” ““If there have been plenty of worries and sufferings, if concern about the future of mankind still persists, what the “White Lady” promised to the young shepherds is reassuring: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph”. Yesterday morning, Benedict XVI focussed his meditation on commemorating Our Lady of Fatima, before saying the Marian prayer of Regina Caeli with the pilgrims gathered in Saint Peter’s Square. The Pope recalled the date of May 13th, the day the Church commemorates the apparitions of Fatima, where in 1917 the Virgin appeared a few times to three children, the young shepherds Francesco, Giacinta and Lucia, entrusting them with a really prophetic message in a century “afflicted by unprecedented destruction, caused by wars and totalitarian regimes, as well as by widespread persecutions against the Church”. The Pope mentioned that just on May 13th 1981 25 years ago John Paul II was the victim of an attempt on his life in Saint Peter’s Square, and the Pope “felt he had been miraculously saved from death by the a motherly hand, as he had said himself”. Then, the Pope greeted “all the boys and girls who over these weeks meet Jesus the Eucharist for the first time”, wishing then to “grow” into the “real disciples” of Jesus.
