Pope Pius XII 20th Century (1939 –1958)

 

 Feastday not known                                              

Born 1876                  

Died 1958

 

Eugenio Pacelli was born at Rome in 1876 from a family devoted to the Papal Service. Eugenio eager to become a priest, worked so hard at The Capranica Seminary that his health gave way and he was forced to leave the Seminary. Leo XIII allowed young Pacelli to live at home while completing his courses and in this way Pacelli reached Ordination in 1899. He took a degree in Canon & Civil Law at the Apollinaris. Cardinal Rampolla, on the watch for talent took Pacelli into his department of state. Pius X made him a Monsignor and set him to work on the titanic task of re-codifying Canon Law. During the First world war Pacelli gained valuable experience helping Benedict XV and Cardinal Gaspari in their humane efforts. Few Popes have travelled  as widely as Pius Pius XII and he is the first Pope to have visited the United States. In the gloomy days of the second world war Pius XII tried hard to keep a door open to peace. She called on Catholics all over the world and especially in comparatively comfortable America to share with the needy. After the war Pius XII continued to stress a need for peace. He purportedly received several mystical visions of Jesus and Mary…

 

“We believe that the present hour is a dread phase of the events foretold by Christ. It seems that darkness is about to fall on the world. Humanity is in the grip of a supreme crisis….” 1

 

“The Virgin mother of God, invoked by such prayers (for peace) will obtain from the Divine Saviour liberation from present anxieties, the peace of hearts and fraternal concord among peoples…” 2

 

“For God or against God –this once more is the alternative that shall decide the destines of all mankind…(prayer and penance)…are the inspirations that will dispel and remedy the first and principal cause of every revolt and every revolution –the revolt of man against God…” 3

 

“My Christmas 1942 blessing goes “to all those who, like the Crusaders will fight for this and for a better Christian world…a new danger has arisen  - the subordination of everything to politics and the heresy of a national state which subordinates all to human law…Communists and National Socialism : these orders conflict with those of God. It is useless to fight without faith in God…” 4

 

“Do you, crusaders-volunteers of a distinguished new society, lift up the new banner of moral and Christian rebirth, declare war on the darkness which comes from deserting God, on the coldness that comes from strife between brothers…” 5

 

After an apparition of of Jesus and Mary he reportedly told one of his assistants: “Mankind must prepare itself form sufferings such as it has never before experienced…the darkest since the deluge…The hour has struck, the battle, the most widespread, bitter and ferocious the world has ever known, has been joined. It must be fought to the finish…” 6

 

Whilst walking in the Vatican gardens he witnessed the inexplicable solar phenomenon of Fatima which originally transpired in 1917: “Having lifted the papers I had in my hand, I was struck by a phenomenon I had never seen before. The sun, which was fairly high, looked like a pale yellow opaque globe completely surrounded by a luminous halo, which nevertheless did not prevent me at all from staring attentively at the sun without the slightest discomfort. A very light cloud was before it. The opaque globe began moving outward, slowly turning over upon itself, and going from left to right and vice-versa. But within the globe very strong movements could be seen in all clarity and without interruption…”7  Two days after this revelation Pius XII solemnly defined the Dogma of the Assumption ex Cathedra

 

Pius XII had read the contents of the Third Secret of Fatima:  “Suppose, dear friend, that Communism was only the most visible of the instruments of subversion to be used against the Church and the traditions of Divine Revelation ... I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy ... A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God ... In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them, like Mary Magdalene weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?' ... I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past…A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb they will ask, “Where have they taken Him?”” 8

 

References

1. Yves Dupont, Catholic Prophecy (Tan Books and Publishers 1970) p

2. Rev R. Gerald. Culleton The Prophets and Our Times  (Tan Books and Publishers 1941) p 229

3. ibid

4. ibid p 230

5. ibid p 230

6. R. Vincent Please Come Back to Me and My Son Ireland’s Eye, Ireland 1992 p15 as quoted by Ted and Maureen Flynn Thunder of Justice: The Miracle, The Warning, The Chastisement, The Era of Peace (Maxkol Communications 1993) p 19

7. Source unavailable. Please write in. (See Modern Papal Visions at http://members.aol.com/bjw1106/marian7a.htm)

8. Msgr. Roche, Pie XII Devant L'Histoire, p. 52-53.