Ordinariate Bishop to Join Pope Francis Consecration of Ukraine & Russia to the Immaculate Heart

Bishop Steven Lopes, the head of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, will join in Pope Francis’s consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, according to announcements shared by multiple Ordinariate parish communities.

Bishop Lopes will join the Holy Father’s Act of Consecration of Russia and Ukraine on March 25 at the 6:30 PM Solemn Pontifical Mass for the Solemnity of the Annunciation. The Mass will include a procession to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham on the grounds.  

The Catholic Church of St. Mary the Virgin, an Ordinariate parish in Arlington, Texas, posted the bishop’s announcement on its Facebook, which stated the Pope’s act of consecration “corresponds to the request of Our Lady at the apparition at Fatima.”
It also noted Russia and the whole world were “previously consecrated to the Immaculate Heart by Pope Pius XII (twice) and Pope St. John Paul II.”

“Please invite your faithful to assist in this spiritual undertaking by praying the Rosary for peace and for the conversion of sinners,” the bishop’s announcement stated.

The Ordinariate of Chair of St. Peter is one of three Catholic dioceses with Anglican traditions in the world, and includes parishes and communities in the U.S. and Canada. The Ordinariates for the Anglican patrimony were established by then-Pope Benedict XVI under a 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, and since then strengthened in their evangelizing mandate and provided their complete liturgies under Pope Francis.

Bishop Lopes is the first bishop ordained for one of the Church’s Ordinariates with Anglican patrimony. The other two Ordinariates, the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham (United Kingdom) and the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross (Australia, Torres Strait islands, Japan, Philippines, Guam) are shepherded by Catholic priest-ordinaries, who were former Anglican bishops but not ordained to the episcopate owing to longstanding discipline shared by both Catholic and Orthodox Churches against ordaining married men bishops.

Msgr. Keith Newton, the ordinary for Our Lady of Walsingham, has called on the Ordinariate communities of the U.K. to pray for Ukraine and to respond with generosity amid Europe’s greatest land war since the end of World War II.

“Please continue to pray for the people of the Ukraine, for the refugees and Ukrainians here who have family suffering in their homeland,” Msgr. Keith Newton said, in a March 4 news release.

Msgr. Newton said that after consultation with the bishop of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic eparchy of the Holy Family in the U.K., he suggested Ordinariate communities and members contribute in a second collection to a special emergency appeal developed by the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox churches that will fund Ukrainian charities providing medicine, food, and critical support to Ukrainians devastated by Russia’s war on their country.

“This is the least we can do in this terrible situation,” he said.  

Editor's note: You can join the #HelpUkraine Emergency appeal here. 

Peter Jesserer Smith is the vice president of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society.