At a small private ceremony in the Sistine Chapel, Benedict XV personally consecrated (Eugenio) Pacelli as archbishop of Sardi on May 13, 1917.
Those with a mind to read significance into Marian dates would later note that Pacelli was made a bishop on the very day, Sunday May 13, 1917, when three children were said to have witnessed a Lady all of dazzling light at a place called Fatima in Portugal.
The apparition, later identified as the Virgin Mary, told them: “Come here on the thirteenth day for six months at this same time and then I will tell you who I am and what I want.”
Following this event, there occurred the phenomenon of the spinning sun of Fatima, reportedly witnessed by thousands. In 1928 the surviving seer, Lucia, revealed the first of the famous Secrets of Fatima, dealing with the prophecies of war and Communism throughout the twentieth century. Forty years later, as Pope, Pacelli himself witnessed in the Vatican gardens what he thought to be the phenomenon of the spinning sun. The self-controlled, legalistic administrator had a strangely mystical side to his character, which was to emerge in the fullness of time. The date of his consecration, May 13, was to become the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima.
John Fahey/Red Cross Disciple of Christ Today
Jarboe/A Sea of Blood and Hollow Screaming
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