STRANGE ECHO OF LA SALETTE

 [Editor’s note:  this article appeared in APPROACHES, No. 86, edited by Hamish Fraser, in 1984.  Our thanks to Anthony Fraser for his gracious permission in allowing us to re-publish on this blog articles from his father’s periodical APPROACHES as well as those from his own sorely-missed APROPOS.]

Writes Hamish Fraser:

In Approaches No. 75 (Christ the King, 1981) Father Lawson reviewed Shepherdess of La Salette by Abbe Gouin.  Now he sends us a translation of an insert in an article in the July-August 1984 issue of the Italian review CHIESA VIVA by its Rev. Editor, Father Luigi Villa.  The insert had been reproduced from the November 1972 issue of Chiesa Viva.  Here it is in full.

FACTS ARE…. FACTS!

In 1846, in a Commune in Isere (La Salette), the Blessed Virgin appeared to two young children, Massimino Giraud and Melanie Calvat-Mathieu.

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Four French bishops made it their business to stifle people’s belief in the apparition.  But… all four of them died a tragic and mysterious death.  Bishop Ginovilhac of Grenoble who had had little Melanie shut up in an English Convent to keep her quiet, died shortly afterwards in a lunatic asylum.  His successor, Bishop Fava, who did everything in his power to stop the spread of news of the apparition, was found dead flat on the floor, naked, his eyes bulging and his fists clenched.  Bishop Gilbert of Amiens (and later of Bordeaux), who had said: ‘The secret of La Salette is nothing but a tissue of anti-religion, lies and exaggerations’, was found a short time later, on August 16, 1889, dead in his room stretched out on the floor; and during his funeral the coffin fell off the catafalque.  Archbishop Darfoy of Paris, who himself interrogated Massimino and did violence to his mind with questions about ideologies so as to get at the secret of the boy:  ‘The words of your beautiful Lady are at times just stupid, as your secret will prove stupid.’  But the boy answered:  ‘It is as certain that I saw the beautiful Lady as I am certain that within three years you will be shot dead.’ It was a long time to the Commune and attempts at revolution, and France, unthinking and comfortable in the Second Empire, did not foresee them; but on May 24, 1871 that prophecy came true: the Archbishop was shot dead by the Paris communards.