Parallels between Dante’s Vita Nuova pilgrimage and the pilgrimage of the Holy Father found in the message Our Lady of Fatima


Parallels found between Dante Alighieri’s Vita Nuova pensive pilgrimage and the pilgrimage of the Holy Father making way through a half-ruined city and up a steep mountain found in the message Our Lady of Fatima.

First the description of the pilgrimage of the Holy Father through a big city half in ruins and making his way up a steep mountain:

‘a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.’ Tuy-3-1-1944

Next is the description of the pensive pilgrimage made through a desolated city found in Dante Alighieri's Vita Nuova

'Ah, pilgrims, moving pensively along, thinking,
perhaps, of things at home you miss, could the land
you come from be so far away (as anyone might
guess from your appearance) that you show no
signs of grief as you pass through the middle of the
desolated city, like people who seem not to
understand the grievous weight of woe it has to
bear?'


'If you would stop to listen to me speak, I
know, from what my sighing heart tells me, you
would be weeping when you leave this place: lost is
the city's source of blessedness, and I know words
that could be said of her with power to humble any
man to tears.'

Vita nuova (XL, 9-10)


Is this a 700 year old prophetic vision of Dante of the monumental event to come? Of the Holy Father and other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain but first making their way through a half ruined city? Many commentators claim that this sonnet found in Dante’s Vita Nuova is out of place. It does not fit with the previous sonnets and the story told of the death of Beatrice. Looking from a different perspective, one in which Beatrice represents Lady Wisdom and the rejection of Wisdom by modern men and therefore the death of Lady Wisdom among men then one can see that Dante has a Vision of the dangers that follow such a rejection of Lady Wisdom. I contend that this vision of Dante found in this sonnet XL is a true vision granted by the Blessed Trinity to Dante of events to come. Events that are to occur when the hour is the darkest. When modern men have reached the pinnacle of their wickedness in the rejection of Divine Wisdom and the Divine plan for governing the world.

Both visions tell of men and women making their way through a big city half in ruins – a desolated city. Both visions tell of a pilgrimage, one in which those pilgrims are afflicted with pain and sorrow, the other of the pilgrims who show no signs of grief as you pass through the middle of the desolated city, but soon will.

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