1917 must be a significant year. There were many forces asserting itself in the world, yet, apparently it boils down to two opposing forces. The shades of grey is becoming clearly a black and white.
Looking first at some of the holy people at that time, we have Gilbert Keith Chesterton who was 43 years old by 29 May. GKC was already an established journalist. Working in Vatican was Eugenio Pacelli (future Pope Pius XII) who was 41 years old by 2 March. Another Italian was Guissepe Moscati who was 37 years old. There was also a famous Italian Franciscan Friar Francesco Forgione who was 30 years old and popularly known as Padre Pio. In Europe's intellectual circle was Jewish Edith Stein (future Sr. Teresa Benedicta) who was 26 years old by 12 October. There is also the Polish seminarian, Raymond Kolbe (wh will take the name Maximillian) who was 23 years old. Another Italian was Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini (future Pope Paul VI) who was 20 years old by 26 September. Italian Pier Giorgio Frassati was 16 years old. British Malcolm Muggeridge was 14 years old. The Albanian Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (future Mother Teresa) was 7 years old by 27 August. The Dutch Philip van Straaten (future Fr. Winifred) was 4 years old.
In the Vineyard of the Lord, we can say it was the worst and the best of times. In the chair of Peter was Benedict XV, 63-year-old Giacomo dela Chiesa. World War I had begun and amidst a war-torn world, so much more was brewing.
In March, the monarchial Russian society was in a revolution. Alexander Kerensky freed all political prisoners. Czar Nicholas abdicated and a provisional government was established. Among the political activists was Stalin who returned to St. Petersburg in this power vacuum. Lenin, too, was back with the slogan, "All power to the soviets!" and pushing for reforms – demanding peace, immediate land reform, worker’s control of factories and self-determination for the non-Russian peoples. It all sounded so wonderful for the people- a promising program of governance. It competed with the provisional government that brought forth conflict and rivalry between Lenin and Kerensky. Finally, Lenin was in control and Russia was no longer a player in the war and society was awaiting the promised reforms. Stalin remained in the background while Lenin was in the front. Stalin was mainly involved in the preparation for the Bolshevik revolution as administrator for the plans for Russia.
On April 20, the new pope, Benedict XV appointed Monsignor Pacelli as Nuncio to Bavaria, Germany, a nation on the verge of military defeat and revolutionary chaos. Benedict XV was desperately seeking peace efforts but the war continued its destructive force. Shells containing deadly gases were introduced; and amidst the shelling, rain, too was pouring which left Belgium and Germany into a sea of mud where many of the wounded drowned.
On 5th of May, Benedict XV with his futile efforts to effect peace among the countries sent a pastoral letter urging the people to pray to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for peace through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He also added the invocation to the Litany of Loreto, “Queen of Peace, Pray for us”. In spite of mankind’s inability to communicate with each other in this one small planet, Heaven and earth seemed closer in hearing distance.
13th of May, Benedict XV consecrated 41-year-old Pacelli into a bishop at the Sistine Chapel. On the same day in Portugal, on a hillside outside Fatima, three children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto and Lucia Dos Santos were playing in the field with their herd of sheep. It was a usual daily routine for the children, something they enjoyed immensely spending time together. Most of the adults were wary of the war in Europe but not the children in the pasture with the sheep. They suddenly saw a flash of lightning and thought a storm was coming. They got ready to take the sheep home when they saw above a small holm oak tree a Lady dressed entirely in white and shining more brilliantly than the sun. They were so close that they were standing in the light. The beautiful Lady said, “be not afraid, I shall do you no harm”. The Lady requested the children to come back to the place every 13th for six consecutive months. 10-year-old Lucia asked questions to the Lady. Such was the event in Fatima, a place named after Mohammad’s daughter, Fatima, who became a Christian. Could three kids keep this event secret to themselves? Even before Pacelli was able to go to Germany, he was again given more responsibilities and he was elevated to an Archbishop. He went to Germany to present his credentials to Ludwig III, King of Bavaria on 28th of May 1917. Meanwhile in the United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on the 29th of May to a prominent Catholic family in Massachusetts.
13th of June and it was the feast of St. Anthony de Padua, a Portuguese and the three Portuguese shepherd children were again with the Lady of Fatima. The Lady asked them to pray the rosary daily. She talked of Jacinta and Francesco going to heaven soon but Lucia would remain to have a mission of establishing devotion to Her Immaculate Heart. What a supernatural encounter for the three children. In Prussia, Archbishop Pacelli visited Kaiser Wilhelm II begging him to use his power to end the war. The kaiser found the archbishop quite likeable and all, but it was war. Pacelli’s encounter and Benedict XV’s pleas with the powers of world seemed fruitless. Would powerful leaders back out from the challenges of war? For 26-year-old Edith Stein, it was a time of encounter with those whose families had lost their loved ones in the war. Edith's friend, Reinach died in battle and Edith came to give her consolation to his Christian wife. But there was something about the widow that touched her - her hope amidst the loss. "This was my first meeting with the Cross, with the DIVINE STRENGTH it brings to those who bear it. I saw for the first time within my reach the Church, BORN of the REDEEMER's SUFFERINGS in his VICTORY over the sting of DEATH. It was at that moment that my incredulity was shattered and the LIGHT of Christ shone forth, CHRIST in the MYSTERY of the CROSS."
The 13th of July, Jacinta, Lucia and Francesco were again with the Lady of Fatima giving them a secret in three parts which they were to guard. There were prophetic messages about the war, a war to come, Russia, the pope, and the world. The children were also asked to receive Holy Communion every first Saturday of the month in reparation of sins. The children were given a vision of hell, and although they were assured of heaven, the thought of anyone going to hell made them do sacrifices for sinners. The children were taught to add after every decade of the rosary the prayer, “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, take all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of Your mercy.”
It was the 13th of August, and the three shepherd children from Fatima were supposed to meet with the Lady, but the three young children aged 10, 9 and 8 were in prison in Ouren, a few kilometers from Fatima. Could they cajole the children into saying it were all but lies? Or intimidation perhaps might make them break? No, the three children did not change their story. Meanwhile, twenty thousand people gathered in Fatima and saw and heard the rumble of thunder and a vividly brilliant flash of lightning in the clear blue sky. The sun grew pale and the whole atmosphere changed to a dull, sickly sort of yellow, while a light cloud of beautiful shape, appeared and hovered a while over the oak tree. On the 19th of August, our Lady appeared in Fatima to the children in the area which was called Valinos, a small village near Fatima. Once again, she appeared above a holm oak tree. They were asked to go to Cova de Iria on the 13th and pray the rosary. “I shall do a miracle, so that all people may believe.”
13th of September, rumours were spreading that God was going to do something special. Lucie’s mother who would often hit her as she thought Lucie was telling lies had fixed all her hopes on a miracle. Nothing happened. The children suffered much but they offered it up for sinners.
So much of the world had nothing much to believe in except the ideals of their rulers to truly empower the masses with socialism. Malcolm Muggeridge grew up with socialism but now as a 16-year-old student at Selwyn College, Cambridge University in England, he was exposed to an organized religion in the Anglican Church. In Austria, a young high school student, Viktor Frankl was involved in the local Young Socialist Workers Organization.
The Artificial Contraception promoter Margaret Sanger followed in 1917 another book with "What Every Mother Should Know". She also launched the monthly periodical "The Birth Control Review" and "Birth Control News" and contributed articles on health to the Socialist Party paper, The Call. A perfect fit. “Though sex cells are placed in a part of the anatomy for the essential purpose of easily expelling them into the female for the purpose of reproduction, there are other elements in the sexual fluid which are the essence of blood, nerve, brain, and muscle. When redirected in to the building and strengthening of these, we find men or women of the greatest endurance greatest magnetic power. A girl can waste her creative powers by brooding over a love affair to the extent of exhausting her system, with the results not unlike the effects of masturbation and debauchery.” - Sanger
The country of Portugal was under the presidency of Democrat Bernardino Luís Machado Guimarães. On this October day, the 13th, around 70,000 people gathered in Cova de Iria in Fatima. Why? The people were still waiting for a miracle. To some of the educated, they were like desperate people believing in fairy tales. By noon, the weather didn't seem convenient for a miracle. It was rainy and Fatima was a muddy place to hang around for a miracle. The three young children, Jacinta, Francesco, and Lucia were there. Suddenly, they exclaimed, “Holy Maria”. Instantaneously, the rain stopped and the clouds cleared to reveal the sun. The sun began to turn around radiating rays into the trees, hills and people with beautiful colors. The people were jubilant the miracle was at hand. Then, the sun seemed to be getting bigger and bigger as if falling from the sky towards them. There were shrieking and praying, some were thinking it was the END OF THE WORLD. Many knelt on the muddy ground and asked forgiveness. Then, it suddenly stopped and the ground was dried. What an experience for the people there. Lucia’s mother, who never believed her own child “can’t deny it”. The people were all agog pestering the children with questions all through the next days. Fatima was in the news but most people had other bigger concerns to attend to. Some devotees of our Lady were excited while some ignored it as some hoax or hallucination.
Whether Franciscan seminarian Raymond (Maximillian) Kolbe was aware or not of the Fatima apparition, he was ready to respond to the Call. On Oct 16, 1917, he founded with six companions the Militia of the Immaculata. His inclination for the military life had developed into the church militant not with swords but with the aim of "converting sinners, heretics and schismatics, particularly freemasons, and bringing all men to love Mary Immaculate. He didn't like what he saw of the world, in fact he saw it as downright evil. The fight, he decided, was a spiritual one. The world was bigger than Poland and there were worse slaveries than earthly ones.
Across the Atlantic in a different time zone, October 16 in the United States, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy St. in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States. It was raided nine days later by the police. She served 30 days in prison.
It was November 6-7 in the Gregorian Calender but Octobrist (October 24-25) in the Russian calendar, the Bolsheviks acted. By the next evening the capital was in their hands, though fighting in Moscow went on for several days. Soon the Bolshevik revolution had installed their own general as commander in chief of the armed forces. When the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets met in the capital, most members of other socialist parties walked out, leaving the impression that Lenin's party best represented the interests of workers, farmers, and soldiers. The congress called upon all parties in the war to negotiate immediate peace. It also abolished all private ownership of land and took all property of the imperial family and the Russian Orthodox Church. The eight-hour workday was made compulsory, and factory workers were given the right to supervise their enterprises. Could Russia be in error as the Lady of Fatima had warned?
Fatima was just an obscure village of Portugal and a war was raging on that cannot be distracted by visions of three young shepherds. 34-year-old Mussolini returned to the newspaper he founded, Il Popolo d'Italia (The People of Italy) while the 41-year-old, tall and slender Archbishop Pacelli continued his diplomatic efforts in behalf of the Holy See in seeking peace and end of war.
Edith’s thirst for the TRUTH was even greater and she read "The Spiritual Exercises" of St. Ignatius. Although, she read it intellectually as she would read any other book, it inflamed in her a DESIRE for this GOD. Something revolutionary, too, was happening inside the agnostic Jew, Edith Stein.
Although Pope Benedict XV couldn’t stop the war, he made the Catholic Church the international center of charity. He mobilized aid for starving regions, he organized negotiations for the exchange of prisoners of war, missing persons were located, correspondence were handled between prisoners and their distant families and efforts for brief cease-fire. In this mission of the church amidst war, Archbishop Pacelli, went hands-on to visit the wounded and to assist the prisoners of war.
In Megiddo, known as Armageddon, the war was also being fought by the British Army led by General Allenby.
It was an age of messianic complex pushing their version of utopia and their way is the only way. Margaret Sanger launched a revolutionary solution to liberate women and to solve poverty. Lenin and Stalin launched a revolution that will liberate the working people into a productive society eradicating poverty. Good intentions for Margaret Sanger, Stalin and Lenin – wanting to ease the travails of humanity. Margaret Higgins Sanger was the sixth of eleven children of a devout Catholic mother. She conceived of her ideal life and that life was not like her mother’s and she embraced atheism. Her slogan, ”No Gods and No Masters". God must be out of the picture during sexual act and conception. Stalin was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church and even entered the seminary, but he was kicked out. “God must be out of the picture for the working humanity". Lenin, “Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism”.
Impossible to have no gods and no masters, someone or something is bound to take each place. 1917 and hence forth, the battle had not ended.
Ref: Encyclopedia Brittanica, Fatima Organizations, New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia
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