Nicholas Gruner

Nicholas Nightingale Gruner (born May 4, 1942) is a Roman Catholic priest and promoter of the message of Our Lady of Fatima, a manifestation of the Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal in 1917, particularly its anti-communist aspects during the Cold War. However, the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo Higuera, in an August 10, 2004 clarification on his priestly status specifically stated that Gruner is "not a priest in good standing with the Roman Catholic Church."^[1] This is disputed by Father Gruner and others as he has since become incardinated as a priest in good standing in the archdiocese of Hyderabad.

Origins of Fatima Anti-Communism

Main article: Our Lady of Fatima

In 1929, Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children entrusted with alleged revelations from the church-sanctioned Marian apparition at Fatima, Portugal, revealed that the Virgin Mary had requested that Russia should be consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart. If that did not happen, Sister Lucia explained, communist "errors" would triumph, the Catholic Church would be persecuted, the Papacy would enter a period of tribulation, faithful Catholics would be martyred and whole nations would be destroyed.

In accord with Sister Lucia's avowal, Pope Pius XII consecrated the entire world (including Russia, but not mentioning it specifically) to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942. However, that proved, at least initially, to be insufficient for Sister Lúcia, who indicated that the Pope and all the bishops of the Church should make the Consecration simultaneously. In 1984, Pope John Paul II followed his predecessor in consecrating the entire world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but without specifically mentioning Russia, and again without the bishops joining in. Father Gruner has dedicated his life not only to publicizing Fatima's message of world peace, but urging his readers to petition the Catholic Church for all bishops to participate in the Consecration of Russia.

Gruner and the Fatima Crusader

The fifth of seven children, Gruner was born in Montreal, Canada, to Malcom and Jessie (née Mullally) Gruner. His paternal grandmother claimed the family was related to Florence Nightingale. He is a graduate of McGill University with post-graduate degrees in theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Gruner was ordained at Avellino, Italy on August 22, 1976 by Bishop Pasquale Venezia[1]. In 1978, he launched a periodical dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima, which was a journal mostly dedicated to praying the rosary, until Father Gruner became focused particularly on the consecration of the Soviet Union controversy.

Gruner held that John Paul II was held by the consent of his predecessor, Pope John XXIII, to an alleged Vatican/Moscow concordat, which had been signed between His Holiness and then-Premier Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union. This was primarily because the Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, also supported this alleged concordat. Throughout the eighties, the Fatima Crusader made further frequent allegations that the Vatican had been infiltrated and subverted, and that the Soviet Union was engaging in deliberate deception when it depicted Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika as initiators of internal communist reform after the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 1988, he urged a letter writing campaign against arms control talks.

When the Soviet Union finally disintegrated in 1991, Fatima pietist groups, like the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima and Fatima Family Apostolate, rejoiced, regarding this as evidence of the efficacy of the dedication of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that John Paul II had conducted nine years beforehand, but which Gruner and the Fatima Crusader discount based on the lack of evidence of a spiritual conversion in Russia.

Father Gruner initiated a radio and television campaign for his message, leading his organization's claimed membership to reach an estimated four hundred thousand by the early nineties. Since then, the "Crusader" has continued to argue for the Consecration of Russia and maintained that such action is urgent.

See also

• Our Lady of Fatima
• Three Secrets of Fatima

Bibliography

• Michael Cuneo: "The Vengeful Virgin: Studies in Contemporary Catholic Apocalypticism" in Tim Robbins and Susan Palmer (ed) Millennium, Messiahs and Mayhem: New York: Routledge: 1997: ISBN 0-415-91649-6
• Nicholas Perry and Loreto Echevarria: Under the Heel of Mary: London: Routledge: 1988: ISBN 0-415-01296-1
• Sandra Zimdars-Swartz: Encountering Mary: Princeton: Princeton University Press: 1991: ISBN 0-691-07371-6
• Francis Alban, Christopher A. Ferrara & Malachi Martin: "Fatima Priest": Pound Ridge: Good Counsel Publications: 1997: ISBN 0966304624

References

1. ^ http://www.fatimafamily.org/news/gruner.html "Gruner - Not in Good Standing with the Roman Catholic Church"

As of April 25th, 2011 (or before), the fatimafamily.org website no longer contains the html page mentioned here, nor any mention of Fr. Nicholas Gruner, and therefore this is not a valid reference. The FFAI archives page only goes back to March of 2006, nearly two years after the cited reference.

External links

• The Fatima Network home website

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Name	Gruner, Nicholas
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Date of birth	May 4, 1942
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