Papal Consecrations to the Immaculate Heart
Papal Consecrations to the Blessed Virgin Mary
Pope Pius XII and Pope St. John Paul II
(Following are the texts of some of the papal Consecrations of the World and/or Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary)
1952. Pope Pius XII, Carissimis Russiae Populis
13 May 1982. Pope St. John Paul II. Consecration of the Modern World to Our Lady of Fátima
16 October 1983. Pope St. John Paul II. Renewed, at end of 1983 Synod of Bishops, Consecration of the Modern World to Our Lady of Fátima.
25 March 1984. Pope St. John Paul II. Consecration of all Individuals and Peoples of the World (in union with the Bishops of the World)
1952. Pope Pius XII, Apostolic Letter Carissimis Russiae Populis (On the Immaculate Heart and the People of Russia)
We know — and the knowledge has filled Our heart with hope and with deepest comfort — that you love and honor the Virgin Mother of God with ardent affection and that you venerate her sacred images. It is known that in the Kremlin itself there was constructed a church — today unfortunately no longer being used for divine worship—dedicated to our Lady assumed into heaven; and this is a most clear testimony of the affectionate devotion which your forebears had and you have for the beloved Mother of God.
HOPE FOR HEARTS THAT LOVE MARY
Now We are well aware that the hope of salvation can never be absent wherever hearts are turned with sincere and ardent piety to the most holy Mother of God. Though attempts be made by men, no matter how powerful or impious, to extirpate the Christian religion and Christian virtue from the minds of the citizens, and though Satan himself may strive with every means to foster this sacrilegious struggle—as is described in the words of the Apostle of the Gentiles: "For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and the powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places"[1]—yet notwithstanding, when Mary interposes her powerful protection, the gates of hell cannot prevail.
She, in fact, is the most loving and most powerful Mother of God and of us all, and never was it heard that anyone has had suppliant recourse to her and has not experienced her most efficacious protection. Continue, therefore, as you have been doing, to venerate her with fervent piety, and to love her ardently and to invoke her with these words which you have been accustomed to address to her: "To you alone has it been given, O most holy and most pure Mother of God, unfailingly to have your petitions ever answered."[2]
MARY IMPLORED FOR RUSSIA
We, together with you, are raising to her Our suppliant invocations, that the Christian Faith, which is the honor and support of human society, may be strengthened and increased among the peoples of Russia, and that all the wiles of the enemies of religion, all their errors and their deceptive artifices, may be driven far from you; that public and private morality may be brought into conformity with the teachings of the Gospels; that those especially who among you profess themselves as Catholics, although deprived of their pastors, may resist with fearless fortitude the assaults of the impious, if necessary even unto death; that just liberty, which is the right of the human person, of citizens, and of Christians, may be restored to all as it should be, and in the first place to the Church, which has the divine mandate of teaching to all men truth and virtue; and finally that true peace may come with its shining light to your beloved nation and to all men throughout the world, and that this peace, founded securely upon justice and nourished by fraternal charity, may lead all mankind to that common well-being of citizens and peoples which is the fruit of mutual concord.
May our most loving Mother be pleased to look with clemency also upon those who are organizing the ranks of militant atheists and upon those who are collaborating in promoting such activities; may she deign to obtain for their minds that light which comes from God and direct their hearts through divine grace unto salvation.
RUSSIA CONSECRATED TO THE IMMACULATE HEART
In order that Our and your prayers be more readily answered, and to give you an especial attestation of Our particular affection, therefore, just as not many years ago We consecrated the entire world to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mother of God, in a most special way, so now We dedicate and consecrate all the peoples of Russia to that same Immaculate Heart, in confident assurance that through the most powerful protection of the Virgin Mary there may, at the earliest moment, be happily realized the hopes and desires which We, together with you and with all those of upright intention, have for the attainment of true peace, of fraternal concord, and of rightful liberty for all: in the first place for the Church, so that through the mediation of the prayer which We raise to heaven in union with you and with all Christian peoples, the saving Kingdom of Christ, which is "a Kingdom of truth and of life, a Kingdom of sanctity and of grace, a Kingdom of justice, of love, and of peace,"[3] may triumph and be firmly established in every part of the world.
And with suppliant appeal We pray the same most loving Mother that she may assist every one of you in the present sad circumstances and obtain from her divine Son heavenly light for your minds, and for your souls that virtue and fortitude by which, with God's grace, you may be able victoriously to overcome impiety and error.
ENDNOTE
1 Eph. 6:12.
2 Acathistus Festi Patrocinii SS. Dei Genetricis; Kondak 3.
3 Praef. in festo I Ch. Regis.
[Source: Papal Documents on Mary (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1954) 249-251.]
13 May 1982. Pope St. John Paul II, Consecration of the Modern World to Our Lady of Fátima.
(On Thursday, 13 May 1982, after the concelebrated Mass in Fátima, Pope John Paul II made the following act of consecration of the modern world to Our Lady of Fátima.)
"We entrust, O Mary, and consecrate the whole world to your Immaculate Heart!"
1. "We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God." As I utter the words of this antiphon with which the Church of Christ has prayed for centuries, I find myself today in this place chosen by you, O Mother, and by you particularly loved.
I am here, united with all the Pastors of the Church in that particular bond whereby we constitute a body and a college, just as Christ desired the Apostles to be in union with Peter.
In the bond of this union, I utter the words of the present Act, in which I wish to include, once more, the hopes and anxieties of the Church in the modern world.
Forty years ago and again ten years later, your servant Pope Pius XII, having before his eyes the painful experience of the human family, entrusted and consecrated to your Immaculate Heart the whole world, especially the peoples for which you had particular love and solicitude.
This world of individuals and nations I too have before my eyes today, as I renew the entrusting and consecration carried out by my Predecessor in the See of Peter: the world of the second millennium that is drawing to a close, the modern world, our world today!
The Church, mindful of the Lord's words: "Go... and make disciples of all nations... and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:19-20), renewed, at the Second Vatican Council, her awareness of her mission in this world.
And therefore, O Mother of individuals and peoples, you who "know all their sufferings-and their hopes", you who have a mother's awareness of all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, which afflict the modern world, accept the cry which we, as though moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to your Heart. Embrace, with the love of the Mother and Handmaid, this human world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you, for we are full of disquiet for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals and peoples.
In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals and nations which particularly need to be entrusted and consecrated.
"We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God: reject not the prayers we send up to you in our necessities.
Reject them not!
Accept our humble trust-and our act of entrusting!
2. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (Jn 3:16).
It was precisely by reason of this love that the Son of God consecrated himself for all mankind: "And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth" (In 17:19).
By reason of that consecration the disciples of all ages are called to spend themselves for the salvation of the world, and to supplement Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the Church (cf. 2 Cor 12:15; Col 1:24).
Before you, Mother of Christ, before your Immaculate Heart, I today, together with the whole Church, unite myself with our Redeemer in this his consecration for the world and for people, which only in his divine Heart has the power to obtain pardon and to secure reparation.
The power of this consecration lasts for all time and embraces all individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every evil that the spirit of darkness is able to awaken, and has in fact awakened in our times, in the heart of man and in his history.
The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, unites herself, through the service of Peter's successor, to this consecration by our Redeemer.
Oh, how deeply we feel the need for consecration on the part of humanity and of the world-our modern world-in union with Christ himself! The redeeming work of Christ, in fact, must be shared in by the world by means of the Church.
Oh, how pained we are by all the things in the Church and in each one of us that are opposed to holiness and consecration! How pained we are that the invitation to repentance, to conversion, to prayer, has not met with the acceptance that it should have received!
How pained we are that many share so coldly in Christ's work of Redemption! That "what is lacking in Christ's afflictions" is so insufficiently completed in our flesh.
And so, blessed be all those souls that obey the call of eternal Love! Blessed be all those who, day after day, with undiminished generosity accept your invitation, O Mother, to do what your Jesus tells them (cf. Jn 2:5) and give the Church and the world a serene testimony of lives inspired by the Gospel.
Above all blessed be you, the Handmaid of the Lord, who in the fullest way obey the divine call!
Hail to you, who are wholly united to the redeeming consecration of your Son!
Mother of the Church! Enlighten the People of God along the paths of faith, of hope and love! Help us to live with the whole truth of the consecration of Christ for the entire human family of the modern world.
3. In entrusting to you, O Mother, the world, all individuals and peoples, we also entrust to you the consecration itself, for -the world's sake, placing it in your motherly Heart.
Oh, Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the future!
From famine and war, deliver us.
From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us.
From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us.
From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us.
From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us.
From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us.:
From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.
Accept, O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies.
Let there be revealed, once more. in the history of the world your infinite power of merciful Love. May it put a stop to evil. May it transform consciences. May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope.
[L'Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 24 May 1982]
16 October 1983, Synod of the Bishops on Penance & Reconciliation.
Pope St. John Paul II and the Bishops of the Synod, Renewal of the Consecration of 1982
At the closing Mass of the Synod, surrounded by numerous cardinals and bishops from all parts of the world who took part in it, the Pope renewed the Act of Consecration of the World to the Mother of God, using the same prayer he said at the Shrine of Fátima the previous year.
"At that time, I asked all my brothers in the episcopate to be with me spiritually. Today, many of you, thanks to the Synod of Bishops, are here, and in your presence and in union with you, I wish to repeat what I said on 13 May 1982."
Consecration repeated as above for 1982
[ L'Osservatore Romano, English Edition, issue of October 24, 1983, page 2]
25 March 1984. Pope St. John Paul II in Union with All the Bishops of the World, Consecration of all Individuals and Peoples of the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Before the Extraordinary Jubilee year of Redemption's Mass for Families, with the Statue of Our Lady of Fátima brought from Fátima to Rome for this purpose by the Bishop of Leiria-Fátima next to the main altar, the Holy Father gave an introduction, where he said in part:
"....In remembrance of the 'Fiat' uttered by her at the moment of the Annunciation, I will today entrust to her Immaculate Heart—in spiritual union with all the bishops of the world—all individuals and peoples, repeating in substance the act that I made at Fátima on May 13, 1982. ..."
ACT OF CONSECRATION
Immediately after the Holy Year Mass for Families:
1. "We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God".
As we utter the words of this antiphon with which the Church of Christ has prayed for centuries, we find ourselves today before you, Mother, in the Jubilee Year of the Redemption.
We find ourselves united with all the pastors of the Church in a particular bond whereby we constitute a body and a college, just as by Christ’s wish the Apostles constituted a body and college with Peter.
In the bond of this union, we utter the words of the present Act, in which we wish to include, once more, the Church’s hopes and anxieties for the modern world.
Forty years ago and again ten years later, your servant Pope Pius XII, having before his eyes the painful experiences of the human family, entrusted and consecrated to your Immaculate Heart the whole world, especially the peoples for which by reason of their situation you have particular love and solicitude.
This world of individuals and nations we too have before our eyes today: the world of the second millennium that is drawing to a close, the modern world, our world!
The Church, mindful of the Lord’s words: "Go... and make disciples of all nations... and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:19-20), has, at the Second Vatican Council, given fresh life to her awareness of her mission in this world.
And therefore, O Mother of individuals and peoples, you who know all their sufferings and their hopes, you who have a mother’s awareness of all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, which afflict the modern world, accept the cry which we, moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to your Heart. Embrace, with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord, this human world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you, for we are full of concern for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals and peoples.
In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals and nations which particularly need to be thus entrusted and consecrated.
"We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God": despise not our petitions in our necessities.
2. Behold, as we stand before you, Mother of Christ, before your Immaculate Heart, we desire, together with the whole Church, to unite ourselves with the consecration which, for love of us, your Son made of himself to the Father: "For their sake", he said, "I consecrate myself that they also may be consecrated in the truth" (Jn 17:19). We wish to unite ourselves with our Redeemer in this his consecration for the world and for the human race, which, in his divine Heart, has the power to obtain pardon and to secure reparation.
The power of this consecration lasts for all time and embraces all individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every evil that the spirit of darkness is able to awaken, and has in fact awakened in our times, in the heart of man and in his history.
How deeply we feel the need for the consecration of humanity and the world—our modern world—in union with Christ himself! For the redeeming work of Christ must be shared in by the world through the Church.
The present year of the Redemption shows this: the special Jubilee of the whole Church.
Above all creatures, may you be blessed, you, the Handmaid of the Lord, who in the fullest way obeyed the divine call!
Hail to you, who are wholly united to the redeeming consecration of your Son!
Mother of the Church! Enlighten the People of God along the paths of faith, hope and love! Enlighten especially the peoples whose consecration and entrustment by us you are awaiting. Help us to live in the truth of the consecration of Christ for the entire human family of the modern world.
3. In entrusting to you, oh Mother, the world, all individuals and peoples, we also entrust to you this very consecration of the world, placing it in your motherly Heart.
Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the future!
From famine and war, deliver us.
From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us.
From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us.
From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us.
From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us.
From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us.
From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us.
From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.
Accept, Oh Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies.
Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin: individual sin and the "sin of the world", in all its manifestations.
Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love! May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!
Pope’s prayer to Our Lady of Fátima
In the afternoon of March 25, 1984, inside the Vatican Basilica and before the pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fátima, before it was taken to the Basilica of St. John Lateran for an all-night vigil, the Holy Father prayed as follows:
Brothers and Sisters.
Before this Marian stay in St. Peter’s Basilica comes to an end, allow me to say a word of thanks. I want to thank you, Mother of Christ, Our Lady of Fátima, who have given us this honor today, the third Sunday of Lent, the day of the Jubilee for families; you who have paid us this visit on a day so full of our faith and our hope. As Bishop of Rome I want to than you, Mother of Christ, Our Lady of Fátima, for this visit of yours in St. Peter’s Basilica on a day when this basilica and this square, filled with pilgrims for the Holy Year of the Redemption, have been able to attend a solemn, deeply felt, I would say suffered, act of entrustment, an act addressed to your Immaculate Heart and, in your Immaculate Heart, addressed to your Son, the Redeemer of the world, the Redeemer of man. We rely on this Immaculate Heart of yours, a mother’s Heart, because in this Heart of yours you carried him as his mother. We rely on this mother’s Heart of yours because with this Heart you embrace all his disciples, indeed all individuals.
So today we have wanted to entrust the fate of the world, of individuals, of peoples, to your Immaculate Heart in order to arrive at the very center of the mystery of Redemption, the mystery that is stronger than all the sins of man and of the world, the mystery in which one can conquer sin in its various forms, in which one can begin, can inaugurate, a new world. And we so need this new world because we experience more and more that the old world, the world of sin, oppresses us, frightens us, brings us various forms of injustice; many times under the name of justice it brings us injustice.
So we have wanted to choose this Sunday, the third Sunday of Lent of the year 1984, still within the Holy Year of the Redemption, for the act of entrusting, of consecrating the world, the great human family, all peoples, especially those in such need of this consecration, this entrustment. All this we have been able to do according to our poor human ability, in the dimension of your motherly concern.
Our Lady of Fátima, to whom we are so devoted and so grateful, indeed in the most intimate and personal sense, you had wanted to pay us a visit on this day that is so important here in Rome. How grateful we are for this! How thankful we are for this! What grace you have given us with this presence of yours which I would say is personal. And our gratitude is extended to the guardian of your sanctuary in Fátima, our beloved brother in the episcopate, the bishop of Leiria-Fátima. We are grateful to him for bringing us the statue of Our Lady of Fátima. We are all grateful, all Romans, above all the Bishop of Rome. We are so grateful for this visit of the statue of Fátima here in our own surroundings: first in the Pauline Chapel of the Vatican, then in my private chapel, then in St. Peter’s Square during the great celebration, and finally in this basilica. Now in this basilica there comes to an end the visit of Our Lady of Fátima who, to continue her presence in Rome, will go to the Cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, St. John Lateran, and then, according to what I have learned, to the Sanctuary of Divine Love. Excuse us, O Madonna, excuse us, Oh Mother of Jesus, if we have to meet in this Rome in various places, in different sites. We must open, we want to open, the grace of your presence to the various locales of this large city and diocese of the Pope. I thank you for everything, and I thank you in the name of everyone, especially in the name of the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, of my brothers in the episcopate, of all the priests, of the whole People of God in this city and in this Church.
I kiss your feet for wanting to direct your steps to us.
May I be permitted, Oh Mary, Our Lady of Fátima, to give again in your presence a Blessing to all present and to the whole Church of Rome.
[L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly English Edition, 2 April 1984, 8-10]
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