America Needs Fatima delivers more than 14,000 roses

Beautiful, isn't it?
One rose from each Public Square Rosary Rally Captain.

Another 68,000 ask Pope Francis for a “clarifying word”

PRESS RELEASE Rome, 22nd October 2015 – After delivering 790,150 signatures to the Vatican Secretariat of State on the 29th September, the Filial Appeal Association has just handed in a further 68,052 signatures requesting Pope Francis for a “clarifying word” as the “the only way to resolve the growing confusion amongst the faithful”—in regards to allowing divorced and civilly remarried couples to receive Holy Communion, as well as in regards to homosexual unions—in the certainty that these words would “never separate pastoral practice from the teaching of Jesus Christ”.
The timeliness of the request has been made evident during the course of this Synod now approaching its end.
According to a recent editorial column of an American magazine well-known to be “innovating”: “Midway through the general assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the family, confusion, if not chaos, reigns, to paraphrase a synod father. And in that confusion is fear, fear of uncertainty and the unknown.”
This is not surprising. Under the guise of employing very inclusive pastoral language, leading figures of the Synod strike at the root of fundamental concepts of Catholic morality such as “indissolubility” of marriage, the “intrinsically disordered nature of homosexual relations”, the classification of “adultery” for civil marriages after a divorce and even the aphorism that “one must love the sinner, but hate the sin”.
Even greater confusion comes from the proposal that pastoral practice towards the divorced and civilly remarried, as well towards homosexual unions, be decentralised—something that will inevitably lead to divergence and divisions.
The coordinators of the Filial Appeal deem it to be of the utmost importance that, as has happened many times in the past, Pope Francis himself—as supreme judge of the Faith and utilising his power as successor of St. Peter—definitively decide all these matters of Faith and Morals that have come up during the Synod; and that he do so in a clear, solemn and irrevocable manner: Roma locuta, causa finita.

Victory Through the Rosary - Our Lady's Action in History and Today

“You will be granted all you ask of me by recitation of the rosary.”

Our Lady’s Action in History and Today
Since the time of Saint Dominic, the Most Holy Rosary has been the weapon by which Our Lady has brought about the greatest victories for the Church. On many occasions when all seemed lost humanly speaking, this act of trust in Our Lady has transformed what appears to be certain failure into glorious triumph. The heroic conviction displayed by Catholics of generations past and present shows Our Lady’s power and certain intercession in overcoming the greatest obstacles.
Will Our Lady grant a victory to Catholics in the twenty-first century as she has in the past? As Catholics of previous generations have testified, trusting in the certain victory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary through the rosary can defeat the forces of evil and change the course of history.

Sign up to become a Rosary Rally Captain in 2016 here!

The Rosary and Saint Dominic Defeat Heresy
The rosary—as a spiritual weapon against evil—has a very long and precious history.
In twelfth and thirteenth century France, a group of heretics known as the Albigensians was destroying the minds of the Catholic laity with its erroneous ideas. The Albigensians’ teachings encouraged suicide, many times by self-induced starvation, because they believed that the body was an intrinsic evil and that the soul must be liberated from matter at all costs. However, as history often shows, Providence raises up great saints in times of dire crises. This time it was no different. Saint Dominic, born of noble lineage, received the Most Holy Rosary from the hands of Our Lady. She gave Saint Dominic the rosary as a weapon to combat the awful Albigensian heresy.
Pope Innocent III proclaimed a crusade to rid France of the horrible influence of the Albigensian heretics. In September of 1213, Raymond of Toulouse was joined by Pedro II of Aragon to do battle against the crusading force which was vastly outnumbered. The two sides were camped outside of the garrison of Muret in the south of France. The crusaders, a mere 800 men led by Simon de Montfort, spent the night praying the rosary for victory under the direction of Saint Dominic, and in the morning all went to confession and Holy Communion. The opposing armies, numbering over 20,000, indulged in a night of drunkenness and debauchery. The next morning, Simon de Montfort divided his cavalry into three and rushed on the disorganized bands of heretics. The rout was completed in less than twenty minutes, and thousands of the heretical sympathizers met their end on the battlefield. The Battle of Muret marked a decisive victory and ended the territorial expansion of Albigensianism. With the preaching of the rosary, this dangerous scourge on the Church was soon wiped out.
English Dominican Nicholas Trivet later wrote, “St. Dominic warred by prayer, De Montfort by arms. Simon de Montfort built the first chapel dedicated to the Rosary as an act of thanksgiving for the victory at Muret.”

The Battle of Lepanto—the Rosary Saves Christendom
The Battle of Lepanto in 1571 was a crucial conflict between the defending Christians and the invading Ottoman Turks, one of the greatest naval battles of all time.
The Christian lands around Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean were constantly getting sacked by Muslim pirates, and Ottoman warships were capturing Christian ships and enslaving vast numbers of sailors. Pope Saint Pius V called on the Catholic powers of Europe to unite in a crusade against the enemy threatening Christendom. After raising a crusade, he asked every non-combatant across the whole Christian world to pray the rosary.
Even after this call to arms, the Christian fleet at Lepanto was greatly outnumbered by the Ottoman Turks. As the battle ensued, the Muslims were yelling, screaming, and banging anything that would make noise.
In contrast, the Christians kept an ominous silence, weapons in one hand, and rosaries in the other. Soon after, the Christians and the Muslims were immersed in a bloody battle. Don Juan of Austria valiantly led the Christians from the bridge of his flagship. The Muslims took aim at the large crucifix on the main deck of his vessel, but as the cannonball approached, the body of Our Lord miraculously turned to avoid the collision.
Muslim chroniclers of the battle also reported seeing in the sky a lady dressed in armor holding a child, and with a terrible gaze.
Terrified at the sight, the Turks began to lose control of the fleet, and the Christians pressed the attack. Thus it was that on October 7, 1571, the Christian fleet was blessed with a miraculous victory.
Pope Pius V was blessed with a vision of the victory at Lepanto, and ordered public processions in thanksgiving. When messengers arrived in Rome a week later to report the victory of the Christian fleet, they were quite surprised to find everyone already knew the outcome, the Holy Pontiff ordering all the bells in the city rung to announce the news. He immediately credited the victory to Our Lady, establishing October 7th as the feast of the Most Holy Rosary.

The Siege of La Rochelle—the Rosary Saves France from a Protestant Rebellion
In the seventeenth century, France was torn apart by a series of religious wars between ruling Catholics and Protestant Huguenots attempting to seize power.
The Huguenots entered into formal rebellion in the western city of La Rochelle against the rule of the Catholic King Louis XIII in the year 1628. The Protestants made an alliance with England. King Louis, unwilling to see his kingdom torn apart, made putting down this uprising his first priority.
Public rosaries and processions were held nightly in Catholic churches all over France during the eight-month duration of the siege. Dominican friars accompanied the king to the battlefield and preached to the armies of the French the necessity of praying the rosary daily for victory. The priests distributed more than 15,000 rosaries among the troops, with the soldiers praying together at set times during the day.
On October 28, 1628, the Huguenots unconditionally surrendered to the armies of King Louis XIII when the English were unable to come to their aid. The victorious French entered the city on November 1st, feast of All Saints, led by the Dominicans chanting the Litany of Loreto and carrying a large banner emblazoned with the image of Our Lady of the Rosary. The friars remained for three weeks and distributed more than 1,500 rosaries to those in La Rochelle who were reconciled to the Church.
King Louis XIII returned to Paris and financed construction of the shrine of Notre Dame des Victoires (Our Lady of Victories) in thanksgiving for Our Lady’s intercession for the victory at La Rochelle.

La Naval de Manila—Our Lady Saves the Philippines from a Dutch Invasion
The war between the Spanish and the Dutch in Europe during the sixteenth century soon found its way to the other side of the globe. Through piracy and brute force, the Protestant Dutch had captured all Portuguese possessions in Southeast Asia by the year 1600. Their next objective was conquering the Philippines, the most distant outpost of the Spanish Empire.
The situation in the Philippines at the time was grim—volcanic eruptions in the 1630s led to food shortages which crippled Manila, an earthquake struck the city in 1645 which destroyed 150 structures, and numerous wrecks had diminished the naval strength of the islands.
The Spanish-Filipino fleet was left with only two aging vessels facing an armada of eighteen Dutch warships.
In 1646, Governor Fajardo in Manila ordered the two vessels deployed to confront the Dutch ships. Four Dominican priests were assigned as chaplains of the two ships, and all aboard went to confession and Holy Communion before departing.
The soldiers made a vow to Our Lady of the Rosary to make a pilgrimage to her shrine in Manila should she grant them victory. Over the next six months, the men on both vessels recited the rosary daily on their knees, begging the Queen of Heaven for aid against overwhelming odds.
Through a series of five battles over a period of six months, the Spanish-Filipino fleet was able to put the Dutch to flight on each occasion. In their second encounter, the Protestant Dutch had the flagship of the Spanish surrounded.
However, the Catholic soldiers remained undaunted, and later reported their cannons and muskets firing with smooth and uncanny accuracy. One cannoneer attested that he fired nineteen cannon shots in succession without fail, rosary in one hand and torch in the other, while proclaiming loudly, “Viva La Virgen!”
Toward the end of the year, the retreating Dutch had suffered the loss of two vessels with three others severely damaged, and an estimated 500 soldiers killed during the engagements. The invaders withdrew to their base in Indonesia, never to threaten the Philippines again. The victorious Spanish and Filipinos returned to Manila with only fifteen casualties. The soldiers fulfilled their vows and made a pilgrimage barefooted to the shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in Manila as a solemn act of thanksgiving.
Every year for the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, a procession is held in thanksgiving for the miraculous victory given through the rosary by Our Lady of La Naval.

The Battle of Peterwardein—Putting an End to the Muslim Menace
After the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Turks continued to provoke Europe.
Prince Eugene of Savoy was given the mission of putting an end to the Muslim threat and restoring Hungarian lands occupied by the Turks for more than a century. Recalling the successes of his predecessors, Pope Clement XI renewed the call for all Catholics to pray the rosary for a decisive victory over the Turks.
The year 1716 marked a new Islamic offensive into the hinterlands of the Holy Roman Empire. The fortress of Peterwardein was in danger of falling to the hands of the enemy. Prince Eugene descended on the city with a force of 60,000, only to find an opposing army more than twice that size led by the Turkish Grand Vizier. Prince Eugene, using quick thinking and sound strategy, was able to rout the invading armies, putting them to flight.
The decisive victory resulted in a loss of 3,000 Christian troops, while the Muslims lost several times that number, including the Grand Vizier who was their commander. This battle marked a turning point, and put an end to the attempted large-scale Islamic invasions of continental Europe.
Pope Clement sent Prince Eugene a ceremonial sword encrusted with gems in thanksgiving for his bold defense of Christendom.
In thanksgiving for this victory granted by Our Lady, the Holy Father ordered the Feast of the Holy Rosary, until then only celebrated in certain countries, to be added to the Church’s universal calendar, so Catholics everywhere could pay honor to the Queen of Heaven for her many victories granted through the rosary.

 Communists Expelled by the Rosary
After World War II, Austria was divided between four countries: America, France, the United Kingdom, and Russia, which was still communist. The section of Austria controlled by the communists was the richest, and included the city of Vienna. The Viennese were subject to all the atrocities and tyrannies of communism.
With all of his country’s problems weighing heavily on his heart, Capuchin Fr. Petrus Pavlicek made a pilgrimage to Mariazell, the principle Marian shrine in Austria. While deep in prayer before the miraculous image of Our Lady above the shrine’s high altar, he was told by an interior voice:

“Do as I say and there will be peace.”

To obey this inspiration of Our Lady, Fr. Pavlicek founded the Holy Rosary Crusade of Reparation in 1947. This crusade consisted of the Viennese faithful coming out of their homes in order to participate in a public rosary procession in the streets of the city.
The intentions of the rosary were for the end of communism in their country and in the world. Father travelled throughout Austria with a statue of Our Lady of Fatima promoting the Rosary Crusade. At first, the processions were miniscule, but in time they grew to staggering proportions.
The Prime Minister and other members of the Austrian government soon joined the ranks, along with all of the nation’s bishops.
In 1955, after eight years spreading the word about the Crusade throughout Austria, the Rosary processions would reach sizes of half a million people, about one-tenth of the Austrian population.
Finally, through the help of Our Lady, the Soviet forces pulled out of Austria in October of 1955, leaving the country for good.
Each year on September 12th, the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, thousands gather in Vienna to thank the Mother of God for her intercession in freeing their country from communist domination.

Rosary Saves Man’s Life on September 11, 2001
A man from New York who had fallen away from the Catholic Church and not gone to confession in years was met at a TFP Fatima presentation given by America Needs Fatima custodian Mr. Jose Ferraz.
After the visit, the New Yorker took home a rosary and rosary guide and started praying it and going to the sacraments again. Months later, on September 11, 2001, he was in the World Trade Center at the very moment when the terrorist attack took place.
Seeing the fireball and smoke from the crash, the man fled his office and tried running down the stairs to safety. However, he met a big obstacle. The fire doors had locked and he was trapped in the stairwell, listening to the screams of burning people who were still inside the building, unable to escape death. It was awful—horrific. Any attempt to pry open the fire doors with bare hands would be futile.
With Our Lady’s help, instead of panicking, he felt calm. He grabbed his rosary and started praying to the Blessed Mother for help. And within minutes, firemen reached his floor, broke down the fire doors and set him free. He ran downstairs to safety, his prayers answered thanks to the power of the Most Holy Rosary.

Public Square Rosary Rallies—Bringing About Our Lady’s Victory Today
In 2007 America Needs Fatima launched the Public Rosary Rallies Campaign. That year, there were 2,107 rallies nationwide. Since then, Catholics from all parts of the United States have been gathering in public places to pray the Rosary for the urgent conversion of America.
Again, from humble beginnings, Our Lady has granted the grace of impressive growth to this movement. In 2014 there were 12, 629 Rosary Rallies in all 50 states!
This year, 2015, on October 10th, we are shooting for 14,000 Rallies. And in 2016, the 10th anniversary of ANF Public Square Rosary Rallies, we hope for 15,000!

What will be the outcome of this effort? Can Catholics in America today be certain Our Lady will hear their supplications? Will she send the graces needed to lead this growing army to victory?
Trusting in the Blessed Mother’s promises throughout history to those who are faithful to the rosary, the conversion of America so urgently needed is guaranteed by the graces Our Lady will most certainly send.
The more desperate the situation becomes, the more pronounced the moral crisis, the more hopeless the circumstances, the greater confidence Catholics can have that the glorious Queen of the Most Holy Rosary will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
This path to the conversion of our nation will not be easy, and Catholics today will need to fight for Our Lady even more valiantly than our forebears in ages past. But as the Blessed Mother has shown time and time again, this most powerful weapon she gave to Saint Dominic will save her children in every generation, and if we are faithful and persevere with these heavenly arms, the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is inevitable.
With the Catholics of ages past, let us not be afraid to publicly beseech the holy Mother of God for heavenly solutions to our nation’s problems, both spiritual and temporal, through fervent recitation of the Holy Rosary.

http://americaneedsfatima.org/The-Holy-Rosary/victory-through-the-rosary.html

Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, because She defeated the Turks at Lepanto

The Turkish fleet came on imposing and terrible, all sails set, impelled by a fair wind, and it was only half a mile from the line of galliasses and another mile from the line of the Christian ships.
D. John waited no longer; he humbly crossed himself, and ordered that the cannon of challenge should be fired on the “Real,” and the blue flag of the League should be hoisted at the stern, which unfurled itself like a piece of the sky on which stood out an image of the Crucified. A moment later the galley of Ali replied, accepting the challenge by firing another cannon, and hoisting at the stern the standard of the Prophet, guarded in Mecca, white and of large size, with a wide green “cenefa,” and in the center verses from the Koran embroidered in gold.

Battle of Lepanto in 1571, Don Juan of Austria and cardinals. Fresco in Ain Karim, Israel at the Franciscan church of the Visitation Photo by Abraham

At the same moment a strange thing happened, a very simple one at any other time, but for good reason then considered a miracle: the wind fell suddenly to a calm, and then began to blow favorably for the Christians and against the Turks. It seemed as if the Voice had said to the sea, “Be calm,” and to the wind, “Be still.” The silence was profound, and nothing was heard but the waves breaking on the prows of the galleys, and the noise of the chains of the Christian galley slaves as they rowed.
Fr. Miguel Servia blessed from the quarter-deck all those of the fleet, and gave them absolution in the hour of death. It was then a quarter to twelve.

The Battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571 by Pieter Brünniche

The first shot was fired by the galleass “Capitana,” commanded by Francisco Duodo, and it smashed the biggest of the five lanterns which crowned the stern of Ali Pasha’s galley; the second injured the castle of a neighboring galley; and the third sunk a small vessel which was hurrying to transmit orders. Then there was a retrograde movement through the Turkish fleet, which the bravery of Ali Pasha at once checked. He rushed to the tiller and made the “Sultana” pass between the galliasses with the rapidity of an arrow, without firing a shot; all the fleet followed him, their line already broken, but prepared to form up again when they had passed the obstacle, as the water of a river reunites after it has passed the posts of a bridge which has impeded and divided it. The left Christian wing and the Turkish right one were the first to engage. Mahomet Scirocco attacked with such force in front, and with such tumult of shouts and savage cries, according to the Turkish custom when fighting, that all attention was drawn to one point; meanwhile some of his light galleys slipped past on the land side and attacked the stern of Barbarigo’s flagship, who saw himself sorely pressed as the crew of Mahomet Scirocco’s galley had boarded his by the prow, and the Turks were already up to the mizzen mast.

Agostino Barbarigo Photo by Bob Swain

The Christians defended themselves like wild beasts, gathered in the stern, and Barbarigo himself was directing them and cheering them on from the castle. He had lifted the visor of his helmet, and was using his shield against the storm of arrows that flew through the air. To give an order, he uncovered himself for a moment, and an arrow entered by the right eye and pierced his brain. He died the next day. Then there was grave risk of the Turks overcoming the Venetian flagship, destroying the left wing, and then attacking the center division on the flank and from the rear, making victory easy. Barbarigo’s nephew Marino Contarini overcame the danger. He boarded his uncle’s ship on the larboard side with all his people, and fought on board perhaps the fiercest combat of all on that memorable day. All was madness, fury, carnage and terror, until Mahomet Scirocco was expelled from the Venetian flagship and penned, in his turn, in his own ship, where he at last succumbed to his wounds. Clinging to the side, they beheaded him there and threw him into the water. Terror then spread among the Turks, and the few galleys at liberty turned their prows towards the shore. There they ran aground, the decimated crews saving themselves by swimming.

Battle of Lepanto by Tomasz Dolabella

D. John had no time to reflect either on this danger, or that catastrophe, or that victory, for he was also hard pressed. Five minutes after Mahomet Scirocco had fallen on Barbarigo, Ali Pasha fell on him with all the weight of his hatred, fury and desire for glory. He could be seen proudly standing on the castle of the stern, a magnificent scimitar in his hand, dressed in a caftan of white brocade woven with silk and silver, with a helmet of dark steel under his turban, with inscriptions in gold and precious stones, turquoises, rubies, and diamonds, which flashed in the sunlight. Slowly the two divisions came on, unheeding what happened on the right or left, and in the midst were the galleys of the two Generalissimos, not firing a shot, and only moving forward silently.

Müezzinzade Ali Paşa, Turkish commander at the Battle of Lepanto

When the length of half a galley separated the two ships, the “Sultana” of Ali Pasha suddenly fired three guns; the first destroyed some of the ironwork of the “Real” and killed several rowers; the second traversed the boat; and the third passed over the cook’s galley without harming anyone. The “Real” replied by sweeping with her shots the stern and gangway of the “Sultana,” and a thick, black smoke at once enveloped Turks and Christians, ships and combatants. From this black cloud, which appeared to be vomited from Hell, could be heard a dreadful grinding noise, and horrible cries, and through the smoke of the powder could be seen splinters of wood and iron, broken oars, weapons, human limbs and dead bodies flying through the air and falling in the bloodstained sea. It was the galley of Ali which had struck that of D. John by the prow with such a tremendous shock that the peak of the “Sultana” entered the “Real” as far as the fourth bench of rowers; the violence of the shock had naturally made each ship recoil; but they could not draw apart.

Flag of the Ottoman Navy

The yards and rigging had become entangled, and they heaved first to one side and then to the other with dreadful grinding and movement, striving to get free without succeeding, like two gladiators, whose bodies are separated, who grasp each other tightly, and then seize each other by the hair. From the captain’s place where he was, at the foot of the standard of the League, D. John ordered grappling-irons to be thrown from the prow, holding the ships close together, and making them into one field of battle. Like lions the Christians flung themselves on board the ship, destroying all in their path, and twice they reached the mainmast of the “Sultana,” and as often had to retire, foot by foot and inch by inch, fighting over these frail boards, from which there was neither escape, nor help, nor hope of compassion, nor other outlet than death.

Battle of Lepanto by Tomasz Dolabella

The “Sultana” was reinforced with reserves from the galleys, and to encourage them, Ali, in his turn, threw himself on board the ship. The “Sultana” rode higher out of the water than the “Real,” and the men poured down into her like a cataract from on high; the shock was so tremendous that the Field-Marshals Figueroa and Moncada fell back with their men, and the Turks succeeded in reaching the foremast. All the men at the prow hastened there, and D. John jumped from the captain’s post, sword in hand, fighting like a soldier to make them retire. This was the critical moment of the battle. There was neither line, nor formation, nor right, nor left, nor center; only could be seen, as far as the eye could reach, fire, smoke and groups of galleys in the midst, fighting with each other, vomiting fire and death, with masts and hulls bristling with arrows, like an enormous porcupine, who puts out its quills to defend itself and to fight; wounding, killing, capturing, cheering, burning were seen and heard on all sides, and dead bodies and bodies of the living falling into the water, and spars, yards, rigging, torn-off heads, turbans, quivers, shields, swords, scimitars, arquebuses, cannon, arms, everything that was then within the grasp of barbarism or civilization for dealing death and destruction.

Naval battle of Lepanto by Andrea Micheli

At this critical moment, by a superhuman effort, a galley freed itself from that chaos of horrors, and threw itself, like a missile from a catapult, hurled by Titans, against the stern of Ali’s galley, forcing the peak as far as the third bench of rowers.

Don John of Austria, Marc Antonio Colonna & Sebastiano Venier. Admirals of the allied Spanish and papal fleets against the Turks.

It was Marco Antonio Colonna who had come to the assistance of D. John of Austria; at the same time the Marqués de Santa Cruz executed a similar maneuver on one of the flanks. The help was great and opportune; still, the Turks succeeded in retiring in good order to their galley; but here, pressed hardly by the followers of Colonna and Santa Cruz, they tumbled over the sides, dead and living, into the water, Turks and Christians fighting to the last with nails and teeth, and destroying each other until engulfed in the gory waves.
Among this mass of desperate people Ali perished beside the tiller; some say that he cut his throat and threw himself into the sea; others that his head was cut off and put on a pike. Then D. John ordered the standard of the Prophet to be lowered, and amidst shouts of victory, the flag of the League was hoisted in its place.

Marcantonio Colonna, Duke of Tagliacozzo & Paliano

D. John had been wounded in the leg, but without limping at all he mounted the castle of the vanquished galley to survey from there the state of the battle. On the left wing the few galleys left to Mahomet Scirocco were flying towards the land, and could be seen running violently aground in the bays, the crews throwing themselves into the water to swim ashore.

Alvaro de Bazan, first Marquis de Santa Cruz, commander of the reserve squadron of the Holy League.

But, unluckily, the same was not happening on the right. Doria, deceived by the tactics of Aluch Ali, had followed him out to sea, making a wide space between the right wing and the center division; D. John’s orders to him to come back did not arrive in time. Meanwhile, Aluch Ali contented himself by watching Doria’s maneuvers, keeping up with him, but not attacking; until suddenly, judging no doubt, that the space was wide enough, he veered to the right with marvelous rapidity, and sent all his fleet through the dangerous breach, literally annihilating the two ends which remained uncovered; the disaster was terrible and the carnage awful; on the flagship of Malta only three men remained alive, the Prior of Messina, Fr. Pietro Giustiniani, pierced by five arrows, a Spanish gentleman with both legs broken, and an Italian with an arm cut off by a blow from an axe. In the flagship of Sicily D. Juan de Cardona lay wounded, and of his 500 men only fifty remained. The “Fierenza,” the Pope’s “San Giovanni,” and the “Piamontesa” of Savoy succumbed without yielding; ten galleys had gone to the bottom; one was on fire, and twelve drifted like buoys, without masts, full of corpses, waiting until the conqueror, Aluch Ali, should take them in tow as trophies and spoils of war. Doria, horrified at the disaster, in all haste returned to the scene of the catastrophe, but D. John was already there before him. Without waiting a moment, the Generalissimo ordered that the towing ropes which already attached twelve galleys to their conquerors should be cut, and although wounded, and without taking any rest after his own struggle, he flew to the assistance of those who were being overcome. “Ah! Brave Generalissimo,” exclaims Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, in his valuable study of the battle of Lepanto, “to him the armada owed its victory, to him the right wing its preservation.” The Marqués de Santa Cruz followed with his whole reserve, and seeing this help, the already victorious Aluch Ali understood that the prey would be torn from his claws.

The Battle of Lepanto, painting by Andries van Eertvelt

The cunning renegade then thought only of saving his life, which he did by a means that no one else would have employed; he placed his son in a galley, and followed by thirteen other ones, passed like a vapor in front of the prows of the enemy, before they could surround him, and fled incontinently to Santa Maura, all sails set, he at the tiller, the unfortunate rowers with a scimitar at their throats, so that they should not flag or draw breath for a second, and should die rather than give in.
The first moment of astonishment over, the Marqués de Santa Cruz and D. John of Austria hastened in pursuit; but the advantage Aluch Ali had obtained increased each minute, night began to fall, and the storm which had threatened since two o’clock began to blow, and the first claps of thunder were heard. So the famous renegade escaped on the wings of the storm, as if the wrath of God were protecting him and preserving him to be the scourge of other people.
This was the last act of the battle of Lepanto, the greatest day that the ages have seen…
It was five o’clock on the evening of the 7^th of October, 1571.
Rev. Fr. Luis Coloma, The Story of Don John of Austria, trans. Lady Moreton, (New York: John Lane Company, 1912), pp. 265-271.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 218

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Also of interest:
Statue of the Blessed Virgin present at the battle of Lepanto has been found
D. John’s calm assessment as the Turkish Armada is sighted: “There’s no time for anything but fighting”
The martial and pious death of Don John of Austria: “A man sent by God”
Tunis was lost because Don John could not reach it in time
Don John called his lion Austria
Don John is offered the kingdoms of Albania and Morea
Fatima Cadem, daughter of Ali Pasha, asks Don John to release her captured brothers
Pope Saint Pius V has a vision announcing the victory of Lepanto
Don John of Austria used an ivory crucifix to inspire his men before Lepanto
Don John of Austria’s calm self-command seeing the power of the Turkish armada
______________________________
Lepanto
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1915)

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run,
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold.
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world.
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain – hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,-
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, ‘Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces – four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.’
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still – hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St Michael’s on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed –
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives, sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign –
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade…
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

Rosary Saves Man’s Life on September 11

St Augustine

Today is the Feast of St Augustine. Read about this great Saint and Doctor of the Church here.... https://americaneedsfatima.org/Saints-Heroes/st-augustine-of-hippo.html

Our Lady of Czestochowa: The Marvelous Story of an Embattled Icon

In the monastery-fortress of Jasna Gora, in Czestochowa, Poland is venerated an ancient icon of Holy Mary and the Infant God, with a fascinating history. Tradition has it that it was painted by the apostle St. Luke on a table built by Our Lord Jesus in St. Joseph’s workshop. Empress Saint Helena who found Our Lord’s cross, also discovered this icon in Jerusalem, and took it to Constantinople where her son, Constantine, built a church to enshrine it.

The image remained in Constantinople for 500 years until, through dowries, it was taken to Russia to a region that later became Poland.

Monastery-fortress of Jasna Gora, in Czestochowa, Poland

This icon, now known as Our Lady of Czestochowa, has an embattled history.
While still in Constantinople, placed on the wall of the city, the icon so frightened an army of besieging Muslims that they took flight.





Under a Holy King
In the 15th century, the polish king Saint Ladislaus installed the holy image in his castle. Tartar invaders besieged the castle and an arrow pierced the image in the region of the throat, leaving a scar.
Interestingly, repeated attempts to repair the damaged painting failed. The scar always reappears.
Wishing to protect the icon from subsequent attacks, Saint Ladislaus took it to his town of birth, Opala.
On the way, he stopped at city of Czestochowa to rest, placing it in the wooden church of the Assumption in the nearby place of Jasna Gora (Bright Hill).
In the morning, the horses pulling the carriage containing the icon refused to move. Taking this as a sign, St. Ladislaus re-installed the image in the church of the Assumption and confided sanctuary and monastery to the Pauline Fathers.
It was on this day, August 26, 1382 that Saint Ladislaus established the feast of the Madonna of Czestochowa and it is still observed today.


Vandalized
Next, the Hussites, followers of the heretic John Hus from Prague, attempted to harm the holy icon. In 1430 they stormed the monastery and stole the image. Placing it in a wagon, they were carrying it away when the vehicle stopped and could not be moved. The attackers hurled the image to the ground, breaking it in three pieces. One man pulled his sword and struck the image twice on the cheek leaving two deep scars. On attempting to slash it thrice, the man went into agonizing convulsions and died.
The two scars on the holy image as well as the one on the throat have always reappeared after attempts to repair them.

Besieged
The holy icon’s great epic was the Siege of Czestochowa in 1655 when an army of 12,000 Swedish Protestant invaders led by a General Miller, attempted to take the monastery-fortress of Jasna Gora. The year before, a vision of a scourge in the face of the sun had been seen over the area. Indeed, King Karl Gustav, and the Swedes invaded and conquered most of Poland with the help of Calvinist Polish nobles, ousting King Jan Kasimir.
One monastery, led by a heroic prior, Fr. Augustine Kordecki, refused to surrender. Taking in five Catholic Polish nobles, the monastery resisted with only 300 men. The besieged faced treason, threats, and numerous assurances of the enemy’s “good will” in attempts to seduce them into an inglorious “peace”.
But placing their full trust in Our Lady, whose image they guarded, the monks answered, “Better to die worthily than to live impiously.” Thus began the 40-day siege, and nothing was spared to bring down the walls of Jasna Gora.
Meanwhile, the forty monks and the besieged prayed before the Holy Icon of Czestochowa. They prayed and fought, fought and prayed. And a mysterious “Lady”, dressed in a white or blue mantle, whom the Swedes called a “witch” began to appear on the ramparts, herself supplying the canons. The sight of her terrified the invaders.
A mysterious fog also enveloped the holy hill, which at times gave the illusion of the monastery-fortress being higher, at others lower, the result being that the canon-balls missed their target.
Finally, the mysterious lady appeared in the night to General Miller himself. After procuring a copy of the icon of Czestochowa, Miller said, "It is absolutely not comparable to that virgin who appeared to me; for it is not possible to see anything comparable on earth. Something of the celestial and divine, which frightened me from the beginning, shone in her face."
In the end, spooked and discouraged by these supernatural occurrences, the Swedes lifted the siege. From the victory of Czestochowa, the Poles again took heart, and rallying around King Jan Kasimir, took back their country.
(For the full account of the siege of Czestochowa Click here)
The next year, in the presence of the clergy, nobility and people, King Kasimir solemnly proclaimed Our Lady of Czestochowa Queen of Poland. Recognizing that Poland had been chastised for its sins, and oppression of the less fortunate, He promised to rule with equity.
In 1920, when the Russian army assembled at the River Vistula, the Polish people had recourse to their Madonna. The Russians quickly withdrew after the image appeared in the clouds over Warsaw.
In Polish history, this is known as the Miracle of Vistula.
During the Nazi occupation of Poland in WW II, Hitler ordered all religious pilgrimages closed. In a demonstration of love and trust in Our Lady, half a million Poles defied Hitler’s orders and visited the shrine. Following the liberation of Poland in 1945, a million and a half people expressed their gratitude to their Madonna by praying before the miraculous image.
Twenty eight years after the first attempt to capture Warsaw, the Russians took the city. That year 800,000 visited the Lady of Czestochowa in defiance of the invader.
And today, free from Communism, Czestochowa continues to be the religious heartbeat of Poland. To the miraculous, fearless Lady of Jasna Gora, the Polish go with their needs and petitions, their sorrows and their joys. Indeed she is their embattled, victorious, miraculous queen.

“I will see you in heaven,” man says on deathbed, after doing the 1st 5 Saturdays devotion

A Timely Response to Our Lady’s Request

While visiting a home in Ohio, I heard an amazing story about the First Five Saturday devotion that Our Lady requested at Fatima.
She asked all Catholics to make reparation to her on the first Saturday of five consecutive months by going to confession, praying at least one rosary, making a fifteen minute meditation and receiving Communion. Our Lady promised that she would “…assist them at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation.”  


The family, of good practicing Catholics, decided to take up the devotion. However, as it often happens when one sets out to do God’s will, all kinds of obstacles run into our path.
On the Friday preceding the first Saturday they had a car accident. On the Saturday some were called to their jobs and some children fell ill. However, all still managed to fulfill Our Lady’s devotion requests, including the father.
Their resolution to do Our Lady’s request could not have been timelier.  After completing the five month devotion, the father became extremely sick.  Doctors found that he had cancer in an advanced stage and only had a few days to live.
The family asked their fellow parishioners for prayers and Masses in his intentions.  Many family members began a round-the-clock vigil praying the rosary around his bed.  For a whole week, those faithful prayer warriors continued to give him spiritual and psychological support with their generous vigil.
Click here for a FREE First Saturday Devotion Holy Card
Through all the suffering, the completion of the 5 First Saturday devotion was a continuous source of consolation to the father and family. “I will see you in heaven,” he reassured his children.
Shortly before his death a priest gave him last rites and he peaceably surrendered his soul to the Lord.

---

By Godofredo Santos

August 25 – King, Crusader, Saint

Saint Louis IX

King of France, son of Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile, born at Poissy, 25 April, 1215; died near Tunis, 25 August, 1270.

Marguerite of Provence, wife of St. Louis IX

He was eleven years of age when the death of Louis VIII made him king, and nineteen when he married Marguerite of Provence by whom he had eleven children. The regency of Blanche of Castile (1226-1234) was marked by the victorious struggle of the Crown against Raymond VII in Languedoc, against Pierre Mauclerc in Brittany, against Philip Hurepel in the Ile de France, and by indecisive combats against Henry III of England. In this period of disturbances the queen was powerfully supported by the legate Frangipani. Accredited to Louis VIII by Honorius III as early as 1225, Frangipani won over to the French cause the sympathies of Gregory IX, who was inclined to listen to Henry III, and through his intervention it was decreed that all the chapters of the dioceses should pay to Blanche of Castile tithes for the southern crusade. It was the legate who received the submission of Raymond VII, Count of Languedoc, at Paris, in front of Notre-Dame, and this submission put an end to the Albigensian war and prepared the union of the southern provinces to France by the Treaty of Paris (April 1229). The influence of Blanche de Castile over the government extended far beyond St. Louis’s minority. Even later, in public business and when ambassadors were officially received, she appeared at his side. She died in 1253.

Blanche of Castile Sculptor Antoine Etex located at Versailles

In the first years of the king’s personal government, the Crown had to combat a fresh rebellion against feudalism, led by the Count de la Marche, in league with Henry III. St. Louis’s victory over this coalition at Taillebourg, 1242, was followed by the Peace of Bordeaux which annexed to the French realm a part of Saintonge.
It was one of St. Louis’s chief characteristics to carry on abreast his administration as national sovereign and the performance of his duties towards Christendom; and taking advantage of the respite which the Peace of Bordeaux afforded, he turned his thoughts towards a crusade. Stricken down with a fierce malady in 1244, he resolved to take the cross when news came that Turcomans had defeated the Christians and the Moslems and invaded Jerusalem.  Between the two crusades he opened negotiations with Henry III, which he thought would prevent new conflicts between France and England. The Treaty of Paris (28 May, 1258) which St. Louis concluded with the King of England after five years’ parley, has been very much discussed.

Treaty of Paris. King Henry III of England does homage to Saint Louis.

By this treaty St. Louis gave Henry III all the fiefs and domains belonging to the King of France in the Dioceses of Limoges, Cahors, and Périgueux; and in the event of Alphonsus of Poitiers dying without issue, Saintonge and Agenais would escheat to Henry III. On the other hand Henry III renounced his claims to Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Poitou, and promised to do homage for the Duchy of Guyenne. It was generally considered and Joinville voiced the opinion of the people, that St. Louis made too many territorial concessions to Henry III; and many historians held that if, on the contrary, St. Louis had carried the war against Henry III further, the Hundred Years War would have been averted. But St. Louis considered that by making the Duchy of Guyenne a fief of the Crown of France he was gaining a moral advantage; and it is an undoubted fact that the Treaty of Paris, was as displeasing to the English as it was to the French. In 1263, St. Louis was chosen as arbitrator in a difference which separated Henry III and the English barons: by the Dit d’Amiens (24 January, 1264) he declared himself for Henry III against the barons, and annulled the Provisions of Oxford, by which the barons had attempted to restrict the authority of the king. It was also in the period between the two crusades that St. Louis, by the Treaty of Corbeil, imposed upon the King of Aragon the abandonment of his claims to all the fiefs in Languedoc excepting Montpellier, and the surrender of his rights to Provence (11 May, 1258). Treaties and arbitrations prove St. Louis to have been above all a lover of peace, a king who desired not only to put an end to conflicts, but also to remove the causes for fresh wars, and this spirit of peace rested upon the Christian conception.
St. Louis’s relations with the Church of France and the papal Court have excited widely divergent interpretations and opinions. However, all historians agree that St. Louis and the successive popes united to protect the clergy of France from the encroachments or molestations of the barons and royal officers. It is equally recognized that during the absence of St. Louis at the crusade, Blanche of Castile protected the clergy in 1251 from the plunder and ill-treatment of a mysterious old marauder called the “Hungarian Master” who was followed by a mob of armed men — called the “Pastoureaux.” The “Hungarian Master” who was said to be in league with the Moslems died in an engagement near Villaneuve and the entire band pursued in every direction was dispersed and annihilated.

St. Louis IX. Painting in Notre-Dame de Poissy

But did St. Louis take measures also to defend the independence of the clergy against the papacy? A number of historians once claimed he did. They attributed to St. Louis a certain “pragmatic sanction” of March 1269, prohibiting irregular collations of ecclesiastical benefices, prohibiting simony, and interdicting the tributes which the papal Court received from the French clergy. The Gallicans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often made use of this measure against the Holy See; the truth is that it was a forgery fabricated in the fourteenth century by juris-consults desirous of giving to the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII a precedent worthy of respect. This so-called pragmatic of Louis IX is presented as a royal decree for the reformation of the Church; never would St. Louis thus have taken upon himself the right to proceed authoritatively with this reformation. When in 1246, a great number of barons from the north and the west leagued against the clergy whom they accused of amassing too great wealth and of encroaching upon their rights, Innocent IV called upon Louis to dissolve this league; how the king acted in the matter is not definitely known. On 2 May, 1247, when the Bishops of Soissons and of Troyes, the archdeacon of Tours, and the provost of the cathedral of Rouen, despatched to the pope a remonstrance against his taxations, his preferment of Italians in the distribution of benefices, against the conflicts between papal jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the ordinaries, Marshal Ferri Pasté seconded their complaints in the name of St. Louis. Shortly after, these complaints were reiterated and detailed in a lengthy memorandum, the text of which has been preserved by Mathieu Paris, the historian. It is not known whether St. Louis affixed his signature to it, but in any case, this document was simply a request asking for the suppression of the abuses, with no pretensions to laying down principles of public right, as was claimed by the Pragmatic Sanction.

Frederick II

Documents prove that St. Louis did not lend an ear to the grievances of his clergy against the emissaries of Urban IV and Clement IV; he even allowed Clement IV to generalize a custom in 1265 according to which the benefices the titularies of which died while sojourning in Rome, should be disposed of by the pope. Docile to the decrees of the Lateran Council (1215), according to which kings were not to tax the churches of their realm without authority from the pope, St. Louis claimed and obtained from successive popes, in view of the crusade, the right to levy quite heavy taxes from the clergy. It is again this fundamental idea of the crusade, ever present in St. Louis’s thoughts that prompted his attitude generally in the struggle between the empire and the pope. While the Emperor Frederick II and the successive popes sought and contended for France’s support, St. Louis’s attitude was at once decided and reserved. On the one hand he did not accept for his brother Robert of Artois, the imperial crown offered him by Gregory IX in 1240. In his correspondence with Frederick he continued to treat him as a sovereign, even after Frederick had been excommunicated and declared dispossessed of his realms by Innocent IV at the Council of Lyons, 17 July, 1245. But on the other hand, in 1251, the king compelled Frederick to release the French archbishops taken prisoners by the Pisans, the emperor’s auxiliaries, when on their way in a Genoese fleet to attend a general council at Rome. In 1245, he conferred at length, at Cluny, with Innocent IV who had taken refuge in Lyons in December, 1244, to escape the threats of the emperor, and it was at this meeting that the papal dispensation for the marriage of Charles Anjou, brother of Louis IX, to Beatrix, heiress of Provençe was granted and it was then that Louis IX and Blanche of Castile promised Innocent IV their support.

Statue of St. Louis IX in Notre Dame Church of St-Vincent de Lyon

Finally, when in 1247 Frederick II took steps to capture Innocent IV at Lyons, the measures Louis took to defend the pope were one of the reasons which caused the emperor to withdraw. St. Louis looked upon every act of hostility from either power as an obstacle to accomplishing the crusade. In the quarrel over investitures, the king kept on friendly terms with both, not allowing the emperor to harass the pope and never exciting the pope against the emperor. In 1262 when Urban offered St. Louis, the Kingdom of Sicily, a fief of the Apostolic See, for one of his sons, St. Louis refused it, through consideration for the Swabian dynasty then reigning; but when Charles of Anjou accepted Urban IV’s offer and went to conquer the Kingdom of Sicily, St. Louis allowed the bravest knights of France to join the expedition which destroyed the power of the Hohenstaufens in Sicily. The king hoped, doubtless, that the possession of Sicily by Charles of Anjou would be advantageous to the crusade.

St. Louis led an exemplary life, bearing constantly in mind his mother’s words: “I would rather see you dead at my feet than guilty of a mortal sin.” His biographers have told us of the long hours he spent in prayer, fasting, and penance, without the knowledge of his subjects. The French king was a great lover of justice. French fancy still pictures him delivering judgements under the oak of Vincennes. It was during his reign that the “court of the king” (curia regis) was organized into a regular court of justice, having competent experts, and judicial commissions acting at regular periods. These commissions were called parlements and the history of the “Dit d’Amiens” proves that entire Christendom willingly looked upon him as an international judiciary. It is an error, however, to represent him as a great legislator; the document known as “Etablissements de St. Louis” was not a code drawn up by order of the king, but merely a collection of customs, written out before 1273 by a jurist who set forth in this book the customs of Orléans, Anjou, and Maine, to which he added a few ordinances of St. Louis.
St. Louis was a patron of architecture. The Sainte Chappelle, an architectural gem, was constructed in his reign, and it was under his patronage that Robert of Sorbonne founded the “Collège de la Sorbonne,” which became the seat of the theological faculty of Paris.

A Painting of the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts in 1809. It is still in existence at 28 de la rue de Charenton.

He was renowned for his charity. The peace and blessings of the realm come to us through the poor he would say. Beggars were fed from his table, he ate their leavings, washed their feet, ministered to the wants of the lepers, and daily fed over one hundred poor. He founded many hospitals and houses: the House of the Felles-Dieu for reformed prostitutes; the Quinze-Vingt for 300 blind men (1254), hospitals at Pontoise, Vernon, Compiégne.

The Enseignements (written instructions) which he left to his son Philip and to his daughter Isabel, the discourses preserved by the witnesses at judicial investigations preparatory to his canonization and Joinville’s anecdotes show St. Louis to have been a man of sound common sense, possessing indefatigable energy, graciously kind and of playful humour, and constantly guarding against the temptation to be imperious. The caricature made of him by the envoy of the Count of Gueldre: “worthless devotee, hypocritical king” was very far from the truth. On the contrary, St. Louis, through his personal qualities as well as his saintliness, increased for many centuries the prestige of the French monarchy. St. Louis’s canonization was proclaimed at Orvieto in 1297, by Boniface VIII. Of the inquiries in view of canonization, carried on from 1273 till 1297, we have only fragmentary reports published by Delaborde (“Mémoires de la société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ilea de France,” XXIII, 1896) and a series of extracts compiled by Guillaume de St. Pathus, Queen Marguerite’s confessor, under the title of “Vie Monseigneur Saint Loys” (Paris, 1899).
(Catholic Encyclopedia)

Blessed Mark of Aviano

(1631–1699)
Capuchin friar. His baptismal name was Carlo Domenico Cristofori, his birthplace Aviano, a small community in the Republic of Venice (Italy). From an early age, he felt attracted to a life of devotion and martyrdom. Educated at the Jesuit College in Gorizia, at 16 he tried to reach the island of Crete, where the Venetians were at war with the Ottoman Turks, in order to preach the Gospel and convert the Muslims to Christianity. On his way, he sought asylum at a Capuchin convent in Capodistria, where he was welcomed by the Superior, who knew his family, and who, after providing him with food and rest, advised him to return home.
Inspired by his encounter with the Capuchins, he felt that God was calling on him to enter their Order. In 1648, he began his novitiate. A year later, he professed his vows and took his father’s name, Marco, becoming Fra’ Marco d’Aviano. His ministry entered a new phase in 1664, when he received the licence to preach throughout the Republic of Venice and other Italian states, particularly during Advent and Lent. He was also given more responsibility when he was elected Superior of the convents of Belluno in 1672, and Oderzo in 1674.
His life took an unexpected turn in 1676, when he gave his blessing to a nun, bedridden for some 13 years: she was miraculously healed. The news spread far and wide, and it was not long before the sick, and many others from all social strata, began to seek him out.
Among those who sought his help was Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, whose wife had been unable to conceive a male heir. From 1680 to the end of his life, Marco d’Aviano became a close confidant and adviser to him, providing the irresolute and often indecisive emperor with guidance and advice for all problems, political, economic, military or spiritual. His forceful, energetic and sometimes passionate and fiery personality proved a good complement for Leopold’s Hamlet-like tendency to allow endless doubts and scruples to paralyse his capacity for action. As the danger of war with the Ottoman Turks grew near, Marco d’Aviano was appointed by Pope Innocent XI as his personal envoy to the Emperor. An impassioned preacher and a skillful mediator, Marco d’Aviano played a crucial role in resolving disputes, restoring unity, and energizing the armies of the so-called ‘Holy League,’ which included Austria, Poland, Venice, and the Papal States under the leadership of the Polish king Jan III Sobieski. In the decisive Battle of Vienna (1683), the Holy League succeeded in inflicting a decisive defeat on the invading Ottoman Turks. This marked the end of the last Turkish attempt to expand their power in Europe, and the beginning of the long European counter-offensive that was to continue ultimately until the disintegration of the Ottoman empire in 1918. This may therefore be considered one of the decisive battles of history. It also put an end to the period of Ottoman revival under the Koprulu Grand Vizirs and their protégé and successor, Kara Mustapha, who was in command of the Ottoman army at Vienna.

King Jan III Sobieski with a gorget of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa.

From 1683 to 1689 he participated in the military campaigns in the role of promoting good relations within the Imperial army and to help the soldiers spiritually. His assistance helped to bring about the liberation of Buda in 1686 and Belgrade in 1688. At the same time, he always maintained a strictly religious spirit, to which any needless violence and cruelty were repugnant. As a result, at the siege of Belgrade several hundred Muslim soldiers successfully appealed to him personally, in order to avoid being massacred upon capture.
In the judgement of historians, Marco’s influence over Leopold was exercised responsibly, in the sole interests of Christianity and of the House of Austria. In one of his private letters to the Emperor, Marco actually scolds him quite forcefully for granting a benefit to one of his brothers, reminding him that, by so doing, he was only providing ammunition for the enemies of their cause.
In 2003, he was beatified by Pope John Paul II.
(cfr: Vatican)

What They Say

Some Testimonies of Illustrious Figures Regarding Books By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

Revolution and Counter-Revolution

            As we mentioned in the Preface, the publication of Revolution and Counter-Revolution had an immediate and profound impact. Ecclesiastical personages like those already quoted, as well as theologians, professors, and conservative leaders from around the world, acclaimed the author's analysis of and solution to the contemporary crisis. More than thirty years after its first edition, the essay's repercussion continues to grow, especially among youth. Three testimonies regarding Revolution and Counter-Revolution are herein transcribed exempli gratia. – Ed.

Lima, July 24, 1961

NUNCIATURA  APOSTOLICA EN  EL  PERU

Distinguished Professor,

            The reading of your book “Revolution and Counter-Revolution” made a magnificent impression on me because of the courage and mastery with which you analyze the process of the Revolution and shed abundant light on the true causes of the crumbling of moral values disorienting consciences today. and also because of the vigor with which you indicate the tactic and the methods to overcome it.

            I especially appreciated the second part of your book, highlighting the efficacy of Catholic doctrine and the spiritual remedies the Church possesses to combat and vanquish the forces and errors of the Revolution.

            I am certain that your book has rendered an important service to the Catholic cause and that it will help gather the forces of good in order to soon solve this great contemporary problem. This is, in my opinion, the way repeatedly indicated by the present Vicar of Christ, who, with so much conviction and solicitude, has insisted on a profound renewal of Christian and sacramental life as a sure remedy for the evils afflicting the world, evils that government leaders vainly seek to solve through the precarious efficacy of weapons. technology, and purely human progress.            I wish, most dear Professor, a widespread diffusion of and a well-merited response to your book from Catholic leaders wishing to join the ranks of the counter-revolutionary movement.

            Please accept the testimony of my sincere admiration for your work and the expression of my deepest esteem.

Romolo Carboni

Titular Archbishop of Sidon

Apostolic Nuncio

Archbishop Romolo Carboni was born in Fano, Italy, in19l1. Ordained in 1934, he was made a bishop in 1953. He was raised to the archepiscopate and appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Peru in 1959. He served as Nuncio to Italy from 1969 to 1936 and now lives in retirement in Fano.

SANTO DOMINGO EL REAL

DOMINICAN FATHERS

July 17, 1984

Dear Friend,

            Yesterday, at a stretch, I read the 1973 Spanish edition of your magnificent book Revolution and Counter-Revolution," which you had kindly sent me.

            I had already read other works of yours and I have been aware of your colossal defense of Christian civilization for quite a while.

            I understand perfectly the third part of this edition (“Twenty Years After”), on the concern regarding the infiltration of the Church in the post-Conciliar times. Since your faith is deeply rooted in the indefectability of THE CHURCH, this phenomenon will be a further stimulus to labor with hope...

            A small book of mine will be ready next month. I will send you a copy as soon as it is available.

            With an embrace,

Victorino Rodriguez. O.P.

            Fr. Victorino Rodriguez y Rodriguez. O.P., is one of the most distinguished intellectual figures of Spain today. Born in Carriles, Asturias, on February 14, 1926, he joined the Order of Saint Dominic when he was 19. Ordained a priest in    1952, he traveled to Rome to complete his studies and obtain a doctorate.

            An eminent theologian and presently prior of the Convent of Santo Domingo el Real in Madrid, he was professor of the School of Theology of San Esteban in Salamanca and held a

chair at the Pontifical University of the same city. He is professor of Madrid's Superior Council of Scientific Investigations and member of both the Royal Academy of Doctors of the same city and the Pontifical Roman Theological Academy. More than 250 of his books and articles have been published, many by the renowned publishing house Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos of Madrid.

Rome, February 10, 1993

Distinguished Professor,

            It was with extreme interest, pleasure, and personal benefit that I read the Spanish copy of Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira's work dedicated to me with expressions of great affection and esteem, for which I am grateful.

            "Revolution and Counter-Revolution" is a masterly work whose teachings should be disseminated far and wide so as to penetrate the conscience, not only of all those who consider themselves truly Catholic, but I would say even more, of all other men of good will. In it, the latter would learn that salvation can be found only in Jesus Christ and His Church; the former would feel confirmed and fortified in their Faith and psychologically and spiritually forewarned and immunized against the cunning process that employs many of them as useful idiots or fellow travelers.

            Its analysis of the revolutionary process is impressive and revealing on account of its realism and profound understanding of history, from the end of the Middle Ages in decadence, which paved the way for the paganizing Renaissance and the pseudo-Reformation, thence for the terrible French Revolution, and. soon after, atheistic Communism.

            That historical analysis is not only external. The actions and reactions it deals with are also explained in light of the human psychology, both the individual psychology and the collective psychology of the masses. However, it is necessary to recognize that someone directs this profound and systematic de-Christianization. Man undoubtedly tends toward evil – pride and sensuality – but were not someone holding the reins of these disorderly tendencies and sagaciously coordinating them, they most probably would not have produced such a constant, skillful, and systematic action, which, tenaciously maintained, profits even from the ups and downs caused by the resistance and natural "reaction" of the opposing forces.

            "Revolution and Counter-Revolution" also foresees, although using caution in its prognoses and by means of hypotheses, the next possible evolution of the revolutionary action and, in turn, that of the Counter-Revolution.

            The book abounds in perspicacious sociological, political, psychological, and evolutive insights and observations, not few of which are worthy of an anthology. Many of them outline the intelligent "tactics" that favor the Revolution and those that may and should be used in a general counter-revolutionary "strategy."

            In sum, I would dare to affirm that this is a prophetic work in the best sense of the word. It should be taught in the Church’s centers of higher education so that at least the elite classes become fully aware of a crushing reality about which, I believe, they do not have a clear notion. This, among other things, would contribute to revealing and unmasking the useful idiots or fellow travelers, among whom are found many ecclesiastical figures, who act in a suicidal manner by playing the enemy's game; this group of idiots, allies of the Revolution, would in good measure disappear....

            The second part of the book well explains the Counter-Revolution's nature and the courageous and "aggressive" tactics that counter-revolutionaries must implement while always avoiding excesses and improper and imprudent attitudes.

            Before such realities, one doubts there is a true "strategy" in the Church as there is in the Revolution. One does find many "tactical" elements, actions, and institutions, but they seem to act in isolation, without a notion of the whole. The concept of a Counter-Revolution and the realization that a Counter-Revolution is acting could unify and provide a greater sense of collaboration within the Church.

            I must congratulate the TFP movement for the stature and quality of its founder, Prof. Plinio. I foresee and desire with all my soul a vast development and a future full of counter-revolutionary successes for the TFP.

            I conclude stating that the spirit with which this work is written greatly impresses me: It is a profoundly Christian spirit, one with a passionate love for the Church. This book is an authentic product of Christian wisdom. It is moving to find in a layman such a sincere devotion to the Mother of Jesus and ours - a clear sign of predestination. "Uncertain, like everyone, about tomorrow, we prayerfully raise our eyes to the lofty throne of Mary, Queen of the Universe.... We beseech the Virgin, therefore, to accept this filial homage, a tribute of love and an expression of absolute confidence in her triumph" (pp. 165, 167).

Rome, September 8, 1993

Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady

Fr. Anastasio Gutierrez

            Fr. Anastasio  Gutierrrez, C.M.F., is one of the Catholic Church's most renowned canonists.

            Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1911, Father Gutierrez is a Spanish citizen who has lived in Rome for the last fifty years.

            In Rome, he received his doctorate in Canon Law from the  Pontifical Lateran University Later, he held a chair at that university's School of Canon Law, eventually becoming its dean.            Father Gutierrez served as a peritus during the Second Vatican Council, and for many years was Cardinal Larraona's assistant in the Congregation for the Religious. He also is a founder of the Institutum Iuridicum Claretianum of Rome.

            He participated in the commission charged to write the new Code of Canon Law, and is presently a consultant to the following Vatican dicasteries: Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Congregation for the Clergy, and Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. He is also a consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, the highest Church organ for canonical questions.

            More recently, Father Gutierrez became postulator of Queen Isabella of Castile's cause of canonization.

Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII

Rome, February 10, 1993

Distinguished Professor,

            It was with keen interest that I read your work “Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility.”

            The thought of the great Pope Pius XII, as one can see in the documents mentioned, remains entirely relevant, and you have taken the good initiative of presenting it to today's public along with opportune annotations. tt is useful to remind people, as Paul VI himself did after the Second Vatican Council, that the teachings his predecessor addressed to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility continue to be fully valid.

            In the comments and documentation with which you facilitate a more complete understanding of the full range of Pius XII's magisterium, one can see great erudition and sureness of thought, justly highlighted by the well-known French historian Georges Bordonove in his foreword to [the French edition of] this work.

            I am certain that I am performing a good deed by recommending your book to all who wish to deepen their knowledge of the wise and enlightening teachings of Pius XII.

            Hoping your timely book will have a wide circulation, I send you cordial greetings.

Silvio Card. Oddi

            Silvio Cardinal Oddi was born in Morfasso, in the province of Piacenza, Italy, in 1910. Having completed his studies at the Angelicum of Rome, lie entered the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. At the service of the Secretariat of State, the still very young Father Oddi began a brilliant career in Vatican diplomacy.

            Cardinal Oddi speaks Several languages and is one of the best informed ecclesiastics on the Middle Fast, where he held diplomatic posts in several countries. On behalf of the Holy See, he also undertook very delicate missions in Yugoslavia and in Cuba immediately after the accession of the communist regime. In 1969, while Apostolic Nuncio in Belgium, he

received the news of his elevation to the cardinalate. Since then he has resided in Rome, holding high offices in the Vatican Coria. In 1979, John Paul II made him Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, a position he held until 1985. He is presently Pontifical Legate for the Sanctuary of Saint Francis of Assisi.

            Cardinal Oddi, an expert on life in the Vatican, of which he has been a protagonist in the last decades, is often interviewed by the Italian and international press on the situation of the Church in our days.

Rome, February 13. 1993

Distinguished Professor,

            Your great renown and the words of praise and encouragement given for your work by the illustrious Fr. Victorino Rodriguez, O.P., generally considered one of the glories of contemporary theology, have led me to read with lively interest your book “Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility.”

            When Pius XII gave the world the splendid series of fourteen allocutions to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility, there were many who saw them less as a theological, philosophical, and historical work regarding values destined to yet play a fundamental and timeless role, than as a nostalgic effusion of love for virtues, greatnesses, and glories that the world understood less and less.

            The most recent of the abovementioned allocutions was that of 1953. More than thirty years later, we can now see how wrong the people were. Indeed, Pius XII had seen the course of events correctly. Today, not only is the old hostility to the nobility gradually dying out, but there are prominent intellectuals emerging most everywhere who emphasize how detrimental is the loss of authentic elites – with the concomitant vulgarization of the human type – to culture and the lifestyle of contemporary society. This is why in many places we now see manifested an ardent aspiration for the restoration of influence of authentic elites over the multitudes, so that the latter may once again become – in accordance with Pius XII's teachings – peoples instead of nameless masses (cf. Christmas radio message off Holiness Pius XII, 1944).

            In this historical context. your work proves to be extraordinarily timely, since in echoing the magisterium of Pope Pius XII a commenting on it with such notable penetration and consistency makes an appeal to the nobility and the analogous elites to contribute, with more courage than ever before, toward the common spirit and temporal good of all nations.

            Indeed it falls to them, as that immortal Pope underscored to fulfill the precious mission of communicating by example, word, and action the treasure of religious and temporal truths of Christianity, the luminous torch of so ninny truths that societies can never forget without the risk of succumbing to the vortex of chaos and moral misery that threatens them.

            I therefore hope for the best of receptions for your book, to which you have devoted the vast resources of your intelligence and erudition. besides your unlimited love for the Church. May it please Divine Providence to grant it widespread circulation, so that both the preferential option for the nobles, inspired by Pius XII and high-lighted by you, and the preferential option for the poor, to whom the current Pontiff has devoted his ardent love, will be forever better understood.

Mario Luigi Card. Ciappi. O.P.

His Eminence Mario Luigi Cardinal Ciappi

            Mario Luigi Cardinal Ciappi. O.P., was born in Florence on October 6. 1909. and was ordained a priest on March 26, 1932. For many years be was a professor at the Angelicum, where he taught Moral and Dogmatic theology and Mariology. Among his students was the then Father Karol Wojtyla, later His Holiness John Paul II. Cardinal Ciappi went on to become dean of the Faculty of Theology at this athenaeum. He was elevated to the episcopal dignity as titular of the Church of Miseno on June 10, 1977, and in the Consistory of June 27 of the same year he received the cardinal’s hat from the hands of Paul VI.

            Until 1939 he was theologian of the Pontifical Household, that is, private theologian of the Holy Father. Cardinal Ciappi is currently president of the Pontifical Roman Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Catholic Doctrine, which gathers some of the greatest names in contemporary theology.

Vatican City, Feast of Saint Joseph, 1993

Most illustrious Professor,

            I thank you heartily for the kind gift of your work “Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility,” sent to me in its Italian translation.

            It made a deep impression on me for several reasons: first of all, for its timeliness, in that it is the reaffirmation of the teachings of the great Pope Pius XII on the subject at a historico-cultural moment when ferocious hostility to the nobility, spread all over the world by the French Revolution, seems everywhere to be diminishing.

            Secondly, the work – amid the universal decay of natural and, above all, Christian values – will awaken in many hearts everywhere the desire to see nobiliary elites, who in past centuries played an important and often decisive role in upholding these values through their lives and actions, once again setting for humanity the examples it needs so urgently and supremely.

            A third reason derives from your observations-which seem to me extremely relevant-regarding the formation, alongside the nobilities and elites of blood, of nobilities and elites of spirit and mind that, by associating and organizing among the many existing noble souls, are assuming all over the world the roles of exemplars of and guides toward a natural and perennial order of things. This, whether to support the nobilities of blood still existent and now re-emerging, or to replace those no longer capable of efficaciously reacting to the manifest decadence of our days, as has happened in more than one instance.

            Using vast and solid documentation, you have done a fine analysis of the very complex sociopolitical reality of our day, and commenting with great logical rigor on the luminous teachings of Pius XII, you have shown how much he and his successors up to John Paul II continue to expect from the existing nobility and future analogous elites for the religious, moral. and cultural uplifting of the world.

            I therefore rejoice at this book, illustrious Professor, and wish it a broad circulation, so it may spark, sustain, and build a deep and vast sensitivity to this excellent tool for the re-creation of a sound natural ethics and a revived religious morality that may lead all humanity to that peace, prosperity and happiness that only authentic and genuine values can realize and guarantee.

            To these good wishes ~ add my fervent prayers to the Lord and to the Mother of the Church, that they may sustain you in the work which is both beneficent and painfully pressing in the times in which we live.

Yours in Christ.

Alfons M. Card. Stickler, S D B

            Alfons M. Cardinal Stickler, S.D.B., was born in Neunkirchen. Austria, in 1910. While still young he entered the Salesian Congregation and made his first Studies of philosophy and theology in Austria and Germany, later specializing in Canon Law at the Roman School of San Apollinare and the Pontifical Lateran University.

            His particular vocation to the study of juridical sciences led him to teach at the Pontifical Athenaeum Salesianum, first in Turin and later in Rome. Father Stickler became dean of the Canon Law School and then rector of the athenaeum, an office beheld from 1958 to 1966.       Placing his superior academic talents at the service of the Holy See. Father Stickler, after having directed the Pontifical Institute of Higher Latin Studies, was named Prefect of the Vatican Library. an institution unequaled in the world on account of its bibliographic treasures.

            In 1983 John Paul II elevated him to the episcopal dignity and made him Pro-Librarian. Afterward. upon making him a cardinal, he appointed him Librarian and Archivist of the Holy Roman Church, an office that since its creation in the sixteenth century has been held by great ecclesiastical figures. Cardinal Stickler held this office until 1988. Especially notable among his important responsibilities was his participation ill the commission responsible for developing the new Code of Canon Law.

A Call to Reflection

(Published in the September- October 1994 issue of TFP Informa, the organ of the Ecuadorian TFP)

            A serious and objective study of history shows that all times, all cultures, and all races have had undeniable differences among their constituents. There have always been wise men and ignorant men, classes that rule and classes that obey, rich and poor. Christ Himself taught, "The poor will always be with you." The variety of elements within human society is as natural and  human as the variety of elements in the human body. As the body has a diversity of organs, it  has a diversity of functions. Mankind has a like diversity.

            Although this diversity is so natural, there is a tendency, when speaking of society's components, to consider the differences as contradictory, as alien to human nature. Thus was born the slogan of the French Revolution, which set the desire for liberty equality, and  fraternity as the foundation of society, not according to the Christian concept that all human beings are equal because they are creatures of the same God and sons of the same Father, but according to the erroneous concept that there should be no differences of any kind between human beings. This denial of the diversity of functions among men contradicts God's plan in creating the universe and corresponds to the rationalist theory that all social inequalities must be eliminated, through violence if necessary.

            That way of thinking characterized the French Revolution and also led materialistic sociologists to the idea of class struggle, practical atheism, and the use of tyranny to eliminate everything that could be considered favorable to the acceptance of the difference of values that is part of the historical reality of society. Marxism-Leninism, inspired in this dialectic, rejected the values of the Christian faith and espoused a materialistic and atheistic philosophy.

            The class struggle preached by Marxism received a death blow with recent events in the Soviet Empire. But the new concept that  must inspire the reestablishment of society destroyed by historical materialism has not been explored. For this, a new insight into the understanding of the human being is needed, as well as a deeper study of the variety of values in society. We need to ask ourselves: Is the idea of radicalizing unity valid? Or is an in-depth study concerning the transcendental variety of the factors that constitute society necessary?

            Basing himself on interesting Church documents, this is what the intelligent and profound thinker Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira proposes to do. He has written a work that can positively help to study and resolve this problem. Entitled "Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII," it deals with a seemingly new subject: social elites and the seasoned aristocracy of the old nobility. The author declares that elites must reclaim the social values of the privileged class, of the families with a heritage, of the families with a background enriched by titles and traditions.

            To some, reviving the social values of the elites may seem anachronistic and obsolete. Nevertheless, Pope Pius XII, remembering the old and noble traditions of his own family, presents the nobility of former times not only as holders of titles but, above all, as holders of a treasure of great virtues that benefited not just elite families but all of society.

            Based on these reflections, I would venture to affirm that immorality and corruption have assumed scandalous proportions in modern society precisely because a wrong criterion of equality has crept in. In every society, in every culture, in every community, groups that stand out from the rest by their greater culture, by their greater morality, by a sense of nobility that not only dignifies an individual but conquers the admiration and respect of those who come to know these human values and, even more, Christian virtues, should be cultivated and fostered. For the same reason, the larger the community of families characterized by the practice of the human and Christian virtues, the better oriented society in general will be.

            Pius XII left us a whole arsenal of documents in which, especially addressing the Roman nobility, he exalts the traditional virtues of the families considered noble and urges the Patriciate to cultivate qualities and virtues that should adorn a family (or person) that feels or considers itself noble. He exhorts the elites not only to maintain their ancestral values of nobility, but to purify them with the teachings of Christ.

            For all these reasons I believe the launching of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira's book is a prophetic call for contemporary society to make an examination of conscience regarding the true nobility that distinguished the men of the past, and the genuine virtues that must contribute to the building of a more human and Christian society. True nobility is based not on vanity and selfishness, but on the solid foundation of truth and goodness. We are convinced, therefore, that this book is a call to a serious reflection that will culminate in the return to the eternal values of the human being that are a basis of greatness and likeness with God.

Ibarra, June 21,1993

Bernardino Cardinal Echeverria Ruiz

            Bernardino Cardinal Echeverria Ruiz, O.F.M., was born in Cotacachi, Ecuador, in 1912. He became a Franciscan in 1928 and was ordained in 1937. He studied at the Pontifical Institute Antoniano in Rome and received his doctorate in Philosophy in 1941. Returning to Ecuador, he filled high posts in the Ecuadorian Province of his Order, founding numerous apostolic works and carrying Out important missions in and outside his country.

            He was named bishop of Ambato in 1949, a dignity he held for twenty years. He was secretary, vice-president, and president of the Ecuadorian Bishops' Conference, of which he was  recently named honorary president. He represented this body at the Latin American Bishops' Conference (CELAM), of which he is a founding member, and he was honored with the title of Assistant to the Apostolic See.

            In 1969 he was designated archbishop of Guayaquil, a see he held until 1989. He revitalized its seminaries and apostolic movements, built churches, and strove for the establishment of new religious orders in the Archdiocese. He headed national movements in the field of pastoral work and the defense of the Faith, carrying out campaigns with great repercussion in Catholic opinion for the inclusion of the name of God in the Constitution, the defense of private education, and the promotion of devotion to the Most Holy Virgin.

            The author of several books and a frequent lecturer, he had weekly and daily radio and television programs. A Fellow of the Language Academy, he has received decorations from the Ecuadorian nation and from other countries, including Spain's Commendation of Isabella the Catholic.

            After accepting his resignation as archbishop of Guayaquil in 1939 in accordance with Canon Law, the Holy Father named him apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Ibarra. As in his former posts, the Prelate has been tireless in his rebuilding of destroyed churches and in his vast pastoral work.

            He received the cardinal's hat in the November 1992 Consistory as titular of Saints Nereus and Achilleus, being the third Ecuadorian to receive this high honor.

SANTO DOMINGO EL REAL

DOMINICAN FATHERS

Madrid, January 25, 1993

Dear friend and admired Professor,

            I have read closely the original of your magnificent work "Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility," which you were kind enough to send me for review. I am greatly honored by your confidence in my evaluation and possible comments. In addition, I admire your ardent desire to be well-founded when launching so noble a cause, as well as your humility in requesting the opinion of someone far less knowledgeable than you about the subject, both in its doctrinal and historical dimensions.             I must say that I found absolutely nothing to criticize or even to improve in your undertaking. I would, however, like to highlight what I consider very good:

            First, the very writing of a book on this subject. It was needed; and your selection of a starting point and major basis for discussion could not have been better, namely, the successive New Year allocutions of Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility. This exceptional Pope Pacelli, whose mind, heart, and blood were noble, was singularly attentive to the problems and expectations of his times. Thus, he could not help but be concerned with the problems of the nobility, to whom he addressed these allocutions, now opportunely brought to us by a Brazilian nobleman, in whose person one finds so much devotion to the Apostolic See and love for Christian civilization.

            Second, the timeliness, since the genuine values of the nobility are currently eclipsed in the post-revolutionary "egalitarianism" and the inorganic modern democracies. More renown ("nobile" = "noscibilie," distinguished, excellent, famous) is given to numbers (of votes or dollars) than to dignifying qualities (knowledge, virtue, art). Yet, as I heard the great theologian Santiago Ramirez say on several occasions, "truth is not democratic, but aristocratic." I hope that your carefully documented, thoughtful work will bring the traditional nobility to the forefront, as bearers of dignity, honesty, and humanism open to God and to the social common good.

            Third, I think that the harmonic complementarity you establish between the "preferential option for the poor," so accentuated in the new evangelization, and the "preferential option for the nobility" is very just and Christian. Indeed, these two outlooks are not exclusive, but complementary. I believe this is the key: One should love the best more, and help the neediest more. Hence the two harmonized preferential options. The charitable option for the indigent should not diminish the singular esteem deserved by the nobility, especially when such esteem is at a low ebb in times of widespread egalitarianism. Very much to the point is the information on the high percentage of canonized saints among the nobility. It was Pius XII who, in 1943, canonized Saint Margaret of Hungary, O.P., daughter  of the King of Hungary and grand-daughter of the Emperor of Constantinople.

            Fourth, in an era of "pacifism" (or peace at any cost), it is also advantageous to give thought to the topic of just war, so often waged by the nobility, whether military' or civil and  ecclesiastical. The Magisterium and Theology had and have much to say in this regard, as Document XI reminds us.

            Fifth and last, at a time when democracy, with no discernment or ulterior ethical resolution, is the sole political dogma for many, it is opportune to recall the Church's social doctrine on the forms of government. The Papal Magisterium has incorporated Saint  Thomas's nuanced doctrine, taken up so often by Catholic thinkers and now by you in Appendix IV of your work.

            I could highlight many other interesting points of your work, but do not wish to unduly lengthen this letter nor to repeat what the reader will find more adequately and more elaborately expounded in the book. With these remarks I hope to attest to having read the original with pleasure and to respond to your friendly gesture.

Victorino Rodriguez O.P.

See previous letter from Fr. Rodriguez for biography.

March 5, 1993

Distinguished Professor.

            I have attentively read your work The Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility," which you were so kind to send to me.

            I deem felicitous your idea of giving wide diffusion to those documents of Pius XII, which at first glance might seem devoid of relevance to the present day. In fact, however, your lucid and documented commentaries show the foresightedness of the theme discussed by that Pontiff. Furthermore, you opportunely recall the beautiful words of Paul VI: “We would like to say many things to you. Your presence provokes much reflection. So it was also with Our venerable Predecessors, especially Pope Pius XII of happy memory. . . . We want to believe that the echo of those words, like a gust of wind swelling a sail, . . . still vibrates in your thoughts, filling them with the austere and magnanimous appeals that nourish the vocation preordained for you by Providence and sustain the role still required of you today by contemporary society."

            Your long experience as professor, congressman, and public figure makes your commentaries all the more intelligent and instructive, pleasantly facilitating the reading of the Pontifical documents, which are of such lofty and estimable value.

            I did not find in your pages any error of a theological or other nature regarding the teachings of the Church. I can only hope that your excellent work will be given a warm and full reception by the public for whom it is intended.

Fr. Raimondo Spiazzi, O.P.

            Fr. Raimondo Spiazzi, O.P., was born in Moneglia, in the province of Liguria, Italy. in 1918. He was ordained a priest in 1944 and obtained a doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Angelicum three years later.

            He began his long career as a university professor teaching Fundamental Theology, Moral Philosophy, and Sociology at the Studio Domenicano of Turin and Dogmatic Theology at the Centro Cattolico di Cultura of the same city.

            In 1949 he returned to Rome, where he lectured, first at the University Pro Deo and then at the Angelicum, whose School of Social Sciences he founded. In 1954 he was appointed dean of the Institute of Religious Sciences at the Angelicum. In 1957 he began to teach Pastoral Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University, and, in 1967. Dogmatic Theology at the Center of Theology for the Laity of the Vicariat of Rome, becoming its dean in 1987.

            Father Spiazzi served as Apostolic Visitor to the seminaries in Lombardy and Milan and as Provincial of the Dominican Order for Piedmont and Liguria. Paul VI personally nominated him a perius of the Second Vatican Council.

            He is now consultant to the Congregation for Catholic Education and member of several study commissions of the Vatican congregations and the Vicariat of Rome. He also belongs to the Pontifical Academy of Our Lady Immaculate, the Pontifical Roman Theological Academy, and the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He is rector of the Basilica of. San Sisto Vecchio on the Appian Way.

            Father Spiazzi has published numerous hooks and over 2.000 articles. Many of the latter have appeared in Italian and foreign magazines.

July 20, 1993

My Dear Juan Miguel,

            I received your missive of the 5th along with the beautiful work of Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, your distinguished founder: “Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites ...” You have given me a present of great value, a work whose scientific, historical, sociological, human, and Christian wisdom is inestimable. I believe that with my 81 years, my 55 years of professorship and predominantly socio-juridical study, my 50 years in this elevated lookout that is Rome, I have some claim to be able to judge it and above all appreciate it. I repeat: It is a work of a wisdom and equity of judgment that can hardly be matched by so many books, which are excellent if you will, but lack what we could call a great thinker's charism of knowledge and experience. For me, it is not so much the documental basis as the elaborations of Professor Corrêa de Oliveira, who ranges over the fields of history, social psychology, philosophy, theology, and Christian ethics with profound insight and analytical capacity. In short, Professor Corrêa de Oliveira is a great MASTER who deserves to figure at the head of this elite class.

            The work's presentation is on par with its content; like the work's theme, it is noble...     My congratulations. May it have the diffusion it merits.

Your most affectionate friend

Fr Anastasio Gutierrez C M F

See previous letter of the Rev. Fr. Anastasio Gutierrez for biographical data.

Excerpts from Georges Bordonove 's foreword to the book's French edition

            Prof. Corrêa de Oliveira ranks among the clear-sighted minds that perceive. with an almost painful sharpness, the metamorphosis underway in today's society, whose final features one cannot foresee. He fears, not without reason, that the combined effect of a galloping progress and a mistaken egalitarianism will eventually obliterate the individual by the monstrous leveling [of society]. It is in this perspective that be identifies, with Pius XII, the mission the patriciate has, unless it prefers to scuttle itself and disappear. In other words, he invites the elites not to dwell in the lamentation of vanished grandeur, not to estrange themselves from society, but rather to resolutely enter the active life, to place their talents, their heritage of experience, their family traditions, and even their way of being, at the service of society, with the sole concern for the common good....

            This work is remarkable in all aspects, notably for the abundance and rigorous exactness of its documentation, the author's universal culture, his solid argumentation, and the transparency of his thought. The reader will also appreciate the Professor's prospective effort when he addresses the question of the world's future. . . . It proposes an itinerary; it erects the first landmarks for the road to be followed.

            Is this the announcement of that twenty-first century which, it has been said, will either be mystical or will not be at all?

Georges Bordonove

            The renowned historian Georges Bordonove was born on May25, 1920, in Enghien (Seine-et-Oise), France. He studied at the Licee Fontanes and at the Literature and Law School of Poitiers, graduating in Literature and Law. The author of almost 70 books and essays, numerous articles and short Stories, several of them award-winning (Grand Prix des Libraires de France. 1959; Prix Bretagne. 1963). Bordonove is a Knight of the Legion of Honor. Commander of the National Order of Merit, and Officier des Arts et des Lettres.

Other Works

Vatican Palace, February 26, 1949

SECRETERIA  DI  STATO  DI SUA  SANTITA

Illustrious Sir,

            Moved by your filial dedication and piety, you offered the Holy Father the book "In Defense of Catholic Action," in which you reveal perfect care and persevering diligence.

            His Holiness is very pleased with you for having explained and defended Catholic Action – of which you have a complete knowledge and for which you have great esteem – with penetration and clarity so that it has become clear to all how important it is to study and promote this auxiliary form of the hierarchical apostolate.

            The August Pontiff hopes with all his heart that this work of yours results in rich and mature fruits and that from it you may harvest neither small nor few consolations. And as a pledge that it be so, be grants you the Apostolic Benediction.

            Meanwhile, with due consideration. I declare myself,

Devotedly yours

J.B. Montini

Substitute

Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

President of Catholic Action

Archdiocese of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini

            Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Paul VI, was born in Lombardy, Italy, in 1897. After his ordination in 1920, he pursued studies at the Pontifical Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics and the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 1924 he began 30 years of service in the Secretariat of State: as undersecretary from 1937 until 1954, he was closely associated with Pius XII.

            He was ordained archbishop of Milan in 1954, and was inducted into the College of Cardinals in 1958. He was elevated to the Papacy In 1963.

            He reconvened the Second Vatican Council. The main thrust of his pontificate was toward institutionalizing the trends of the Council.

            He died in 1978.

Rome, December 2, 1964

SACRED  CONGREGATION  OF  SEMINARIES  AND  UNIVERSITIES

Most Reverend Excellency,

            Only now have we been able to read the ample and profound study of the illustrious Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, of the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, on the important theme “The Freedom of the Church in the Communist State” (third enlarged edition, Sao Paulo, 1964), which your Most Reverend Excellency was kind enough to send to this Sacred Congregation with the very kind letter that reached our offices this past November.

            At the same time that we express to you our sincere gratitude, we congratulate Your Excellency and the eminent author, justly celebrated for his philosophical, historical, and sociological knowledge, and we wish the widest circulation for this compact pamphlet, which is a most faithful echo of all the Documents of the supreme Magisterium of the Church, including the luminous encyclicals “Mater et Magistra” of John XXIII and "Ecciesiam Suam" of Paul VI, happily reigning.

            May Our Lord grant that all Catholics comprehend the necessity of being united “in uno sensu eademque sententia” in order to avoid the illusions, deceits, and dangers which today threaten His Church internally.

            With sentiments of particular esteem and consideration, with all my heart I profess myself once again to Your Most Reverend Excellency

Most devoted in Jesus Christ