The Vatican media report specifies that it is important for the Pontifical International Marian Academy to “clarify things, because often the so-called messages generate confusion, spread anxiety-provoking apocalyptic scenarios or even accusations against the Pope and the Church.

A false and very worrying statement

Stefano Cecchin, ofm, president of the Pontifical Marian Academy, gave an interview to the weekly magazine Alfa y Omega, in which he assures, among other things, that “the apparitions that speak of God’s punishments are absolutely false”.

The Franciscan friar began by recalling the authority of the Academy he presides over: “We are the only ones in the world who are competent on the subject of the figure of Mary (…) That is to say, we are recognised as experts in this discipline, with the right to interfere”, although he acknowledges that “it is the bishops who give the final judgement and who have the ultimate word”.

One of the criteria used by the Pontifical Academy, according to Fr Cecchin, is the following: “Does a mother want to punish her children by sending them illnesses, death…? No, not at all. So the apparitions that speak of God’s punishments are absolutely false.”

This raises a serious problem: Thus, during the 3rd apparition at Fatima, on July 13, 1917, Our Lady said to the children:

“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go; to save them, God wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I am about to tell you is done, many souls will be saved and they will have peace. The war will soon be over. But if they do not stop offending God, a more serious war will begin under the pontificate of Pius XI.

“When you see the night lighted by an unknown light, know that it is a great sign from God to tell you that he will punish the world for its crimes, by war, famine and persecution against the Church and the Holy Father.

And at La Salette, Our Lady said to the children:

“People do not observe the Lord’s Day, they continue to work non-stop on Sundays (…) The Lent period is ignored. Men cannot swear without taking God’s name in vain. Disobedience and forgetting God’s commandments are the things that make the hand of my Son weighed down.

According to Fr Cecchin, both of these apparitions are “absolutely false”. This appears perfectly inadmissible. The root of this false opinion resides in the new appreciation of mercy, present in theology since some time and highlighted by the present pope, but already discernible in John Paul II. A mercy disconnected from justice.

The negation of a papal approbation

On the other hand, the Franciscan Father affirms that there has never been and never will be a papal approval of an apparition, because they are private revelations: “It must be made clear that the apparitions are private revelations. They do not add to or subtract from public revelations, and therefore papal approval is not necessary. There never will be, there never has been”.

The peremptory assertion requires a distinction that theology has long since made, and which has been put in place by the Papacy. We must distinguish between the authority of the message and its content. As for the authority, it does not go beyond the private order, and, unlike the public revelation contained in Holy Scripture and Tradition, it cannot be made mandatory for consciences. In other words, no one is obliged to believe in a private revelation.

On the other hand, as for the content, the Church can declare that it is entirely in conformity with Catholic doctrine and thus allow worship: pilgrimage, invocation or even mass in honour of the Blessed Virgin under the title of her apparition: this is the case for Lourdes for example. For such a cult to be universally authorised, the authority of the Pope is required, notwithstanding Fr Cecchin.