May the entwined hearts of Mary and Jesus open to receive our supplications!
24 COUNTRIES CONSECRATED TO SACRED HEART OF JESUS, IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
CNA Staff, Mar 25, 2020 / 05:25 pm (CNA).- Twenty-four countries on Wednesday were consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Fatima, Portugal.
In a March 25 ceremony that included the recitation of the rosary and a litany asking the Blessed Virgin Mary to pray for the afflicted, Fatima’s bishop, Cardinal Antonio Marto, renewed the consecration of Portugal and Spain to Jesus and Mary, and added the names of twenty-four other countries.
In response to the global coronavirus pandemic, the Portuguese bishops’ conference announced last week they would re-consecrate Portugal to Christ and Mary on the evening of March 25. Shortly after the announcement, the Spanish bishops’ conference requested that their country also be consecrated in the same liturgy.
The Portuguese bishops subsequently invited the heads of other national bishops’ conferences to request that their nations be added as well.
In addition to Spain and Portugal, the other 22 countries consecrated at the request of their respective episcopal conferences are: Albania, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Slovakia, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Mexico, Moldova, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Kenya, the Dominican Republic, Romania, Tanzania, East Timor and Zimbabwe.
The cardinal also prayed for “children, the elderly and the most vulnerable,” asking the Blessed Virgin Mary to “comfort doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals, and volunteer caregivers. Strengthen families and reinforce us in citizenship and solidarity.”
During his remarks, the cardinal recalled that Saints Francisco and Jacinto Marto, shepherd children to whom the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in 1917, both died amid the victims of the Spanish flu pandemic.
Cardinal Marto prayed that the saints would intercede for “so many sick people who, these days and in a profound way, experience the solitude of isolation to which they are subject.”
In a statement, the bishops’ conference of Portugal noted that 36 years ago, on March 25, 1984, Pope St. John Paul II consecrated the entire world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
In Spain, more than 3,600 people have died of the coronavirus, while in Portugal, nearly 3000 are infected and almost 50 have died. More than 21,000 people have died around the world as a result of the novel coronavirus.
ST. JOHN PAUL’S PRAYER TO IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
On March 25, 1984, Pope John Paul II consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in an extraordinary ceremony in St. Peter’s Square before one of, if not the largest crowds ever to fill the square at the time, including cardinals and bishops from throughout the world.
What made the event extraordinary was that it was held in the presence of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima – the celebrated statue in the “capelinha” (little chapel) of the famous Portuguese shrine that was flown to Rome at the Pope’s request by the bishop of Fatima. The statue had been carried through the square and placed on the sagrato as the world watched with bated breath.
In union with the bishops of the entire world, this is the prayer that Pope St. John Paul said on that day:
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.
Accept, O 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,” sin 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!
Joan's Rome 