Dear Mr. President:
When this is published in our little periodical, the Mancipia, you will be about to be sworn in as President of the United States. This will not be a very long letter, certainly not as long as the nine-page harangue the North Korean president recently sent to the U.S. government and, by extension, to you and your administration.
I congratulate you on your hard-fought election. Further, I commend you on many of the positions you have expressed throughout the campaign, and into your transition period. Your attitudes about appointing pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, protecting the citizens by strengthening the borders of our country, reducing taxes, supporting our military and police in an effort to restore law and order — are encouraging. Your manner of speaking about the size of government echoes a Catholic principle called subsidiarity. That principle tells us to leave to local government what can be done by local government; to leave at the city level what can be done at that level, to permit the state to handle things better handled at that level and to use regional structures to perform duties that are best handled at that level.
It is clear to all that you love your country and are grateful for the sacrifices men in uniform have made, even with their lives, to keep our nation free.
Your popular campaign motto, to “Make America Great Again” commits you to maintaining loyalty to the Constitution, both personally and, certainly, in your coming appointments to executive offices and to the judiciary. You have the chance to help make America great in the higher sense of defending what is morally just, at home and abroad, and supporting the law of God above all else, as we have it given to us in the Ten Commandments. I believe that the best way that you can achieve good things for America is by doing what is good for yourself. To aid you in your office, you would benefit immensely by becoming a Catholic and nourishing your soul and body with the sacraments God has given His Church through Jesus Christ. Doing this, you will be walking personally on the path of salvation and, by your good example, helping many others to do the same.
By way of introduction, I am the Prefect of the Third Order of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We are a Catholic religious order that has its own rally cry. Yours is to “Make America Great Again,” ours is to “Make America Catholic.” We have the common goal of making the country better. Our two-fold crusade is to convert America to the one true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation, and to defend all the dogmas of the Faith.
Another new President who won in the 2016 elections, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Peru, on October 27, 2016, consecrated his country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The purposes of the consecration included, in his own words to, “make an act of consecration of myself, my family and the Republic of Peru, to the love and protection of Almighty God through the intercession of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” What better protection could a President ask for his people? As a Catholic, you, Mr. Trump, could imitate his example.
That event in Lima was attended by high-ranking business and political leaders of Peru, including the President of the Congress, Luz Salgado, who also requested the protection of God in his speech, “I put in your loving hands my government with all its workers and citizens who are under my responsibility . . . [asking God] . . . to protect our country with a special protection.”
I do not know if President Kuczynski was among the heads of state who have called to congratulate you. If not, when you eventually do speak with him, here is a fact that ties him to our country: Kuczynski went into exile to the United States in 1969 due to political persecution at home. I do not know where he resided in our country, but his father also suffered a similar but far worse exile. Kuczynski’s father was a German Jewish immigrant, a physician, who fled Germany in 1933 to escape Nazism.
It will not be easy to make the conversion I am suggesting; but, Mr. Trump, you are no stranger in confronting challenges. This is your challenge of faith. God’s grace will fortify you in accepting it. You have built up a real estate/business empire. You have become a man of means. But all that material wealth will be of naught in the final reckoning. “For what doth it profit a man,” Jesus said, “if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16, verse 26)
We are made in the image and likeness of God. This likeness to God is chiefly in the soul, which is a spirit and will live forever. The two spiritual powers of the soul are intellect (understanding) and free will. The soul is therefore more valuable than the body which will someday die. The purpose or end of man is simple, we learned it as children: God created me that I might know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this world, and then be happy with Him forever in heaven.
Finally, there is what may be an uncanny arrangement of events taking place in the very year you will take your place as the 45th President of the country. In 1917, one hundred years ago, the greatest and most largely viewed modern miracle took place near a town called Fatima in Portugal. This was an event that was impossible to pass off as anything but miraculous. In fact, the Portuguese newspapers of the time, many anti-Catholic, wrote that at least 70,000 people witnessed what has come to be called, The Miracle of the Sun.
The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, appeared six times to three shepherd children near the town of Fatima, Portugal between May 13 and October 13, 1917. Coming at a time when Christendom and practically the whole world was torn asunder by war and bloody violence, She promised that Heaven would grant peace to all the world if Her requests for prayer, reparation, and consecration were heard and obeyed.
“If My requests are granted … there will be peace”
Our Lady of Fatima explained to the children that war is a punishment for sin and warned that God would further chastise the world for its disobedience to His will by means of war, hunger and the persecution of the Church, the Holy Father and the Catholic faithful. God’s Mother prophesied that Russia would be God’s chosen “instrument of chastisement,” spreading the “errors” of atheism, materialism, statism, and anti-christian social order across the earth, fomenting wars, annihilating nations, and persecuting the faithful everywhere.
“If My requests are not granted, Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will suffer much and various nations will be annihilated.”
To prevent this terrible chastisement at the hands of Russia and to convert “that poor nation,” Our Lady requested the solemn public Consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart by the Pope and all the Catholic bishops of the world.
The heart of Our Lady’s Message to the world is contained in what has come to be called the “Secret” which She confided to the three child seers in July 1917. The Secret actually consists of three parts, the first two of which have been publicly revealed. The last part of the Secret (often called the Third Secret) has not yet been made public in its totality.
You, Mr. President, will be in office during the 100th anniversary year of the Fatima apparitions.
I am praying for you, daily.
In the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Brother John Marie Vianney, M.I.C.M., Tert., Prefect
