KGB Cracking Down on Catholic Church

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        They used to call it the KGB, but now it is called the FSB. What’s the difference? Nothing - except the name. And now the FSB (which I prefer to call the KGB, since nothing has changed) is cracking down, hard, on the tiny Catholic Church apparatus in Russia.

        On November 20, 2002 Keston/CWNews.com reported that "For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet regime, a Catholic priest in Russia is being regularly questioned by internal-security officials." The priest has not been identified, but Keston notes that he is "being questioned by an official of the FSB - the security agency formerly known as the KGB… in order to discuss the prevention of political extremism." According to Keston, the KGB agent "was particularly interested in the activities of the Catholic Church ‘within the Moscow Patriarchate in particular.’"

        The KGB agent was especially interested in having the priest "identify any college professors who were active in the local Catholic congregation in Omsk." The priest was also "questioned about the activities of a German Catholic relief agency, and about Church plans for evangelical activity." Shades of the Stalin era.

        And this was not just a single interrogation. The priest informed Keston that he has "been questioned each month" and that "the official interrogations give him cause for concern." That’s quite an understatement. The very conduct of the interrogations demonstrates that the Catholic Church is simply not free to exist in Russia. Indeed, as the priest himself declared to Keston: "From this [the monthly interrogations] I understood that the era of freedom is over. Again someone is looking over my shoulder. I don't like it."

        The "era of freedom" alluded to by the priest has proven to be as illusory as the entire "miracle" of Russia’s supposed "transformation" since the "consecration" of Russia in 1984 - a "consecration" which mentioned everything but the nation that Our Lady wished to be consecrated.

        Cardinal Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State, tells us that the events predicted in the Message of Fatima "now belong to the past." That is what he declared to the whole world in Fatima on May 13, 2000, as he prepared us for a Vatican "commentary" on the Third Secret which would claim that the vision of a Pope being executed by a band of soldiers means nothing more than Pope John Paul II not being killed by a lone assassin.

       What does Cardinal Sodano have to say about the persecution of the Church in Russia today? The man who has tried to bury the Message of Fatima has observed a curious silence in this regard. But the day will come when he will be forced to open his mouth and give an accounting of his "interpretation" of the Message of Fatima, an interpretation he arrogated to himself without any mandate from Heaven. And that accounting will include every day of suffering by every Russian Catholic since the "consecration" of 1984.

       We will all have to answer for our failings on the Day of Judgment. But who would want to answer for despising the very prophecies of the Mother of God?