WHY ENGLAND? WHAT ABOUT OTHER COUNTRIES OF EUROPE?
There are strong reasons to believe that England will be the spearhead of great historical conversions in Europe.
Examples: In 1857 Dom Bosco related to Blessed Pius IX a vision of St. Dominic Savio:
'One morning, while I was doing my thanksgiving after Holy Communion, I was taken by a strong distraction. It seemed that I was on a very vast flat land surface, full of people surrounded by thick darkness. They were walking, but did so as though they had lost their way and could not see where they set their feet. Someone beside me said, "This region is England."
'Then I saw the Supreme Pontiff, Pius IX. He was dressed in a majestic fashion, carrying in his hands a splendorous light, and advancing amidst the multitude of people. As He advanced, the darkness gradually disappeared and the people were bathed with so much light that it seemed noon time.
'The friend said, "This light is the Catholic Religion, which must illuminate England." '
Pius IX said to Dom Bosco: "This narration confirms in me my determination to work without rest in favour of England, which is already the object of all my solicitudes."(Apud Memorie Biografiche di Don Giovanni Bosco, compiled by Fr. Giovanni Battista Lemoyne S.D.B.; and in part the Spanish version of Fr. Rodolfo Fierro S.D.B., published in Biografía y escritos de San Juan Bosco, BAC, Madri, 1955).
In 1854, the famous Curé d’Ars was talking to Archbishop Ullathorne, of Birmingham, England, when suddenly the saintly curé interrupted him and said:
"Mais, Monseigneur, je crois que l’Eglise d’Anglaterre retournera à son ancienne splendeur."
"But, Monsignor, I believe that the Church in England will recover her ancient splendour."
(Cf. ‘The Curé D’Ars’, by Abbé Francis Trochu, TAN Books, Rockford, Illinois, 1977, p. 511).
In Her apparition at La Salette, France, on 19th September, 1846, the Blessed Virgin Mary said to the boy Maximin (one of the two seers):
"A Protestant nation in the north shall be converted to the Faith, and through the means of that nation, the others shall return to the Holy Catholic Church". It happened merely four years prior to the emancipation of the Catholic Hierarchy in England.
In 1895 Pope Leo XIII wrote the Encyclical Amantissima Voluntatis, inviting the English to pray together with him towards their final reunification. He issued a special prayer for the conversion of England, and enriched it with indulgences.
Thus, we firmly believe that the reunification of all baptized Christians is of the essence. As long as our separated brethren in baptism remain fragmented into thousands of denominations, with a wide variety of creeds and moral codes, all claiming to derive their interpretations from the Bible, Christianity - weakened as it is by the influence of secularism and the Culture of Death - will not stand a chance against Islam.
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