The Disturbing Story
of a Warning the Vatican Refuses to Heed
The cover says it tells the story of "the most controversial priest
in the Catholic Church today." One might expect such a book to be about a
radical reformer, perhaps an advocate of new doctrines on such things as
divorce, contraception or the ordination of women. Instead, this book is about
the life's work of Fr. Nicholas Gruner, a stalwart upholder of traditional
Catholic values, devotions and beliefs.
Fatima Priest by Francis Alban (Good Counsel Publications, Pound Ridge, New York) tells a
tale many Catholics find puzzling and disturbing. In a Church led by a Pope
most observers see as an unbending conservative himself, how can a priest get
in trouble by upholding tradition? Fatima Priest provides the shocking
answer. All it takes, it seems, is for that priest to uphold traditions—as
well as underlying beliefs—that powerful officials within the Vatican
would prefer to abandon or ignore.
The book traces
Fr. Gruner's extraordinary life of devotion back to his Catholic upbringing in
Montreal in the late forties, and through the prosperous fifties. It was at
this time, when the Catholic Church had yet to be rocked by waves of reform,
that the foundations of Fr. Gruner's vocation were formed. But by the time he
became a seminarian at the Angelicum in Rome, things were changing fast, and by
the time he was ordained in Avellino in 1976, the Catholic Church of the
fifties was gone, and the New Order had taken its place.
Devotion to the
old order was not a shrewd career move for a newly-ordained priest, and Fr.
Gruner immediately began paying a price for his convictions. His refusal to say
Mass in the vernacular or give Communion in the hand made him unwelcome in many
parishes. But while some reformers shunned a cassock-wearing advocate of
outmoded devotions such as the Rosary, others were drawn to a priest they saw
as a defender of the true beliefs of the Catholic Church.
At the heart of
Fr. Gruner's dedication to Catholic traditions was his profound belief in the
miracle of Fatima. In the messages Our Lady delivered to mankind through three
Portuguese peasant children in 1917, Fr. Gruner saw a clear foretelling of the
troubles now gripping the Church. He became increasingly concerned about the
way the Church had reacted to the Fatima apparitions, first with enthusiastic
acceptance, then later, with indifference and even hostility. In particular,
Fr. Gruner focused on the so-called "third secret," the last message written
down by the sole surviving Fatima seer, Sister Lucia. Why, he wondered, had the
Church reneged on its promise to publish this message in 1960? What was in the
message that made three successive Popes decide to keep it hidden? Did it
predict, as some allege, the very crisis now rending the Church, a crisis
reaching to the very highest levels in the Vatican?
Fr. Gruner's open
search for answers to these questions—and the growing numbers of
like-minded followers he attracted—soon caught the attention of Vatican
officials with very different views on Fatima. Despite the fact that the
present Pope has publicly pronounced himself a Fatima believer, these officials
dismiss the apparitions as mere "private revelations," and want to hear no more
of them. Ignoring the dire warnings Our Lady uttered at Fatima about the threat
of world enslavement by atheistic Russia, these same officials crafted the
notorious Vatican-Moscow agreement of 1962. This agreement imposed on the
Church a controversial policy of soft-pedaling its criticism of communist
regimes. The covert and later overt campaign mounted by these high-ranking
prelates to undermine Fr. Gruner's Fatima movement and silence him personally
forms the shocking core of the book.
Many Catholics
have expressed both surprise and dismay at the dark picture the book paints of
a Vatican bureaucracy in which episcopal power is routinely abused to enforce
"political correctness." Far from allowing all sincere believers a voice in the
inner dialogue of the Church, these officials tolerate only views in accord
with their own, and move quickly to curb those who stray beyond their
guidelines. Within a Church hierarchy that subordinates priests to bishops by a
vow of obedience, it is all too easy to make life difficult for targets of
bureaucratic displeasure—as Fr. Gruner has learned to his great cost.
As the book
recounts, the Vatican's efforts to silence Fr. Gruner have never taken the form
of challenging what he says. Instead, they have sought to discredit him
personally, first by circulating unfounded accusations about his status as a
priest, and later by an escalating campaign aimed at forcing him to abandon his
Fatima apostolate. In the course of this campaign, officials of the Vatican
Secretariat of State, the Congregation for the Clergy and the Apostolic
Signatura have repeatedly participated in breaches of the Church's own rules
protecting the right of priests to due process under canon law. As the book
ends, Fr. Gruner appears to be approaching the final chapter in this saga, but
the outcome remains unknown.
Fatima Priest
was first published in 1997 in a hard-cover edition of 10,000 copies and a
soft-cover edition of 88,000 copies. This will be followed by a second printing
of an updated, pocket-book edition of 50,000 copies in 1998. The book has now
been distributed to virtually every Bishop in the world, and to over 2,000
priests. Many of these have now written to Fr. Gruner, expressing their concern
about his treatment by the Vatican, and its implications for all other priests.
The book has thus become an important vehicle for bringing Fr. Gruner's
predicament to the attention of a steadily widening circle of concerned
Catholics. As more people learn the facts of this case, their reactions may yet
serve to give the story a happier ending than the one now in prospect.
What would you
do if you knew the Truth was being hidden; if your enemies wanted to destroy
you and eliminate you from the scene?