The Theology of History in the Message of Fatima
Roberto de Mattei
De Maria numquam satis Conference
Augustinianum (Rome), October 8, 2026
Christian Theology of History
There is no better place and time than this: the hall of the Augustinianum, under the pontificate of an Augustinian Pope, to speak about the theology of history, placing our words under the patronage of the one who was the first and greatest representative of Christian theology of history: Saint Augustine of Hippo.
It may be surprising to apply the theology of history to an event that appears to be merely devotional, such as the apparitions and the message of Fatima. However, I hope to clarify in my presentation the importance of Fatima from the perspective of the Christian theology of history.
What do we mean, first of all, by the theology of history?
The theology of history is, ultimately, the effort to read, in the light of human reason and divine Revelation, those designs of Divine Providence that extend to every creature. It is indeed a dogma of the Catholic faith, proclaimed by the First Vatican Council: «God, by His Providence, protects and governs all things which He has made, reaching from end to end with might and ordering all things sweetly (Wisdom 8,1)».
History, like time and space, is not a divine subject, but a creature, because it is the place where events produced by the actions of free creatures, yet governed by Divine Providence, unfold. Developing the Principle and Foundation of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, one could say that history is a finite and contingent reality which, like every creature, has its beginning and its end in God. The supernatural center of history is Jesus Christ, through whom God Himself entered created time. The appearance of the Incarnate Word on earth is the culminating point of divine Revelation and of all human history, which from this event onward, as Dom Guéranger reminds us, is divided into two great eras: before and after the birth of Jesus Christ. «Before Jesus Christ, an expectation of many centuries; after Jesus Christ, a duration whose secret is unknown to man, because no man knows the hour of the birth of the last elect; and it is for the elect, for whom the Son of God became incarnate, that the world is preserved».
Reason does not claim to lift the veil that hides the mysterious designs of God, but, in the light of Revelation, it seeks to understand the deepest meaning of human events, always maintaining the awareness that the ultimate explanation of history belongs to Him who is at once its principle, Lord, and end.
Thanks to supernatural Revelation, man can know realities that reason alone could not reach: original sin, the Incarnation and the Redemption, the action of grace, the mission of the Church, and the eternal destiny of humanity. Saint Paul describes it as the manifestation of the «mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed» (Romans 16, 25-26).
The philosophy of history ignores the supernatural dimension of this mystery, which in fact constitutes one of the foundations of the theology of history. Public Revelation transmitted by the Church concluded with the death of the last Apostle, but the supernatural action of God, which invisibly guides history, continues to have visible manifestations throughout the centuries, such as charisms, apparitions, and miracles (one need only think of Eucharistic miracles). The so-called private revelations, when they are authenticated by the Church, belong to this category of supernatural manifestations.
In the case of Fatima, ecclesiastical recognition does not refer only to the approval of the apparitions, which dates back to October 13, 1930, when the Bishop of Leiria, Monsignor José Alves Correia da Silva, officially authorized its cult. The Message of the Virgin Mary also received a singular confirmation from the supreme authority of the Church on June 26, 2000, when, by the will of John Paul II, its text, including the so-called "Third Secret," was published.
Today, one of the consequences of the weakening of faith is the spread of a sentimental religiosity, fuelled by the multiplication of alleged apparitions, revelations, and heavenly messages, which the mass media tend to spectacularize.
However, there is an opposite risk: the tendency to rationalize religion, expunging from it everything that transcends the natural order. When, instead, an apparition is officially recognized by the Church, rejecting it out of prejudice or ignoring it means depriving oneself of a light that Heaven wished to offer to souls, and sometimes to society as a whole, at a specific historical moment.
This was the role played by the great Marian manifestations of the 19th and 20th centuries. A common characteristic of these heavenly interventions is that their purpose is not only the individual perfection of souls, but also concerns the common good of society and the historical destiny of peoples. The theme is vast, but one cannot overlook, for example, the connection between the apparitions of Fatima in 1917 and those of Lourdes in 1858, in which Our Lady, revealing her identity to Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pronounced the words: "I am the Immaculate Conception."
From Lourdes to Fatima
The words of the Virgin acquire a particular significance if one considers that just four years had passed since the solemn definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by Pius IX on December 8, 1854. Lourdes thus appeared to the Catholic world as an extraordinary heavenly confirmation of the pontifical proclamation.
Two great authors of the 19th century, the Spaniard Juan Donoso Cortés and the French Jesuit Henri Ramière, showed how the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the apparition of Lourdes, which forms a whole with it, fit within a broad theology of history.
Donoso Cortés, in his famous letter sent to Cardinal Raffaele Fornari on June 19, 1852, presents the impending dogma of the Immaculate Conception as the antidote par excellence to the errors of the time. The heart of the modern Revolution consists, for the Spanish thinker, in the negation of original sin and in the attribution of all evil to the State, private property, and social inequalities, as the nascent socialism preached. To these revolutionary utopias, Donoso Cortés contraposes the Blessed Virgin Mary, the only Immaculate One, to whom it is reserved to conquer evil, errors, and heresies, which are born and develop as a consequence of the sins of men.
Father Henri Ramière, for his part, published in 1861 a powerful volume entitled Les Espérances de l'Église, which concludes with this concept: the solemn definition of the Immaculate Conception prepares the full triumph of Jesus Christ and the Church in society. Developing the principle expounded by Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort in his Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, according to which «It was through the most Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus Christ came into the world, and it is also through her that He must reign in the world», Ramière explains how God manifests the glories of Mary in history because He wants to use Her to extend the social Kingship of Christ.
If Donoso Cortés sees in the Immaculate Conception the antithesis of the Revolution, Father Ramière contemplates in her the dawn of the historical triumph of the Church. The Jesuit recalls what Pius IX proclaims in the constitution Ineffabilis Deus, immediately after the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: «We cherish the firm hope that the most Blessed Virgin will... bring it to pass that our Holy Mother the Catholic Church, all difficulties being removed and all errors overcome, may flourish daily more and more among all peoples and in all places, from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth, and may enjoy complete peace, tranquillity, and liberty; (...) that all those who err, the mist of their minds being dispelled, may return to the path of truth and justice, and that there may be one fold and one shepherd».
Father Ramière discerns in these words the indication of an historical horizon toward which Catholics can legitimately direct their hope, and comments as follows: «From now on we know what we have the right to expect, and this is certainly everything that the most holily ambitious Christian could have dreamed of: it is the complete triumph of the Church, it is the destruction of all errors, it is the universal reign of truth and virtue, it is the union of men and peoples in a single flock, which will walk, under the guidance of the divine Shepherd, on the paths of true fraternity and true progress».
In this sense, the apparitions of Lourdes prefigure the Message of Fatima. At Lourdes, the Virgin Mary reveals herself as the Immaculate Conception; at Fatima, she announces what she will achieve: the historical triumph of her Immaculate Heart.
The Core of the Message of Fatima The message of Fatima of July 13, 1917, consists of three parts, called secrets, or rather of a single secret divided into three parts, which form an organic and coherent whole.The first part is a vision in which the Virgin Mary shows the seers the terrible flames of Hell. Then Our Lady says: «You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world».
At this point follows the so-called Third Secret: a symbolic representation of the historical drama of the Church and humanity in the time that elapses between the spread of the errors of Russia and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The Message of Fatima hangs on these two hinges: the words «Russia will spread her errors throughout the world» which announce a punishment looming over humanity, and the reassuring promise: «In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph».
Among Catholics, the idea of a divine punishment is often set aside, and even rejected. Yet here it is Our Lady who uses the term punishment, recalling a principle of the Christian theology of history, according to which there exists not only the sin of individuals, but also the collective sin of peoples. And while individuals have their definitive reward or punishment in eternity, nations, which do not have an extra-temporal destiny, are rewarded or punished in historical time. Pius XII confirms this in a 1956 address: the Lord, «being a just judge, if He often punishes the sins of private individuals only after death, nevertheless sometimes strikes rulers and nations themselves even in this mortal life, for their injustices, as history teaches us».
To avoid punishment, the Blessed Virgin formulates two precise requests: the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. There is an apparent disproportion between the simplicity of these requests and the immense good promised in exchange for their fulfilment. However, the fulfilment of the promises presupposes conversion and repentance, as confirmed by the triple appeal to Penance that the angel addresses in the vision of the Third Secret. Punishment is not inevitable but is conditional on this disposition of the soul. In the words of Our Lady, the conditional particle "if" recurs four times: «if what I say to you is done»; «if people do not cease offending God»; «if My requests are heeded»; «if not». What is, in contrast, unconditional is the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, which will happen anyway, with or without the punishment.
The words «My Immaculate Heart will triumph» affirm a certainty that seems to place the divine design in an indefinite historical perspective. The words «Russia will spread her errors throughout the world», on the other hand, insert the actions of men into a very precise historical context.
«Russia will spread her errors throughout the world»
When Our Lady communicates her message to the three shepherd children on July 13, 1917, we are in the heart of the First World War, the so-called "Great War", which between 1914 and 1918 caused over nine million deaths in Europe. An immense holocaust of blood, which a few weeks later, in the Note to the Leaders of the Belligerent Peoples of August 1, 1917, Benedict XV would define as a «useless slaughter».
Since 1914, Russia had been fighting against the Central Powers alongside France and England, which were joined by Italy in 1915. But in February 1917, a revolution of soldiers and workers, which broke out in Petrograd, caused the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and put an end to the Empire of the Romanovs. A provisional government was formed, presided over by Prince Georgy L'vov, and then, in July, by the socialist deputy of the Duma, Aleksandr Kerensky.
In the lodges of French Freemasonry, where the war had been conceived to republicanize Europe, the end of the Tsars was greeted with enthusiasm. For the German General Staff, however, it was an opportunity to attempt to crush the internal front of the enemy army. The leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, known by the pseudonym Lenin, who was in exile in Zurich, was repatriated by the Germans in a "sealed train," and the day after his arrival in Petrograd, April 4, 1917, he demanded "all power to the Soviets".
It is in this context that the reference to Russia assumes an impressive significance. At the moment of the apparitions, it was by no means evident that this very nation would become the central driving force of a complex of errors destined to expand across all continents. It certainly was not the errors of Tsarism, overthrown by the Revolution, nor those of the Russian Orthodox Church, which never had a planetary projection. The word errors assumes a prophetic meaning in light of what would happen on October 26, or November 7, 1917, depending on whether one adopts the Gregorian or the Julian calendar, when the Bolshevik party led by Lenin succeeded in seizing power through a coup d'état.
Marx's "eleventh thesis" on Feuerbach, according to which the task of philosophers is not to know the world, but to transform it, seemed to have been historically realized in the person of Lenin. The Russian Revolution was not only an historical event, but a concentrate of philosophical and moral errors, which have been deepened by countless studies, among which I like to recall those of Father Gustave Wetter, Father Cornelio Fabro, and Professor Augusto Del Noce. But it was Pope Pius XI, in the encyclical Divini Redemptoris, which appeared on March 19, 1937, who was the first to synthesize the ideological core of those errors, identifying them in historical and dialectical materialism.
According to this doctrine, Pius XI explains, matter in perennial evolution is the only existing reality. Man and society would be the product of a necessary evolution, which tends, in a perpetual conflict of forces, toward the final synthesis: a classless society. This conception denies God, the immortality of the soul, and any extra-temporal hope. The class struggle, fuelled by hatred and violence, is presented as a mission of progress, while all opposition must be annihilated as an enemy of the human race.
Russia did not limit itself, under Lenin and his successors, to professing this doctrine. In 1919, the Comintern was founded in Moscow, the international organization aimed at propagating the communist revolution throughout the world. A chapter of Divini Redemptoris is specifically dedicated to this spread, due to the fact, Pius XI states, «that too few have been able to grasp the true nature of Communism».
Furthermore, the spread of communism «is to be explained by a propaganda so truly diabolical that the world has perhaps never witnessed its like before: a propaganda directed from a single center and cleverly adapted to the varying conditions of different peoples».
Misunderstanding, therefore, of the nature of communism, diabolical propaganda, and, as a third point indicated by the Pope, «a conspiracy of silence on the part of a large section of the non-Catholic press of the world», explain the spread of Russia's errors throughout the world. Citing the Second Letter to the Thessalonians (2,4), Pius XI adds: «For the first time in history we are witnessing a struggle, cold-blooded in purpose and carefully mapped out, turned against 'everything that is called God'».
The End of Communism?
The meaning of the formula «Russia will spread her errors throughout the world» was evident to everyone in the seventy years that followed the Russian Revolution. From 1917 onward, communism did not remain confined within the borders of Russia, but was transformed into a universal project of political, social, and cultural subversion. The international activity of communist parties, the expansion of Marxism-Leninism in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and the division of the world into two blocs after the Second World War offered a dramatic confirmation of the words spoken by Our Lady at Fatima. Anti-communism of a liberal matrix, for its part, limited itself to criticizing the repressive and violent aspect of communism, ignoring its underlying philosophical core.
But so-called "real socialism" soon entered a crisis. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev launched perestroika; in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and in December 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed in a bloodless manner. The end of the Soviet empire was interpreted as the definitive victory of the liberal West and as the conclusion of the great ideological confrontations of the twentieth century. Communism seemed to sink, swallowing anti-communism into the abyss along with it.
When, on June 26, 2000, the Holy See published the third part of the secret of Fatima, in the theological commentary that accompanied the document, the prophecy was connected above all to the persecutions suffered by the Church in the twentieth century and to the assassination attempt against John Paul II on May 13, 1981. This interpretation seemed to relegate the content of the message to events now concluded, as if Fatima belonged definitively to the past and the historical cycle it announced had closed with the fall of Soviet communism.
Yet, such a reading left open some fundamental questions, which today arise with even greater force: the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary promised by Our Lady has not been realized; the world has not known peace nor a return to God and His law; Russia, although it has abandoned Marxist-Leninist ideology in its official form, has not converted in the sense indicated by the message. Above all, communism has not disappeared from the horizon of history.
After the collapse of the Soviet regime, the errors of Russia, liberated from the casing that contained them, spread throughout the West like a fluid and ungraspable magma. Materialism, evolutionism, relativism, and the rejection of the natural and Christian order have continued to spread, grounding themselves on the doctrines of Marx, Lenin, and Gramsci, but assuming new and often more insidious forms. What communist regimes had attempted to impose by violence has been introduced, in many Western societies, through laws, customs, school and university education, the media, and the transformation of language.
Communism survives as a system of power in China, Russia, North Korea, and Cuba, albeit under different forms, but what above all lives are its ideological presuppositions, in a geopolitical space far wider than that expressed by the regimes that refer to it in a more or less direct manner. The strength of these errors does not lie in the capacity to propose a positive model of society, but in what they deny: the principles and institutions upon which, over the course of centuries, Christian civilization developed under the impulse of the Church.
Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, in his essay Revolution and Counter-Revolution, demonstrated that the origin of the attack on Christian Civilization dates back to a chain of errors which, under the impulse of disordered passions, have assaulted it since the fifteenth century and developing down to our own days.
The Brazilian thinker explains that while it is true that no moral vice is properly irreversible, since grace can always lead the sinner to conversion, nevertheless, the more man roots himself in disorder, the more a condition of "quasi-irreversibility" is created in his psychological and spiritual condition. This principle can be applied to contemporary society. The revolutionary process, fuelled by disordered passions, has driven cultural and moral degradation to the extreme. Therefore, the errors and sins now rampant cannot but result, barring an extraordinary intervention of grace, in wars, revolutions, upheavals, and ultimately in a final collapse of society.
In this sense, in light of what has happened in the hundred and ten years that separate us from the message of Fatima, we must recognize that the punishment announced to humanity, if then it constituted a possibility that was still avoidable, today appears to be a quasi-irreversible outcome.
God, who always brings His designs to completion (Isaiah 46:11), often defers punishment to offer sinners the possibility of converting and to render more meritorious the fidelity of the good, who are called to persevere during an ordeal that seems to have no end. The prolongation of the waiting, however, does not mean that divine justice has failed. On the contrary, every rejected grace increases the responsibility of the one who receives it and prepares a reckoning that is all the more severe the longer the time of mercy has been.
This law of history has been illustrated, with different emphases, by Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, Father Henri Ramière, Monsignor Henri Delassus, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, and more generally by the great exponents of the theology of history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in whose line I humbly place myself.
History also shows that the longer the incubation of a catastrophe, the more rapid and impetuous can be its unfolding when it breaks upon peoples. For years, disintegrating forces operate slowly, almost invisibly, while institutions continue to preserve the appearance of solidity. Then, having reached a critical point, the acceleration becomes vertiginous: what seemed unshakeable suddenly gives way, and an entire historical order plunges in a few months, a few weeks, sometimes a few days. So it happened with the French Revolution, so it occurred with the First World War, and so it was for the Russian Revolution. The Church too, in what belongs to its human and historical dimension, is exposed to this law, although we have the supernatural certainty that the gates of hell will never prevail against it. We know, however, that when men reject the time of mercy offered to them by God and the measure of sins reaches its peak, the slowness of waiting can suddenly give way to the rapidity of collapse.
In the first decades of the twenty-first century, humanity has experienced a succession of ever deeper crises: the terrorist attacks after 2001, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the severe financial crisis started in 2007-2008, the revolutions and conflicts caused by the so-called "Arab Springs," the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the new conflagration in the Middle East. To these convulsions have been added recurrent nuclear threats, hybrid warfare, mass migrations, and the growing psychological and moral fragility of Western nations.
The Sleepwalkers
Pope Francis has repeatedly described this scenario with the expression «a third world war fought piecemeal». The formula captures a characteristic feature of our time: there is not yet a single global conflict formally declared, but a multiplicity of wars, tensions, and crises connected to one another, capable of converging at any moment into a clash of worldwide proportions. Never before has the international situation appeared so unstable and turbulent, suspended on the brink of a catastrophe that might manifest itself militarily, economically, socially, or in the realm of healthcare.
The expression «the sleepwalkers» was made famous by the historian Christopher Clark in his book on the First World War. The «sleepwalkers» were above all the political, diplomatic, and military leaders of the great European powers who, during the crisis of July 1914, led the continent toward the Great War. Clark defines them as «sleepwalkers» because they were incapable of fully seeing the reality of the nightmare toward which they were advancing. In the summer of 1914, they knowingly entered a crisis whose consequences they could neither foresee nor dominate, until they provoked a catastrophe of worldwide proportions.
Today, the same expression can be applied to the cultural elites, the political ruling classes, and even the ecclesiastical authorities, who seem to advance like sleepwalkers toward an ever darker future, incapable of understanding the profound meaning of the crisis of our time. A meaning which, in its supernatural and providential dimension, only the Message of Fatima can fully illuminate.
Someone will object that the Catholic faith is not grounded on the hope of Fatima, but on faith in Jesus Christ. And that is true. The message of Fatima adds nothing to the deposit of faith, but it adds much to the hope of the Church, because it reveals the religious and moral root of the crisis of our time and indicates the way through which the Church and our civilization can emerge from it.
The Hope of Fatima
Between the two phrases «Russia will spread her errors throughout the world» and «My Immaculate Heart will triumph» there is a word that constitutes their hinge: «Por fim», translatable into English as «in the end», «at the end», or «finally». This expression not only contains all the trials, sufferings, and struggles that precede the final triumph of Mary, but expresses the hope that must sustain these trials.
Never before have international events, in their dramatic nature, rendered so relevant what the Blessed Virgin announced in 1917, and never before would it be so important to feed hope into the final triumph she promised. But confidence in this triumph appears languid in souls, which often lack a true supernatural spirit and ground their Marian devotion on fragile and wavering sentiments. Yet this is the hour of the theological virtue of hope, grounded on reason and faith.
Faith has a single foundation: the authority of God; hope has two: the fidelity of God and the cooperation of man. What is hoped for, in fact, does not depend only on the expectation of the one who desires a good, but it also demands the effort, patience, and struggle of the one who desires it in order to obtain it. For this reason, Saint Augustine defines hope as the virtue through which «we wait with patience for future goods», that is, by suffering and fighting «against all adversities until we arrive at the goal of our desires».
The ultimate object of hope is the salvation of the soul, the possession of God, eternal beatitude. Hope, however, extends to all spiritual goods. In this sense, the Doctor of Hippo states that the object of hope is as vast as that of prayer. Today, the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary can and must be an object of hope because it was announced to us by God Himself, through the words of the most Blessed Virgin.
In the encyclical Fulgens Corona of September 8, 1953, Pius XII expresses his «great hope that a new era may arise, gladdened by Christian peace and the triumph of religion»; these are words that echo those, which we have cited, of Blessed Pius IX: «We cherish the firm hope that the most Blessed Virgin will... bring it to pass that our Holy Mother the Catholic Church, all difficulties being removed and all errors overcome, may flourish daily more and more among all peoples and in all places, from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth, and may enjoy complete peace, tranquillity, and liberty».
This is not millenarianism. This is a theological perspective which, admitting the reality of sin and its dramatic consequences, opposes secularized philosophies of history which, according to a well-known expression of Eric Voegelin, tend to «immanentize the eschaton», that is, to transfer into history the Christian promise of an ultimate salvation. But it is a theology of history that is also distinguished from those readings of Catholic eschatology that identify the present crisis with the era of the Antichrist, excluding any possible Christian rebirth of society. In the perspective of the Message of Fatima, the consciousness of the depth of the crisis is accompanied by the hope of a triumph of the Church in all the fullness and extension that the uncancellable existence of original sin can allow.
The triumph of the Immaculate Heart will be precisely this: the full manifestation in history of the maternal sovereignty of her who, Immaculate from the first instant, Co-Redemptrix and universal Mediatrix of all graces, prepares, through the conversion of men and the defeat of all errors, the recognition of her Queenship and that of Jesus Christ over all humanity. The foundation of all Mary's privileges is her Divine Maternity, and the completion of her progressive perfection in grace is the Assumption into the heavenly Palace, where she is crowned Queen of Heaven and earth. But by the theological principle of convenience, it is necessary that the Queenship of Mary be real and effective on earth, at least during a phase of the history of humanity.
Hope animates this theology of history. Saint Peter exhorts: «Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you» (1 Peter 3,15). We have, therefore, the duty not only to preserve hope, but also to expound its reasons. And the reason for our hope is the certainty that God is faithful to His promises, because as Saint Augustine always teaches, «He who brought us to hope will not deceive us; He will give us the reality of what we hope for». The Lord, indeed, «has kindled a great hope in the heart of those who hope in Him»; «Magnam spem Dominus suis promisit sperantibus».
For the same reason, we are intimately persuaded that the Blessed Virgin Mary, bringing us to hope in the triumph of her Immaculate Heart, will not deceive us, but will give us the hope of what in Her and through Her we hope for. Our Lady does not promise us the absence of the ordeal, but the grace to endure and survive it; she does not assure us of a goal without a struggle, but she assures us of the final victory, if we remain faithful to Her.
For this reason, we hope from Her all the graces necessary to fulfil our mission; we hope through Her to arrive at Jesus Christ; we hope with Her in the final triumph of the Church over its enemies, invoking Her as Auxilium Christianorum. This hope does not rest on our strengths but is placed in Her whom God has constituted Mother of divine hope and victor in all battles. It is She, the very source of our confidence and the root of our theology of history.
