Who killed Father Gruner?

Assiduous readers of WWW will know that Walt was, or is an admirer or Father Nicholas Gruner, the Fatima Priest. For all of his 38 years in the Roman Catholic priesthood, Father Gruner worked tirelessly to promote the Full Message of Our Lady of Fatima, beseeching Popes from Paul VI onwards to release the entire Third Secret -- suppressed by the Vatican to this day -- and consecrate Russia to Our Lady's Immaculate Heart, by which act a time of peace can be brought to this troubled world.

At the end of April 2015, Our Lord Jesus Christ called Father Gruner home to be with Him and His Blessed Mother. The statement from the Fatima Center, posted here on WWW, did not mention the cause of Father Gruner's death. In fact it was a massive coronary, suffered while he was, as usual, working at his desk.

There were some -- friends of Our Lady as well as Her enemies in the highest echelons of the Church -- who wondered if Our Lady's Apostolate, founded by Father Gruner, would survive his passing. Walt is pleased to report that the work is being continued under the direction of his niece, Miriam Dias, ably assisted by the Fatima Center management team, and faithful followers such as John Vennari and Christopher Ferrara, who you can see in this video "Remembering Father Gruner".



The next major event on the Fatima calendar is the Save Washington DC conference, to be held on September 22nd-24th in [They already figured it out! Ed.] The highlight of the conference will be a procession and demonstration (with permission of the DC police) to be held on the 23rd, to coincide with the visit of Pope Francis to the White House. Click here for details of what's going to happen and how you can be part of it.

But I digress. The question at hand is: Who killed Father Gruner? For the answer, I have the word of two of my agents, who worked with Father on and off for a quarter of a century, that he was counting on Pope Francis, a man of evident devotion to Our Lady, to perform the Consecration of Russia, in the manner the Blessed Virgin requested. See "Pope Francis: a traditional Catholic's view".

Did Pope Francis do so? Sadly, the answer is a resounding NO. What he did, in October of 2013, was to "entrust" (not "consecrate") "the world" (not Russia, by name) to the Blessed Virgin (but not to Her Immaculate Heart). See "SHOCKING! Pope Francis did NOT 'consecrate' 'the world' to the 'Immaculate Heart of Mary' after all!"

Why the Holy Father shied away from doing as Our Lady asked -- not even going as far as his predecessors -- is known only to him, and (presumably) God. What my agents tell me, though, is that Father Gruner was profoundly disappointed by the Pope's failure to do what had been so fervently prayed for, hoped for, and even expected. It is no stretch, I think, to say that Father Gruner died of a broken heart. Who broke it? Pope Francis!

SHOCKING! Pope Francis did NOT "consecrate" "the world" to the "Immaculate Heart of Mary" after all!

Following his "installation" last spring, many Catholics hoped that Pope Francis -- rumoured to be a devotee of the Blessed Virgin -- would finally obey Our Lady's Fatima request and consecrate Russia by name to Her Immaculate Heart.

Father Nicholas Gruner and other "Fatimists" insist that Sister Lucia, the seer of Fatima, was told that the Consecration must be done solemnly and publicly, in union with all the world's bishops. So far, no pope, from Pius XI through Benedict XVI, has been willing to go that far, although Pius XII and John Paul consecrated "the world" on several occasions.

Around the time of Walt's birthday, the Vatican announced that on October 13th Pope Francis would again consecrate "the world", in the presence of the original statue of Our Lady of Fatima, which would be brought to Rome from Portugal for the occasion. Believers in the Fatima prophecies began to hope that he might even mention "Russia" by name. Father Gruner went to Rome to press his campaign for this more specific act of consecration.

On October 14th Walt reported -- as did all the Catholic media -- that the Pope had consecrated the world as he said he would. And in my October 23rd update, I pointed out that nothing happened. There was no Miracle of the Sun, no sudden outbreak of peace in the Middle East, not even a resolution of the impasses in the United States Congress. Why not? Because, I said, what Francis (and his predecessors) did was not what Our Lady wants.

Little did I know -- I didn't go to Rome for the Big Event -- that Pope Francis didn't even go as far as his predecessors towards obeying Heaven's command. I have seen only today the October 15th report in Catholic Family News which gives the full Italian text (and an English translation) of the Pope's prayer in St. Peter's Square on the 13th.

Follow the link and read it carefully. You will find no mention of the specific words "consecrate" or "world" or "Immaculate Heart". None. What the Pope said he was doing was an "act of entrustment", not an act of "consecration".

Does it matter? Isn't it just a semantic quibble? Isn't an "entrustment" as good as a "consecration"? Well, seems to me a public prayer -- which is what Our Lady asked for -- is a combination of actions and words. We can't know what's in the mind of the person praying. Francis may have had some kind of "mental reservation" -- thinking something other than what he said -- but his spoken words were all the public could hear.

So, as far as we mere mortals know, no "consecration" of any kind was done on October 13th. Our Lady of Fatima is still waiting.