The consecration of Russia (and an unasked for Ukraine) delivered by Pope Francis on 25 March 2022 is of doubtful value for peace in our times. The intention is defective; the objective is oblique; and the animus behind the current Papacy is decisively opposed to what our Lady of Fatima requested.
Even a casual perusal of the consecration prayer reveals nothing in reference to our Lady of Fatima, nor the purpose of the requested consecration she revealed to Sister Lucia in 1929 for the conversion of Russia. The Pope's prayer asks for peace. Peace is what our Lady promised the world if the consecration was carried out as she requested. What Pope Francis did was to request the fruits of the consecration without performing the requirements of the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary: ask for the conversion of Russia, lest that nation fill the world (and sadly now, even the Church) with its errors. Failure to do the consecration properly (according to the Fatima redactor, Sister Lucia) would result in Russia spreading its errors (atheistic communism) throughout the world resulting in wars, the annihilation of entire nations, and the persecution of the Church.
The real reason that heaven cannot accept the consecration is that the men of the Church have chosen their own path to peace in utter disregard for Fatima.
This began in April of 1963 when Pope John XXIII promulgated the encyclical Pacem in terris, subtitled Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity, and Liberty. The encyclical demonstrated an utterly earthbound, quasi-humanist attempt to instrumentalize the Church as a vehicle for attaining a temporal peace in the world by an appeal to what amounts to the French Revolution's slogan of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
The encyclical was published during the Second Vatican Council which had begun in October 1962 and provided an impetus to it that would inspire many churchmen to pursue peace through merely human means as though the Mother of God had not even appeared in Fatima, or requested the consecration of Russia.
The Council, seeking rapprochement with the communist sphere of influence then engulfing the eastern hemisphere welcomed observers from the Russian Orthodox Church on the (KGB's) condition that communism - the very errors of Russia our Lady warned against - would not be condemned. Pope John XXIII agreed to this in the little known Pact of Metz, guaranteeing no condemnation of communism at Vatican II. The calculus was this: uniting the Eastern Churches with Rome would strengthen the ties between the free countries and those restricted by atheist communism. This would come not by an act of religion (the requested consecration of our Lady of Fatima) but by human efforts and the new orientation of ecumenism.
Although nearly 500 council fathers signed a formal petition during the council to condemn communism (as Pope Pius XI did in Divini redemptoris, 1937), the petition was lost, and no condemnation ever occurred.
Following the council, Pope Paul VI gave a speech at the United Nations on 4 December, 1965 in which he appealed
...this lofty Institution, and it comes from our experience of history... is as an "expert on humanity" [and] we bring this Organization the support and approval of our recent predecessors, that of the Catholic hierarchy, and our own, convinced as we are that this Organization [the United Nations] represents the obligatory path of modern civilization and world peace.
... People turn to the United Nations as if it were their last hope for peace and harmony. We presume to bring here their tribute of honor and of hope along with our own. That is why this moment is a great one for you too.
Fatima does not even appear to be in the consciousness of the Supreme Pontiff nor of the conciliar fathers although it seems plausible that the best opportunity the Church ever had to perform the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary would have been at the Second Vatican Council where 2,400 prelates were assembled together in the same city, and even in the same room.
No one championed the council with more vigor and zeal than Pope John Paul II, who hailed it as the event that caused us to see the Church in an "utterly new way, quite unknown previously" (Redemptor hominis, March 1979). In fact, John Paul II was so convinced that the Council contained the promise and justification for achieving peace that he convened the spectacle of the Prayer Meeting of All Religions at Assisi in 1986. The stated purpose of this event was to ask the various deities and luminaries (as well as the Triune God) for peace in the world through the orchestrated cacophony of pluralist religious activity. The event appeared to place the religion of Jesus Christ, God-made-Man on the same level as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and many other religious systems. The common denominator is man in whom the Pope finds the key to true peace and brotherhood.
"Man ... is the primary route that the Church must travel in fulfilling her mission: he is the primary and fundamental way for the Church, the way traced out by Christ himself, the way that leads invariably through the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption." (Redemptor hominis #13)
About the correlation between Vatican II and Assisi Prayer the Pope said
“The day of Assisi, showing the Catholic Church holding hands with our brothers of other religions, was a visible expression of [the] statements of the Second Vatican Council.”
Pope John Paul II went on to celebrate the inter-religious prayer meeting at Assisi as a new direction for the future, “The event of Assisi” he said, “can thus be considered as a visible illustration, an exegesis of events, a catechesis intelligible to all, of what is presupposed and signified by the commitments to ecumenism and to the inter-religious dialogue which was recommended and promoted by the Second Vatican Council.”
Toward the end of the speech, the Pope urged his Cardinals to continue on the same new path, “Keep always alive the spirit of Assisi as a motive of hope for the future.”
- Pope’s Christmas Address to Roman Curia,” L’Osservatore Romano, January 5, 1987, pp. 6-7.
The event itself - repeated by the same Pope in 2002 - shocked the sensibilities of Catholics and protestants alike with its audacious assertion that all prayer is directed to the one God regardless of the intent of the one praying. John Paul II left no doubt about this assertion:
"It must first be kept in mind that every quest of the human spirit for truth and goodness, and in the last analysis for God, is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The various religions arose precisely from this primordial human openness to God. At their origins we often find founders who, with the help of God’s Spirit, achieved a deeper religious experience. Handed on to others, this experience took form in the doctrines, rites and precepts of the various religions.
In every authentic religious experience, the most characteristic expression is prayer. Because of the human spirit’s constitutive openness to God’s action of urging it to self-transcendence, we can hold that “every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person.”
(Address to the Members of the Roman Curia, 22 Dec. 1986, n. 11; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 5 Jan. 1987, p. 7).
The same Supreme Pontiff who urged the Curia to “keep always alive the spirit of Assisi as a motive of hope for the future” finds a willingness to do just that in successors Pope Benedict XVI who convened a third Assisi event in 2011 and in Pope Francis who participated in a pagan ceremony at the Vatican in 2019 and signed a document with the Grand Imam of Al Azhar alleging that God wills the existence of all religions.
Which brings us back to Fatima: why would heaven accept the truncated, humanistic prayer of Pope Francis to end the war (without Russia's conversion) in Ukraine when he is inebriated with the spirit of Assisi Prayer himself? Make no mistake; Assisi Prayer is diametrically opposed to the message of Fatima in every way. Assisi prayer is based on a false conception of both man and God; far from requiring anyone's conversion, it offers Papal sanction to the practice of every religion imaginable. Assisi prayer sought peace through the mere human instruments of interreligious dialogue and ecumenical activity. Assisi Prayer is in the final analysis a shockingly impious repudiation of the message of Fatima in preference for man's own ways of attaining peace.
"Thus saith the Lord: Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord." [Jeremias 17,5]
How could heaven set aside this monstrous effrontery? How could our Lady of Fatima accept the prayer of Pope Francis for peace when the entire hierarchy with few exceptions has been compromising with Russia's errors for 60 years now? The root of this rejection of Fatima lies in the purpose and orientation of the Second Vatican Council; the council rejected the supernatural means of achieving peace provided by our Lady and chose the arm of flesh - humanistic ecumenism and interreligious dialogue.
The same tragic exchange occurred in Judea when the Jews chose the way of political insurgency by crying out for the release of the terrorist Barabbas instead of the Prince of Peace, Jesus of Nazareth. Their violent insurgency ended with the death of a million Hebrews in the siege of Jerusalem 66-70 A.D. by the Roman emperor Titus. By choosing the means of mere human efforts and rejecting the sure path promised by the Queen of Heaven, we too are meeting the consequences of our decisions.
The spirit of Vatican II - identified by Pope John Paul as being fulfilled at the Assisi Prayer events - is diametrically opposed to the spirit of Fatima. They both seek the same end but with dramatically different paths of attainment. Pope Francis asked for an end to the war in Ukraine, but he did not consecrate Russia and Russia alone to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for it's conversion. On top of all our other sins and moral failures, we have added an impious request for the Blessed Virgin Mary to bend her will to that of sinful humanity and grant us peace without conversion.
That is simply not going to happen.