CATHOLIC PICTORIAL  - FOOD FOR THOUGHT	FR FRANCIS MARSDEN
for 1 Sept. 1991

MARY’S VICTORY IN MOSCOW

A Russian staying in a London hotel was amazed to find a Gideon Bible in his hotel room. “How honest you must be in England,” he said to his host. “If Bibles were left in Russian hotel rooms they would all be stolen the, next morning, our people are so desperate for Bibles.” His English friend bad to explain, sadly, that it was not British honesty but British indifference to the Word of God which left Bibles unstolen and unread in hotel rooms. This the Russian found very difficult to understand.

A fortnight ago the Pope celebrated the Mass of the Assumption with 1¼ million young people from all over Europe at Częstachowa. The new Christian Europe was taking shape. BBC and ITV both completely ignored the event at the Polish national shrine to Our Lady. There is censorship in the west too.

Four days later the hardline putsch in Moscow brought back fears of new censorship, cold war, the arms race and suppression of religious liberty. Yet by August 22nd, feast of the Queenship of Mary, President Gorbachev was safely back in Moscow. Since then Boris Yeltsin has suspended the activities of the Soviet Communist Party, seized their offices, banned their newspapers and frozen their bank accounts. After 74 years the false religion of Marxism-Leninism has collapsed in the Soviet Union.

Behind these political facts lies a spiritual battle: Christianity against the atheist materialism inspired by Satan. The overthrow of Soviet Communism fulfils part of Our Lady’s message at Fatima in 1917. There on July 13th she showed the three young children the fate of sinners in hell: “In order to save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.”

She begged for prayer and penance, especially the Rosary. If people turned back to God, there would be peace. If not, a second World War would follow “to punish the world by means of war, hunger, persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent it, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturday. If people attend to my requests, Russia will be converted and the world will have peace. If not, Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, fomenting wars and persecutions of the Church.”

World War II followed. Marxist regimes brought misery to millions in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Ethiopia and Eastern Europe. Mary continued: “The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be annihilated.” (Poland in 1939, the Baltic states in 1940, eastern European nations by 1950 behind the Iron Curtain, and Tibet) Finally, Mary promised: “The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, it will be converted, and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world . . .
There had been an earlier apparition of the Virgin Mary to Ukrainian peasants in 1914 at the shrine of Hrushiw, two weeks before the First World War started. She forecast the war. Russia would become a godless country. Ukraine would suffer terribly for 80 years. They would endure three world wars before gaining their freedom. They must remain faithful to God, pray, repent, make acts of reparation On 24 August 1991 the Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev declared their independence from the Soviet Union, subject to a referendum!

Five Popes have recognised the Fatima message. John Paul II attributed his near escape from death on 13 May 1981 when he was shot in St Peter’s Square, to Our Lady of Fatima. He visited Fatima on the first and tenth anniversaries of his shooting.

A powerful vindication of the Fatima message came at Hiroshima, Japan, when the first atom bomb exploded on 6 Aug. 1945. A community of 8 Jesuits living only 1/4 mile from the centre of the nuclear blast survived the holocaust unscathed. Every building, every person for a mile around them was wiped out: they had not even burns or radiation sickness. Over 200 scientists have examined them and can give no natural explanation as to bow they could possibly have survived the full force and beat of the bomb. But their Superior had an explanation:
“In that house the Rosary was prayed every day. In that house we were living the message of Fatima.”
Another example: after 1945 half of Austria was under Soviet Red Army control. In Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary there were communist takeovers. One-tenth of the Austrian population signed a pledge to live and pray as the Fatima messages requested. Suddenly, on 13 May 1955, a Fatima anniversary, the Soviets suddenly announced their withdrawal from Austrian soil, the only time post-World War II that communist forces gave up occupied territory voluntarily. As one Austrian cabinet minister said: “Our liberation is inexplicable, except for the direct intervention of the Virgin of Fatima.”

Meanwhile the Soviet Union groaned under the communist yoke. Lenin, Stalin and Khruschev destroyed churches and cathedrals, closed down parishes, schools, monasteries and seminaries. God was dead. Religion was a tool of the capitalists to oppress the proletariat: the communist ideal, incarnate in the State, was God. For this the Bolsheviks killed and died. Stalin liquidated the Ukrainian Catholics in 1946. The
Russian Orthodox were brought under total state control and infiltrated by the KGB, an invention, by the way, of the Polish Catholic ex-seminarian Dzerzhinsky, who renounced his Faith to become a fanatical atheist and enforce the Communist Revolution by secrecy, terror and torture. Christians of all denominations and none filled the labour camps, the psychiatric hospitals and the Siberian death camps.

“How many divisions has the Pope?” sneered Lenin. Now he has his answer. The wheels of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. For decades after every Low Mass the Prayers for Russia were said. After Vatican II England dropped them (mistakenly, in my opinion) but in some countries they continued. Good, holy Catholics continued to pray the Rosary as requested at Fatima: we should never feel helpless vis-à-vis world events. We have a most powerful Ally in Heaven: only the atheist is powerless.

The Fatima message was partly repeated in 1973 when Our Lady appeared at Akita in Japan. She seemed to be warning of the dangers of nuclear war, as did Padre Pio in the starkest of terms. Suddenly in 1979 the new Pope was from Communist Poland: the Holy Spirit and the Cardinals had chosen well. God’s plan of liberation from communism was beginning. Solidarność, founded in the Gdansk shipyards, challenged communist rule in Poland. The Medugorje apparitions began in 1981:  millions flocked to a communist country to hear the Queen of Peace urging them to prayer, fasting, penance and reconciliation.

On 13 July 1984 after many attempts, the Pope managed, in union with all the world’s Catholic bishops, to perform the Collegial Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow, the humane and smiling communist baptised secretly by his mother in Stalinist days. A new spirit of truth and openness (glasnost) swept the Soviet Union. Human rights and religious freedoms would be respected.

26 April 1987, exactly one year after the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, the Virgin Mary started appearing again at Hrushiw in Ukraine: “Teach the children to pray,” she said, “Forgive the nations which have harmed you . . Chernobyl is a sign and a reminder for the whole world. Constantly say the Rosary. The Rosary is the weapon against Satan . . . I have come on purpose to thank the Ukrainian people because you have suffered most for the Church of Christ in the last 70 years. I have come to comfort you and to tell you that your suffering will soon come to an end, Ukraine will become an independent state. Repent and love each other. The times are coming which have been foretold as being those in the end times.
Tens, even hundreds of thousands saw Our Lady. She told them “Ukrainians must become Apostles of Christ among the Russian peoples, for if there is not a return of Christianity to Russia, there will be a Third World War.”

Three years ago such prophecies of a free Ukraine seemed impossible But in late 1989 the Catholic Poles headed the rush to freedom of eastern Europe: East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. In 1990 Catholic Lithuania declared her independence from Moscow, only to suffer a Kremlin military crackdown. Meanwhile Albania was toppling statues of its communist tyrant Enver Hoxha to become free but starving.

And so to the last fortnight and the defeat of the communist coup against Gorbachev. Yeltsin establishes a free and democratic Russia while Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Byelorussia and Moldavia in addition to the Baltic States all declare their independence. “Salvation comes from the East.” It is a time of triumph: not the triumph of free market economics or godless capitalism, but the triumph of God’s plan to liberate his people. Liberation theology with a vengeance! It is the triumph of the human spirit and Christian values over godless atheism and corruption. “The flesh has nothing to offer: it is the spirit which gives life.”

Now, ironically, Belgrade not Moscow is the last communist capital in Europe, as the Serbs batter free Croatia. Let us pray for Yugoslavia, and for the peaceful development of the Soviet nations in the difficult days ahead. We need to pray for the safe handling of their nuclear arsenals in Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan: soon we should be able to divert more of our defence spending to improve hospitals, schools and housing.

The great prize for the Church would be reunion with the Russian Orthodox: we are almost identical on matters of faith. We both have valid Sacraments, Eucharist and Priesthood. Then the whole Church could breath fully with both lungs, East and West. Finally let us turn our prayers to China where one—fifth of the world’s population still suffer the communist yoke, bishops and believers are gaoled, free speech is suppressed. I hope to live to see the day when the Red Flag is burnt in Peking.