At the centenary of Our Lady’s 1925 request at Pontevedra, Portugal, Cardinals Raymond Burke and Robert Sarah highlight the need for reparation to her Immaculate Heart.
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Cardinals Raymond Burke and Robert Sarah are among senior prelates urging greater participation in the First Saturday Devotion and are backing an initiative that originated in France, aimed at encouraging the faithful to take part.
The Marian devotion, which is centered on making reparation for offenses and blasphemies against Mary’s Immaculate Heart that include denying her perpetual virginity or the Immaculate Conception, promises two immense graces for those who participate with true devotion and repentance: Our Lady’s assistance at the hour of death with all the graces necessary for salvation, and peace on earth.
The 100th anniversary of the devotion is Dec. 10. To mark its centenary, the “Alliance of the First Saturdays of Fatima” — a French-based global federation of Catholic groups whose mission is to promote and spread the devotion — launched the “First Saturdays of Fatima Jubilee 2025” on Jan. 4.
The initiative’s objective is first to make people aware of Our Lady’s request to carry out the devotion, and second, to obtain the conversion of the world, resulting in peace that will come through the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
“Let us show God that we know how to unite ourselves for once in order to obey this essential request of Our Lady,” said Régis de Lassus, chief coordinator of Salve-Corde, the umbrella organization overseeing the initiative.
The alliance, which is inviting individuals to carry out the devotion independently or to join or create a “First Saturday Group,” is featuring a map on its website, showing nearby groups, although as of writing this appears limited to France, and if there isn’t a group in the vicinity, tools to help create one. Meditations are also provided each month.
Four Acts of Devotion
The devotion is clear, uncomplicated, and less burdensome than some might imagine.
As Venerable Lúcia dos Santos explained, the Blessed Virgin asks for four acts of devotion on the first Saturday of five consecutive months: Confession within about eight days before or after Saturday, with the intention of reparation (some say it can be within 20 days during this jubilee year); Holy Communion (preferably on the first Saturday, but allowed within a day if necessary); praying five decades of the Rosary; and, in addition to the recitation, meditating for 15 minutes on one or more mysteries of the Rosary.
These instructions were given in 1925 in Pontevedra, Spain — eight years after the Fatima apparitions — when the Blessed Virgin, with the Infant Jesus at her side, resting on a bright cloud, appeared to Venerable Lúcia, then the surviving shepherd child of Fatima. Sister Lúcia, as she became known in later years, was at the time a postulant with the Sisters of Saint Dorothy in Pontevedra.
In the apparition, the Child Jesus spoke to Lúcia and asked for “compassion on the Heart of your most holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.”
After these words, the Blessed Mother spoke, telling Lúcia :
Look, my daughter, at my Heart surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You, at least, try to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.
The Blessed Virgin shared two conditions for obtaining the end of wars: fulfillment of the First Saturdays throughout the Church, and the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, requested in a later apparition at Tuy (Tui), Spain, in 1929.
But it is the First Saturdays condition, de Lassus told the Register Aug. 26, that “has been forgotten and must be fulfilled as soon as possible because the spiritual and geopolitical situation in the world is catastrophic, and Heaven has been waiting for almost a hundred years.”
In a homily at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Wisconsin on the first Saturday of June this year, Cardinal Burke underscored the importance of the devotion, saying that Our Lady’s “insistence on the devotion of the First Saturdays is a wonderful expression of her unfailing maternal love.”
Recalling a second Pontevedra vision Lúcia received in February 1926 related to the First Saturday devotion, Cardinal Burke relayed how the Child Jesus had told her that “many souls” had begun the devotion but “few finish them, and those who do finish them, do so to receive the graces that are promised.” He told her it would please him more if they carried out “five decades with fervor and with the intention of making reparation to the Heart of their heavenly Mother, than if they did 15 decades in a tepid and indifferent manner.”
The cardinal stressed that the devotion “is not an isolated act but expresses a way of life, namely, daily conversion of heart to Christ’s Most Sacred Heart, under the maternal guidance and care of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.”
He also encouraged the faithful, saying that although Our Lady made clear the great suffering which results from a failure to take up devotion to her Immaculate Heart, she also gave words of hope by stressing that “in the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
Burundi Devotion
De Lassus said that in addition to Cardinal Burke and Cardinal Sarah, the alliance is in contact with many bishops across the world who have drawn attention to the devotion. He highlighted in particular the Burundi bishops’ conference, where 10,000 faithful attended a First Saturday devotion on May 3 this year — the first time since Our Lady gave her message a century ago that the entire Church of a country had assembled together to answer the Blessed Virgin’s call.
Other prelates are in the process of celebrating the devotion, he said, adding that monasteries, rectors of shrines and others have also “welcomed these First Saturdays with faith.” In August, the alliance held a novena to pray that Pope Leo XIV would carry out the devotion during the 2025 Jubilee of Hope.
Asked if the initiative will continue beyond this year and the anniversary, de Lassus said this is only “one step” in ensuring the devotion is celebrated on a permanent basis, and he drew attention to “First Saturday Cities” that are already established, where faithful in hundreds of cities around the world carry out the devotion, making all who participate “united in prayer within the Church.”
Noting that June 13, 2029, will mark the 100th anniversary of the request for the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, de Lassus stressed that “more than ever, we must work to obey Our Lady, using the means she has given us, in particular the Rosary and the First Saturdays.”
“Her triumph may well take place during these three and a half years that frame these two anniversaries,” he said. “It depends on us.”
This article was originally published on National Catholic Register.
Edward Pentin began reporting on the Pope and the Vatican with Vatican Radio before moving on to become the Rome correspondent for EWTN's National Catholic Register. He has also reported on the Holy See and the Catholic Church for a number of other publications including Newsweek, Newsmax, Zenit, The Catholic Herald, and The Holy Land Review, a Franciscan publication specializing in the Church and the Middle East. Edward is the author of The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates (Sophia Institute Press, 2020) and The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? An Investigation into Alleged Manipulation at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family (Ignatius Press, 2015).
