Pope’s prayer to Our Lady of Fatima (Pope Saint John Paul II)
In the afternoon of March 25, 1984, inside the Vatican Basilica and before the pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima, 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 Fatima, 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 Fatima, 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 Fatima, 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 Fatima, our beloved brother in the episcopate, the bishop of Leiria-Fatima. We are grateful to him for bringing us the statue of Our Lady of Fatima. We are all grateful, all Romans, above all the Bishop of Rome. We are so grateful for this visit of the statue of Fatima 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 Fatima 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 Fatima, to give again in your presence a Blessing to all present and to the whole Church of Rome.
Source: L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly English Edition, 2 April 1984, 8-10
Retrieved from:
https://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/consecra.htm 01/03/2016
