The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to thousands of dead combatants, with many civilians killed and millions of people displaced from their homes. The war has revived many Cold War-era fears, including military escalation and even nuclear war.
On March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, Pope Francis led the world in a consecration to the Virgin Mary.
“Accept this act that we carry out with confidence and love. Grant that war may end and peace spread throughout the world,” the pope prayed before a statue of Our Lady of Fatima. “Through your intercession, may God’s mercy be poured out on the earth and the gentle rhythm of peace return to mark our days.”
Davies described the papal consecration as a conscious response to “the gospel message of prayer and repentance that was entrusted to the children of Fatima.” At the time of the First World War, three children in Portugal witnessed an apparition of the Virgin Mary in Portugal.
“The children of Fatima had no human means to overcome war and bring peace to the world,” the bishop said. “Two of these children would die in the global pandemic of a century ago and are numbered among the saints. Yet, by a renewed love for the Eucharist and a new faithfulness to prayer, especially the prayer of Mary’s heart in the Rosary; and by the offering of the small sacrifices of each day, these children sought to follow the path of Mary’s heart and open the way for the world to receive God’s gift of peace.”
“We recognize that it is human sin which takes away the peace of the world, the peace of families and of whole societies,” the bishop’s letter continued. “Sin takes away our own peace and when this rejection of God becomes definitive, it removes our hope of everlasting peace.”
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