October 13th and the Healing of Our Wounds
The historian who, fifty or a hundred years from now, wished to capture in a single image the day of October 13, 2026 — the hundred and ninth anniversary of the final apparition of Our Lady at Fatima — would find before him the following picture.
On October 14, Pope Leo XIV was to have closed, in the Basilica of Saint Peter, the international gathering dedicated to the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis's exhortation Amoris Laetitia. But after announcing, during the Angelus of October 11, that he had a pulmonary nodule, the Pontiff was admitted to the Policlinico Gemelli on October 13 and operated upon that same day.
The cancellation of the solemn Mass the Pope was to have celebrated on Wednesday in the presence of 250 bishops gathered from throughout the world both confirms the urgency attributed to the surgical intervention and leaves the conclusions of the episcopal gathering suspended in uncertainty.
All Catholic faithful are now praying for the Pope's health, but the media portrait of an energetic man capable of sustaining a demanding agenda with vigor is now joined by that of a person weakened by an illness whose course remains unknown. This observation carries a significance that transcends mere medical reporting and helps us recall truths the world has forgotten. The Church lives by the grace of Christ, and her indefectibility does not depend upon the health of a Pontiff. The Pope stands in need of the prayers of the faithful precisely because his office does not exempt him from suffering — which is, along with death, a consequence of original sin. But events such as a sudden illness help us to reflect upon the precariousness of human life, upon the supernatural destiny of man, and upon the existence of a God who rewards and punishes, in time and in eternity.
Donald Trump, Vladimir Zelensky, Xi Jinping, and all the powerful of the earth live in the same condition of imponderable fragility in which the Pope finds himself today — exposed, like every man, to suffering and to death. In Washington, these days, fragility takes a political form. President Trump approaches the midterm elections of November 3 with the risk of a heavy defeat, after his announcements of peace in Ukraine and the Middle East have once again been contradicted by events. The outcome of the elections remains open, but the image of a president capable of resolving every crisis through force of will has dissolved.
In Ukraine, the American announcement of an energy ceasefire collides with the reality of growing Russian attacks on Kyiv's infrastructure. In the Middle East as well, peace remains an uncertain prospect. The distance between words and facts, between public assurances and the reality of destruction and bloodshed, remains dramatic. Diplomatic announcements travel swiftly through the media, but human suffering continues, day after day, among the rubble.
International tensions weigh upon energy supplies and prices, while Europe prepares for the cold season with reduced safety margins. The consequences fall upon families through their utility bills and upon businesses through production costs. A continent that depends upon decisions made elsewhere is discovering how difficult it is to defend its own autonomy without adequate economic and material foundations. On this terrain, social unease grows and distrust in public institutions widens. To the energy vulnerability is added a deeper crisis: the loss of values, the forgetting of one's roots, and the reduction of daily life to the pursuit of an immediate and purely material personal interest.
The date of October 13 invites us to reread this panorama in the light of Fatima. In 1917, Europe was devastated by war and the Bolshevik Revolution was about to open a new era. The message entrusted to the three shepherd children called for prayer, penance, and conversion. In the final apparition at the Cova da Iria, the Virgin Mary appeared as Our Lady of the Rosary, asking that the Rosary continue to be prayed daily and announcing the imminent end of the war. The connection between peace and the recitation of the Rosary runs throughout the entire message of Fatima. After the apparition, the shepherd children saw beside the sun Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus and Our Lady dressed in white with a blue mantle; Saint Joseph and the Child blessed the world, tracing with their hands the sign of the cross. The vision of the Holy Family appears as a paradigmatic image of the Christian order. The peace of nations is rooted in that order — not in its systematic destruction by the revolutionary process that assaults Christian civilization.
Seen in this light, material and moral sufferings — both individual and collective — help us restore to life its eternal measure. Only the contemplation of man's supreme destiny can give us true peace, quam mundus dare non potest (Jn 14:27): that peace which a world estranged from God can never bestow. No political or diplomatic agreement can, by itself, heal the moral disorder from which wars arise. Peace among nations requires justice, and justice demands men willing to acknowledge a natural and divine law superior to their own contingent interests.
God, who is the Lord of history, can alter the destinies of time — including through the prayers addressed to him when the horizon darkens. "May the hands of Pope Leo's surgeons be guided by Jesus Christ, the Divine Physician," said the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Paul S. Coakley. May the mind and heart of the Pontiff be guided — after his hoped-for recovery as well — by the One who heals every wound of soul and body. Christ, the Divine Physician, takes upon himself the weight of our sins, offering his own life to save us. "By his wounds you have been healed" (1 Pt 2:24), says the Apostle Peter, of whom Leo is the successor. Let us pray that the healing action of Christ may extend to all those who, cum Petro et sub Petro, guide the Church today — healing their wounds, which are also our own.
