THE HOLY SHROUD FORSAKEN

     Moure, explains the Abbé de Nantes, is a call to order in a Church that has forsaken the Holy Shroud, as we observed in 1998 during its centenary exhibition. We went to Turin to see it, to approach it as closely as possible, to discern the Precious Blood, the cruel wounds, the sorrowful features of the Divine Face. In order to be able to testify to it afterwards in response to all the doubts, all the negations, all the blasphemies.

     Now, far from taking part in the untarnished joy of an exultant Church, victorious through this labarum over every attack of Hell, we passed through a city that was still asleep, a figure of the city half in ruins of the Third Secret – but we did not know this at the time. «And we filed into a cathedral that was plunged into darkness, as though we were proceeding to the cemetery, to the tomb of some masonic notability. As the Church pretended not to recognise it, the lay powers had taken charge of the affair so that everything should be correct, with no excesses.» One could not better describe the exhibition of 1998.

     «Nevertheless, continues the Abbé de Nantes, this rapid vision was enough to stir every one of our pilgrims, who left promising to return later, like Mary Magdalene going to the tomb of her adored Master… But since then, it is as though the tombstone had fallen back on the sepulchre. No one speaks of it anymore; it is as if no one had ever believed in it.»

     Four years have passed, and now people are speaking about it again, but it seems only in order to assassinate it and bury it a second time. The Centro of Turin (International Centre for Studies of the Holy Shroud) arranged for the removal of the thirty variously-sized pieces of cloth which had been sewn to the Holy Shroud in 1534 by the Poor Clares of Chambery to repair the damage caused by the fire of 1532. They also had the Holland cloth replaced, which had been sewn on at the same time in order to strengthen the entire linen strip. Mrs Flury-Lemberg carried out this work in the greatest secrecy, from 20 June to 22 July 2002, in the new sacristy of the Duomo. Alas! Orazio Petrosillo, having caught wind of this, unleashed a furious media storm in the Messaggero of 9 August:

     «The Holy Shroud of Turin is no longer what it has been for over almost five centuries, from April 1534 right up to these last few weeks. They have destroyed the repairs to have survived from that date.»

     As if that were the real question!

     Emmanuela Marinelli, co-author of a book on the Holy Shroud with Petrosillo, alerted her French friends against the «Turin Taliban», worse than those in Afghanistan since they act in secret! Who will silence this ridiculous and degrading polemic?

     In lamenting that «the Shroud of Turin no longer resembles what millions and millions of people venerated and contemplated during the recent exhibitions of 1978, 1998 and the Jubilee», Orazio Petrosillo forgets that the holy Relic existed before 1978, before April 1534, and, above all, before 1350, contrary to the alleged results of the carbon 14 dating. The real question is quite different! With or without its patches, one cannot lie about the Holy Shroud, any more than about the miracle of Moure: the Holy Shroud is as old as the Risen Jesus.

     The only real issue, as the Abbé de Nantes has explained since 1998, is to «understand the relationship between the events in Turin, in which we took an intense part, and those of Moure, which have not ceased to proclaim a contrary lesson.» For, from 18 May 1996, we have been «torn between the Shroud of Jesus who died after atrocious sufferings and the miraculous Host which showed Him living and drew us towards Him.»

OUR SWEET CHRIST ON EARTH

     How is one to understand «this mysterious sign of the three apparitions, like the bell ringing three times in our villages to indicate that Mass is about to begin… or like the wooden mallet knocking three times before the curtain rises on a classical tragedy»? Having raised this question in his Letter to the Phalange of 8 December 1998, the Abbé de Nantes replied: «There is no doubt that Jesus will return to Moure, not that He said He would: He remained silent! But He came and He came back again, so that the world might be forewarned of His return. In the same way that, after the visits of the Angel, the children were not surprised by the apparition of the Immaculate Virgin at Fatima, so no one will be surprised when Jesus returns and this time speaks. The whole world will fall silent, and what God will announce for the salvation of all will be made known from pole to pole.»

     Now, He has returned... not to Moure, nor to Turin where they continue to forsake the devotion owed to the stains of His Precious Blood and to the imprint of His Sacred Body left on His Holy Shroud… yes, in all truth, He has returned, not in 1999, but in the year 2000, the last year of the second millennium; He has returned through the revelation of the Third Secret of Fatima, in the person of His Vicar, our sweet Christ on earth:

     «And we saw in an immense light that is God “something similar to the image that a mirror reflects when a person passes before it”: a Bishop dressed in White. “We had the impression that it was the Holy Father”.»

     This bishop dressed in white, seen through the veils of the glory of God which is the reflection of Heaven, is Albino Luciani, who was elected Pope on 26 August 1978, twenty-four years ago to the day. We were holding our “summer university” in the Basque country, when The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 20^th Century arrived, its title interwoven with a new name: The Catholic Renaissance in the 20^th Century. The explanation for this novelty exploded in a triumphal editorial announcing a «great joy», gaudium magnum, proclaimed on 26 August 1978, on the evening of a wonderful summer’s day, in the loggia of Saint Peter’s by Cardinal Felici: the election to the sovereign pontificate of the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Albino Luciani.

     «Another Saint Pius X without knowing it» – the title of the editorial explained the immense joy urbi et orbi, for the City and the entire world: «As the 263^rd successor of Saint Peter, wrote the Abbé de Nantes, he becomes Pope a hundred years after the death of Pius IX, seventy-five years after the election of Pius X, and twenty years after the death of Pius XII when the Church’s great tribulation began; twenty years of decadence under the names of John and Paul, the very names chosen by the new Pontiff.» (English CRC n^o 102, September 1978)

     Right away the Church of old began to revive. The Angel, to the left of Our Lady, led the way and cried out once again in a voice loud enough to awaken the abyss:

«PENANCE, PENANCE, PENANCE!»

     While the world choked with rage and hate, the chosen one of Our Lady on the contrary smiled with divine grace, like Her Christ of times past.

     For thirty-three days Holy Church seemed to have awoken from a long night and chanted the allelulia of Heaven… The gardens of the Vatican were like a new Paradise where this incomparable prince of Peace walked, said his breviary, recited his Rosary, awaiting his hour… The Angel then sounded the trumpet, and we saw Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious turn towards the Immaculate whom he had proclaimed on the day of his enthronement as the “Star of his pontificate”. They hailed Her with innumerable Ave Maria’s, and formed processions to Lourdes, Loreto and Fatima, with a joy that reminded the older folk of the extraordinary feasts of ancient times. We ourselves were at Lourdes along with all those at our “summer university” and took part in the procession.

     She who stepped out onto the mountains of Galicia and the steep heights of Portugal in this procession headed by Our Lady’s chosen one, was, above all others, the one most beloved of Her Immaculate Heart, because she was responding, through divine inspiration, to what Jesus most desired to hear and admire.

     These multitudes climbed those steep mountains without difficulty. Rosaries and crucifixes could once again be seen in their hands, on their banners and on their religious habits, in a manner that had not been seen since the Revolution. Each carved himself a rough cross, which was easily done as the holm oaks still retained their bark.

     Thus recommenced the rebirth of the Church of ancient times, regaining her vigour and the faith of olden days. This clergy proved that the venerable tradition of our parishes, our monastic communities and our Christian families still existed, albeit in an underground and persecuted manner.

     However, with an astonishing insight into the Secret of Mary, the Abbé de Nantes immediately added, in the editorial cited above, «Signs? portents? Malachy calls him “de medietate lunae”. The half moon is the symbol of Venice, gateway to the East, from whence he comes. But it should be interpreted rather as “from the split in the Church”. A sign of woe. Whoever lives will see.»

     Thirty-three days later, the “woe” was upon us: «The saint that God gave us», was «suddenly recalled on 28 September, to our great sadness and consternation». Our Father admitted: «I was preparing to write the chronicle of the first month of this astonishing reign under the premonitory title “The Pope of the holocaust” to reveal what was already brewing. The holocaust came rather sooner and in a rather different way from what I was about to relate, but the truth of the sacrifice and the holiness of the victim are no less apparent and the effects no less decisive.» (English CRC n^o 103, Oct 78)

     For this Pope, so recently given to the Church, to have be taken away so quickly, was already a sign of his holiness: at this stage of his Way of the Cross, he had proved such a perfect servant of God, so desirous of expiating the faults and crimes of his predecessors, that his sacrifice was accepted without delay.

     Another divine sign accompanied this brief pontificate, as the the Abbé de Nantes immediately remarked:

     «At the very hour when the Pope was elected, there took place the first showing of the Holy Shroud in Turin, the exhibition of the Holy Face of Jesus Crucified, the memorial of His Passion and proof of His Resurrection, in the presence of 80,000 people. The Pope is our “sweet Christ on earth”, but sometimes He is another Crucified, like Saint Peter. Whoever lives will see.» (English CRC n^o 102, Sept.1978)

THE SIGN OF LAZARUS

     Scarcely had he died than he was already embalmed; ignored as though he had never existed. But Someone was not able to forget him: Mary of the Seven Sorrows who, forsaking the men of bloodstained hands, watched over events with Her unique son, Her confidant, the secret witness of everything, our noble Pastor Albino Luciani. Between 1978 and 2000, a secret struggle took place between the Immaculate Virgin and the ministers of Her Son in revolt against Him... a shameful exclusion.

     But on 26 June 2000, the day of the publication of the image-rich Secret of Mary, there rose up once again, like a glorious body, the true Priest, the holy Bishop, the incomparable Patriarch of Venice, the Sovereign Pontiff, who was and is for ever the holy Victim, the Victim without stain, the innocent Victim killed by his brothers, the priest of the incomparable Sacrifice of the Roman altar. His resurrection had already become a reality! Henceforth, nothing would be as it was before.

     Now, in this month of August 2002, at the end of our “summer university”, this same conjunction returns between the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord in His death and resurrection, visible a short while ago at Moure and on the Holy Shroud, and Albino Luciani, the white light, «the lunar splendour shining in the night sky and illuminating it with a beauty drawn entirely from the sun whose reflection it is». Thus did the Abbé de Nantes describe in 1978 «the humility of him who declared that he was not the light but wanted nothing more than to be with us as its MIRROR».

     At a time when people are again speaking about the Holy Shroud in Turin, the newspaper La Croix tells us the good news we have been long awaiting, for one cannot lie about John Paul I any more than one can lie bout the Eucharistic miracle of Moure, or about the age of the Holy Shroud.
 

A REPUTATION FOR HOLINESS

     La Croix’s heading is not correct, for the «first steps taken towards the beatification of John Paul I» began twenty years ago, shortly after the death of the most beloved Pontiff.

     On 26 August 1980, Mgr Maffeo Ducoli, the Bishop of Belluno, a close friend of Albino Luciani whom he succeeded in this see, gave the imprimatur to a prayer to obtain graces through the intercession of John Paul I, in view of his canonisation.

     He has since stated: «After the death of the Pope, numerous requests from the faithful for his beatification began to arrive at the curia of Belluno. Consequently, we prepared the text of a petition asking the Holy Father John Paul II to introduce the cause for the beatification of his predecessor. This popular petition, which circulated spontaneously among the faithful without ecclesiastical involvement, spread first of all in the places where he had lived: in the province of Belluno, at Vittorio Veneto, at Venice; and then even further afield. Thousands of signatures began to arrive from the United States. There, the Carmelites of Flemington took a key part in encouraging the devotion of the faithful towards the deceased Pope: the mother superior of this community has in fact written a book on John Paul I.» (30 Days, French ed., August 1998, p. 28)

     The rapid trip of Cardinal Luciani to Brazil, in 1975, to visit communities of Italian origin, made a deep impression on the country’s population. «Everywhere he went, relates Cardinal Lorscheider, he gave a brief talk, without ever repeating himself, and many people wept when on hearing the Patriarch speak of their land, especially when he expressed himself in their Venetian dialect.» (30 Days, August 1998, p. 13)

     Fifteen years later, in 1990, 229 Brazilian bishops, almost the entire Brazilian episcopate, signed a «request for the introduction of the cause of beatification of John Paul I», addressed directly to HH John Paul II. The petition recalled «the growing veneration displayed by the Brazilian faithful of all social classes towards the paternal and benevolent person of the late John Paul I». It noted that «the deceased Pontiff had left behind him a luminous wake of faith and holiness and that, in numerous parts of the world, the faithful were already speaking of special graces received through his powerful intercession». The Brazilian bishops considered «the value he placed on humility, his chosen virtue, selected as the motto of his episcopal coat of arms». They concluded by presenting to the reigning Pope “a request for the introduction of the cause of beatification of his predecessor, John Paul I, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, for whom John Paul I had always fostered an ardent and particularly tender devotion.”» (Ibid., p. 29)

     John Paul II never followed up this request. That is why one of the most notable miracles obtained – doubtless through the intercession of Albino Luciani – is to see Mgr Vincenzo Salvio, Mgr Ducoli’s successor in the see of Belluno, today receiving from the Vicariate of Rome, the Congregation for the Cause of Saints and the Secretariat of State, a favourable decision concerning the opening of a preliminary inquiry in view of his beatification.
 

     Of course, we must expect to see a thousand obstacles obstruct the preliminary phase of this process. Already, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, Vicar of Rome, has refused to assume the responsibility that is his, or has been prevented from doing so by higher Authority: «In the Vicariate of Rome, they preferred Belluno to take charge of the matter, seeing that Luciani had lived there for forty-six years, while he had only resided at Rome for thirty-three days.» (Corriere della Sera, 27 August 2002)

     But the bishop competent to introduce the cause of canonisation is the one in whose territory the servant of God died: not the one in which he lived, but the one in which he died. It is therefore the Bishop of Rome, in other words Pope John Paul II, who is the competent authority, and it is in Rome that the process must be opened. It is in Rome that the body of the servant of God, Albino Luciani, pope and martyr, reposes. Like Lazarus he waits for the tombstone to be removed in order to deliver his message of salvation. For, as the Abbé de Nantes recalls, «there is nothing terrifying in the death of a just man. On the contrary, it is a sign of mercy and a peaceful rainbow». Tomorrow, thanks to his sacrificial holocaust, the undivided Church of East and West will begin to revive under the one Roman Father and Patriarch, who will shortly be proclaimed a saint by popular acclamation. Already he is working miracles, which are being documented by the Papa Luciani centre. The July 2002 issue of its review, Humilitas, reports two miraculous cancer cures.
 

     Please God that Sister Mary-Lucy of the Immaculate Heart, the messenger most faithful, may learn of such glory! by virtue of that perfect and wonderful understanding which reigned between these two marvellous souls who never cease telling us with a united voice: «Love the Immaculate Heart of Mary! Love what She loves!»

Brother Bruno of Jesus    

At Rome, in the crypt of Saint Peter’s, the tomb of our dearest holy pope, John Paul I, guarded by the two angels of the secret of Fatima, is distinguished from the tombs of his predecessors by its sobriety and lack of adornment.