Statement from John Vennari on
Zenit’s Fatima Report
January 2, 2004:
Zenit news posted on January 1 the article "What is Happening in
Fatima?" in which the alleged plan to turn Fatima into an Interfaith Shrine was
discussed. The article contained various falsehoods that call for an immediate
response.
Reporter Delia
Gallagher says that Zenit received a three-page fax from Bishop Serafim
de Sousa Ferreira e Silva dated December 28, in which the Shrine Rector at
Fatima alleged that Father Nicholas Gruner was responsible for the original
November 1 Portugal News report "Fatima to Become an Interfaith Shrine".
"It is our
conviction", said Fatima Shrine Rector Msgr. Guerra, "that the article in
Portugal News has been guided by some members of the group led by Father
Nicholas Gruner".
Msgr. Guerra’s
assumption is completely false. I can state categorically that Father Gruner
has absolutely no connection with Portugal News and is no way
responsible for the November 1 report.
I attended the Fatima
Interfaith Congress at the request of Father Gruner’s organization and
filed my own report on Father Gruner’s web page "Fatima to Become an
Interfaith Shrine? An Account from One Who Was There". It was also published in
the journal of which I am editor, Catholic Family News.
In that report, I
quote the Portugal News article, and I also quote a local newspaper from
Fatima, Noticias de Fatima, that ran the headline "Sanctuary for Various
Creeds" But absolutely no one from Father Gruner’s organization had
anything to do with the articles appearing in the two above-mentioned
journals.
Zenit also
claimed that Father Gruner was involved with the "We Resist You to the Face"
statement. This is not true. The Resistance statement was a
collaboration between Atila Sinke Guimaraes, Michael Matt, Marian Horvat and
myself. Father Gruner did not know of or read the "We Resist You to the Face"
statement until after it was first published in the May 30, 2000 issue of
The Remnant.
Also false is Msgr.
Guerra’s claim that the Fatima Center distributed literature against the
interreligious congress hosted at the Shrine by Msgr. Guerra. The literature
distributed by the Fatima Center, in fact, were Chronology of a Cover-up
booklets and flyers promoting the book The Devil’s Final Battle,
neither of which contained mention of the interreligious Congress.
It is interesting
that Zenit was favored with a faxed response from Fatima authorities,
whereas other Catholic reporters were not. Christopher Ferrara, a reporter for
The Remnant, contacted the Shrine by fax on November 23, 2003 to pose
questions about Fatima’s new pan-religious initiative and to ask Msgr.
Guerra to confirm or deny the quotations attributed to him in Portugal
News and Noticias de Fatima. Msgr. Guerra did not respond to Mr.
Ferrara’s fax of November 23, nor to his e-mail of November 10, nor did
anyone else from the Shrine offer a response. Indeed, the Monsignor did not
deny the reported statement anywhere in the three-page fax to Zenit in
which he had every opportunity to do so. The reasonable conclusion to be drawn
is that the Monsignor does not deny the accuracy of quotations attributed to
him in Portugal News and Noticias de Fatima.
What is clear from
the Zenit report, however, is that Fatima is now committed to the
post-Conciliar pan-religious initiative. Msgr. Guerra contends that "the Fatima
apparitions were exhortation to interreligious dialogue" This is preposterous.
Our Lady of Fatima called for conversion to Catholicism in Russia and the
triumph of the Immaculate Heart throughout the world. The ecumenism and
"interreligious dialogue" practiced since the Council would have horrified any
of the pre-Conciliar popes. These novelties — including prayer meetings
with witch doctors and voodoo priests at Assisi — are clear departures
from 2000 years of Catholic teaching and practice.
Further, eleven years
after the Fatima apparitions, Pope Pius XI issued the 1928 encyclical
Mortalium animos which condemns the same ecumenism that has been
nurtured since Vatican II.
It is worth noting
that Inside the Vatican's December 2003 issue publishes the whole of
Mortalium animos by Pius XII in running columns beneath its own
extensive story on the Fatima Shrine controversy.
In this encyclical,
Pope Pius XI wrote that the Holy See has "always forbidden" Catholics to take
part in interreligious assemblies. Pius rightly insisted, "unity can only arise
from one teaching authority, one law of belief, one faith of Christians". Pius
also wrote that the "fair and alluring words" of the pan-religious orientation
"cloak a most deadly error subversive to the Catholic Faith".
Msgr. Guerra is the
same man who applauded Father Jacques Dupuis, a modernist speaker who said at
the recent Fatima Congress, "There is no need to invoke here that horrible text
from the Council of Florence," concerning no salvation outside the Catholic
Church. Dupuis thus exhorted his audience to reject defined Catholic dogma. It
is little wonder that Msgr. Guerra attempts to subvert the Fatima Message to
his distorted, pan-religious vision.
A fuller commentary
on this Zenit report will be published in the February 2004 Catholic
Family News.
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