Pope Francis to install showers for Homeless

Next Monday, work will begin to renovate Vatican restrooms for pilgrims, but Pope Francis has also given instructions for showers to be installed where Rome’s homeless can wash.

Bishop Konrad Krajewski, or “Don Conrado” as he is familiarly known, is the Pope’s “almoner,” the person in charge of distributing alms on the Pope’s behalf. He recounts that it was a Sardinian homeless man named Franco who brought home the need for washing facilities.

 

Franco explained to the bishop that the greatest need for Rome’s homeless is a place to wash. “Nobody dies of hunger,” he said, “you can always find a sandwich to get by. But there are no places to go to the bathroom and wash.” This was a revelation for Don Conrado, who had always assumed that food was the number one concern.

 

So on November 17, three showers dedicated to the local homeless will be added to the restrooms for pilgrims under the colonnade of St. Peter’s Basilica. They can wash and change their bedding under the windows of the Apostolic Palace. The good idea is spreading, and at Don Conrado’s instigation a dozen parishes in the Roman neighborhoods most frequented by homeless people are also adding showers, paid for by the Pope.

 

Pope Francis chose Don Corrado for this exact task: to be the Pope’s feet on the ground in personally helping the local poor.

 

To be sure, there are other initiatives as well. The Sant’Egidio Community, for instance, has published an updated handbook titled “Where to eat, sleep, wash.” But the Pope’s man makes his presence felt.

 

Don Conrado is accustomed to immediate action for the poor rather than organizing major projects or fundraisers that can take months. “In the Gospel,” he says, “Jesus always uses the word ‘today,’ and it is ‘today’ when we have to respond to people’s needs.”

 

“It isn’t easy,” the bishop says, “because it is simpler to make sandwiches than take care of a shower service. We need volunteers, towels, linens.”

 

Don Conrado says that it is appropriate to be installing the showers beneath Rome’s most iconic church, under the imposing colonnade of Bernini. “The church exists,” he says, “because the Body of Christ is there. In the poor we serve the suffering body of Jesus. In all of Rome’s history, the poor have gathered around this basilica.”

 

For the Vatican showers there will be no sign outside. The service is designed to assist those who already live in the area, who will be familiar with the set-up. According to the bishop, being able to wash and keep clean makes the homeless less vulnerable to diseases that are transmitted with dirt.

 

Don Conrado is also trying to involve students of a local school for hairdressers, to provide an occasional haircut to go with the showers.

 

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Taken from: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/11/13/Pope-Francis-to-Install-Showers-for-Homeless

Pope Francis to venerate famed Shroud of Turin



 

By Inés San Martín

Vatican correspondent November 5, 2014

 

ROME — Walking in the footsteps of both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Pope Francis will travel to the Italian city of Turin on June 21 to venerate its famous shroud, traditionally regarded as the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

The shroud will be placed on display in the Turin cathedral from April 19 to June 24, marking one of the rare occasions when the revered but controversial cloth will be available for public viewing.

On the same trip, Francis also will pay tribute to Italian St. John Bosco, founder of the Salesian religious order, on the bicentennial of his birth. “Don Bosco,” as he was known, dedicated his life to helping and educating street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth.

 

The Shroud of Turin is a piece of linen cloth that, according to Catholic tradition, was used to wrap the body of Christ after his death on the Cross. It contains a full-length photo-negative image of a man, front and back, bearing signs of wounds that correspond to the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion.

To date there’s no scientific consensus on how the image was created. Skeptics regard it as a later forgery, while devotees believe it was burned into the cloth at the time of Christ’s resurrection.

All three recent popes have been careful not to pronounce definitively on the authenticity of the shroud, generally referring to it as an “icon” that inspires genuine faith regardless of its historical origins.

 

“The pope comes as a pilgrim of faith and of love,” said Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia of Turin, papal custodian of the Shroud, during a Vatican news conference Wednesday to announce the pope’s trip next June.

“Like his predecessors did, Pope Francis confirms the devotion to the shroud that millions of pilgrims recognize as a sign of the mystery of the passion and death of the Lord,” Nosiglia said.

In 1978, a detailed examination carried out by a team of American scientists found no evidence of how the image was produced.

A radiocarbon dating test performed in 1988 over small samples of the icon by three laboratories, at the universities of Oxford and Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, concurred that the samples they tested dated from the Middle Ages, between 1260 and 1390.

Other scientists, however, believe those results could be off by centuries, pointing to the possibility of bacterial contamination of the cloth. They note, for instance, that burial shrouds for Egyptian pharaohs sometimes test to centuries later than their known age for precisely that reason.

Despite the controversies, Pope Benedict XVI visited the shroud during its last public exhibition in 2010, and St. John Paul II did so three times: in 1998, in 1980, and in 1978, months before the conclave that elected him pope.
 

More from Crux

• Pope to go to Turin to view burial shroud icon



• The never-ending debate about the Shroud of Turin continues in St. Louis

More

 

During the first days of his pontificate, Francis referred to the disfigured face depicted in the Holy Shroud as “all those faces of men and women marred by a life which does not respect their dignity, by war and violence which afflict the weakest …”

The message was made public on March 30, 2013, hours before footage of the icon was shown on TV for the first time in four decades.

During the press conference, organizers of the exhibition announced that more than 1 million people from all over the world are expected in Turin to venerate the icon.

The visit to the display in the city’s cathedral will be free, but to regulate the massive flow of visitors, mandatory reservations should be made through the official website.

Inés San Martín

 ines@cruxnow.comE-mail the author @inesanmaFollow author on twitter

Inés San Martín is the Vatican correspondent for Crux, stationed in Rome. More

 

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Taken from: http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2014/11/05/pope-francis-to-venerate-famed-shroud-of-turin-in-2015/

Creationists Criticise Pope Francis’ Backing Of Big Bang And Evolution Theories

For AMAIC'S views on Creationists, see e.g. our:

http://genesisflood-amaic.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/for-part-one-see-httpscienceagesamaic.html

 

 

 

The following has been taken from: http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/571662/20141104/pope-francis-criticsm-big-bang-theory-evolution.htm#.VFlHh2aKB9B

 

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By Athena Yenko | November 4, 2014 4:50 PM EST

Some creationists expressed their strong opinions about Pope Francis' declaration that Big Bang and Evolution theories "are not incompatible" with the existence of a Creator.  John Ransom, a Finance Editor for Townhall Finance, likened the Pope to a drunk driver. Kent Ham, the leader of the Christian group Answers in Genesis alleged Pope Francis is putting man's words above God's words. Michael Snyder from Right Side news said Pope just wants to recruit new people to the Catholic faith by embracing a progressive view of how the Earth was created.

 

View Full Image

REUTERS/Alessandro BianchiPope Francis sprinkles holy water with an aspergillum as a blessing during the Palm Sunday mass at Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican April 13, 2014.

 

 

Pope Francis, "lane-wise, seems like a drunk driver," Ransom wrote. He said he agrees with the Pope saying that the scientific theories of creation are not incompatible with how it was written in the Bible. However, with Pope Francis' "desperation to be relevant," he made use of words that "will hurt Catholics" who had been loyal to the faith, Ransom stated.

 

In Ransom's opinion, the Pope's statement that "God is not a magician" is tantamount in saying that God is not divine. "I don't know how I can support a pope - or church- that says that God is not divine," Ransom highlighted.

Ransom thinks Pope Francis is bargaining too much to balance the scientific beliefs of men and the teachings of the church. With this, he is sacrificing the divinity of "our Creator" and succumbing to the worldly caprices of men, Ransom said. He noted that Pope Francis has the same attitude in handling homosexuality and other moral issues. If the Pope continues to adopt this approach, "those on the Left will seize upon the Pope's words to demoralize and degrade believers in the Christina Church," Ransom believes.

 

For Ham, Pope Francis makes no difference with many religious leaders who is putting man's word above the words of God. He found it particularly shocking that Pope Francis compares God to a magician with a magic wand. He said the comparison is tantamount in saying that only a man with the capacity of a magician had created the universe. For Ham, the Pope's statement shows he does not understand "who Scripture claims God is." Ham is appealing for people to pray that church leaders, including Pope Francis, repent for their unacceptable views about God.

 

" I encourage you to pray that church leaders like these will realise that they are placing man's opinions above God's Word and that they will repent and trust God's Word, beginning in Genesis," Ham wrote.

 

For Snyder, Pope Francis's has an agenda when he made his controversial speech. It seemed that the Pope wants to create "a religion that almost everyone would love." He said the changes that Pope Francis is bringing to the table are aimed at drawing lots of new people to the Catholic faith. In his interpretation, Pope's statement made it obvious that he "does not believe what the Bible literally says about the how the world was created and about how humanity came to be."

The 'Pope Francis supports evolution' story is just the latest example of the press getting the Catholic church completely wrong

 



Sorry, But Media Coverage of Pope Francis is Papal Bull

The 'Pope Francis supports evolution' story is just the latest example of the press getting the Catholic church completely wrong

It is official: the media has gone bananas in its coverage of Pope Francis.

The OMG-Pope-Francis-Supports-Evolution story of the past two days is just the latest example. Almost every news outlet, major and minor, has plastered Pope Francis’ name across the interwebs and proclaimed he has finally planted the Catholic Church in the evolution camp of the creation-evolution debate. The only problem? Almost every outlet has got the story wrong, proving once again that the mainstream media has nearly no understanding of the Church. And that madness shows no signs of stopping.

 Pope Francis’ real role in this evolution hubbub was small. He spoke, as Popes do, to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Monday, which had gathered to discuss “Evolving Topics of Nature,” and he affirmed what Catholic teaching has been for decades. “God is not a divine being or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life,” he said. “Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”

Anyone who knows anything about Catholic history knows that a statement like this is nothing new. Pope Pius XII wrote an encyclical “Humani Generis” in 1950 affirming that there was no conflict between evolution and Catholic faith. Pope John Paul II reaffirmed that, stressing that evolution was more than a hypothesis, in 1996. Pope Benedict XVI hosted a conference on the nuances of creation and evolution in 2006. There’s an official book on the event for anyone who wants to know more. Pope Francis’ comments Monday even came as he was unveiling a new statue of Pope Benedict XVI, honoring him for his leadership.

 

None of that seems to matter to the media; the internet exploded all the same. Site after site after site ramped up the Pope’s words and took them out of context. Headlines like these added drama: NPR: “Pope Says God Not ‘A Magician, With A Magic Wand.’” Salon: “Pope Francis schools creationists.” U.S. News and World Report: “Pope Francis Backs the Big Bang Theory, Evolution” (with a subhed: “Also, the pontiff says he’s not a communist”). Huffington Post. Sydney Morning Herald. Telegraph. USA Today. New York Post. The list goes on and on. Only Slate did its homework.

Wednesday morning the stories continued with new, analytical twists. The New Republic came out with a story titled, “The Pope Has More Faith Than the GOP in Science.” The Washington Post posted a piece, “Pope Francis may believe in evolution, but 42 percent of Americans do not.” It doesn’t seem to matter that Pope Benedict XVI called the debate between evolution an creation an “absurdity” in 2007. MSNBC opened its piece saying, “Pope Francis made a significant rhetorical break with Catholic tradition Monday by declaring that the theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real.” NBCNews called the Pope’s statement, “a theological break from his predecessor Benedict XVI, a strong exponent of creationism.”

 

This embarrassing narrative repeats itself over and over in Francis coverage. It happened last week when the Pope, again, voiced the Church’s long-standing opposition to the death penalty (having also done so in June, and after John Paul discussed the topic at length in an entire encyclical on being consistently pro-life in 1995). It happened at the Synod of the Bishops on the family, when the bishops talked about welcoming gays and the media whipped that up into an inaccurate story about an enormous policy shift toward gay marriage.

 

That’s dangerous, especially because this furor seems to occur most often when hot-button Western political issues can be tied to the Pope’s statements—evolution, death penalty, gay marriage. Wednesday morning, Pope Francis asked for prayers for 43 Mexican students who were burned alive by drug traffickers. It is unlikely that that will get the same pickup.

 

Moral of this story: Don’t believe most of what you read about the Vatican. Papal coverage has gone wild.

 

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Taken from: http://time.com/3545844/pope-francis-evolution-creationism/#3545844/pope-francis-evolution-creationism/

Pope Francis blasts life sentences as ‘hidden death penalty’

 

Pontiff slates countries facilitating torture and says using prisons to fix social problems is like treating all diseases with one drug

 

 

• Agence France-Presse in Vatican City

• The Guardian, Friday 24 October 2014 04.01 AEST

 

 

Pope Francis criticises capital punishment and life sentences in speech at penal law association. Photograph: Vatican pool/Getty Images

Pope Francis has branded life-long prison terms “a hidden death sentence” in an attack on “penal populism” that included severe criticism of countries that facilitate torture.

 

In a wide-ranging speech to a delegation from the International Association of Penal Law, the pontiff said believers should oppose life-long incarceration as strongly as the use of capital punishment.

“All Christians and men of good faith are therefore called upon today to fight, not only for the abolition of the death penalty – whether it is legal or illegal and in all its forms – but also to improve the conditions of incarceration to ensure that the human dignity of those deprived of their freedom is respected.

“And this, for me, is linked to life sentences. For a short time now, these no longer exist in the Vatican penal code. A sentence of life (without parole) is a hidden death penalty.”

 

In comments likely to enhance his reputation as one of the most liberal of popes, Francis went on to slam the risk of sentencing becoming disproportionately severe.

“In recent decades a belief has spread that through public punishment the most diverse social problems can be resolved, as if different diseases could all be cured by the same medicine.”

 

Reiterating Catholic teaching that capital punishment is a sin, the pope also made what appeared to be a thinly veiled attack on the European countries which have facilitated US demands for extraordinary rendition of terror suspects to detention centres in parts of the world where they can be tortured with impunity.

“These abuses will only stop if the international community firmly commits to recognising … the principle of placing human dignity above all else.”

 

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Taken from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/23/pope-francis-life-sentence-hidden-death-penalty-torture

Has Velikovsky Correctly Placed the Ice Age?

From: Chronology and Catastrophism Workshop, SIS, May 1988 Number 1, p. 41

….

Many times in Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval Dr Velikovsky equates the beginning of the Pleistocene or ice age with the time of the Exodus, circa 1450 BC. On pages 114-126 of Earth in Upheaval he gives a graphic description of what he thinks happened when the ice age began. The description however sounds more like the Noachian Deluge than the Exodus. We can therefore expect Velikovsky to run into problems with his placement of the Noah/Saturn Flood and the events of that time. Presumably Velikovsky must place the Deluge in the era prior to the Pleistocene (Glacial Age). A check of the chart on p.l84 of Earth in Upheaval will show this period is known as the Tertiary or “Age of Mammals”. Under the conventional time scale it is allocated 70 million years and is followed by one million years of the ice age and then followed by 30,000 years of the Recent or Holocene Age. This system is greatly overstretched, Velikovsky claims, and does not allow for any great catastrophes.

In order to show that Velikovsky’s placement of the ice age is incorrect we must show that the conventional scheme is also wrong and also have some idea of the time-span Velikovsky allows for the period from the Deluge to the Exodus. The only clue he gives us is found on p.55 of his article “Seismology, Catastrophe and Chronology” (Kronos VIII:4). Here he notes that Dr Schaeffer has discerned that in the 4th millennium BC the ancient Near East went through great paroxysms before the time of another disaster in the Early Bronze Age (3^rd millennium). Velikovsky comments “Schaeffer like myself … arrived at the same number of disturbances … and the same relative dating”. Assuming from this that the disaster before the Early Bronze Age was the Deluge, and placing it in the 4th millennium at 3450 BC then we obtain a figure of 2000 years for the time Velikovsky would have placed between the Deluge and the Exodus.

Pick up a copy of Kummel’s History of the Earth and glance at pp.447-455 and you will see the fallacy of this time-gap. The maps on these pages clearly show that during the Tertiary Age Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor were in a state of complete ruin, being mostly under water. Note in particular the Great Tethys or Central Sea which stretches 9000 miles from Spain to India and is up to 2000 miles wide. On p.453 the map for the Oligocene subdivision of the Tertiary shows that the sea invasion of Europe plainly stops at the boundary of the area covered by the ice age in Scandinavia. This is curious because under the conventional scheme the ice age does not occur for another 23 million years. During the Eocene subdivision of the Tertiary the sea covered the south of England up to a point where the later ice age reached, supposedly 38 million years later. During the whole period of these disastrous sea invasions and large scale fresh water floodings the northern part of the British Isles along with Scandinavia was not touched. In North America it is a similar story for the Canadian Shield. While the rest of the continent was subject to sea incursions, rain storm flooding in the mid-west and volcanic eruptions in the Rockies and Central America all was tranquil in north-east Canada.

It is absolutely impossible that while the rest of the world was drowning, most of the British Isles, Scandinavia and Canada escaped. There can only be one solution, i.e. the ice age struck these lands at the same time as the Noachian Deluge. Conventional geologists have therefore reconstructed the ages of the past incorrectly by placing too much time between the end of the Tertiary and the ice age. If either follows immediately or happens at the same time as the subdivisions of the Tertiary i.e. the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene periods are all contemporary with one another). Failing to grasp this, Velikovsky while at least cutting the time period down from millions of years to about 2000, has accordingly overrated the scale of the Exodus catastrophe.

There is a slim possibility that Velikovsky might place the Flood at the time of the dinosaurs. This can easily be discounted. Stone Age Man could not possibly have survived in a world of flesh-eating dinosaurs like the 18 foot tall Tyrannosaurus Rex. Besides, in Kummel’s book on p.37 we find a chart that clearly shows the dinosaurs drowned because of massive invasions of shallow seas upon the continents. The actual figures are 75% sea water drownings and 25% continental rain water and river delta drownings. For the Age of Mammals the figures are reversed: 20% are drowned by shallow sea invasions and 80% by lowland continental andupland fresh water. The book of Genesis makes it clear that the Deluge drownings were caused by forty days and nights of rainstorms. Once more this favours the Cenozoic era and not the Mesozoic or Dinosaurian era.
 

A possible new sequence of the geological ages might be:

Cenozoic

Holocene - Neolithic. Bronze, Iron

Pleistocene. Tertiary – Noachian Deluge – many giant forms of today’s mammals become extinct (cf. Genesis 6:4)

Palaeocene – period of change between dinosaurs and mammals

Mesozoic. Palaeozoic – Land and sea creatures of the Dinosaurian era. They are contemporary and not separated by hundreds of millions of years as

under the conventional scheme. Mostly destroyed by sea wave invasions caused by comet strikes in the oceans.

 

Terry Lawrence. Auckland~ New Zealand

The Great Solar Miracle: Fatima October 13, 1917

 



by

Damien F. Mackey

   

Taken from my book (1994),


 

The Five First Saturdays

 

…
 

After the Lady had identified who she was, Lucia again asked her if she would cure the sick, and convert the sinners who had been recommended to her. Our Lady replied:

 

“I will cure or convert some of them. Others I will not.
They must repent and beg pardon for their sins”.

Then, with a look of grief and in a suppliant tone of voice, she added:

“Men must not offend God any more for He is already very much offended”.

 

And opening her hands Our Lady, as She was rising to go away, projected beams of light onto the sun. Lucia cried: “Look at the sun!” And suddenly, as the crowd looked upwards, the clouds opened and exposed the blue sky with the sun at its zenith. But this sun did not dazzle. The people could look directly at it. It was like a shining silver plate. Then the sun trembled. It made some abrupt movements. It began to spin like a wheel of fire. Great shafts of coloured light flared out from its centre in all directions, colouring in a most fantastic manner the clouds, trees, rocks, earth, and even the clothes and faces of the people gathered there, in alternating splashes of red, yellow, green, blue and violet – the full spectrum of rainbow colours.

After about five minutes the sun stopped revolving in this fashion. A moment later, it resumed a second time its incredible motion, throwing out its light and colour like a huge display of fireworks. And once more, after a few minutes, the sun stopped its prodigious dance.

After a short time, and for the third time, it resumed its spinning and fantastic colours. The crowd gazed spellbound. Then came the awful climax. The sun seemed to be falling from the sky. Zig-zagging from side to side, it plunged down towards the crowd below, sending out a heat increasingly intense, and causing the spectators to believe that this was indeed the end of the world.

People stood wild-eyed, or sank to their knees in the mud, as the sun rushed towards them. A desperate cry went up from the crowd, begging God, or the Blessed Virgin Mary, for mercy, asking pardon for their sins. The sun halted, stopping short in its precipitous fall, and then it climbed back to its place in the sky, where it regained its normal brilliance.

Then the dazed people, who had just experienced the wonder of the age – or what Cardinal Laraana would later call “the greatest Divine intervention since the time of Our Lord” (Soul, Sep-Oct, 1990, p. 6) –found that another miracle had occurred. This apocalyptic scene, full of majesty and terror, had ended with a delicate gift, which showed the motherly tenderness of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for her children. Their sodden clothes were dry and comfortable, without a trace of mud and rain.

But there was another aspect to Our Lady’s Miracle that only the three children witnessed. Corresponding to the three distinct movements of the sun, separated by the moments of pause, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco

 

saw three distinct tableaux representing, successively, the Joyful, the Sorrowful and the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary.

In the first tableau they saw the three members of the Holy Family; with Our Lady of the Rosary to the right of the sun and more brilliant than the sun, wearing a white dress and a blue mantle. To the left, dressed in red, was St. Joseph with the Infant Jesus blessing the world. Next, Our Divine Lord appeared as a grown man, lovingly blessing the world. To the left was Our Lady of Sorrows, clad in purple. Finally, Our Lady of Sorrows was replaced by Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Scapular in her hand. The Miracle of the sun at Fatima, therefore, was absolutely a Rosary miracle. It seemed even to move to the pulse and rhythm of a Rosary being recited. Its approximately fifteen minutes’duration might also have been intended to represent one of the conditions of the Five First Saturday devotion: fifteen minutes of meditation on the Mysteries of the Rosary, while keeping Our Lady company.

Full of Scriptural Imagery

All in one, the great Miracle of the 13th of October, 1917, incorporated some of the most spectacular elements of renowned Old Testament miracles. Fr. Smolenski (op. cit., pp. 11-12) has compared Noah’s time for instance, when it rained for forty days and forty nights, with Fatima on that day, when everything was drenched with rain. The dove with the branch indicated that the storm had subsided; Our Lady’s presence over the holm-oak tree was Heaven’s peace. The Ark landed on solid earth; Fatima was dry because of the miracle. God re-established the covenant of peace by means of Noah; Our Lady asked that Consecration be made to her Immaculate Heart. The rainbow became the sign of peace; the whole area of the Fatima miracle reflected all the colours of the rainbow during the sun’s dance. “As Noah’s sons inherited the covenant of peace, brought to mind by the presence of the rainbow, so Mary, Image of the Church as the servant of God, would have her children be the bearers of her peace to a re-energized and re-evangelized creation”.
Other comparisons with Old Testament miracles appear in Soul magazine (Sep-Oct, 1990, p. 6). For instance, the sun’s leaving the entire area dry at the Cova da Iria reminds one of the dry path through the Red Sea. Or of Joshua’s own solar miracle, when, at his command, the sun gave its light two hours after sunset. Again, reminiscent of the sun’s fall, was Elijah’s calling down of fire from the sky as a challenge to the pagan priests. (Elijah is of course already linked to the Carmelites, and the Scapular, due to his association with Mount Carmel, and his miraculous mantle). Finally, we could add to these the miraculous alteration affected on the sundial, as cause by the prophet Isaiah for the benefit of king Hezekiah.
Pope Pius XII, when instituting the feast of The Queenship of Mary with his encyclical, Ad Caeli Reginam, in 1954, likened Our Lady to the rainbow in the Genesis account of Noah and in Ecclesiasticus:

“Is She not a rainbow in the clouds, reaching towards God, a promise of peace? (Cf. Genesis 9:13). ‘Look upon the rainbow, and bless Him that made it; it is very beautiful in its brightness. It encompasses the heaven about with the circle of its glory, the hands of the Most High have displayed it’ (Ecclesiasticus 43:11-12)”.

But undoubtedly, more than anything else, it was the stupendous character of the Miracle of the Sun –coupled with the fact that it had been predicted to the very hour, months in advance – that sets Fatima apart from all of the Old Testament manifestations of God, and even from the preceding Marian apparitions. Pope Paul VI referred to it simply as ‘Signum Magnum’, ‘The Great Sign’.