French Journalist Launches Pachamama Reparation Initiative

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PARIS (ChurchMilitant.com) - A French journalist is promoting an international day of prayer and reparation in response to the "scandalous" veneration of the Pachamama idols during the Amazon Synod on Dec. 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

"I hope that calling all faithful to publicly express their love to our Lady and their rejection of the Pachamama idolatry will galvanize them," Jeanne Smits told Church Militant on Wednesday.

Smits said she was "shocked" by the idolatrous incidents "we heard about during the Amazon Synod," adding she was especially "horrified" to read that "an exorcist in Mexico had explained that the Pachamama statuette was in fact a parody of our Lady of Guadalupe." Smits also reflected:

Every baptized and confirmed Catholic is a soldier of the Church Militant and the arms that we possess are in our minds, hearts and pockets: sacrifice, reparation, prayers, especially the prayer of the Rosary. That is why I decided to suggest the idea of a special prayer on December 12, which is the liturgical feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Cardinal Raymond Burke gave his support to the Day of Prayer during a telephone interview with journalist Jean-Pierre Maugendre, of the Renaissance Catholique movement, on Dec. 8.

Cardinal Burke told Maugendre: “I want to encourage you in every way to go ahead with this initiative.”

Asked his reason for supporting the day of prayer, the cardinal said:

St. Peter's Basilica has also been introduced to an idol ... the figure of a demonic force ... there is need of reparation and prayers, in order to pray that the evil forces that came with this idol ... will be defeated by the grace of God, by Christ who wants the Basilica of St. Peter to be cleansed from the sacrilegious act that was performed during the synod.

Kazakhstan Bp. Athanasius Schneider also endorsed Day of Prayer and Reparation calling it a "precious initiative."

Smits said she is "very devoted to the 'Empress of the Americas,' having lived in South American countries when I was a child."

"Our Lady of Guadalupe is certainly known in France," she added, but not as well known as other manifestions of Our Lady in France including those of "Lourdes, La Salette, the Rue du Bac."

She likened the "wondrous properties of the image" Our Lady left on Juan Diego's cloak to the miraclulous image of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin and believes Our Lady of Guadalupe is "capable speaking to the entire world."

"My first aim in suggesting the idea of praying specifically to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe was really to repair the great wrong, the great injury that has been inflicted on her image," she said.

"In the troubled times we are living through, I think that our Lady of Guadalupe has a special role," she said.

The Pachamama idols made numerous appearances during the Amazon Synod: during the pagan ceremony in the Vatican Gardens where people bowed down and worshiped the Pachamama idol as Pope Francis looked on, in a procession at the beginning of the Amazon Synod, on display in Santa Maria in Traspontina Church and in St. Peter's Basilica itself.

Smits said "the prayer day would be 'our' way of throwing the Pachamama idols into the Tiber," a reference to Alexander Tschugguel's act of removing the idolatrous images from Santa Maria in Traspontina Church on Nov. 4. The twenty-six-year-old Austrian has described his act as "a correction of a grievous breach of the First Commandment that had upset many faithful Catholics."

Tschugguel told Church Militant on Wednesday that he supports Smits' international day of prayer, saying, "It is now very important to ask the faithful worldwide to unite in prayer."

"Every action right now which aims to repair our faith and the Church is connected. Right now our most important duty is to realize that we can not save the world by ourselves," he said. "Only with the help of God will it be possible to bring the souls to heaven."

Catholics around the world are urged to join in the Day of Prayer by saying five decades of the Rosary and a prayer of reparation. They are encouraged to pray in a church or a public place with other Catholics and with the sick and elderly in their homes or hospital rooms.

Archbishop Schneider recommended a prayer of reparation included in an open letter in which he condemned the use of the Pachamama statue at the Amazon Synod:

Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, receive through the hands of the Immaculate Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary from our contrite heart a sincere act of reparation for the acts of worship of wooden idols and symbols, which occurred in Rome, the Eternal City and the heart of the Catholic world, during the Synod for the Amazon. Pour out in the heart of Our Holy Father Pope Francis, of the Cardinals, of the Bishops, of the priests and lay faithful, your Spirit, who will expel the darkness of the minds, so that they might recognize the impiety of such acts, which offended your Divine majesty and offer to you public and private acts of reparation.

Pour out in all members of the Church the light of the fulness and beauty of the Catholic Faith. Enkindle in them the burning zeal of bringing the salvation of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, to all men, especially to the people in the Amazon region, who still are enslaved in the service of feeble material and perishable things, as they are the deaf and mute symbols and idols of “mother earth”, to all people and especially to the people of the Amazonian tribes, who do not have the liberty of the children of God, and who do not have the unspeakable happiness to know Jesus Christ and to have in Him part in the life of your Divine nature.

Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you the one true God, besides Whom there is no other god and no salvation, have mercy on your Church. Look especially upon the tears and the contrite and humble sighs of the little ones in the Church, look upon the tears and prayers of the little children, of the adolescents, of young men and young women, of the fathers and mothers of family and also of the true Christian heroes, who in their zeal for your glory and in their love for Mother Church threw in the water the symbols of abomination which defiled her. Have mercy on us: spare us, O Lord, parce Domine, parce Domine! Have mercy on us: Kyrie eleison!

Smits reflected, "The Church seems to be bowing down to the false divinity of the Mother Earth, together with the whole environmentalist movement, when we already have a Mother of the Universe, the Mother of God."

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