On the 45th anniversary of the shooting of Karol Wojtyła in St. Peter’s Square, the National Register portal published a commentary by Grattan Brown, STD, director of mission at the so-called “Saint John Paul II National Shrine” in Washington, D.C. The article, saturated with the mythology of Fatima and the hagiography of a manifest heretic, presents the assassination attempt as a miracle of “Our Lady of Fatima” and frames Wojtyła’s survival as divine Providence at work — all while omitting the apostasy, heresy, and systemic destruction of the Faith that defined his 26-year pontificate. The commentary is a textbook example of how the conciliar sect weaponizes private revelations of dubious origin to legitimize the reign of modernism and obscure the true causes of the Church’s present ruin.
The Mythology of Fatima as a Prop for Apostasy
The article opens by invoking the apparitions of Fatima as though they were an established and uncontested pillar of Catholic faith, writing that “Our Lady appeared to three young shepherds in Fatima, Portugal” and gave them “visions symbolizing the living hell that would become the European communist regimes of the 20th century.” This is presented without the slightest critical examination — a remarkable omission given the well-documented theological objections, logical contradictions, and the strong suspicion that the entire Fatima narrative constitutes a Masonic psychological operation against the Church.
The message of Fatima, with its imprecise demand for the “conversion of Russia” without specifying Catholicism, opened the door to the religious relativism that would become the hallmark of the conciliar revolution. Its focus on external threats — communism — deliberately diverted attention from the modernist apostasy within the Church, the very enemy St. Pius X had identified as the gravest danger in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907). That the National Register builds its narrative on this foundation reveals the depth of the deception: a message that ignores the warnings of St. Pius X against “enemies within” is now used to celebrate a pope who embodied those enemies.
The “Saint” Who Destroyed the Church
Grattan Brown refers to “St. John Paul II” as though his canonization by the conciliar sect carries any weight whatsoever. Karol Wojtyła was a manifest heretic and apostate whose entire pontificate was dedicated to the implementation of the modernist errors condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu and Pascendi. Under his reign, the Church saw the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), which enshrined the heresy of religious liberty condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (propositions 77-79) and by Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos. He convened the infamous interreligious gathering at Assisi in 1986, where prayers were offered to false gods — an act of idolatry and apostasy that would have been unthinkable to any true successor of St. Peter.
The article praises Wojtyła’s “commitment to the challenging and joyful life God offered him” and his “effective opposition to communism.” Yet this so-called opposition was coupled with his strong desire to reconcile the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches — a reconciliation that, as the Fatima message itself ambiguously encouraged, required no conversion to Catholicism. This is the ecumenism condemned as a mortal sin against the Faith, the very ecumenism that constitutes one of the defining marks of the conciliar sect. That the article presents this as a virtue rather than a betrayal of Catholic doctrine reveals the total inversion of values that characterizes the post-conciliar mentality.
“In the Designs of Providence There Are No Mere Coincidences”
The article quotes Wojtyła’s own words from his pilgrimage to the Fatima shrine: “In the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences.” This phrase, presented as profound spiritual wisdom, is in reality a tautology dressed in piety — and one that, in the mouth of a manifest heretic, carries no spiritual authority whatsoever. The true teaching of the Church on Providence is found not in the private revelations of Fatima but in the immutable doctrine articulated by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925), where he proclaimed the universal reign of Christ the King over all nations and all aspects of human life — a reign that Wojtyła systematically undermined through his embrace of religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the laicization of the state.
The article claims that “the message of Fatima showed the power of devotion and penance to avert violence” and that “God’s mercy is far greater than the plans of evil.” But where is the acknowledgment that the greatest evil facing the Church today is not communism — which collapsed on its own — but the internal destruction wrought by the conciliar revolution? Where is the mention that the “pope” who survived the bullet was the same man who allowed the systematic dismantling of the Most Holy Sacrifice, the persecution of priests loyal to Tradition, and the introduction of pagan rites into the liturgy? The omission of these facts is not accidental; it is the very essence of the deception.
Forgiveness Without Repentance: The Corruption of Mercy
The article celebrates Wojtyła’s forgiveness of his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Ağca, calling it “discipleship” and “a life transformed by God’s mercy.” The Pope reportedly told Ağca that “she [Our Lady of Fatima] was not going to spirit herself through the prison walls to take revenge on him.” This anecdote, presented as evidence of sanctity, is in fact a trivialization of divine justice. Catholic teaching on forgiveness does not negate the reality of sin, the necessity of repentance, or the existence of eternal punishment. The constant emphasis on mercy without reference to justice, to the state of grace, or to the reality of hell is a hallmark of the modernist heresy — the very heresy condemned in proposition 6 of the Syllabus of Errors, which denies that divine revelation is necessary for the knowledge of moral truths.
Moreover, the article notes that “European communism fell less than a decade after Ağca’s assassination attempt,” implying a causal connection with the Fatima message and Wojtyła’s pontificate. This is historical revisionism of the crudest kind. Communism fell due to its own internal contradictions and the economic and political pressures of the Cold War — not because of the “consecration of Russia” that the Fatima message ambiguously demanded and that the conciliar sect claims to have fulfilled. The attribution of geopolitical events to private revelations is a superstitious practice that obscures the true workings of divine Providence and the Church’s mission.
The Abomination of the “John Paul II National Shrine”
That this commentary was published under the auspices of the so-called “Saint John Paul II National Shrine” — an institution dedicated to the cult of a manifest heretic — is itself a sign of the times. The conciliar sect has erected monuments to its own apostasy, canonized its own destroyers, and built shrines to those who should be remembered as the architects of the present ruin. The faithful are expected to venerate a man who, by the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, ceased to be Pope the moment he became a manifest heretic — for “a manifest heretic cannot be Pope,” since “he who is not a Christian is not a member of the Church, and a manifest heretic is not a Christian” (De Romano Pontifice, II:30).
The True Lessons of May 13, 1981
The true lesson of the events of May 13, 1981, is not that “Our Lady of Fatima” saved a pope. It is that God permitted a manifest heretic to survive so that he could complete the destruction of the Church’s visible structures — a destruction foretold not by Fatima but by the immutable teaching of the Church on the nature of heresy and the loss of papal office. The faithful are not called to marvel at the “Providence” that spared Wojtyła but to recognize the judgment of God upon a Church that has abandoned its divine mission.
As Pope Pius IX declared in the Syllabus of Errors, the Catholic religion cannot be placed on the same level as false religions (proposition 18), the Church is a true and perfect society endowed with perpetual rights (proposition 19), and the Roman Pontiff cannot reconcile himself with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (proposition 80). Every one of these condemnations was violated by the man the National Register calls “St. John Paul II” — and every one of these violations is glossed over in an article that prefers the mythology of Fatima to the reality of apostasy.
The faithful must reject this narrative entirely. The future is not “in the heart of God” as the article sentimentally concludes — it is in the immutable Tradition of the Catholic Church, in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as offered before 1958, in the Social Kingship of Christ as proclaimed by Pius XI, and in the uncompromising defense of the Faith as taught by the Fathers, the Councils, and the true Popes. Everything else — including the mythology of Fatima and the cult of Wojtyła — is a diversion from the real battle: the battle against modernism, the synthesis of all errors.
Source:
No Mere Coincidences: Fatima and the Shooting of John Paul II (ncregister.com)
Date: 13.05.2026