THE DEEP ROOTS OF

PORTUGAL'S MARIAN DEVOTION

LISBON, PORTUGAL ---- The Catholic News Agency also reported that when the Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima in 1917, Portugal had already acclaimed Mary as their reigning Queen for hundreds of years. After the coronation of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception as “Queen of Portugal” by King João IV in 1646, no Portuguese monarch ever wore a crown again. The history of exceptional Marian devotion near Fatima dates back even further.
 
Fourteen miles from the Fatima Shrine is the Batalha Monastery, where several dozen Dominican friars were commissioned in 1388 to pray a perpetual rosary in thanksgiving for the Virgin Mary’s protection of Portugal.
 
The gothic monastery in Batalha was built in dedication to Our Lady of Victory in gratitude for an answered prayer. In 1385 King Joao I made a vow to the Virgin Mary that he would build a great monastery if she would deliver him victory in a battle against the Spanish. The Dominican community remained in the monastery until 1834, when all religious orders were driven out of Portugal. Today it continues to function as both the local parish and a tourist attraction. In nearby Alcobaca, a Cistercian monastery has stood in honor of Mary for over 800 years. The king of Portugal endowed the monastery to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in 1153, shortly before the Cistercian founder’s death. The gothic church was completed in 1223.
 
Benedict XVI has described Saint Bernard of Clairvaux as “a Doctor of Mariology” because “he understood her essential role in the Church, presenting her as the perfect model of the monastic life and of every other form of the Christian life.”
 
An altarpiece in the Alcobaca Monastery, added in 1705, depicts the death of Saint Bernard under the protection of Mary. The walls in the monastery’s King’s Hall are decorated with16th-century blue and white rococo tile scenes depicting the history of the Cistercian order. An ornate oval baroque reliquary chapel containing 71 terracotta reliquary busts from floor to ceiling can be found in the sacristy. Napoleon's troops plundered the monastery in 1811, shortly before the Cistercians, like Batalha’s Dominicans, were forced to leave Portugal. Fewer than 10 miles from Alcobaca is the beachside town of Nazaré, named for a statue of the Virgin Mary brought from Nazareth by a monk in the 8th century, according to the local tradition. Before Nazaré became a world-famous surfing destination with 80-foot waves, it was a popular medieval pilgrimage site. In 1182, a Portuguese knight was hunting a deer near the coast. When his horse nearly ran over one of Nazaré’s steep cliffs, he called out “Our Lady, Help Me!” and his horse stopped just at the cliff’s precipice next to the small grotto with the Nazareth statue. In thanksgiving for his life, the knight had a small chapel built around the statue, which went on to receive so many visitors that a larger church dedicated to Our Lady of Nazaré was built near the cliffs by the King of Portugal in 1377 to house the statue and its pilgrims.
 
Despite the centuries-long tradition of Marian devotion in Portugal, when Our Lady of Fatima appeared in 1917, Catholics were not thriving in the country. When the monarchy was abolished in 1910, the revolutionaries attempted to root out Catholicism and its Marian queen along with it, seizing all of the Church’s property and assets. A popular illustration of the 1910 revolution includes an image of armed men marching out priests at gunpoint. Anticlericalism peaked in the years leading up to the Fatima apparitions, causing the pope to speak out about the persecution of the Church under the First Portuguese Republic. In 1911, Saint Pius X issued an encyclical, Iamdudum, decrying the secularization occurring in Portugal. “We have seen, arising out of an obstinate determination to secularize every civil organization and to leave no trace of religion in the acts of common life, the deletion of the feast days of the Church from the number of public festivals, the abolition of religious oaths, the hasty establishment of the law of divorce and religious instruction banished from the public schools,” wrote the pope.
 
St. Pius X’s successor, Benedict XV, would go on to write a letter to his secretary of state for all the world’s bishops on May 5, 1917 asking for prayers to the Virgin Mary for peace amid the ongoing devastation of World War I throughout Europe. In this letter, the pope made permanent an additional title for Mary in the Litany of Loreto: “Regina pacis,” or “Queen of peace.” When Mary appeared in Portugal as Our Lady of the Rosary nine days later, she instructed, “Pray the Rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war."

The Portuguese tradition of the perpetual rosary, dating back more than 500 years, would continue.
 

A GOOD CATHOLIC PROCLAIMS THE GOSPEL

VATICAN CITY ---- The Catholic News Agency reported Pope Francis said that by virtue of their Baptism, every Catholic is called to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ – a mission which cannot be separated from the Catholic Church. “It is truly [our] Baptism that makes us missionaries,” the pope said in off-the-cuff comments. “A baptized person who does not feel the need to proclaim the Gospel, to announce Jesus, is not a good Christian.”  The first necessary element of all authentic missionary discipleship is the “changeless center, which is Jesus,” he said. This is because proclaiming the Gospel cannot be separated from Christ or from the Church.
 
Announcing the Gospel “is not an initiative of individual believers, groups or even large groups, but it is the Church’s mission inseparably united with her Lord,” Pope Francis said. “No Christian proclaims the Gospel ‘on his own,’ but only sent by the Church who received the mandate from Christ himself.”
 
Speaking during his weekly Angelus address, the pope reflected on the Christian’s mission as seen when Jesus sends out his disciples “two by two” to preach repentance.
 
Jesus’ message to his disciples in this episode of the Gospel concerns not just priests, but every baptized person, who is “called to witness, in the various environments of life, the Gospel of Christ,” he said. Like the disciples were warned, the message may not be welcomed, but this aligns with what Jesus himself experienced, the pope said, noting that he was “was rejected and crucified.”  “Only if we are united with him, dead and risen, can we find the courage of evangelization,” Francis said. Noting that the center of the mission must always be Christ, he pointed to examples of saints from Rome who are examples of being “humble workers of the Kingdom,” such as St. Philip Neri, St. Benedict Joseph Labre, St. Frances of Rome, and Bl. Ludovica Albertoni.  They did not work to advance themselves or their own ideas or interests, but acted always as messengers sent by Jesus, he said. Pointing to the Blessed Virgin Mary as “the first disciple and missionary of the Word of God,” the Pope concluded by asking her help to bring “the message of the Gospel to the world in a humble and radiant exultation, beyond any rejection, misunderstanding or tribulation.”
 

PLEADS WITH WEST TO TAKE NOTICE
AGAINST CHRISTIANS,
NIGERIAN BISHOP FEARS GENOCIDE

NIGERIA --- Aid To The Church in Need (ACN) reported that Bishop William Amove Avenya of the Diocese of Gboko, in, Nigeria said, “PLEASE DON’T make the same mistake as was made with the genocide in Rwanda. It happened under our noses, but no one stopped it. And we know well how that ended.” Bishop Avenya is from the Diocese of Gboko, in Benue State, Nigeria, where Christians form the majority of the population. He is only the latest of the bishops of Nigeria’s Middle Belt to have raised his voice to denounce what is an increasingly worrying phenomenon—the attacks by Islamist Fulani herdsmen on Christians in the region. In recent days there have been new attacks in the area of Jos, the capital of Plateau State, killing more than 100 people.
 
The Fulani Herdsmen have herded their flocks in parts of Nigeria’s Middle Belt for centuries and there have always been occasional clashes with local peasant farmers, the majority of whom are Christians today, and whose crops were frequently trampled and even destroyed by the herdsmen’s flocks. But whereas in the past these conflicts were generally either tribal in nature or driven by economics, today they appear to be religiously motivated. According to official data, there have been 492 victims since the beginning of the year in Benue State alone. “They are criminals and terrorists, but they do not do the same things in the majority Muslim areas,” Bishop Avenya charges, adding: “We are convinced that what is happening is an ethnic cleansing of Christians.” Bishop Peter Iornzuul Adoboh of Katsina Ala Diocese (Benue State) and Bishop Matthew Ishaya Audu of Lafia diocese (Nassarawa State) believe that there is a “clear agenda of Islamizing the Nigerian Middle Belt,” a plan that is making use of the Fulani Herdsmen. “Their aim is to strike at the Christians,” explains Bishop Audu, “and the government is doing nothing to stop them, because President Buhari himself is a member of the Fulani tribe.” Adding to the suspicions of complicity on the part of the government is not merely the inactivity of the federal police but also the fact that these Fulani Herdsmen are being armed with ever more sophisticated weaponry. “At one time these pastoralists were armed only with sticks,” Bishop Avenya explains. “But now they are armed with AK-47’s—expensive weapons that they could not possibly afford. So who is supplying them? And besides, in these areas there are checkpoints every mile-and-a-half. Is it possible that armed men and their flocks of cattle could have somehow become invisible?” On May 22, 2018, all the dioceses of Nigeria took part in a protest march, calling on the government to protect the Christians. Bishop Avenya insists: “Our faithful are being murdered or forced to live as refugees as a result of the violence. And the West continues to view the matter of the Fulani as merely an internal problem. Don’t do as you did in Rwanda; don’t wait for the genocide to happen before intervening!” 
 

CANONIZATIONS FIXED FOR OCTOBER 14

VATICAN CITY --- The Catholic News Service reported that at an ordinary consistory on July 19, Pope Francis announced that five more people will be canonized on October 14—the date already set for the canonizations of Blessed Pope Paul VI and Blessed Archbishop Oscar Romero.
  

NICARAGUAN FORCES STORM BARRIO, DESTROY CHURCHES;
‘IT IS A GENOCIDE’

NICARAGUA --- The Catholic World News reported that Nicaraguan police and pro-regime paramilitary forces stormed the indigenous community of Monimbó, a center of opposition to the President Daniel Ortega’s repressive regime. “This is a barrio of humble people, an indigenous barrio of working people,” Father Augusto Gutiérrez, who ministers in Monimbó, told a Spanish radio station. “The paramilitaries entered the barrio,” he continued. “There have been four hours of attack with heavy military weapons, destroying the churches … It is a genocide. It has no other name.” Noting that the people were using homemade weapons to defend themselves, Father Gutiérrez appealed to the Spanish government and the international community for help. He pleaded, “Do not let us die!” Pope Francis’ representative in Nicaragua, Archbishop Waldemar Stanisław Sommertag, has made a strong appeal for an end to the violence which has racked the country since April 18^th. More than 360 people have died in conflict between forces of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and opposition protesters, who are calling for his resignation. President Ortega has been in power since 2007 and is on his third mandate, along with his wife Rosario Murillo, the Vice President. In a statement released on Tuesday, the Apostolic Nuncio called it a “tragic moment” for the country. “I  wish to express, on behalf of the Holy Father and the Holy See, my deep concern for the grave situation the country is facing. Obviously, it is unacceptable to think that the dead and victims of violence can solve the political crisis and guarantee a future of peace and prosperity in Nicaragua,” he said. The Organization of American States condemned Ortega for repression.