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The year was 1984 and St. John Paul II was presiding at a Mass for Families during the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Redemption. He was faced with a world in turmoil (nearing the end of the Cold War), and recognized the need to beseech God’s help in delivering the world from evil.
The occasion was highlighted by the presence of the original statue of Our Lady of Fatima in Rome, standing prominently next to the main altar. During the Mass John Paul II led those present in a “Consecration of All Individuals and Peoples of the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” He said, “I will today entrust to her Immaculate Heart—in spiritual union with all the bishops of the world—all individuals and peoples, repeating in substance the act that I made at Fátima on May 13, 1982.”
At the end of the consecration John Paul II said a powerful prayer that asks God to deliver us from the many faces of evil. It is a prayer that retains its relevance as evil continues to plague our world.
Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the future!
From famine and war, deliver us.
From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us.
From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us.
From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us.
From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us.
From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us.
From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us.
From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.
Accept, O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies.
Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin: individual sin and the “sin of the world,” sin in all its manifestations.
Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love! May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!
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And today we celebrate...