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A Missed Opportunity
The October 8, 2000
"Entrustment" to Our Lady
The largest concentration of bishops since the Second
Vatican Council came to Rome in October to observe the Great Jubilee. In
addressing the august assembly, Archbishop Giovanni Battiste Re noted that the
bishops had gathered on "October 7, the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary, and
the first Saturday of the month, both integral elements of the message of
Fatima."
 It
was nice to hear someone at the Vatican get the message of Fatima straight. In
so doing Archbishop Re probably hadn't consulted "The Message of Fatima", that
woefully misnamed Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) document
that ignored the Rosary and the First Saturday Communions of Reparation, among
other things. The CDF made it easy to forget that at Pontevedra in 1925 the
Blessed Virgin promised eternal salvation to anyone who
"'on the first Saturday of five consecutive months
shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and
keep Me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries
of the Rosary" with the intention of making reparation to Her Immaculate Heart.
(The Whole Truth About Fatima, Vol. 2, p. 247.)
According to
Sister Lucy, the principal condition was to perform the devotions with "a
spirit of reparation" to the Immaculate Heart. It was fitting then, that the
Pope, so often mentioned in the Fatima message, should lead a worldwide Rosary
on the First Saturday of October, the month of the Rosary. In so doing,
however, Pope John Paul II did not mention First Saturday devotions, the title
"Immaculate Heart" or the word "reparation." He also omitted the Fatima prayers
customarily said at the end of each decade of the Rosary: "O my Jesus, forgive
us our sins, save us from the fires of hell," etc.
The next day the Pope
and 1500 bishops prayed the Pope's "Act of Entrustment" of the future to Mary,
of whom the Pope petitioned:
"O Mother, You know the sufferings and hopes of the
Church and the world: come to the aid of Your children in the daily trials
which life brings to each one, and grant that, thanks to the efforts of all,
the darkness will not prevail over the light."
Absent from John
Paul's Act of Entrustment were the words "consecration," "Russia," "Immaculate
Heart," "conversion," "Fatima," and "eternal salvation." Thus were dashed the
hopes of thousands around the world (including Robert Moynihan, Editor of
Inside The Vatican) that the Pope and his bishops would finally
consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart.
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