absence of all the characteristics of true apparitions”. Only counterfeiters have an interest in making it impossible to distinguish between real and counterfeit money!

Twenty centuries of Church history prove that there are marvellous divine apparitions that are authentic messages from Heaven to earth. But there are also false apparitions, which are pathological or diabolical counterfeits, and we must be wary of them and denounce them. It is this twofold certainty that has always inspired the conduct of the Church's pastors.

Discernment of spirits is all the more necessary because a fraudulent or diabolical apparition, far from being entirely bad, often has positive aspects.

On the contrary, an authentic divine apparition must be true, good and worthy of God in itself and in all its circumstances, to the exclusion of any decisive negative character.

The very principle of this theory, namely that in divine revelations the divine and the human elements can often only be roughly disentangled, is Modernist. It is the negation of any faithful transmission of a message from Heaven. It removes all objectivity, reliability and importance from authentic messages from Christ or His Blessed Mother. On the other hand, it allows all the counterfeit manifestations that the Prince of lies is multiplying throughout the world to be tolerated as presumed divine manifestations!

Your Eminence, you are a Modernist, in other words a heretic. This is clear from your entire document. And, abomination of desolation, you give your heresy the force of law.

THE TRIUMPH OF MODERNISM

In his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Saint Pius X denounced agnosticism as the basis for Modernism, namely the claim that “God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as regards history, He must not be considered as an historical subject” (Art. 6).

The renunciation by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of “positive recognition of the divine origin of alleged supernatural phenomena” is a practical agnosticism, even if it is not explicitly theorised. For when Our Lord God intervenes, He gives explicit signs of His presence or of the presence of His messengers, which His Church has always been able to recognise through a wise discernment of spirits. Why are you abandoning this discernment? Unless your intention is to maintain that “God can never be the direct object of science "?

CHARISMATIC IMMANENTISM.

There is never any clear mention in these new Norms of an apparition of Our Lord or His Blessed Mother descended from Heaven in Their glorious bodies. This seems to suggest that, for Cardinal Fernandez, They are not “historical subjects”, alive and free to intervene here below, in Their Kingdom.

On the other hand, a certain Spirit, whom Fernandez identifies with the “Holy Spirit”, seems to be able to act anywhere and in any way. The epigraph to the Introduction says: “Listening to the Spirit Who Works in the Faithful People of God”. This is the quintessence of immanentism, which Saint Pius X denounced as the positive heresy of Modernism: the claim that God reveals Himself in the conscience of ‘believers’, and not outside them.

In the Introduction, after recalling that the “revealed Word” contains the whole of Revelation, it is written that, “in the time of the Church”, this “Spirit leads believers of every era ‘into all the truth’ ” ((Jn 16:13), to ‘bring about an ever deeper understanding of Revelation’ ” (no. 3). There is no question of the mediation of the teaching Church.

Strictly speaking, this is already Protestant illuminism: each believer (Lutheran, Pentecostal, Jehovah's Witness or Catholic...) with his Bible in hand, listens to what the Spirit is saying to him, who “guides him in understanding the mystery of Christ” (Art. 3). This kind of illuminism has tragically become commonplace in our conciliar Church since the Second Vatican Council's constitution Dei verbum. On the other hand, we must remember that what Our Lord says in (Jn 16:13: “the Spirit of truth will guide you into all the truth”, was promised to His Apostles, and it is their successors who have the duty of scrupulously transmitting the deposit of Faith that was revealed to them, and of teaching it to the faithful.

Under the pontificate of Pope Francis, an emulator of John Paul II and his so-called Catechism of the Catholic Church, this illuminism has taken on a disproportionate scale, notably with the Synod on Synodality: the Holy Spirit is supposed to inspire all the members of the People of God equally, who should therefore be consulted to direct the Church.

ILLUMINISM: “THE SPIRIT” ACTING IN THE “PEOPLE OF GOD”.

This same illuminism has become the supreme criterion for discerning presumed supernatural phenomena. The Nihil obstat, which henceforth is the highest degree of recognition, is based on the observation of “signs of the action of the Holy Spirit in the midst ^[18] of a given spiritual experience” (Art. 17). In note 18, we read: “The expression ‘in the midst of’ does not mean ‘by means of’ or ‘through,’ but indicates that even though a certain context is not necessarily of supernatural origin, the Holy Spirit is working good things

Question: how can the presence of the Holy Spirit be discerned? Nowhere in the document is this specified. Is it by the presence of spiritual fruits of piety, of conversion? The Devil can let such good things happen around one of his deceptions, only to do greater harm later, when he shows his hand, causing an enormous scandal. History offers dark examples of this with Mother Magdalena de la Cruz in the 16^th century and Nicole Tavernier. There are also false seers whom the Devil allows to do a certain amount of good, because they are the indispensable guarantors of messages that are pernicious for the Church, or because they are a means of distracting pastors and the faithful from true heavenly apparitions and requests, the fulfilment of which he fears: “for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Co 11:14).

But the Holy Spirit, the true Spirit, cannot tolerate any human lie or diabolical trickery. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, He dwells in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and it is always with reference to Their work that He acts. In this respect, the choice of the expression ‘in the midst of’’ is an unspeakable act of perfidy, as if the Holy Spirit could and wanted to act anywhere and in any way.

The new Norms even stipulate that if the local Ordinary finds that purported fruits of the Spirit are actually rotten fruits, he must endeavour to “purify them of negative and problematic elements”●, but not to prohibit worship so as not to “upset (sic) the People of God”●.

According to these new criteria, the Gospa's apparitions at Medjugorje, a Satanic sham designed to divert the faithful’s attention from Fatima,● could be given a Nihil obstat, as Cardinal Fernandez envisaged at the press conference on May 17. Yes, as we all know, if there is one place where the ‘Spirit’ blows in gale force, with large crowds, abundant collections, and even rosaries and confessions, it is certainly Medjugorje!

“But the Gospa said that ‘all religions are equal before God’ during her apparition on October 1, 1981!” (cf. ibid., p. 12).

“That does not matter,” replied Cardinal Fernandez. “The Spirit who inspires the people of God has spoken. Moreover, our Holy Father Francis also said so in his Abu Dhabi declaration.”

With the fallacious pretext of ‘listening to the people of God’, the ecclesiastical hierarchy will be free to exercise its arbitrary power, recognising these so-called ‘fruits of the Spirit’ wherever it wishes. Approval of the Medjugorje pilgrimage would serve their pastoral objectives and be in line with their illuminism. It would be the triumph of Satan, instead of submission to the divine will revealed at Fatima, Pontevedra and Tuy.

THE “PASTORAL CARE OF SHRINES”.

In the Apostolic Constitution Predicate Evangelium, on the reform of the Curia (2022), the Dicastery for Evangelisation, which is now the most important, before the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, was given the mission “to promote an organic pastoral care in shrines, as dynamic centres of continuing evangelisation” (Art. 56 § 2).

It should be remembered that ‘evangelisation’ is not to be understood in the strict sense of the expansion of the Roman Church by winning souls to Christ, but in the Wojtylian sense of ‘service to the world’, of ‘promotion of human dignity’, under a certain evangelical veneer, with a view to establishing the ‘civilisation of love’.

So the Vatican has its sights set on shrines, which are the last refuge for Catholic faith and piety. These, however, need to be brought into line with the spirit of the ongoing ‘Synodal Reformation’. Acknowledging the veracity of a heavenly intervention that would impose itself on the Church contradicts too much the spirit of absolute religious freedom at the foundation of their ‘universal brotherhood’, especially if the divine message calls for conversion and penance, and reminds people of the existence of Hell and Heaven! Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernandez are therefore doing away with the recognition of supernatural phenomena. How much more would the introduction of the devotion of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary disturb their Progressivist-Modernist pastoral approach, which tends towards interfaith activities and the service of the modern world!

“God is not mocked.” Ga 6:7 They are mad, blinded, in their revolt. Our Lord will accomplish His plan in spite of them and against their will, their chimeras will disappear, while the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph. May they still be of this world to see it and convert! But in the meantime, Our Lady is in great sorrow.

LET US PREPARE FOR THE CENTENARY OF PONTEVEDRA 
THE TEARS OF OUR HEAVENLY MOTHER

Cardinal Fernandez quotes a sentence from the judgement published by the bishops of Sicily on December 12, 1953, concerning the weeping of a bust of the Immaculate Heart, in the city of Syracuse, a miraculous phenomenon that was witnessed fifty-eight times in succession over four days, from August 29 to September 1, 1953. Here it is: “The reality of the lacrimations cannot be doubted.”

The Cardinal claims that this assertion is too categorical, that it has the disadvantage of forcing the faithful to believe it, and he continues: “Therefore, a few months later, the Holy Office of the time specified ‘that it had not yet made any decision regarding the Madonnina delle Lacrime.’ (October 2, 1954).” The word ‘therefore’ is an act of perfidy. It suggests that the Holy Office was opposed to such sentences. In fact, his statement only shows that the dicastery acted with a certain tardiness.

The hierarchical Church had very quickly and very wisely reached its verdict, thanks to an exemplary investigation led and organised by the Ordinary of Syracuse, Archbishop Baranzini. The city's ecclesiastical tribunal, set up for the occasion, gathered the testimony of 188 witnesses, and scientific analysis of the liquid emanating from the eyes of the plaster statuette showed it to be entirely similar to human tears.●.

As early as September 10, Archbishop Baranzini was able to send an initial report of the events to Cardinal Pizzardo, Secretary of the Holy Office. Then, on September 24, he went to Rome. There he met Cardinal Pizzardo and Cardinal Ottaviani, Pro-secretary of the Holy Office. On the 27^th, he was received by Pope Pius XII. On October 7, he appointed a medical commission to study the testimonies of miraculous cures, some three hundred of which had been reported by mid-November.

Finally, on December 12, a little over three months after the event, the Sicilian episcopate, gathered around Cardinal Ruffini, gave its verdict in an official communiqué. The cardinal explained his decision in a radio message:

“The Madonna was seen weeping for four days, on August 29, 30, 31 and September 1; and she wept with such abundance that these tears permeated many absorbent cotton wads and could be the subject of scientific expertise.

“The bishops of Sicily, at their meeting in Bagheria, in the Villa San Cataldo, having carefully examined the numerous sworn depositions of witnesses above all suspicion, and having taken note of the positive results of the diligent chemical analyses to which the tears taken from the holy image were subjected, unanimously issued the judgement that the reality of the facts cannot be doubted.

“Consequently, they expressed the wish that such a merciful manifestation of our heavenly Mother would provoke the entire population to a salutary penitence and a more ardent devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and that a shrine would be built without delay to perpetuate the memory of the prodigy.”

Furthermore, on May 9, 1954, at the blessing of the first stone of the sanctuary, Cardinal Ruffini gave a moving speech: “Everyone wonders why the Blessed Virgin wept like that for four long days. If we recall the famous apparitions at Lourdes and Fatima, the answer is easy. She wept in Sicily, in Syracuse, because here Her tears would not flow in vain; because here a multitude of souls would strive to console Her and to incite others to console Her.”

Moreover, on the occasion of a Marian Congress in Sicily, Pius XII gave his decision on the miraculous tears of the Virgin of Syracuse on October 17, 1954, a fortnight after the declaration of the Holy Office mentioned by Fernandez. In a message broadcast on the radio, the Supreme Pontiff declared: “It is with deep emotion that we have learned of the unanimous declaration of the Episcopate of Sicily on the reality of this event. Will men understand the mysterious language of Mary's tears?” He explained: “Mary is always nourished by love and pity for the human race, to whom She has been given as Mother.”

It is not insignificant that Cardinal Fernandez, who is obstructing the reparatory devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary with his new Norms, should attack this miracle of Syracuse, where Our Lady manifested Her anguish and sorrow.

If She really and physically wept in Italy, in 1953, it was because of a mystery of iniquity: deceived by unworthy prelates – Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini was still at the Vatican as Substitute at the Secretariat of State – Pius XII had once again refused to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to approve devotion of reparation. This mystery of iniquity is still at work today: if Mary Immaculate weeps in this year 2024, it is because this devotion has still not been approved.

Father Ricardo Figueiredo, a young Portuguese theologian, recently showed that Venerable Sister Lucia practised the virtue of fortitude to a heroic degree when fulfilling her mission as messenger of Mary Immaculate, and particularly when, despite all the obstacles she encountered, she made the revelations of Pontevedra known to her superiors and spiritual directors●. Let us follow in her footsteps as we prepare for the centenary of the apparitions at Pontevedra, by spreading reparatory devotion in our Catholic Counter-Reformation circles, our families, our parishes and our places of study.

She used to say: “To console my dear Mother in Heaven, I would be happy to drink the bitterest chalice to the last drop".

Brother Francis of Mary of the Angels