In a little-noticed meeting at this week’s Tory conference, Theresa May addressed a group of Marian activists. She entrusted to the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart “my Government with all its workers and citizens who are under my responsibility”.
The Prime Minister added: “I offer to Almighty God my thoughts and decisions so that he may use them for the good of our country, and always bearing in mind the Ten Commandments in governing it.”
Well, no, that didn’t actually happen. But the quotation itself is a real one – from Peruvian president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, at a ceremony of consecration last October. The consecration, at which President Kuczynski also asked forgiveness for his own sins and those of the nation, was the first of a trend. In the last 12 months several countries, not to mention many dioceses, have been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary: Ukraine (along with Eastern Europe), Poland, Scotland, Lebanon (along with the Middle East), Canada, Syria and, yes, England and Wales, carried out by Cardinal Nichols in February. Next week Nigeria will join the list.
The simple reason – though not the only one – for the trend is that 2017 is the centenary of the Fatima apparitions, when Our Lady told the little seers: “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart.” After all the terrible trials of the Church, her Immaculate Heart would triumph, she said.
There is a major, and ongoing, controversy, about whether Our Lady’s request for Russia to be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart has been obeyed. But leaving that aside, bishops around the world have certainly promoted the devotion within their own jurisdictions. Portugal was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart in 1931, 14 years after the apparitions. Five years later, the author Donal Foley points out, the Portuguese bishops “made a vow to organise a national pilgrimage to Fatima if Portugal was spared involvement in the Spanish civil war. Their country was preserved from this, and as a result they were able to return in May 1938 to fulfil their vow and renew the previous consecration, being joined by half a million Portuguese.” Other countries followed suit: England and Wales, for instance, were consecrated in 1948.
But Fatima is not the only reason that 2017 has been a year of consecrations: in many countries there is a sense of multiple political and cultural crises, a wish for speedy intervention from heaven. At the consecration of Lebanon and the Middle East, for instance, Cardinal Bechara al-Rahi alluded to “conflicts and wars, death and displacement, the language of arms, fanaticism, violence and terrorism”.
Likewise, Scotland’s consecration was – according to Bishop John Keenan of Paisley – an act of resistance to “the powers of evil that threaten the Gospel in these turbulent times of aggressive secularism, confusing relativism and energy-sapping consumerism”.
Bishop Keenan made another telling observation: he said that the initiative for the consecration had come not from the hierarchy, but from the laity, who had sent “continual letters” asking the bishops to consider making the consecration. In part, then, this also reflects the revival of Marian piety – championed so effectively by Catholic leaders from St John Paul II downwards in the last 35 years – and of popular piety more generally. Eucharistic processions are increasingly popular, for instance: next year will see the first Eucharistic Congress in England and Wales since 2005.
Donal Foley observes that to be truly effective, national consecrations need to involve something more than the ceremonial prayer: they must happen in the context of “the ordinary lay people of the particular country also playing their part by living a more fervent Christian life”.
As well as Portugal, Foley mentions Poland. It could be argued, he says, that its 1946 consecration “greatly helped the Poles to resist the communist regime in succeeding decades”.
Although Britain has only the 33rd largest Catholic population in the world (by Wikipedia’s estimate), England, Wales and Scotland have all been consecrated this year (as was Ireland in 2013). Foley comments that in England’s case, it may be that “the grace of being Mary’s Dowry is coming into play and that we as a nation are meant, ultimately, to be an example to the world”.
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