A Promise Unfulfilled

It has been more than 90 years since the Virgin of Fatima promised the three seers: “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.” Where is the period of world peace which the Virgin promised? Why does the world — especially since the events of “9/11” and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — seem poised on the brink of an apocalypse, as wars and rumors of wars abound? The answer is really quite simple: the Virgin’s promise has not been fulfilled because Her request has not yet been honored.

A Simple Requirement:
The Consecration of Russia

Throughout her life Sister Lucy had been steadfast in her testimony that the Virgin of Fatima requested nothing less than the Consecration of Russia by the Pope, together with the world’s bishops, in a solemn public ceremony. The proofs of this are abundant. Here are some examples:

On May 18, 1936, Sister Lucy wrote to her confessor, Fr. José Bernardo Gonçalves, S.J., in response to his question: “Should I still insist on the consecration of Russia?” in the course of his contacts with the Pope. She replied: “Should you insist? I do not know. Recently I was speaking to Our Lord and asked Him why He would not convert Russia without the Pope doing that consecration, and Jesus replied: ‘Because I want My whole Church to recognize that consecration as a Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that later on it will put the devotion to the Immaculate Heart beside devotion to My Sacred Heart.’”

On October 24, 1940 Sister Lucy was ordered by one of her spiritual directors, the Bishop of Gurza, to write to the Pope and ask for the consecration of the world, with “special mention” of Russia. This was an attempt by the bishop to get the Pope to do something, since during the previous ten years Pius XII, and Pius XI before him, had failed to respond to repeated requests to consecrate Russia.

Sister Lucy’s correspondence reveals that she was very upset by this instruction, because she knew that Our Lady of Fatima had requested only the Consecration of Russsia, not the world. However, since she was put under obedience, Sister Lucy went to Our Lord in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament exposed to ask Him what she should do. Our Lord responded to Her, and said that what the Bishop of Gurza had asked for He would deign to reward by shortening the days of World War II, but that it would not bring about world peace, as would the explicit Consecration of Russia by the Pope together with all the bishops. On December 2, 1940 Sister Lucy wrote to the Pope requesting the consecration of the world with special mention of Russia.

On April 13, 1980 she would write to Father Umberto that she had only made this request under obedience to her bishop, making it clear that this was not what Our Lady of Fatima had requested.

On October 31, 1942 and again on December 8, 1942 Pope Pius XII consecrated the world, with an oblique reference to Russia. In his six-volume work on World War II, Winston Churchill reports in early 1943 (almost immediately after the consecrations performed by Pius XII) “the hinges of fate” turned in favor of the Allies and that thereafter the Allies won almost every battle, whereas before they had lost. Nevertheless, during Lent of 1943

“Our Lord again told Sister Lucy that while ‘the present distress (i.e. WWII) would be shortened’ on account of the consecration of the world by Pope Pius, world peace would not be granted without the explicit Consecration of Russia by the Pope and the bishops.”

On July 15, 1946, the eminent author and historian William Thomas Walsh interviewed Sister Lucy, which is recounted in his important work, Our Lady of Fatima, which incidentally has sold over one million copies. During this interview, which appears at the book’s end, Mr. Walsh asked her pointed questions about the correct procedure for the Collegial Consecration:

“Finally we came to the important subject of the second July secret, of which so many different and conflicting versions have been published. Lucia made it plain that Our Lady did not ask for the consecration of the world to Her Immaculate Heart. What She demanded specifically was the consecration of Russia. She did not comment, of course, on the fact that Pope Pius XII had consecrated the world, not Russia, to the Immaculate Heart in 1942. But she said more than once, and with deliberate emphasis: ‘What Our Lady wants is that the Pope and all the bishops in the world shall consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart on one special day. If this is done, She will convert Russia and there will be peace. If it is not done, the errors of Russia will spread through every country in the world’.”⁵⁵

Sister Lucy is clear and forthright. The collegial consecration requested by Heaven is the Consecration of Russia, not the world, which must be done by the Pope in union with the world’s bishops on the same day.

Then there is the little-known revelation of Our Lady to Sister Lucy in the early 1950s, which is recounted in Il Pellegrinaggio Della Meraviglie, published under the auspices of the Catholic Bishops of Italy. The Virgin Mary appeared to Sister Lucy in May 1952 and said “Make it known to the Holy Father that I am always awaiting the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart. Without that Consecration, Russia will not be able to convert, nor will the world have peace.”⁵⁶

Thus, 10 years after Pope Pius XII’s 1942 consecration of the world, we have the report of Our Lady reminding Sister Lucy that Russia will not be converted, nor will there be peace, unless Russia is consecrated by name.

Thirty years later, in 1982, Sister Lucy’s testimony remained steadfast despite Pope John Paul II’s ceremony consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart, but without mention of Russia. On May 12, 1982, the day before the attempted 1982 consecration, the Vatican’s own L’Osservatore Romano published an
interview of Sister Lucy by Father Umberto Maria Pasquale, a Salesian priest, during which she told Father Umberto that Our Lady had never requested the consecration of the world, but only the consecration of Russia:

“At a certain moment I said to her: ‘Sister, I should like to ask you a question. If you cannot answer me, let it be! But if you can answer it, I would be most grateful to you ... Has Our Lady ever spoken to you about the consecration of the world to Her Immaculate Heart?’

“‘No, Father Umberto! Never! At the Cova da Iria in 1917 Our Lady had promised: I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia ... In 1929, at Tuy, as She had promised, Our Lady came back to tell me that the moment had come to ask the Holy Father for the Consecration of that country (Russia).’ ”⁵⁷ 

This testimony was confirmed by Sister Lucy in a handwritten letter to Father Umberto, which the priest also published. (See photographic reproduction below.)

A translation of the letter reads: “Reverend Father Umberto, in replying to your question, I will clarify: Our Lady of Fatima, in Her request, referred only to the Consecration of Russia ... - Coimbra 13 IV - 1980 (signed) Sister Lucia” 

Again, on March 19, 1983, at the request of Pope John Paul II, Sister Lucy met with the Papal Nuncio Archbishop Portalupi, Dr. Lacerda, and Father Messias Coelho. During this meeting, Sister Lucy confirmed that Pope John Paul’s consecration of 1982 did not fulfill the requests of Our Lady. Sister Lucy said: 

“In the act of offering of May 13, 1982, Russia did not appear as being the object of the consecration. And each bishop did not organize in his own diocese a public and solemn ceremony of reparation and Consecration of Russia. Pope John Paul II simply renewed the consecration of the world executed by Pius XII on October 31, 1942. From this consecration we can expect some benefits, but not the conversion of Russia.”⁵⁸ 

She concluded: “The Consecration of Russia has not been done as Our Lady had demanded it. I was not able to say it because I did not have the permission of the Holy See.”⁵⁹

A year later, on March 25, 1984, Pope John Paul II made an act of offering wherein he again consecrated “the world”, not Russia. As with the 1982 consecration, “each bishop did not organize in his own diocese a public and solemn ceremony of reparation and consecration of Russia”. Concerning this ceremony Frère François writes: “In the months which followed the act of offering of March 25, 1984, which was only a renewal of the act of 1982, the principal scholars of Fatima agreed in saying that the Consecration of Russia had not yet been done as Heaven wished it.”⁶⁰

Such was also the conviction of Father Antonio Maria Martins,⁶¹ and of Father Messias Coelho who, on the eve of March 25, 1984, had announced in Mensagem de Fátima, of which he was the publisher-editor, “Consecration of Russia: It will not be done yet this time.” He further explained, “It is certain the more contains the less. Apparently therefore, the ‘consecration of the world’ will perhaps give the impression of having the power to take the place of consecrating specifically Russia. However, the problem cannot be resolved in logical terms, nor even in the light of systematic theology.”⁶²

These theologians based their statements not only on the bald fact that a Consecration of Russia needs to mention the word “Russia”, but also on the testimony of Sister Lucy herself.

On Thursday, March 22, 1984, three days before the act of offering, the Carmel of Coimbra was celebrating Sister Lucy’s seventy-seventh birthday. She received on that day, as was her custom, her old friend Mrs. Eugenia Pestana. After extending good wishes to her Carmelite friend, Mrs. Pestana asked, “Then Lucy, Sunday is the Consecration?” Sister Lucy, who had already received and read the text of the Pope’s consecration formula, made a negative sign and declared: “That consecration cannot have a decisive character.”⁶³

In a 1985 interview in Sol de Fátima, Sister Lucy was asked if the Pope fulfilled the request of Our Lady when he consecrated the world in 1984. Sister Lucy replied: “There was no participation of all the bishops, and there was no mention of Russia.” She was then asked, “So the consecration was not done as requested by Our Lady?”, to which she replied: “No. Many bishops attached no importance to this act.”⁶⁴

Even Father Rene Laurentin, well-known for his “progressive” views, admitted in 1986 that “Sister Lucy remains unsatisfied⁶⁵ ... Lucy seems to think that the Consecration has ‘not been made’ as Our Lady wanted it.”⁶⁶

Then on July 20, 1987, Sister Lucy was interviewed quickly outside her convent while voting. Here she told journalist Enrique Romero that the Consecration of Russia has not been done as requested.⁶⁷

Why Has Russia Not Been Consecrated?

Why, then, has Russia not been consecrated? Why have we had instead ceremonies consecrating the world with no mention of Russia?

In the simplest possible terms, the answer is that certain members of the Vatican apparatus have counseled the Pope not to mention Russia in any consecration ceremony, since in their view this would be seen as a “provocation” of Russia and an insult to the Russian Orthodox that could damage the “ecumenical relations” with which the Vatican has been experimenting since the Second Vatican Council. This attitude was explicitly confirmed by a Vatican-level prelate in the November 2000 issue of Inside the Vatican. This prelate, a leading Cardinal identified only as “one of the Pope’s closest advisors,” is quoted to the effect that “Rome fears the Russian Orthodox might regard it as an ‘offense’ if Rome were to make specific mention of Russia in such a prayer, as if Russia especially is in need of help when the whole world, including the post-Christian West, faces profound problems ...” The same Cardinal-advisor added: “Let us beware of becoming too literal-minded.”

Thus, “Rome” — meaning a few members of the Vatican apparatus who advise the Pope — has decided not to honor the specific request of Our Lady of Fatima for a public Consecration of Russia. The historical events which have led up to this failure to honor the Virgin’s specific request are far too complex to discuss here. The reader is invited to consult The Devil’s Final Battle and World Enslavement or Peace ...It's Up to the Pope, both of which give a detailed study of the relation between the Message of Fatima and the current crisis in the Catholic Church.

Does Not a Consecration of the World Suffice?

It is argued that Pope John Paul II’s consecration of the world in 1984 sufficed for a consecration of Russia since, after all, Russia is “part of” the world. Putting aside for the moment all of Sister Lucy’s testimony to the contrary, this argument quickly dissolves under the application of simple common sense.

According to the dictionary, the word consecrate means “to declare or set apart as sacred: consecrate a church.” (American Heritage Dictionary) The dictionary example of the word’s meaning is perfect for our purposes. It is simple common sense that a local bishop cannot consecrate a new Catholic church for worship by consecrating his whole diocese on the theory that the new church is “part of” the diocese. Obviously, in order to consecrate a specific church building for worship, that building must be set apart from all the other buildings in the diocese and specifically declared a place of Catholic worship.

Furthermore, it defies logic to argue that Russia can be consecrated in a ceremony from which any mention of Russia has been deliberately omitted precisely so that no one would think that Russia in particular was being consecrated. To recall the words of the Cardinal quoted in Inside the Vatican, certain members of the Vatican apparatus wish to avoid giving any impression that “Russia especially is in need of help.” Yet Russia’s special need for spiritual assistance is precisely the reason the Virgin requested the consecration of that nation to Her Immaculate Heart. And it is also why Sister Lucy has attested, over and over again, that a Consecration of Russia, and nothing but Russia, is what Heaven requires in order for the world to obtain the promises of the Virgin of Fatima.

Has Sister Lucy “Changed” Her Testimony?

Opponents of the Consecration of Russia (including certain members of the Vatican apparatus) have attempted to persuade Catholics that Sister Lucy has repudiated all her former statements, and now says that the consecration of the world in 1984 sufficed for a Consecration of Russia. The only thing they have failed to produce in this regard was Sister Lucy herself! Instead they proffer such “evidence” as a computer-generated letter (Sister Lucy was a cloistered nun who had never used a computer to write letters) from 1989, which she purportedly signed. The pur ported letter, which states that the Consecration was accomplished in 1984, is revealed as an obvious fake by its further statement that Pope Paul VI consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary during his visit to Fatima in 1967. In fact, Paul VI performed no such consecration. The real Sister Lucy could not have made such a mistake, as she was present for the entire visit, during which Paul VI consecrated absolutely nothing.

Sister Lucy has never been produced in person to refute her testimony concerning the inadequacy of the 1984 consecration of the world. Furthermore, if any such repudiation were extracted from Sister Lucy under the guise of obedience to her superiors, it would not represent her own free and voluntary statement — just as Sister Lucy’s request to Pius XII that he consecrate the world with “special mention of Russia” was not her idea, but that of her bishop-confessor, which she expressed in her letter only under obedience.

Russia’s Manifest Failure
to Undergo Conversion

Even if we put aside both our common sense and the unwavering testimony of Sister Lucy, there is still the principle of human reason, taught by Saint Thomas Aquinas, that against a fact there is no argument (contra factum non argumentum est). That is, no matter what anyone says, no matter what the authority of anyone speaking to the contrary, a fact cannot be negated. Thus, if even the Pope himself were to declare that the Eiffel Tower is located in Saint Peter’s Square that would not make it so, for there is no argument against the fact that the Eiffel Tower is located in Paris. Therefore, even those in authority in the Church who declare that a consecration of the world suffices for a Consecration of Russia — and the Pope is conspicuously not among these authority figures — cannot use a mere “argument from authority” to trump an undeniable fact.

Where Fatima is concerned, the undeniable fact is that Russia has not been converted since the consecrations of the world in 1982 and 1984. Yet the Virgin promised that Russia “will be converted” following its consecration to Her Immaculate Heart and that Her Immaculate Heart “will triumph” in a period of world peace. Given that the Church has approved the Message of Fatima as an authentic prophecy of the Mother of God, we are confronted with two alternatives: either the Mother of God has misled us, or those who have substituted a consecration of the world for the Consecration of Russia have misled us. Since the Mother of God cannot mislead us, the second alternative is the only logical conclusion.

The empirical evidence also compels us to accept the second alternative. Since the consecrations of the world in 1982 and 1984, Russia has not only failed to convert, but has undergone a dramatic spiritual, moral and material decline. We will here summarize some of the overwhelming evidence in this regard:

1. Russia has manifestly failed to embrace the Catholic Faith and thus cannot possibly be said to have converted.

Father Joaquin Alonso, probably the foremost Fatima expert of the 20th Century, had many interviews with Sister Lucy. In 1976 he wrote:

“... we should affirm that Lucia always thought that the ‘conversion’ of Russia is not to be limited to the return of the Russian people to the Orthodox Christian religions, rejecting the Marxist atheism of the Soviets, but rather, it refers purely, plainly and simply to the total, integral conversion of Russia to the one true Church of Christ, the Catholic Church.”⁶⁸

In this context Catholics have never understood the word “conversion” to mean anything other than a conversion to Catholicism. It is nonsensical, therefore to argue, as some do, that by “conversion” the Mother of God — who is also known by Catholics under the title Mother of the Catholic Church — meant that Russia would embrace the Orthodox religion following the “fall of communism” in 1991. The Mother of the Catholic Church did not come to Fatima to announce the conversion of Russia to a non-Catholic religion. What is more, Russian Orthodoxy was already the predominant religion in Russia when Our Lady appeared at Fatima. Therefore, according to this argument, Russia would already have been “converted” in 1917 and Our Lady of Fatima’s statement that Russia “will be converted” would have been senseless.

2. Russia has not even “converted” to Russian Orthodoxy.

Today, more than 23 years after the supposed Consecration of Russia in 1984, nearly all of those who designate themselves Russian Orthodox do not practice their religion. The Economist notes that “Russia is suffering a crisis of faith” and that 94% of Russians aged 18-29 do not go to church.⁶⁹

3. Russia (not surprisingly) has been in a state of rapidly accelerating moral decline since 1984:

• Today, Russia has the highest abortion rate in the world. Fr. Daniel Maurer, C.J.D., who spent eight years in Russia, says that statistically, the average Russian woman will have eight abortions during her childbearing years—though Fr. Maurer believes the actual number averaged out to be about 12 abortions per woman. He has spoken to women who have had as many as 25 abortions. A major reason for these dreadful figures is that other contraception methods (which are immoral anyway) have not been introduced in Russia, nor are they trusted. This leaves abortion as the “cheapest way to limit the family size”. Presently in Russia, abortions are free, but births are not.⁷⁰
  


• The Russian birth rate is plummeting and Russia’s population is dropping at the rate of 700,000 people each year — an unprecedented event in a civilized nation during “peacetime.”⁷¹



• Russia has the highest alcohol consumption in the world.⁷²



• Satanism, occultism and witchcraft are on the rise in Russia, as even the Russian Orthodox patriarch, Alexy II, publicly admits.⁷³



• Homosexuality is rampant in Moscow and throughout the country. In fact, in April 1993, nine years after the 1984 “consecration”, Boris Yeltsin allowed homosexuality to be de-criminalized. Homosexuality is now “legal” in Russia.⁷⁴



• Russia is a leading world center for the distribution of child pornography. The Associated Press reported on a Moscow-based child pornography ring linked to another child pornography ring in Texas. To quote AP: “Russian law does not distinguish between child pornography and pornography involving adults, and treats the production and distribution of either as a minor crime, said Dmitry Chepchugov, head of the Russian Interior Ministry’s department for high technology crimes. Russian police often complain about the legal chaos that has turned Russia into an international center of child pornography production. ‘Unfortunately, Russia has turned into a world trash bin of child pornography,’ Chepchugov told reporters in Moscow.”⁷⁵



• Russians are addicted to “reality-based” TV. On the most vile of the “reality-based” shows, cameras film the intimate personal lives of Russian “couples,” including their activity breaking the 6th Commandment. Despite grumbles of disapproval from old hard-line Communists, Russian viewers “cannot get enough” of this pornography. The program “boasts an audience share of more than 50% and thousands of Russians have endured sub-zero temperatures and stood in line for more than an hour to catch a glimpse of it through a window of the apartment. Millions have logged on to the website, which has crashed frequently under the weight of the heavy traffic.”⁷⁶

More Facts

• Since he rose to power in 1999, Vladimir Putin has systematically made himself the virtual dictator of Russia: arresting and imprisoning his domestic critics on trumped up charges; shutting down all opposition media; outlawing the popular election of Russia’s local governors and replacing them with Kremlin appointees.



• As for the question of Russia’s genuine conversion — that is, her conversion to the Catholic Faith — the years since 1984 have witnessed a steady decline of the Church’s position in Russia, to the point where, today, the Church is undergoing outright persecution under the Putin regime. Consider these facts:



• There are a mere ten Russian-born priests in the whole country — five in Siberia and five in Kazakhstan. Ninety-five percent of the priests and nuns in Russia are foreign born. In Archbishop Bukovsky’s frank opinion the Catholic Church “is small.”⁷⁷



• According to the Vatican, there are 500,000 Catholics in Russia, and most of these are in Siberia, where Stalin had sent their grandparents in exile.⁷⁸



• In 1997 Russia enacted a new law on “freedom of conscience” which gave privileged status to Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism as Russia’s “traditional religions,” while requiring Catholic parishes to obtain approval from local bureaucrats for their very existence.



• The Russian Orthodox hierarchy exploded in outrage when the Vatican announced in February 2002 that its “apostolic administrations” in Russia would be designated as dioceses. These would not even be dioceses in the traditional Catholic sense. There would, for example, be only an “Archdiocese of the Mother of God at Moscow”; and the Archbishop in charge of this structure will not be called the Archbishop of Moscow, lest the Vatican give offense to the Russian Orthodox Partriarch of Moscow, the ex-KGB agent, Alexy II.



• On March 2, 2002, the Pope conducted a Saturday prayer service that was broadcast from the Vatican by satellite into Russia. The broadcast was totally blacked out by the same Russian television networks now under Vladimir Putin’s thumb. Only by shipping special equipment into the country (that was held up at customs until the last possible moment) could a few thousand Catholics see the Pope on television screens set up at Assumption Cathedral in Moscow. The BBC reported that “Patriarch Alexy of the Russian Orthodox Church said it (the satellite broadcast) was an ‘invasion of Russia’ and referred to the Polish occupation of Moscow in the early 17th Century. John-Paul is of Polish origin.”⁷⁹ Hence, after 40 years of Ostpolitik and “ecumenical dialogue”, the Orthodox hierarchy will not even tolerate a video image of the Pope in even one single Catholic church in Moscow.

• Trying to put a happy face on the debacle in Russia, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the then head of the “Archdiocese of the Mother of God at Moscow”, claimed that “It’s all a misunderstanding,” referring to Orthodox charges that the Catholic Church is “proselytizing” in Russia.



• An Associated Press story on Kondrusiewicz’s reaction to Orthodox hostility noted that “Parishioners have come to Kondrusiewicz in tears recently, complaining that the indignant rhetoric by Orthodox leaders on national newscasts since Feb. 11 has made them afraid to practice their faith.”⁸⁰



• Russia’s 1997 law on “freedom of conscience” continues to grant special legal status to Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, while forbidding Catholic “proselytism” and requiring registration of Catholic churches with local bureaucrats.



• As of the year 2002, Catholics remain a tiny, benighted minority in Russia — perhaps 500,000 nominal Catholics in a nation of 144 million people. The small percentage of Catholics who even go to Mass on Sunday (most of them in Siberia) is dependent almost entirely on a total of 190 non- Russian priests, who are allowed into Russia only with visitor’s visas that require a departure from the country every three months to seek renewal, which can be denied at any time and for any reason, often for no reason at all.



• In 2002 Russian authorities began expelling non-Russian Catholic clergy from the country. As of November 2002 five priests, including the bishop for Siberia, Bishop Jerzy Mazur, had been expelled and their visas confiscated without ex- planation. Bishop Mazur learned that he had been added to a secret “list” of Catholic clergy who are considered “undesirables” and will no longer be allowed to enter Russian territory. After ignoring even the Pope’s request for an explanation of the expulsions, Vladimir Putin sent a perfunctory letter stating nothing more than that the expulsions were in accordance with Russian law.⁸¹



• Archbishop Kondrusiewicz has issued a formal protest on behalf of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia, entitled “Religious Liberty in Russia is in Serious Danger.” The protest declares:

“Catholics in Russia ask themselves: What will happen next? Are the constitutional guarantees valid also for them, including liberty of conscience and of the right to have their own pastors, which comprises inviting them from abroad, not forgetting that for 81 years the Catholic Church was deprived of the right of forming and ordaining its own priests? Perhaps the State really considers Catholics second-class citizens? Are they (the State) returning to the times of persecution of the faith? … The expulsion of a Catholic bishop who has not violated any law, surpasses all imaginable limits of civilized relations between the State and the Church. … With grave worry, we express our decisive protest in respect to violation of the constitutional rights of Catholics.”⁸²

• In October 2002 the Pope’s own spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, declared that the actions against the Catholic Church by Russian authorities had reached the level of “a true persecution.”⁸³

Catholic Church Also Harassed
in “Former” Soviet Union

It is even worse for the Catholic Church in the neighboring “former Soviet republics.” In Romania, at least eleven Catholic parishes stolen by Stalin have been bulldozed to the ground rather than returned to their rightful owners after the “fall of communism” in 1990.⁸⁴In Belarus, Catholic World News Service (CWN) reported on January 10, 2002 that there are “disturbing new indications of hostility to the Catholic Church” and that “the broadcasting of Sunday Mass on the state radio service has been canceled without warning.” As CWN noted, “Belarus is officially a secular state … [I]ts authoritarian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, although he proclaims himself to be an atheist, nevertheless looks to the Orthodox Church for support in his policy of the ‘integration’ of Belarus with Russia.” In November 2002, Lukashenko signed into law a bill that subjects all religious bodies, including the Catholic Church, to state regulation, including registration requirements, the requirement of government approval of all religious literature before publication, and a ban on most religious meetings in private homes. The evidence of persecutions against the Catholic Church in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Romania, Transylvania and elsewhere in “the former Soviet Union” could be multiplied endlessly.

Putin — The New Stalin

Throughout all of this, Vladimir Putin has been busy reassembling the never-quite-dismantled elements of a Soviet-style dictatorship. “Russia’s last independent television station was closed yesterday, leaving the country’s entire broadcast media under Kremlin control”⁸⁵ — the same broadcast media that has been denouncing the Catholic Church over the question of dioceses in Russia. As if by a prearranged schedule, the same thing is happening in the Ukraine. “The torch of liberty has grown dimmer in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine — as it has across most of the territory of the old USSR — with the government’s silencing of the last independent media outlet and the continuing controversy surrounding the murder of a popular outspoken journalist.”⁸⁶ There have been many murders and fatal “accidents” involving journalists since the “fall of communism.”

In conjunction with his systematic takeover of the mass media under the guise of “debt collection” and “tax evasion”, Putin has restored the Soviet national anthem, consolidated Kremlin control over Russian provinces and signed a military and diplomatic “friendship” treaty with Red China. Putin has even ordered the production of a commemorative calendar glorifying the Soviet-era Lubyanka Prison (capstone of the Soviet gulag) and the Soviet-era butcher Felix Dzerzhinsky. It was Dzerzhinsky, you might recall, who founded the KGB, authorized the torture and execution of Catholic priests, and presided over Lenin’s liquidation of the Russian middle class. The calendar is for use in the offices of the KGB, which has been strategically renamed the FSB.

By mysterious coincidence, a national cult of Vladimir Putin is “spontaneously” emerging:

“[T]he cult of President Putin received new impetus yesterday when thousands of students celebrated the first anniversary of his inauguration under the Kremlin walls. The rally, where many wore T-shirts decorated with Mr. Putin’s face, plumbed new depths of grovelling to the former KGB colonel, who is already immortalized in children’s books, sculpture and obsequious coverage in the media. Speakers tried to outdo each other in their praise of the great leader. Their rhetoric yielded new insights into the thinking of Putin loyalists, who now dominate the bureaucracy, parliament and state broadcasting.”⁸⁷

These political developments were summed up by Yelena Bonner, widow of the Soviet dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov: “Under Putin, a new stage in the introduction of modernized Stalinism has begun. Authoritarianism is growing harsher, society is being militarized, the military budget is increasing.” Bonner warned that “under the present government our country can expect, in the foreseeable future, destructive upheavals that could affect surrounding countries as well.” She also drew clear parallels between “converted” Russia and Stalinist Russia: “[A]bout a third of the population worked for either nothing or symbolic wages during the Stalin era. In modern Russia two thirds of the population are on the verge of poverty. The health care system is worse today than it was in the Fifties. Stalin murdered about 20 million [actually more like 50 million] people, while in today’s Russia the population is falling by a million people a year.”⁸⁸

Facts All Show Russia is Not Converted

The evidence will admit no contrary conclusion: Russia has not converted in any sense of the word — not to the Catholic faith (which is the only correct signification of the word “convert” in this context), not to Orthodoxy, not to “democracy.” Furthermore, as the rampant practice of abortion in Russia today demonstrates, Russian society has not even converted to an adherence to the natural law. The same is true, of course, of societies throughout the world. As Pope Pius XII observed in his letter of February 11, 1949: “We are overwhelmed with sadness and anguish, seeing that the wickedness of perverse men has reached a degree of impiety that is unbelievable and absolutely unknown in other times.” And this was written before Russia’s “legalization” of abortion had spread to every nation, along with the rest of Russia’s errors — precisely as Our Lady of Fatima predicted.