In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There are many atheists, Jews and Protestants who have converted to our Catholic faith through
the Virgin Mary and have found in her the way to Jesus.
Each conversion is a unique and personal path; but, certainly, the hand of the Virgin Mary,
as a loving mother, is not exempt from any conversion, although her influence does not
always appear clearly.
Who could be more interested in loving Jesus than Mary?
From whose hand do all the graces received from God come, if not from Mary,
who is the mediatrix of all graces?
On March 10th, 1615, Father Ogilvie in Glasgow in England was to be hanged for his Catholic faith.
Seeing thousands of spectators before him, he took the rosary, which was the only thing
he had left, and threw it with a strong hand in the middle of the immense crowd so that
someone could pick it up.
The rosary hit the chest of a young Hungarian Calvinist,
who was traveling for pleasure and happened to be there.
He was moved and the memory of the rosary haunted him everywhere until one day the Hungarian
Calvinist abjured his heresy in Rome, becoming a Catholic.
And he used to repeat that he owed his conversion to the rosary.
On November 7th, 1823, General Rafael del Riego y Flórez was hanged in Madrid.
Before dying, he wanted to confess, and when asked why he wanted to confess, he replied
My whole life has been a fabric of iniquities, but, if I must attribute to any work that
God has mercy on my soul, I find only a memory.
When I was a child, my holy mother took me every day to the chapel of the Rosary in Santo
Domingo in Oviedo, and there, on our knees, we prayed the rosary to the Blessed Virgin.
My mother died and, since then, either as a memory of affection for her or as a remainder
of my devotion to the Most Holy Mother of God, I have never stopped praying it.
Before General Rafael del Riego y Flórez died, he wrote, signed and read the following:
I, Rafael del Riego, imprisoned in the royal jail of this court,
finding myself in my right mind,
believing as I firmly do all the mysteries of our holy faith,
proposed by our Mother Church,
in whose bosom I wish to die,
urgently moved by the warnings of my conscience, which
for more than 15 days has worked powerfully in me,
I want to express everywhere, where
my memory has been able to reach, that I die resigned in the dispositions of divine Providence,
whose justice I adore and venerate,
because I know the crimes that make me worthy of death.
For this reason, just as I have asked and ask God for forgiveness for all my crimes,
I also implore the clemency of my holy religion, of my King and of all the peoples and individuals
of the nation.
Another conversion happened in a session of the Catholic Congress, held in Lille, a city
in the northern part of France.
An English priest told the following
An Anglican family lived in a city in England.
The youngest of the children learned the Hail Mary from some Catholic friends.
One afternoon, he recited it in front of his mother and she admonished him never to mention
those praises to Mary again, because she was a woman like the others.
One day the boy, reading the Gospel of Saint Luke, found that the angel was saying to the Virgin Mary:
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
And her cousin Elizabeth, full of the Holy Spirit, told her:
"Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb (Luke 1).
So the boy said to his mother:
Mom, the Hail Mary is in the Bible, why can't you pray it?
The mother just told him not to bring up the subject again.
But the boy thought that Mary could not be a woman like the others, because she was the mother of Jesus.
The boy grew up and at the age of thirteen, at a family evening he defended his idea that
Mary was not like other women, since the Gospel says that she is full of grace and that all
generations will call me blessed (Luke 2).
Years later, the young man entered the army and converted to Catholicism.
On vacation, he went to visit his sister, who told him that she would rather see her
children dead than see them Catholic.
But in those days, one of her children suffered a serious illness and her brother told her
to pray the Hail Mary devoutly to ask for health through the intercession of the Virgin Mary.
Finally, his sister agreed.
The next day, the boy was cured, to the great surprise of the doctor, who considered it a miracle.
Within three months, his sister, with her husband and her children, became Catholic.
And her brother, leaving military life, entered the Seminary and became a priest.
And he ended by saying
And that priest is me.
Father Tuckwell.
A contemplative nun wrote to us the following testimony
At the beginning of July 1979,
I was at home with permission from Rome, to care for my sick mother.
One day we had to admit her to the hospital because of a heart and bronchial condition.
She was put in a room with two other patients.
One was called Mary and she was 36 years old.
The other was 40.
Both were very far from God and had pornographic posters in the room, something incomprehensible
in a public center.
Mary had contagious hepatitis and no one visited her.
She had belonged to the communist party and had been a true leader, holding rallies;
but she drank liquor excessively, to the point of drinking 40 glasses of white wine every day,
until one day she fell ill and they had to admit her to the hospital.
But her communist friends abandoned her to her fate and no one remembered her or visited her.
I tried to make friends with her and she began to confide in me about her orgies with her
friends when she was healthy and how now she felt sad for being abandoned by everyone.
One day I suggested that she go to confession to find her lost peace, but she told me
I don't want to know anything about priests, don't talk to me about them.
Another day I asked her if she could place a picture of Our Lady of Fátima on my mother's
bedside table and she gladly accepted it.
The next day, I asked the two of them if we could tune in to the radio for 25 minutes
to listen to the rosary, which the nuns in my convent broadcast every day.
They agreed, because they were taking a liking to me.
So they started praying the rosary with me every day.
As my mother was visited by two very good priests, one 74 years old and the other 91,
I told them about the case and they tried to get closer to see if she would go to confession.
But nothing.
They told me
"With you, maybe she will confess, but with us, we can't even see each other from afar."
She had true hatred of priests in her heart.
So, I asked her to wear the Virgin's medal on her chain, full of other amulets, and she agreed.
I also brought her two postcards, one of Our Lady of Fátima and the other of Jesus in agony,
and she placed them on her little table.
Again, I begged her to confess, but nothing.
My mom was discharged and we went home.
But I went back a few days later to visit her and she no longer had her pornographic magazines.
And finally, according to what the chaplain told me, on the eve of the feast of the Assumption
she went to confession.
And soon after, she died.
According to what her partner told me, she had placed the two postcards that I had given
her on her chest with adhesive tape.
But before she died she had been able to receive Communion for several days.
She died on September 6th, 1979.
No one asked about her, and three days later they buried her.
Her partner gave me money to have a Mass celebrated for her eternal rest.
As we see, our mother the Virgin Mary never fails.
When it seemed impossible for her to go to confession, the Virgin Mary, through the rosary
and the little medal, obtained with her intercession before Jesus, the salvation of this soul,
which seemed lost forever.
The converts through the Virgin Mary are innumerable.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.