'There has yet to be a collegial consecration of the Pope and the bishops together of Russia, Russia alone, to the Immaculate Heart.'
(LifeSiteNews) — Christopher Ferrara, lawyer, author, and internationally renowned Fatima expert, has endorsed LifeSiteNews' idea of petitioning Pope Leo XIV to perform a Consecration of Russia in exact conformity with the requirements set forth by Heaven during and after the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal in 1917.
LifeSite was able to conduct a short interview with Mr. Ferrara during the recent May 2025 Fatima, Fatith & Fidelity Conference organized by the Fatima Center in Cincinnati, OH. After discussing the question of the consecration of Russia, Ferrara also told LifeSite about his first positive impressions of our new Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV.
Speaking about Fatima, Ferrara first acknowledged that the 2022 Consecration of Russia and of other entities to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was insufficient. “The ceremony that Francis attempted is just another example of lumping a whole bunch of things together and sticking Russia in this part of a long list of objects of consecration,” he told LifeSite. "To consecrate Russia, you have to consecrate Russia, not a bunch of other things.”
Ferrara went on to say that “it would make sense to ask [Pope] Leo, finally, to consecrate Russia and Russia alone to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in keeping with the Virgin's wishes, as expressed to Sister Lucia in 1929 when she appeared and said the time has come for the consecration of Russia.”
Regarding the 2022 consecration of Russia, the author noted that it did not bring peace but instead “an escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war. So that obviously was not met with heaven's approval.”
READ: Pope Leo XIV corrects the Francis record on cohabitation
The request from Heaven was that the Pope, together with the bishops of the world, consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and establish the Five Saturday devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, both as acts of reparation for the sins of mankind, as well as petitions to God for the end of Communism, the conversion of Russia, and a period of peace. Our Lady of Fatima also promoted the daily recitation of the Rosary as one of the key means of restoration and healing in the world.
Unfortunately, no pope has ever fulfilled Heaven's wishes in this matter. As Ferrara put it: “It's amazing to me that, beginning with Pius XII, who literally saw the Miracle of the Sun in the Vatican Gardens. we've had attempt after attempt to consecrate Russia. Pius XII maybe came closest because he did consecrate Russia, but only in a written document. There has yet to be a collegial consecration of the Pope and the bishops together of Russia, Russia alone, to the Immaculate Heart.”
As David Rodriguez, the content director of the Fatima Center, recently stated: “There has been no peace in the world since 1929 when [the Virgin] requested it,” adding that “there has always been war going on.”
“More people have been killed by war in these last one hundred years than in the rest of the human history combined,” he remarked.
Ferrara told LifeSite that the incomplete attempts at consecrating Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary “probably produce some benefits. We know that [Sister Lucy] has had locutions from the Virgin that this or that attempt would produce some benefit. So if you want to use a crude sports metaphor, there have been some doubles and triples, but there's no home run. And the home run will happen when Russia alone is consecrated.”
Part of the results of a perfect consecration of Russia, according to the lawyer, would be a “true conversion of Russia. There's been a change in Russia, and obviously you could consider quasi-miraculous a change from a communist dictatorship to basically an authoritarian regime. But now at least the Orthodox Church can function, [and there is] some degree of liberty for the Catholic Church, but it's still a secularized society, far from being converted in the way that the Virgin had envisioned when she came to Fatima.”
“So yeah, we should be petitioning the Pope at long last to consecrate just Russia, Russia alone, to the Immaculate Heart,” Ferrara concluded.
In this opinion he is in the company of two bishops – Bishop Joseph Strickland and Bishop Bernard Fellay – who recently gave LifeSite their own statements arguing that the 2022 consecration of Russia was defective and did not fulfill Heaven's wishes.
READ: Our Lady’s request for the consecration of Russia has not yet been fulfilled
