Here are excerpts from Pope Benedict XVI’s homily given on May 13, 2010, at the marian shrine of Fatima, Portugal, to a crowd of 500,000 pilgrims. The visit of the Holy Father was on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the beatification of the two young shepherds, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, to whom Our Lady appeared in 1917. The third seer, Lucia, who became a Carmelite nun, died in 2005 and the cause for her beatification has begun. In her messages, Mary asked people to pray the Rosary and to consecrate themselves to her Immaculate Heart. She added further that “in the end, her Immaculate Heart will triumph”:
We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete. Here there takes on new life the plan of God which asks humanity from the beginning: “Where is your brother Abel [...] Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!” (Gen 4:9). Mankind has succeeded in unleashing a cycle of death and terror, but failed in bringing it to an end... In sacred Scripture we often find that God seeks righteous men and women in order to save the city of man and he does the same here, in Fatima, when Our Lady asks: “Do you want to offer yourselves to God, to endure all the sufferings which he will send you, in an act of reparation for the sins by which he is offended and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?” (Memoirs of Sister Lucia, I, 162).
At a time when the human family was ready to sacrifice all that was most sacred on the altar of the petty and selfish interests of nations, races, ideologies, groups and individuals, our Blessed Mother came from Heaven, offering to implant in the hearts of all those who trust in her the Love of God burning in her own heart. At that time it was only to three children, yet the example of their lives spread and multiplied, especially as a result of the travels of the Pilgrim Virgin in countless groups throughout the world dedicated to the cause of fraternal solidarity. May the seven years which separate us from the centenary of the apparitions hasten the fulfilment of the prophecy of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the glory of the Most Holy Trinity.
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