The Consecration of Russia

During the July 1917 apparition, with World War I still being fought, Our Lady told the children that the war would end, but that if people did not stop offending God a worse one would break out during the reign of Pius XI. To prevent it she would return to ask for two things: the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If her requests were heeded Russia would be converted and there would be peace. If not, Russia would spread her errors through the world. She ended with a prophecy: "The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world."

On 13 October 1917 about 70,000 people saw the miracle of the sun, which Dr. Sungenis calls the greatest sign of Heaven acting in human affairs since the Resurrection. The Bolshevik revolution came in November 1917. By Dr. Sungenis's account, the new regime closed a large share of Russia's monasteries and churches, and about two thousand Orthodox priests were killed after Lenin seized church valuables in 1922.

Dr. Sungenis also points out what the July prophecy leaves out: it says the Holy Father will consecrate Russia, but it says nothing about the bishops. The request for the bishops comes in 1929.

“To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.”

A year passed and Pius XI made no move toward the consecration. In August 1931 Our Lord told Sister Lucy that if His ministers followed the example of the King of France in delaying His request, they would follow him into misfortune. The reference is to the French kings who did not consecrate France to the Sacred Heart, a failure that Dr. Sungenis ties to the Revolution of 1789.

For Dr. Sungenis this is the first sign that Fatima is "local and time-constrained": Our Lord wanted the act done then, not in some later century. Fatima historian Frère Michel put it this way: in 1929 to 1931 everything depended on the Pope, and if Russia had been consecrated neither the Second World War nor the spread of Communism would have happened.

Some Fatima writers argue from the French parallel that Heaven will still accept a consecration up to 2029, a hundred years after Tuy. Dr. Sungenis rejects that reading. He points out that Louis XVI's late consecration of France did nothing to stop the Revolution, so the parallel, taken strictly, would predict no effect on Russia either.

“Make it known to My ministers that given they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My request, that they will follow him into misfortune.”

In March 1937 Bishop da Silva of Leiria wrote to Pius XI urging the consecration, and the Pope acknowledged the letter on 8 April 1937. Dr. Sungenis counts this, after Our Lord's warning of 1931, as the second time Pius XI was pressed. Nothing followed.

That same year Pius XI wrote Divini Redemptoris, calling Communism a persecution that exceeded anything before it, and on 29 September 1937 Ingravescentibus Malis, on the Rosary. The second encyclical urged prayer to Our Lady against the destroyers of Christian civilisation but said nothing of Fatima, the Immaculate Heart or Russia. Pius XI died on 10 February 1939 having never made the act. Dr. Sungenis calls him "a puzzle": a holy man by all appearances whom the Fatima affair never gripped.

“He was, so to speak, content with a simple routine exhortation.”

Almost two years after Sister Lucy's letters, Pius XII consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on 31 October 1942. He left out any special mention of Russia, and the bishops were not called to join him.

Dr. Sungenis judges the act harshly and still gives it weight. Compared with Pius XI, who ignored Fatima for ten years, Pius XII at least partly believed. In the Death Penalty show he says the Pope had agreed to mention Russia at the end of the act and then broke that agreement. As he reads the May 1936 words, the act was "too late" to stop the war, which Our Lord let continue to punish the world.

“Fear rather than faith had gripped his soul.”

The war in Europe ended on 8 May 1945, two and a half years after the 1942 consecration. Dr. Sungenis puts three texts side by side: the 1917 promise of a period of peace, Sister Lucy's January 1940 letter linking the consecration to peace, and the May 1943 promise that the war would end in answer to the act. From these he concludes that the promised peace began in 1945.

He is careful about what kind of peace he means. It is not a world without wars. In his view it is a peace from Russia: no more annihilation of nations by the power that had been spreading its errors since 1917. He also argues that without the 1942 act the war and its punishment would have gone on beyond 1945.

“When we consider all three of the above references together, we can understand that the promised “period of peace” started after World War II had ended in May 1945.”

Two months after Our Lady's last request, on the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, apostles of the Slavs, Pius XII published the apostolic letter Sacro Vergente Anno, addressed to the peoples of Russia. In it he consecrated them to the Immaculate Heart. Dr. Sungenis calls it the only time in modern history a pope has made a consecration naming Russia.

The usual objections are that the letter speaks of "the peoples of Russia" rather than Russia, and that the bishops were not ordered to join. Dr. Sungenis answers that Russia is the people who live there. He points to the Pope's "we consecrate", which he argues normally speaks for the Pope with the bishops. He notes that no bishop is on record objecting. And Our Lady's 1917 prophecy said only that the Holy Father would consecrate Russia. He also says the Pope left Fatima unmentioned and gave the act little ceremony: "even he flopped up a little bit", but Heaven accepted it.

“…just as a few years ago we consecrated the entire human race to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, so today we consecrate and in a most special manner we entrust all the peoples of Russia to this Immaculate Heart.”

Fr. Umberto Maria Pasquale had known Sister Lucy since 1939 and received 157 letters from her by 1982. After an interview at the Coimbra Carmel on 5 August 1978, he wrote asking whether Our Lady had ever spoken of consecrating the world. Her reply of 13 April 1980 has two paragraphs. The first says Our Lady asked for the consecration of Russia. The second says that on her confessor's advice she asked Pius XII to consecrate the world with explicit mention of Russia.

Dr. Sungenis says circulated copies often drop the second paragraph. One copy published online by Fr. Paul Kramer shows three asterisks where it should be. Some copies also add the Portuguese word for "only" to the first sentence. With the second paragraph gone, the letter seems to say Heaven would accept nothing but a consecration of Russia alone. L'Osservatore Romano printed the letter on 12 May 1982, the day before John Paul II's Fatima consecration.

The letter also changed Dr. Sungenis's mind on a side question. Only the Sister Lucy of 1940 would have known that the request had been changed, so he now accepts that the Sister Lucy of the 1980s was the real one.

“Our Lady of Fatima in her request referred to the consecration of Russia.”

Dr. Sungenis traces the conversion of Russia as a process over decades, not a single event. Under Khrushchev, from 1958, there was an anti-religious campaign, but he calls it mild next to Lenin's, with no bloodshed and virtually no arrests. In 1985 Gorbachev gave Christians more freedom, and in 1988 he blessed the celebration of a thousand years of Russian Orthodoxy. In 1991 new laws removed the Soviet restrictions on religion, and the Soviet Union itself was dissolved in December 1991. The constitution of 12 December 1993 wrote religious freedom into law.

He sets the peace alongside the conversion: the Cuban crisis of 1962 passing without war, then the 1972 ABM treaty, the 1975 Helsinki accords, the 1987 INF treaty and the Malta summit of December 1989. He adds later evidence: Metropolitan Hilarion's 2013 report of more than 25,000 churches built or restored in 25 years. He defines this conversion as a return to Christian faith, not reunion with Rome. Many Fatima writers do not accept that definition.

“Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of conscience, the freedom of religion, including the right to profess individually or together with other any religion or to profess no religion at all, to freely choose, possess and disseminate religious and other views and act according to them.”