Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

etween 1917 and the 1940s, a great twentieth-century myth was born. Of
course, Fatima was not without precedents, and Church experts in mythmaking
were not without experience. In the modern era, the Church utilized
ever-popular Marian apparitions as weapons in the struggle against secularization,
liberalism, liberal nationalism, freemasonry, socialism, and communism
and against hostile regimes and rival religions. Seven apparitions
in the modern era were officially “approved” by the Vatican. The first great
wave of Marian apparitions in modern Europe occurred in the aftermath of
the church-state struggle triggered by the French Revolution. The Commune
of Paris in 1871, during which the anticlerical Communards executed the
archbishop of Paris, prompted a vehement Church response through massive
pilgrimages to Lourdes, Rue du Bac, and Pontmain; consecrations of
the Virgin’s statues and shrines, and Marian festivals and commemorations.
Apparitions were reported during the unification of Italy and Germany in
the 1870s, during the Carlist Wars of the 1840s and the liberal-conservative
struggles in the 1890s in Spain, and in the wake of the foundation of the
Spanish Republic in 1931.
The Fatima myth and the symbol known as “Our Lady of Fatima” became
the battering ram of the Catholic Church’s anticommunist crusade in the
twentieth century. In 1917, the “Militia of the Immaculate Conception” was
founded, and in 1921 the “Legion of Mary” enhanced the ranks of Catholic
Action. The Church responded to the persecution of religion in the Soviet
Union and to the struggle between the Church and the Republicans during
the Spanish Civil War, by revealing a first package of Fatima Prophecies. 29
In 1925–41, the Fatima visionary Lucia Dos Santos wrote memoirs and
revealed those “secrets.” Sister Lucia lived throughout the whole century, so
that she could “reveal” Madonna’s “secrets” in the 1960s, in the 1980s, and
again, at the age of 93, on the threshold of the new millennium.
The Fatima myth has a special role in the history of the Cold War. William
Christian Jr. found that between 1947 and 1954, 112 visions and apparitions
were reported, which is on average four times as many visions per
year in this period as in the rest of the years from 1930 to 1975. 30 Moreover,
during the critical period of the Cold War, between 1948 and 1958, over
126 Marian Congresses were held in various countries and the year of 1954
was proclaimed the Marian Year by the anticommunist Pope Pius XII. 31
According to estimates given by the leading Marian theologian Rene Laurentin,
by the late 1950s nearly thousand new books on Mary were being
published every year, and this includes only scholarly works, let alone
thousands of devotional books and pamphlets. 32 In this period a new practice
was introduced—the feasts of the consecration to the Immaculate
Heart. It was carried out through “voyage-missions” of the Madonna’s
statue or image from parish to parish in towns and villages. 33 In Spain, the
dictator Franco received and welcomed the traveling image of Our Lady at
the Prado Palace in Madrid. In Italy, the Church and Christian Democratic
Party (DC), came together in attendance of Marian “voyage missions” during
mary-making in herzegovina 115