And Cardinal Burke...

...at a conference in Rome has said that, while St John Paul certainly consecrated Russia, along with the rest of the world, to Mary, it can and should be done again, this time with a specific mention of that country. And of course it can be done again.   Christianity is gaining  - or rather regaining - ground in Russia on a large scale and has been doing so rather dramatically since the 1984 consecration and the events that followed.  There will be a time when Russian pilgrims come to Fatima and join in the prayers there...and in God's good time there will be healing between the Eastern Orthodoxy and the Catholic Church and the unity broken so many centuries ago will be restored.

Renewing the consecration will probably, over the years, become something that is done with some regularity and with great solemnity. The mistake some commentators and lobbyists have made has been to link it with theories of their own: secrets hidden in the Vatican conspiracies covered up, a whole range of pet ideas. But Fatima was not about that.  The message was one of prayer and penance. Which was - no surprises here - the message that Cardinal Burke sought to emphasise too.

Cardinal Burke wrote a Foreword to Fr Andrew Apostoli's book on Fatima , which is a good read and answers a lot of questions often raised about the whole subject.

Cardinal Burke's speech was a rallying-call to the New Evangelisation, and he urged that we listen to the voices of  Blessed Paul VI and Saint John Paul:  "The pontificate of Pope Saint John Paul II, in fact, may be rightly described as a tireless call to recognize the Church’s challenge to be faithful to her divinely given mission in a completely secularized society and to respond to the challenge by means of a new evangelization. A new evangelization consists in: 1) teaching the faith through preaching, catechesis, Catholic education and all forms of communication, 2) celebrating the faith in Divine Worship and in prayer and devotion which are the extension of Divine Worship into every moment of daily living, and 3) living the faith by the practice of the virtues – all as if for the first time, that is, with the engagement and energy of the first disciples and of the first missionaries to our native place."

Particularly moving is the cardinal's quoting St John Paul's words at Fatima in 1982 on the anniversary of the attempt on his life. Worth reading the whole thing here...