Monsignor Viganò / There is no paradise for cowards. The victory of the Holy League at Lepanto
The text of the video message sent by Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò to the conference on the victory of the Holy League at Lepanto, held in Settimo di Pescantina on 11 October.
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Salve, Regina, rosa de spina,
rosa d’amor, Madre del Signor.
Fa’ che mi no mora e che no mora pecador,
che no peca mortalmente e che no mora malamente.
Hail, O Queen, Rose among thorns,
Rose of love, Mother of the Lord.
Grant that I may not die, nor that I may die a sinner,
that I may not sin mortally, nor that I may die badly.
Sailor’s Prayer, recited by the entire Venetian fleet
before going to battle in the waters of Patras.
Dear Friends,
Allow me to thank the organizers of this event and extend my greetings to all participants. It is a pleasure for me to join you in celebrating the anniversary of the Victory of Lepanto by taking part in the ninth edition of this Conference, which this year has as its theme the paradox of a secularist, liberal, and Masonic Europe waging war on Christian, anti-globalist Russia. We now live in the end times, in which the clash between Christ and Antichrist requires all of us to rally behind the banners of our Divine King and His Most August Mother, our Queen, mindful of the words of the Lord: Whoever is not with me is against me (Mt 12:30).
On October 7, 1571, in the Gulf of Patras, the fleet of the Holy League triumphantly crushed Ottoman pride, slowing Islamic expansion in the western Mediterranean. This expansion was never halted by any “dialogue” between the Cross and the Crescent, but by the use of military force, the sacrifice of countless human lives, and the supernatural protection that the Queen of Victories and Mediatrix of all Graces unfurled like a cloak over Christianity threatened by Islam. Even at the gates of Vienna, on September 12, 1683—just 112 years after Lepanto—the Turks were defeated by the Catholic armies, under the patronage of the Holy Name of Mary. Fearsome and terrible, like an army drawn up in battle array: merely uttering these words brings a lump to our throats, moved by the contemplation of our August Queen at the head of the angelic and earthly armies. She had also appeared in a similar guise on August 7, 626, when Constantinople was besieged by the Avars, the Slavs, and the Sassanian Persians, and the Christian people gathered in the church of Blachernae invoked her intervention. Resplendent with light and with the Child Jesus in her arms, the Vittoriosa Condottiera—as she is called in the Akathist Hymn—had routed her enemies, earning the capital of the Empire the title of “City of Mary.”
But if divine help and the powerful intercession of the Ever-Virgin Mother of God have miraculously and certainly supernaturally brought about victories that were humanly difficult if not impossible, we cannot fail to remember that these prodigious and providential interventions, these irruptions of the power of Deus Sabaoth into human contingencies, are made possible only where this unattainable and divine all is preceded by the nothingness of our cooperation in the work of Redemption. By virtue of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, in fact, the God-Man takes possession of humanity, of which by divinity, by lineage, and by right of conquest He is constituted Lord and King. But this consortium of the divine nature of the Son of God with the human nature of Jesus Christ, brought about by the Hypostatic Union, ensures that every member of the Mystical Body can also unite with the Passion of Christ the Head, completing in their own flesh what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings, for the good of His Body, which is the Church (Col 1:24). And in the economy of salvation, every person is called to actively contribute to the work of Redemption, without seeking an excuse for one’s own indolence in a fatalism that is far from Catholic.
But in recalling Lepanto, we cannot fail to recall the heroic figure of Marcantonio Bragadin, a Venetian nobleman and governor of Famagusta, Cyprus, during the Ottoman siege of 1570-1571. The city fell in August 1571, and Bragadin negotiated an honorable capitulation with the Ottoman commander Lala Mustafa Pasha, who promised to spare the defenders’ lives. However, the Turks, breaking their word, violated the agreement: Bragadin was tortured and subjected to a brutal death; he was flayed alive, and his skin was stuffed with straw and sent as a trophy to Sultan Selim II. This horrific crime aroused outrage among the members of the Holy League, and the victory of Lepanto was also seen as revenge for the siege of Cyprus, the atrocities suffered by Bragadin,[1] and as punishment for the Turks’ disloyalty, unthinkable for a Christian knight. Bragadin’s heroism also found emulators in the Gulf of Patras: Don Juan of Austria, Supreme Commander of the Holy League at just twenty-four years of age and a great strategist, was a man of faith. During battle, he encouraged the rowers and soldiers by shouting: “There is no paradise for cowards!” Sebastiano Venier, Venetian Captain General and a seventy-five-year-old veteran, distinguished himself for his courage and ardor, urging his comrades: “He who does not fight is not Venetian.” His heroism earned him election as Doge in 1577. The Venetian commander Agostino Barbarigo died in battle – after being struck in the eye by an arrow he continued to command the left wing of the fleet even as he was dying, thus contributing to the final victory. Marcantonio Colonna, Papal Admiral, distinguished himself for his commitment to rescuing the wounded and ensuring that Ottoman prisoners were treated humanely, in accordance with the Christian values that the Holy League professed.
It was their courage, their self-sacrifice, but above all their sincere and virile faith that constituted the nothingness that the Lord expects from us before taking the field at our side and granting us an otherwise unthinkable victory. His all, our nothingness. The nothingness of those who, on the facades of buildings, were not ashamed to inscribe Non nobis Domine non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam. Of those who, established in authority as members of the Most Serene Senate, did not hesitate to attribute the victory of the Christian fleet not to naval power, nor to force of arms, but to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin as Our Lady of the Rosary, whom Saint Pius V – the Pope of Lepanto – had ordered to be invoked through the recitation of the Holy Rosary. For there was a time when men were men, indeed men of valor, men of their word, men of war, men of faith. Sinners, certainly, but courageous, willing to die to defend the Holy Church and drive the idolatrous invaders back to their remote reaches. Ut Turcarum et hæreticorum conatus ad nihilum perducere digneris: Te rogamus, audi nos! Thus they prayed in Constantinople, thus they prayed at Lepanto, thus they prayed in Vienna: always confident that God’s help would come when it showed itself unmistakably divine and supernatural, and always through the mediation of the Mother of God, She who is omnipotent by Grace. Our God is a jealous God: jealous of His people and jealous of His own Lordship over us, a Lordship that He does not allow to be usurped by anyone and which He wishes to share with His Most Holy Mother, Our Lady and Queen. He is King, and as King He wishes to reign: oportet illum regnare, it is necessary that He reign. And when Christ reigns, the Psalmist’s vow is fulfilled: Beatus populus, cujus Dominus Deus ejus (Ps 143:15) – Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord.
How much time has passed since the Victory of Lepanto! Five hundred and fifty-four years: over half a millennium. And today, in a world that regards the heroism of the fallen of Lepanto and their Faith with incomprehension and contempt, considering them dangerous fanatics, the Islamic hordes are not only not repelled at our borders, but are “welcomed” and housed, fed and cared for, and left free to commit crimes and transform our homeland into an Islamic nation. Three hundred and ninety-one years after Lepanto, the first “council” of the “new church”—Vatican II, the anniversary of whose opening occurs today—theorized that syncretic ecumenism condemned by the Roman Pontiffs that within a few years would lead Paul VI, on January 19, 1967,[2] to return the banner that Mehmet Ali Pasha had raised on his flagship, the Sultana. With that reckless gesture, Paul VI humiliated the Church and his predecessor, Saint Pius V, to whom that flag had been donated by Sebastiano Venier, who had heroically conquered it by boarding the Sultana. Despite the ecumenical mania of the conciliar and synodal Popes, we still preserve the banner that Saint Pius V blessed and had hoisted at the mast of the Reál, the flagship of flagships of the Christian fleet: a purple silk cloth edged in gold, at the center of which stands the image of the Most Holy Redeemer, flanked by the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and the motto In hoc signo vinces. It was Marcantonio Colonna who brought it back to Gaeta, as a vow made to Saint Erasmus, patron saint of sailors.[3] That image and that motto sum up the meaning of Christian life, valid in the glorious times of Lepanto just as much as in the present times of apostasy.
In the name of a distorted concept of “welcome” and “inclusiveness,” millions of Muslims are now ferried and escorted into our cities and villages, where now-empty churches become mosques. In many places, the sacred and solemn sound of bells falls silent, but the voice of the muezzin resounds, calling Mohammed’s followers to prayer. If this is not only possible today, but even encouraged and celebrated as a civilizational achievement, we owe it to the Revolution: to the French Revolution, for its attack on the Catholic monarchy in the civil sphere; and to the “conciliar” and “synodal” revolution, for its attack on the sacred monarchy of the Papacy in the ecclesiastical sphere. Democracy and “synodality” are two sides of the same false coin. On one side there is the emblem of Masonic liberalism, on the other that of syncretistic irenic ecumenism.
For decades now, Europe has once again become a land of conquest and will soon be dominated by Muslims, especially in rebellious nations like Great Britain, France, and Germany. Their betrayal of Our Lord Jesus Christ and their crimes against God’s Law cry out to Heaven for vengeance and will not go unpunished. But Italy is no less guilty, forgetting the glorious legacy she has guarded, which is founded on Catholic Civilization, the Kingship of Christ, and a cosmic order that places at its center the God who became man, not man who makes himself a god. As has always happened throughout history, it will be God’s enemies who punish His rebellious children.
How are we to return to Lepanto? Shall we form another Holy League against the enemies of Christianity? Providence will show us the way at the right time. But whatever juncture we may find ourselves in, whatever adversity, whatever threat to our Faith and our identity may loom over us, we must never forget one thing about the reasons for Victory: we must not shirk our duty to bear witness to the Faith we profess, the Baptism in which we have been incorporated into Christ, the Tradition to which we belong. We must not find excuses to stand idly by and watch the enemies of Christ demolish the Holy Church, especially when these traitors are at the top of the Hierarchy. We must not use obedience as a blanket to hide the cowardice and mediocrity that contemporary society holds up to us as models of reassuring conformity to a single required way of thinking. Let us do our part, with the courage and fortitude of Christ’s soldiers: and then Our Lord will do His, with the Omnipotence of Almighty God.
Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
7 October MMXXV
Mary Most Holy Queen of Victories,
Madonna delle Grazie
[1] His skin was later recovered by the Venetians and brought to Venice, where it is preserved as a relic in the Basilica of Saints John and Paul. Bragadin became a symbol of Venetian sacrifice in the battle against Ottoman expansion.
[2] Paul VI, Discorso al nuovo Ambasciatore di Turchia accreditato presso la Santa Sede, 19 Gennaio 1967. Cf. https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/it/speeches/1967/january/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19670119_ambasciatore-turchia.html: «Since We Ourselves wished to express Our feelings in some way, with a gesture that could be appreciated by the Authorities of contemporary Turkey, it was a joy for Us to return an ancient standard, taken at the time of the battle of Lepanto, which, since then, had been preserved in the collections of the Vatican.
[3] Initially kept in a small chest, in the 18th century it was stretched out and framed for public display. In 1943, a German bomb damaged it, though not irreparably. Restored after the war, the Standard of Lepanto is now preserved—and on public display—in the Diocesan Museum of Lazio.
