TORCHLIT PILGRIMAGE IN REPARATION OF GAY PRIDE LINKED TO THE THIRD SECRET OF FATIMA

By Alberto Carosa

(EWTNews) Rome. The convenors of the July 1st Catholic torchlit rally against the Gay Pride in Rome have always maintained that a "World Gay Pride Day demands a World Catholic reparation" and this national/international dimension was represented by a massive adhesion or/and participation not only from Italy, but also from abroad. It would be impossible to give a fully exhaustive picture: suffice to say that all the more noteworthy was the overwhelming presence of the clergy, especially members of religious congregations, from two of the most ancient Benedictine monasteries in France, Fontgombault and Triors, to the Franciscan friars of the Immaculate of Frigento, an order founded by father Stefano Manelli and whose rule is inspired to the spirituality of Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, and the white-blue clad nuns of the Blessed Mary Immaculate.

As to the laity, representatives and members of pro-life and pro-family groups came from so far afield as Australia, US and Latin America, including France, UK, Switzerland etc., let alone countless email messages of faithful around the world assuring of their prayers and that "our hearts will be marching along". And members of the Roman participate and aristocracy could be seen demonstrating side by side with people from all walks of life. Australia’s president of National Civic Council, Peter Westmore, was interviewed by a US TV network, one of the countless representatives of national and international electronic and printed media, with the former covering the event live and in the following days in their newscasts.

But the underlying and ultimate significance of the torchlit march in reparation of and protest against the Gay Pride festival is all the more spiritual: to heed Our Lady of Fatima's appeal to penance. This was the opinion of Prof. Roberto de Mattei, president of Centro Culturale Lepanto, the main organiser of the march, when he briefly addressed the thousand participants in the second rallying point, Piazza Numa Pompilio, prior to move on for the third, the final and daunting leg of the march: the 15 kms pilgrimage throughout the night to the shrine of Our Lady of Divino Amore (Divine Love). Here the pilgrimage was crowned at dawn by a five o’clock mass which was also offered with reparation purpose by their celebrants.

The demonstrators first assembled around the statue of Saint Francis in Piazza San Giovanni and formed a long torchlit procession behind a gigantic banner which read "In defense of the natural and Christian order", to then proceed to the Lateran palaces, the official seat of the Chair of Peter, where in a first stopover the faithful gave witness of their allegiance to the Church by singing the Salve Regina. Subsequently, the participants prayed the litanies to Our Lady and the Sacred Heart on their way from the Lateran to Piazza Numa Pompilio, a highly symbolic place in that this square marks the beginning of the old Appian Way, the route which was trodden on by countless champions of the faith, Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the first instance, in their evangelising mission to the Eternal City.

Here attorney Claudio Vitelli, the co-ordinator of the march, took the floor to recall that "we are not alone in our demanding effort of reparation". The over a thousand people present, he noted, are only the tip of an iceberg of a much, much larger proportion scattered throughout Italy and the rest of the world "who are tonight here with us in spirit and prayer". From a solemn mass which was being celebrated by Archbishop Custodio Alvim Pereira in a central square in Lisbon at the same time and with the same intention, to a number of convents and monasteries in Italy and abroad which had pledged to assist with concomitant prayers and adoration hours, the religious in support of the march included personalities of the caliber of Cardinal Alfons Maria Stickler, Cardinal Opilio Rossi, the Papal nuncio to Italy Msgr Luigi Accogli, the maronite patriarch Harb Chucrallah and many, many others. Vitelli thanked also the MPs present, from senator Riccardo Pedrizzi to hon. Domenico Gramazio, president of Centro Iniziative Sociali, and hon. Tommaso Luzzi, deputy president of Lazio regional government. In a special tribute to the most numerous delegations, the co-ordinator welcomed representatives of the Northern Italy‘s Triveneto Committee for Christian civilization and the Polish community in Rome. According to some of the latter's members, the Polish were informally urged to participate by msgr Stanislao Dzivisz himself, the private secretary to the Holy Father.

In his keynote address after Vitelli’s, Prof. Roberto de Mattei, as said, linked the Gay Pride to the newly-revealed third part of the secret of Fatima. "The staging of this Gay Pride", he said, "is made possible by the fact that nowadays our Christian civilization is in ruins, as is in ruins the city through which the Holy Father passes in the vision of the third secret". The only remedy to this situation, he went on saying, "is indicated by the Angel: Penance, Penance, Penance". As matter of fact, the president of Centro Culturale Lepanto pointed out, the Gay Pride is a direct and head-on challenge on the most basic tenets of the Catholic Church, which the pro-homosexual forces are opposing with a vision based on an unbridled lust for pleasure and whose ultimate aim is to wipe out any trace of Christendom, however marginalised and dimmed it may be.

"With the Gay Pride", Prof. Roberto de Mattei went on saying, "the practice of homosexuality is transformed into theory and cultural movement, becoming homosexualism. The watchword of the movement is: from hidden to visible, from the sense of guilt to that of pride, from the homosexual 'catacombs of shame' to the homosexualisation of society, following a route analogous but opposite to that which led the Christians, after the persecutions, to build the great Christian civilization, which we have left behind. Having come out of the 'catacombs', the homosexual militants want to force the Catholics back into them. The anti-Christian intolerance which animates them explains why the Coliseum is their symbol".

"The homosexual rally aims at exercising a propagandistic pressure on the European and worldwide laws, so that they introduce a new crime, a new offence, that of homophobia, namely the crime committed by those who believe in a natural and Christian family, those who believe in a natural and Christian order. The 'homophobes' deserve nothing less than the gladiators and the wild beasts. We not them", added prof. de Mattei, "are the victims. We not them are the marginalised and the discriminated against. We are reacting because we feel under attack. Tonight we are defending with our voice and with our protest the Christian civilization which is under attack and the Church, whose honor has been gravely insulted. In the silence of this night we want our voice to be primarily a humble and supplicant one that raises itself to God and history to ask pardon for all the outrages, blasphemies and sacrileges which will be committed during this week's witches sabbath. It is therefore a voice of reparation and of penitence. A penitence which forms part of the daily battle of those who fight to be coherent both in public and in private with their vision of the world. Victory is the aim of every battle however.

In the face of this deadly danger, he argued, all Christians have the duty to mobilize and courageously reaffirm their principles. The major Rome daily Il Tempo, the only paper which has been openly supporting the reparation initiative since its inception, described the march as "The torchlit of hope". "But I would better say of certainty", De Mattei argued, "since we have the rational and moral certainty of this victory, which arises from the vitality and the power of the Christian message. And all the more so if we consider that this certainty of victory was promised by Our Lady herself in Fatima with her inspiring words: in the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph".

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