Consecration of the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

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Pope Francis to Consecrate Ukraine and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

What does it mean and how can it help?

On Friday, March 25^th, 2022, at the request of the Catholic Bishops of Ukraine, the Holy Father will consecrate Ukraine and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He has formally asked all the bishops and priests of the Universal Church through his Apostolic Nuncios to join him spiritually in the consecration, and since then the Holy Father has extended the invitation “to every community and all the faithful” to join him in “the consecration of humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that she, the Queen of Peace, may help us obtain peace.” 

Because of its importance, I want to share some ideas that may help to understand it better and answer some questions concerning the consecration that have arisen so we can participate more actively and fruitfully in it for the sake of peace in Ukraine and the relief of the people suffering so terribly from this unjust war there. There are three major questions about this consecration that have come up.

First of all, “what would a consecration of this type possibly signify, since it is external and even alien to some of those intended to be consecrated by it? No one, not even the Holy Father, can confer a formal consecration on others against their will or without their personal participation. (Parents and godparents simply stand in for their children, of whom they have full responsibility.)” 

These are the observations of Fr. Rene Laurentin in his book, The Meaning of Consecration Today. Because they apply directly to the consecration that Pope Francis is going to make this Friday in that he is consecrating the aggressors in this conflict as well as the victims, it would be good to know how this consecration can work and help.

In answering this question, Fr. Laurentin – the preeminent theological expert on consecration to Mary – cites a distinction between “formal” and “votive” consecration. Formal consecration would of course be one in which all the positive parts of a valid consecration are realized, whether it be sacramental, like Baptism; canonical, like the 3 vows; or devotional, like the consecration of St. Louis de Montfort and others similar to his. Whereas the votive consecration is “an expression of a desire of God, Who, in fact, wants all men to be saved, and Who has given the Church the mission of evangelizing the whole world for that purpose.” Importantly, he adds, “The Church, in turn, is obliged to work in accordance with the design of God, and this includes the desire that all should be consecrated for their own good.”

In a statement that remarkably reflects the current situation in Ukraine and the world around it these days, Fr. Laurentin offers this explanation concerning a consecration like that which Pope Francis is to make on Friday: 

“The votive act [consecration] takes away none of the liberty of those who have been confided to the care of God; it is also in conformity with human solidarity. Men do not hesitate to mobilize for great humanitarian causes or in order to provide aid to those in distress, and no one thinks there is anything untoward in this at all. If firemen or physicians can thus be mobilized to provide help to others, why in the world can God not be mobilized? Indeed, failure to provide the requisite aid to persons in need could sometimes be a crime of omission under the law.”  

Indeed, most of the world has been mobilizing its aid and support for Ukraine and its suffering citizens, millions of whom have fled to other countries. So, it is a wonderful thing that the Holy Father has chosen to respond very actively to the request to consecrate Ukraine and Russia. It is very special that the Church will be offering the best of what it can offer for the resolution and relief of the crisis – God’s intervention.

As Fr. Laurentin goes on to explain, “From this point of view, votive consecrations really have the character of a prayer of intercession, and this, of course, is entirely in accord with the Tradition of the Church. Such consecrations have the aim of procuring the most efficacious aid there is, namely, that of God who created us to be in solidarity with one another, and He has taught us that we should not resist helping those in some kind of danger.”

There has been a tremendous mobilization of effort and aid for the people of Ukraine in the face of the unjust and barbaric war that Putin’s army is waging against Ukraine. This mobilization includes thousands of individuals, local groups, communities, countries and the international community. The consecration by Pope Francis is to “mobilize” the supernatural aid of God that is the most important effort we can make to bring resolution and peace to this crisis. 

Why is this consecration being made to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and not to God or to our Lord Jesus Christ? 

Consecration of Russia and Ukraine and even the whole world as Pope John Paul II did in 1984 to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is perhaps the most significant part of the act that Pope Francis is to do on Friday. It is to fulfill the request of our Lady of Fatima who said to the three children in July of 1917:

“I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communions of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.”

This important promise/warning are the very reason the consecration is being offered by Pope Francis as was done by both Pope John Paul and Pius XII at the request of our Lady herself. In 1920, Jacinta – the youngest of the three seers of Fatima – was dying in a Lisbon hospital from the Spanish flu and confided an urgent plea to Lucia that tells us the importance of this consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary:

“You must stay to tell people that God wants to establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary…They must ask peace through the Immaculate Heart because God has given it to her. I wish I could put into everybody the fire that I have in my heart which makes me love and the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary so much.”  St. Jacinta de Jesus Marto

On June 13, 1929, our Lady appeared again to Lucia when she was a nun living in Spain. She said then,

“The moment has come in which God askes the Holy Father, in union with all the Bishops of the world, to make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means.”

So, as our Lady is saying here, it’s God request that the consecration of Ukraine and Russia is being made now by Pope Francis to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and why he has requested all the Bishops of the Church to join him in this important act! God is asking us to entrust officially as a Church the peoples of Ukraine and Russia to Mary’s Immaculate Heart so as to obtain her intercession for their reconciliation to God and to each other and have peace! In this way, God wants to establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary!

You’ll recall in the explanation of Louis de Montfort’s consecration, the object and goal of any consecration is conformity to God and His Son our Lord, Jesus Christ, and while his devotion is often called “Marian consecration” or “consecration to the Blessed Mother”, Montfort’s official formula is “I am all yours O Jesus through Mary”. The Blessed Mother is the means by which we are consecrated to Jesus, and there is no better way to do the consecration process than through Mary. Jesus is the “Prince of Peace” and Lord of all. The consecration that Pope Francis is to make on the 25^th is to the Lord through the Immaculate Heart of Mary because that is what was requested by our Lady of Fatima herself, because as she said, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to her Immaculate Heart.

It is so important for all the faithful of the Church in union with the Bishops and priests of the Church who are formally requested by the Holy Father to join him spiritually in the consecration to participate as actively as we can praying for the end of the war between Ukraine and Russia! Therefore, this consecration will be a prayer of the whole Church raising its voice together to God begging for divine aid to the suffering, strength to the defenders and change of heart to the aggressors to bring peace to Ukraine! It can also be the moment that Heaven has been waiting for to demonstrate “for those who have eyes to see” the power and goodness of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to bring true peace to our world and conversion of all hearts back to God and His ways! Any war is the result of sins and as our Lord explained in the Gospel on Sunday, we cannot think that because evil has come to Ukraine and Russia, they are more guilty than the rest of us and the only ones who need to be converted in order to be saved. “Do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” (Luke 13:4)

Fr. Laurentin points out that “The wish and the prayer involved in a consecration are merely the beginning, even an anticipation. One is not dispensed, when having recourse to a consecration, from going on to seek the best possible means to fulfill the mission implied in the wish or desire.”  So, the consecration does not and cannot work alone. It is not a magical formula or some miraculous work that causes instantaneous results, but it can be a powerful, grace-filled catalyst of a movement towards God which has to be supported by the faithful who pray and make reparation for sin, and then the conversion of hearts and not just systems can produce the change and the peace desired. 

So then the biggest question of all arises: hasn’t Pope John Paul II already consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1984, and if so, didn’t it work?

St. Pope John Paul II made the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 24, 1984. It was also in union with all the bishops of the Church as this present consecration is being done. The invitation to the bishops to join him then in ’84 was sent out at least 3 months in advance of the scheduled date on March 24^th, the Solemnity of the Annunciation that year since the 25^th was a Sunday in Lent. The 1984 consecration in St. Peter’s Square before the statue of our Lady of Fatima was John Paul’s third such consecration, after one in 1982 in Fatima offered by himself in thanksgiving for saving his life in the assassination attempt on May 13^th, 1981; then another in Rome in 1983 but without all the bishops. The third and final one of his Pontificate was in March of 1984 with all the bishops and the official statue of our Lady of Fatima from the Cova da Ira and not simply the pilgrim statue that usually travels.

The act was named officially an “Entrustment of the whole world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary”, so it was clearly a votive consecration of intercessory prayer by the whole church in union with the Holy Father at that time, as this current consecration is to be celebrated. 

Some Catholics question the validity of John Paul’s consecration, as even mentioned in the letter by the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Christophe Pierre in his letter of March 17, 2022 to all the Bishop of the U.S.. The objection is usually the fact that Pope John Paul did not state the name of Russia in the formula of consecration (or entrustment) that he made. Our Lady’s request to the seers at Fatima was that the Holy Father consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart “so it would not spread its errors”. Yet, it was a consecration of the whole world and by John Paul’s own addition to the formula “especially those of particular concern to the Heart of the Blessed Mother” – those she had specifically requested be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart – implying Russia. After the consecration, when John Paul was interviewed about the consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, he added insistently, “and Russia, I consecrated Russia as well”. Most of all to the point, Lucia Santos – the last of the Fatima seers still living in Portugal in 1989 – affirmed that the consecration of Pope John Paul II had been “accepted by Heaven”! And most of all, the ensuing results of the consecration were on full display for the world to see in the next few years.

John Paul II’s consecration took place in March of 1984.  Mikhail Gorbachev was in full power as the General Secretary of the Soviet Union and in 1986 began a radical reform of the Soviet Union.  His first initiative was perestroika, the restructuring of the Soviet society and economy because it was collapsing from within from too much central control.  Two years later, he implemented glasnost which was an introduction of more freedoms, especially freedom of speech.  What did that do?  It broke flood gates.  People started making mass demonstrations because they were tired of the police state and all of its controls over their lives.  Within the satellite countries of the Warsaw Pact: the Baltics, East Germany and Poland got their freedom in bloodless coups because Gorbachev wouldn’t intervene.  He wouldn’t send the military like the Soviets did brutally in Hungary and East Germany in the 1950s.  Russia had changed.  It stopped spreading its errors and began to dissolve.  In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and by 1991, the Soviet Union stopped existing as a Union of Federations when the 14 republics within the Soviet Union itself separated from Moscow’s central authority and gained their independence.  Russia was alone.  The Soviet superpower collapsed within six years of the consecration by John Paul II without a shot being fired.  The power of consecration was on full display!

Some still claim that the conversion of Russia did not happen, but no one can deny that the Soviet Union had changed (which is the basic meaning of “conversion”). In fact, it had ceased to exist and stopped spreading its errors. In the 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia did experience an apparent increase in freedoms, democratization, openness to the west and even some renewed religiosity. Just a few years ago, Putin himself acted as personal emissary for Pope Francis to intervene in some international dispute that the Pope had been shut out of. But that it is now in desperate need of conversion to God is plainly seen in the unjust war that they have provoked in Ukraine! But where did that come from and why is another consecration still needed? 

We can only speculate, but much like Hitler who came to power in Germany after its devastating defeat in WWI and especially the humiliating treatment of Germany at the Versailles Treaty, Vladimir Putin apparently took advantage to consolidate his personal power in the chaos of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Putin had been an aggressive and decorated agent of the notorious KGB in the 1970’s and 80’s, but when Gorbachev came to power and was introducing more freedoms, Putin resigned from the KGB and became part of Gorbachev’s government. He became prime minister and later president of Russia in 1999 and using the talents he acquired in the KGB has continued as such until today, being reelected in 2018. He obviously built a strong even brutal base of power around himself and rules as an autocratic leader with a democratic façade. He is believed to be one of the richest men in the world, if not the richest. The council meeting of his cabinet in deciding on the invasion of Ukraine was a public display of his intimidating personal power in the coercion of every member of his inner political circle to agree willingly or not to the proposal. The invasion of Ukraine is in reality Putin’s war! 

With the centralization of power in one man, the control of all media and forms of speech and the violent repression of its own people wishing to protest the war or even challenge the state’s propaganda of the situation with imprisonment and other severe penalties we are witnessing the rise of a new Soviet style regime of repression and control that has launched itself against a neighboring sovereign state without provocation.

It can certainly be argued that Putin took full advantage of the radical change going on in Russia to an ostensibly democratic state for his own personal possession and power. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” as Dr. Warren Carrol often postulated in his history of the world. So, while St. Pope John Paul II effectively consecrated Russia along with the whole world and wrought a significant change or conversion of the Soviet Union to stop spreading its errors, a new evil has obviously arisen in Russia that requires the help of Heaven to stop it from spreading its errors once again to Ukraine and beyond. 

Finally, the war in Ukraine should be a stark reminder of the evil consequences of sin that pervade our whole world. While Putin and some of the Russians are the obvious culprits of the current crisis, the main locus of sinfulness can be found especially in the west and in particular in the United States where legalized abortion is rampant and so many evil trends have been bred from the culture of death including gender identity, transgenderism, radical feminism and a hypocritical movement of the “woke culture” which cancel and divide society along its most fundamental values. The consecration of Ukraine and Russia is to help bring peace to that critical area now in a brutal and unjust war, but it is also a call from Heaven and the Church to the whole world to repent and turn back to God and His commandments. The prayer of the rosary for peace and acts of reparation for our sins and those of the whole world including the five first Saturdays Communion of Reparation and the devotion of Divine Mercy are things our Lady is asking for along with the consecration! We live in dramatic times and the consequences of our individual choices have tremendous impact on the welfare of our souls and the world around us. 

Let’s enthusiastically join Pope Francis in this special act of consecration, so as to bring peace to Ukraine and to begin the conversion of the whole world through the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, whose Heart in the end, she promised, will Triumph!

(The Consecration by Pope Francis is to be offered on Friday, March 25, 2022, at 5pm Rome time.)