CHAPTER 5

WHO RULES THE CHURCH?

     AT Rome, there were no celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. The Pope simply mentioned the event in a few words at the beginning of his general audience on 11 October 1972. The Abbé de Nantes remarked on that very evening at the meeting of the League at the Mutualité: “Today, none of the paragons of this wonderful Reform dared to celebrate its anniversary! This morning in Rome the Pope, in tears, was scarcely able to refer to it.¹”

     Over the course of the previous years, Paul VI had occasionally confessed that the fruits of the Council were not exactly what he had hoped for. For example, on 7 December 1968 he had said:

     “The Church finds herself in an hour of disquiet, of self-criticism, one could almost say of self-destruction. It is like an inward upheaval, complex and full of anguish, such as no one would have expected after the Council. We had expected to see, rather, an expansion and flourishing of the ideas ripened in the great sessions of the Council. This aspect exists also, certainly. But [...] it is the painful aspect which is the more prominent. It is as though the Church were working for her own ruin.

     “There are those who would expect of the Pope dramatic gestures, decisive and energetic interventions. The Pope considers that the only course he has to follow is that of placing his trust in Jesus Christ, who loves His Church more than anyone else. It will be He who will calm the tempest. How many times has Jesus not said: ‘Have confidence in God, and believe in Me!’ The Pope shall be the first to follow this commandment of the Lord and to abandon himself without disquiet and undue distress to the mysterious action of the invisible but very definite help which Jesus has assured for His Church.²”

     “The Pope”, the Abbé de Nantes will remark, “was right to speak of self-destruction, however surprising this term must seem in the mouth of him who is Master of the Church. It was a recognition of the fact that he himself, he primarily and before anyone else, was the destroyer of his own property. The Church is him. On that day, he had a clear perception that he was destroying himself and the whole Church along with him; he called upon Heaven to intervene and to arrest the ruin which his own hand had provoked and which he was still pursuing!³”

     When Paul VI dared to affirm: “No one would have expected such a self-destruction after the Council...”, he was ignoring and taking no account of the warnings, complaints and accusations brought by the Abbé de Nantes, which he would have had to have known about even before the Council closed in 1965⁴. Admittedly, the Pope said he noted that the children of the Church, even “those wielding the greatest authority”, were troubled with feelings of “confusion” and “uncertainty”, as if experiencing “a shiver of fever”⁵, but he absolutely refused to combat the heresy, schism and sacrilege that was openly committed, perpetrated and professed by numerous high-ranking members of the hierarchy.

     Occasionally the Pope had some surprising things to say about the weakness of Peter. Thus, during the audience of 12 April 1967, a few weeks before the jubilee of the apparitions at Fatima, having recalled the dangers which menace the faith of the faithful, he said:

     “We find a strange thing taking place within ourselves: in our desire to comfort you, We find ourselves beginning to share, in a certain sense, the feeling of your danger, from which we would wish to protect you. And, conscious of our inadequacy, we think of the weakness of Simon, son of John, who was called upon to become Peter by the Will of Christ.” And he went on to review all the weaknesses “of poor Peter”: doubt, fear, his treachery, his unreflecting enthusiasm. Yet, Paul VI added: “But the conclusion is consoling. The Lord restored His chosen one, and in his profession of faith and love, He constituted him Pastor of His flock.⁶”

     In 1972, with the Pope's seventy-fifth birthday approaching, the possibility of his resignation received much discussion in the press, since he himself had insisted that parish priests, bishops and finally even cardinals⁷, should proffer their resignation at this age. The more modernist theologians were also hoping for Paul VI’s departure. It was in these circumstances that Paul VI revealed the anguish he suffered over his insufficiency and unworthiness. Let us listen to him recalling, on 28 June 1972, – three months before his birthday on 26 September –, one of the “symbols that surrounds the figure of Peter”:

     “There is yet another sign to be found in the history of Peter: the cock. The implacable cock which crowed on the night of the denial, the night of Jesus’ trial, just as He had predicted: ‘Before the cock crows twice, you will have denied me three times.’ (Mk 14.30) The human psychology of Peter comes across to us here in all its dramatic simplicity, in all its human fragility; he was good, sincere and exuberant in his words and his feelings; carried away by his enthusiasm, he trusted in himself. But the devil got the upper hand over him (1 P 5.8); he was overcome with fear and he renounced his fidelity, his love: ‘I do not know this man.’ (Mk 14.71) Fortunately – how great is Christ’s goodness towards this feeble witness He has chosen – Jesus, at that moment, ‘turned round and fixed his gaze on Peter’ (Lk 22.61). That was enough to fill the poor Apostle with remorse and make him weep. He fled, but he did not despair. Jesus had also foretold that he would recover and that he would then have the task of ‘confirming his brethren’ (Lk 22.32).” And Paul VI concluded his speech as follows: “It is with both joy and trembling that he who is speaking to you recalls these Gospel images relating to Peter, in whom today the Church honours Jesus Christ; and you can understand why. Therefore, dearest brothers and sons, say a prayer for us as well, the unworthy but true successor of Peter, who blesses you with all his heart.⁸”

     Paul VI was too “smitten with power”⁹ – the expression is that of the Abbé de Nantes – to relinquish it of his own accord on his seventy-fifth birthday on 26 September 1972. He had also personally denied the rumours of his “retirement” by declaring on 24 April:

     “It is the Lord who has created the Church, not ourselves. It is not easy nor agreeable to have certain responsibilities. But Jesus declared: You will be an apostle. On you will I found my Church...It would be a relief to evade this responsibility of ours. But I do not wish to do so. And you who are here, can you not at least show your understanding and your affection for those who have hierarchical roles in the Church: that is to say those who have responsibility for the ministry?¹⁰”

     In his editorial for July 1972, the Abbé de Nantes commented on these papal words: “Everything carries on as though the deadline of 26 September posed a threat to Paul VI, a threat which he seeks to pre-empt through some kind of popular plebiscite. He makes out that the encouragement, the confidence and the good wishes of the masses are needed by him in order to establish some kind of democratic renewal of his mandate. But the great powers of capitalism and communism which govern the world and form public opinion are today behind Paul VI and Cardinal Villot, his possible successor. This can be clearly seen in the press. The only Roman groups which favour Paul VI’s departure, whatever the means or the reason, are those of the traditionalist minority. These groups are becoming more and more numerous. Is it from them that this anxiety of Paul VI stems?”

     The remainder of this editorial of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, entitled “Who is governing the Church?” suddenly took a dramatic turn. In his analysis of the two other speeches of Paul VI, the Abbé de Nantes showed the frightful consequences of a negligent Pope who refuses to exercise the duties of his office. The demonstration is rigorous and the conclusion disturbing. Paul VI was surrendering the Church to the power of an invisible and mysterious force: the Devil.

     “At the head of the Church, the Pope has formed for himself a curious idea of his mission. He does not claim to govern the Church, to preach the truth, to condemn error and repress disorder. He has expressed this new idea before and he repeated it on 21 June, for the ninth anniversary of his election: it is not he who is holding the tiller of the Church, it is Christ!”

     But let us listen to what the Pope had to say:

     “In our personal notes, we find the following reflections: Perhaps the Lord has called me to this service not because I had a certain aptitude or in order that I might steer the Church to safety in her present difficulties, but in order that I might have the opportunity to suffer for the Church and that it might clearly appear that it is He and no one else who is guiding and saving her¹¹.

     “We confide these reflections to you, not of course to make a public and therefore boastful act of humility, but in order that you also may share the peace of mind that we feel at the thought that it is not our weak and inexpert hand which is at the tiller of the barque of Peter, but the invisible, strong and tender hand of the Lord Jesus!”

     Having invited the pilgrims of that 21 June to have “the trust that Jesus expects of those who belong to Him”, Paul VI then went on:

     “As for us, we repeat with fervour the words pronounced by Saint Leo on the anniversary of his election: He who conferred on us this dignity will also give us the strength to exercise it.”

     “Now here is something that is very strange and inconsistent”, remarked our Father.

     “Either the Pope, aided by the Holy Spirit, governs the Church with authority, awareness and a sense of responsibility.

     “Or else Christ governs His Church directly, in which case the only role for the Pope is to stand aside, feeble and wretched, and to follow a vocation that is simply one of suffering and powerlessness.

     “But the result of amalgamating these two claims is to excuse Paul VI for not doing his job as Vicar of Christ, that of governing, on the pretext that Christ has invisibly assumed this role, whilst contradictorily imputing to Christ, as though He were its sole infallible Author, everything that Paul VI is doing or is failing to do in the Church today.

     “There is something ever more serious still. On 29 June, on the feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, he referred to another power, itself also invisible, which is at work within the postconciliar Church:

     “ ‘Through some crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: doubt, uncertainty, questionings, dissatisfaction, confrontation, have come to the fore. We no longer trust in the Church, but in the first profane prophet who comes to speak to us from any newspaper or any gathering, to ask him if he has the formula for the true life, ignoring the fact that we ourselves already possess it. Doubt entered into our consciousness. It entered through those very windows which should have been open to the light: to science.’

     “Those wonderful opening to the world decided upon by Vatican II! And the Pope confesses his disillusion:

     “ ‘We should have expected the dawn following the Council to be a day of sunshine for the Church. But instead we encountered new storms. We are doing our best to create new chasms instead of filling them in. What has happened? We will confide our thoughts to you: an adverse power, the Devil, that mysterious being , the enemy of all men, something supernatural, has come to ruin and dry up the fruits of the Ecumenical Council and to prevent the Church breaking into hymns of joy at having rediscovered her consciousness of herself. It is for this reason that we would wish at this moment to be more than ever capable of exercising the office that God gave Peter: You must confirm your brethren in the faith.¹²’

     “So, the devil is at work within the Church, and Paul VI, forgetting what he had said eight days earlier, manifests his desire to exercise his authority as he should, or at least to find himself capable of this.

     “Satan is on the prowl in the Church, as we have already said...¹³”

     Then the Abbé de Nantes explained why the situation and the state of the Church were becoming ever more deplorable. Using several examples borrowed from events of the day, he showed that, through the fault of Paul VI, the reactions of the “good” against evil were ineffective, whereas the bad were authorised to destroy everything.

     “Cardinal Staff is one of the good.” As Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the supreme tribunal of the Church, he defends and recalls the divine and ecclesiastical law on sacramental marriage. Now, despite the decisions of the Apostolic Signatura, “the delinquent Dutch bishops and their rebel tribunals continue to function and persist in their disorders, all with the connivance of Paul VI.”

     “Cardinal Willebrands is one of the bad.” He published an instruction on “cases in which other Christians can be admitted to Holy Communion in the Catholic Church”. “It is nothing less than a violation of the divine law which teaches that the Eucharist is the sacrament of the living, to be given by priests to the faithful of the Church, and on no account to those in heresy or schism. The Council had already made a serious breach in this bimillennial prohibition of any ‘communicatio in sacris’. And Paul VI had already infringed this divine law for a certain Barbarina Olson, a Presbyterian. Since that occasion, everyone has used this bad example as an excuse for admitting the ‘separated brethren’ to Holy Communion. With this scandalous Instruction, the sacrilege becomes legal.”

     “At any rate, the Pope is allowing all this to go on. He is allowing Satan to rule the Church, to destroy her. Will there still be a Catholic Church when the practice of intercommunion has become universal? All that remains will be a flock without the faith!”

     Without quoting all the proofs supporting the demonstration developed in this editorial, let us go directly to its implacable conclusion:

     “If Paul VI is not governing the Church, then neither is Jesus Christ governing her invisibly, as He would not wish to substitute for His failing Vicar. Taking advantage of this abdication, it is Satan who is leading the dance, to the despair of the faithful and the triumphant joy of the wicked.

     “It seems to me that those cardinals who are still sound and who are afflicted by the abandon into which the Church of Rome has fallen, could and should take advantage of this 26 September to point out to the poor Paul VI – he who is ‘unworthy and incapable’, to repeat his own humble and accurate expression – that it would be best for him to relinquish a charge which he is obstinately holding on to whilst failing to exercise its essential duties. They would only have to remind him of that which Saint Catherine of Sienna wrote to Gregory XI in somewhat comparable circumstances: ‘Since Christ has given you an authority and you have agreed to accept it, it is your duty to exercise the power that belongs to it. But if you have no intention of exercising it, then you would do better to divest yourself of the position you have accepted. You would thereby render greater honour to God and work more certainly for the salvation of your own soul.’

     “From now on, let us pray for his abdication on 26 September.¹⁴”

     The remonstrations and invective addressed to Pope Paul VI by the Abbé de Nantes became ever more vehement in that summer of 1972:

     “The primary cause of a disease which afflicts the whole body at the same time and in the same manner, clearly lies in the head. In a society that is authoritarian and hierarchical, free and powerful, the Head, the Leader, has direct, immediate and personal responsibility for any present-day ills which he has either decided on or tolerated. And if he moans and laments how much pain they cause him, this merely serves to show that he is aware of the evil but refuses to fight it.

     “Paul VI must go. His recent act – in the middle of the Roman summer vacation – which authorised the bishops to give Holy Communion to heretics and schismatics without abjuration or confession, would be sufficient grounds in itself to justify the clergy of Rome demanding his deposition, either his enforced abdication or his voluntary resignation. For the sake of numerous souls heading for damnation, for the sake of the Church which is collapsing, for his own eternal salvation, it is urgent that Paul VI be given notice – by Heaven if everyone else is too cowardly to accept this duty – to quit. But let it not be through a sudden and unexpected death, an event we must dread both on his own account and on that of the Church, since the great lesson to be learned – perhaps even his retraction, why not? – would thereby be lost.¹⁵”

“OUR LADY, HAVE PITY ON US!”

     On 15 August 1972, on the feast of the Assumption, the Abbé de Nantes will address a truly fervent prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary, asking that She might intercede before our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, on behalf of the Church, and that She might be given the task of promptly intervening in order to save the Church.

     Here is the full text of this ardent supplication published in the Catholic Counter-Reformation for August 1972, under the title “Our Lady, have pity on us!”

     “O Lady Ever Watchful, Our Lady of Salvation, Queen of the Angels, Immaculate Virgin Mother of God, Our Lady of Holy Hope!

     “I come before Thee, the last and most unworthy of Thy servants, and I throw myself at Thy feet to be heard, to be heeded by Thee. I come before Thee to speak not of my own pain and misery, nor of the trials of those close to me, as I do in my daily prayers, trusting only in Thy mercy. I come before Thee to speak of our Church, which is also Thine, for Thou art her Queen, her Mother and – to express it in the mysterious language of the Apostle in his Apocalypse – her resplendent image.

     “She is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, just as Thou, at Thy glorious Assumption into Heaven, wast and remaineth Unique and Incomparable, raised high above all holy virgins, Holy and Immaculate beyond the purest of sacrificial offerings, the Catholic and Apostolic Mother of all the living throughout the ages, ever since that Hour of anguish when Thou didst merit to beget all men to eternal life from the side of Christ the Saviour. The Church resembles Thee. She is a Virgin and Mother like Thee, One, without peer, beyond compare with any other; Holy in her founders, in her teaching and her works; Catholic in her readiness to receive every human being, free man or slave, Jew or pagan, man or woman, criminal or innocent; and finally Apostolic through her unalterable fidelity to the words and institutions, to the memory and the Spirit of her Spouse, by a bond which the greatest crime could never destroy.

     “Just as Thou didst appear to the marvelling and affectionate eyes of the disciples of Jerusalem and Ephesus, so Thou art in heavenly Glory. Just as the Church resembles Thee in the dazed eyes of our faith, so will her splendour be at the resurrection of the body to eternal life. Her beauty, reason, virtue and divine countenance will fill us with joy... 

     “But today we live in anxious fear for our Mother. We see a cancer spreading within her, devouring and desiccating her vital organs. Before long it will cover her whole body. When it reaches her dear face, that will be the end. Thou canst not, O Mother, remain aloof in this drama and insensitive to our affliction. Yes, I know that Thou art always close to the Church, to each one of us, even to me a miserable sinner. Thou hast given us numerous proofs of this, at the rue de Bac in Paris, at Fatima in Portugal, and at Lourdes where I went to drink and to wash in the spring and to kiss that blessed rock on which Thy didst place Thy feet. Thou art and always shalt be, until the very last day of history, just as Thou wast at the wedding feast of Cana, attentive to the smooth running of the household and the cares of Thy children.

     “Behold then... The Church is like the boat of Saint Peter in the tempest. It is not a matter of rousing the Lord who seems to be asleep. We have learned the lesson of that episode. Today we have the faith and we know that the ship cannot sink while He is there. But we also know that it is the task of the Pope, the bishops and each of the rowers in his respective rank to toil away and to pull hard at the oars, and not to sit back and dream about some invisible and miraculous rescue which would dispense them from struggling against the unleashed Powers of Hell.

     “Our Lord Himself I will not disturb. But Thou, Thou dost take our part, and Thou alone at this extreme hour of need canst ask Him to come to our aid, and to come quickly, lest we die before the promised dawn.

     “To speak frankly, I should like to tell Thee, O Mary, in spite of my own unworthiness and thinking only of the dire need of the Church, that it is high time for Thee, the Help of Christians, to come to our aid, for we are literally about to perish. The Turks no longer menace Christendom at sea or beneath the walls of Constantinople or of Vienna; the Turks are now within the gates of the City, within Rome itself, within the Holy of Holies, and from there they control the Church throughout the whole world.

     “Thou canst not let them continue. Terrible as an army ranged in battle, Thy mission is to crush the head of the Serpent. And even though we do not deserve it, or rather because we do not deserve it and have no chance of saving ourselves, Thou must needs come and save the Church from this shameful bondage…

     “Shall it come about through great miracles or terrible punishments? No, I cannot believe that. Such Old Testament means do not belong to Thy generous Heart. They suit neither Thy most lovable humility nor Thy discreet kindness. Thou art far more admirable in the victories of Thy gentleness, wherein Thou dost more clearly manifest the all-powerfulness of Thy frailty. What we expect from Thee is to intervene in a way that almost goes unnoticed, soothing every anguish and procuring salvation, as at Cana, by the simplest and most touching of miracles. May Jesus at Thy prayer change our hearts, just as He changed the unwholesome water into the best wine of the wedding feast, and just as each morning He changes ordinary wine into His redemptive Blood.

     “Thy adversary has become master within the Church, as the Pope himself has been forced to admit. That is the first reason why Thou shouldst come.

     “But there is another reason, one of great force. We have always been told that the three works of the divine Wisdom and Mercy of our God were inseparable: Thyself, O blessed Virgin, in Thy Immaculate Glory, the Blessed Sacrament of the Thy Divine Son, and the sovereign Roman Pontiff, His Vicar on earth and Thy child of predilection.

     “Today, ever since that disastrous Council where, even Thy most certain privileges were disputed and the title of ‘Mediatrix of all graces’ was withheld from Thee, the solemn recognition of which would have been so fitting, and for which the title of ‘Mother of the Church’ could never be a sufficient consolation..., ever since that frightful permanent reform, devotion to Thee is disappearing from our churches, Thy messages are kept from us, Thy Rosary is despised, and there are even those who would cast doubts – O Mother, forgive them – upon that most sublime and intimate of all Thy privileges, Thy glorious and perpetual virginity.

     “Today, ever since that disastrous Council, the Blessed Sacrament is under attack every day and in a thousand different ways. I am not speaking of disrespect or even of sacrileges, of lack of devotion in the reception of this sacrament or of a lack of zeal in preaching it, of making it understood and loved. I myself would also have to confess numerous and grave failings of this kind! But the doctrine of the Real Presence is being falsified, and the liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice has been emptied of its mystery until it has become nigh heretical. The new forms of the Mass lend support to the Lutheran error. The anarchic reform of rites and words  is rapidly leading priests and faithful to deny this mystery of redemption and divine communion, and to see in it nothing more than an empty meal of human brotherhood.

      “Today, ever since that disastrous Council, the Sovereign Pontiff presides not over the Catholic communion, but over anarchy. He is no longer the Doctor, the Pastor and the Prince of his people, but the flatterer, the lackey and the slave of the international rabble who cry out in public: Nolumus Christum regnare super nos! We have a Pope who refuses to act as the supreme Pontiff and who hands over to Jesus the task of governing in his stead, while he goes off to sleep in the stern of the drifting ship. He travels abroad to receive the applause of the pagan peoples and opens the doors of the sanctuary to our armed enemies. Our Paul VI, the agent of the Roman and Apostolic Church’s liquidation, visited Thy domain in Fatima to speak to the crowds gathered in Thy honour about pacifism, liberty, internationalism and antichrist humanism. Refusing to heed Thy messages or to publish Thy secret maternal warnings, he thus corrupted the Gospel of Thy Son in Thy very presence and almost in Thy name. Could anything be more terrible?

     “For the past ten years, the Church’s Pastors have been sullying her honour, as well as Thine and that of God, Thy Father and our Father. Thou canst not allow this to continue. Nay I must go further, much further, and remind Thee of what Thou knowest better than all of us. It concerns certain solemn promises that Heaven cannot neglect. When He called upon all men to board the Barque of Peter and went Himself to the stern to take His rest like a ship’s captain who has every reason to trust His coxswain and the rest of the crew, Jesus made a commitment to all of us and guaranteed that the Gates of Hell would never prevail against His Church. And this promise was not given in an invisible, indistinct or uncertain manner, but in a way that was striking, indubitable and marvellous, resulting in the Church being a permanent miracle, as significant a sign as His own Resurrection, so that the world might believe.

     “Today, the world can no longer see anything, the world no longer believes, and even the faithful are beginning to doubt. A number of them need only a faulty judgement, a secret vice of the soul, or an anomaly of the heart to make them sin against the faith and go off to join the sects. The infallibility of the Magisterium is overshadowed by the numerous, gross and triumphal failings of the Pope and bishops, not to speak of degenerate theologians and of so many preachers of falsehood who are held up as sincere and courageous scholars!

     “If the Christian masses were to apostatise, there would be nothing to do but weep and pray. If the supporting walls of the Church were to collapse, then, as long as the Sanctuary were still intact, there would be no reason for anyone to falter or waver in his faith. But if the entire hierarchy should commit daily sins of infidelity, if the Pope should inhibit the good and favour the bad to the extent that it would be better to be without a pope at all, if the Church is like a woman without a head, a spouse separated from her Spouse, then, O Blessed Virgin, I who am nothing, indeed less than nothing, have every reason to demand from Thee – in virtue of the Promises made by Thy Son and the office He has solemnly and securely confided to Thee, and in the name of the Church of the persecuted, the Church of silence, the Church of the poor – the salvation promised.

     “The time has come for us to be delivered of a Pope who does not act as a pope, to be protected from an episcopal hierarchy which is absolutely indifferent to its essential duties, to be for ever liberated from the yoke of a Council whose memory will for ever remain hateful in the minds of Catholics and whose Acts deserve to be condemned and expelled as forming no part of the Christian patrimony.

     “We have the right to ask this of Thee, O Mother, not on account of our merits but on account of Thy Promises, counting not on our own hearts but knocking instead at Thine, and not through any fidelity on our part but through Thy own tender solicitude.

     “I intercede for those who are letting themselves be carried away by the tide, those who are gradually losing the faith, devotion and every virtue, merely through following the precept and example of their Pastors who claim to be acting on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit! I intercede also for those who react by rebellion and, improperly trusting in their own inadequate lights, go astray by rejecting these Pastors of falsehood out of hand, blindly falling into the abyss even though it was not the abyss originally intended for them.

     “The Church is not a synagogue of Satan. The Church remains in existence; she belongs to Thee, O Virgin Mary, for was she not made in Thy image and likeness? Watch over her! It is Thou who must needs save her by the grace of our God.

     “I would prefer that I alone should be struck down and punished by Divine Justice rather than Thy people. But I will not ask for this. For who am I, and what would be the value of the holocaust of a miserable sinner? What relevance would the faithful see in this, what lesson would they draw? Let us not speak of something that would only be an act of presumption and posturing. But there is ONE who made Himself anathema and a propitiatory victim for His Church, and who became the Saviour of the Body, the Sign and daily Sacrament of the resurrection of all men – Jesus Christ, Thy Son and our Lord. In His footsteps have followed so many apostles and martyrs! It is through His Blood and theirs, in their name, and in consideration of Thy own eminent merits, O Blessed Virgin, that on this day of Thy Assumption, I make so bold as to pray to Thee on behalf of Holy Church and to ask of Thee three things, for we are perishing:

     “That our Pope Paul VI may resign and that a Pastor according to the Heart of Christ may succeed him, for the good of all.

     “That our bishops, under the leadership of the new Pastor, may be converted and once again exercise their divinely bestowed authority.

     “That the infallibility of the Roman Magisterium may triumph at Vatican III, a Council of Counter-Reformation and Restoration, the hope of the Church, by casting an anathema upon Vatican II as the principle and the underlying cause of all the evil. Amen! Amen!¹⁶”

     Reading this moving entreaty, it would seem that the Abbé de Nantes had a clear presentiment, even at that time, of the power and the mission that Our Father in Heaven had entrusted to the most Blessed Virgin Mary for our century. It was true that our Father was not as yet aware of Father Alonso’s thesis regarding the probable content of the third Secret of Fatima¹⁷. At that time he did not know that the third part of the incomparable prophecy of the Queen of Heaven predicted the coming of a spiritual chastisement: the apostasy ravaging the Church in her head and members. Let us remark, however, that he had already listened with great attention to the message that the seer of Fatima had confided to Father Fuentes on 26 December 1957.

     One cannot but be struck by this marvellous accord: the faith, the doctrine and the devotion of the theologian of the Catholic Counter-Reformation are in perfect harmony with the revelations of Fatima, which teach us that it is the Virgin of the Immaculate Heart, and She alone, who “will be able to help us” in our times, since God has given Her the power to save souls, to grant peace to the world, and also to be the guardian of the dogmas of the faith. It is through the Immaculate Mediatrix – through the prophecy of Her third Secret – that Jesus Christ “wishes to vanquish the diabolical wave sweeping through the Church, the impiety installed even in the Sanctuary and all the forces of darkness that have fomented the modern apostasy”¹⁸.