Our Lady Help of Christians
In this month of May we have a number of significant Marian feast days. On the 13^th May we celebrated the relatively ‘new’ feast of Our Lady of Fatima. This coming Wednesday we will celebrate another ‘recent’ Marian feast – that of Our Lady Help of Christians (25^th May). Our Lady, Help of Christian is the principal patroness of Australia, and accordingly the Feast Day has the rank of a Solemnity. Given the significance of Our Lady, Help of Christians to the Church in Australia it is remarkable that so little is known about this feast, which has a fascinating historical back-story.
The French Revolution (1789-1799) had unleashed political havoc in Europe, and among the greatest casualties was the Church herself. The Revolutionaries were bitterly anti-Catholic. All churches had been seized by the state, religious services were banned, monasteries and convents were dissolved, and many priests and nuns were executed. The destruction of church properties and the overthrow of the ecclesiastical order meant the Church in France at the end of the 18^th century was one in total disarray, and existed largely ‘underground’. In 1796, three years prior to his seizing control of the Republic, Napoleon Bonaparte led a military campaign to invade the Papal States. Pope Pius VI tried to sue for peace, but in February 1798 the French troops marched on Rome unopposed, and declared Rome to be a Republic. Pope Pius VI, as head of the Papal States, had full temporal authority and refused to renounce it. He was taken prisoner and conducted to Valence, in South-East France where he died a prisoner in 1799. It wasn’t until the repatriation of his body to Rome in 1802 that the poor, long-suffering Pope was given the dignity of a Christian Funeral.
It was against this political turmoil that Pope Pius VII was elected Pope in 1800. These were desperate times: He was crowned Pope with an improvised paper-mâché papal tiara, on account of the French troops having looted the papal treasury! In the previous year, 1799, Napoleon had seized absolute political control as First Consul of the Republic of France. Over the next decade Napoleon was to play a game of political chess with the Church. Although a baptised Catholic, Napoleon had no apparent religious sentiments, but he understood that the Church had real political influence and could be used for his own strategic advancement. In 1801 Napoleon and Pius VII succeeded in negotiating a Concordat that granted the Church and the Catholic faithful certain basic rights. However, the Concordat also meant that Pope Pius VII had to walk a political tightrope in terms of maintaining cooperation with the Napoleonic Republic. In 1804 Pius VII came to Paris on the understanding that he would celebrate the coronation of Napoleon at Notre Dame Cathedral according to the Rites of the Roman Pontifical. This turned out to be a ruse. The French Kings had for centuries been anointed by the Archbishop of Reims, at Reims Cathedral, according to the Catholic Rite of Coronation. With calculated political cunning Napoleon wanted the Pope’s presence at his coronation as Emperor to bolster his legitimacy whilst simultaneously eschewing the Pope’s spiritual or temporal authority. Just to make the point, Napoleon crowned himself, which could only be read as a blatant powerplay, making the Pope appear impotent, a mere play-thing of the emperor.
Tensions between Emperor and Pope simmered in the ensuing years, but boiled over in 1809 when France annexed the Papal States. Pope Pius VII was seized and found himself, like his predecessor, a prisoner of France. Although he was not mistreated (he was in fact well-provided for by Napoleon), Pius VII’s years of exile from Rome were an immense trial for the Pope personally and indeed deeply distressing for the entire Church. Throughout the ordeal Pius VII maintained a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, entrusting his situation to her intercession. On 15^th August 1811 whilst saying Mass for the Feast of the Assumption, the Pope entered into an ecstasy and began to levitate before the altar. This spectacle was witnessed by numerous attendants including the French soldiers commissioned with guarding their prisoner, and evoked a great sense of awe. Pius for his part vowed that if he were ever released from his imprisonment, he would institute a new Feast in Honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
After five years in exile, in January of 1814, Pope Pius VII signed the Concordat of Fontainebleau which granted him release. In a strange twist of fate, by April 1814 Napoleon’s political ambitions had unravelled and he was compelled to abdicate as Emperor. As the aging Pope was making the long return journey back to Rome, Napoleon began his exile on the Isle of Elba, and later on St Helena. By a curious reversal of circumstances, it was the Emperor, not the Pope, who died in exile, a broken man. Meanwhile, Pius VII arrived with his convoy in Rome on 24^th May 1815 to the joy and acclaim of the entire city. It is said that upon the approach of his carriage, the Romans were so enthralled at the return of their Papa they untied the horses and pulled the Papal carriage through the streets by hand. Pope Pius VII, made true his vow to the Blessed Virgin Mary and thereafter instituted the Feast of Our Lady Help of Christians to be celebrated annually on 24^th May, the day he returned to Rome.
During this saga the fledgling Church in Australia had not yet even the formal foundation of a single diocese. Bede Polding was appointed the first bishop of Sydney who convened Australia’s first Provincial Synod in 1844. The plight of Catholics in Australia at this time was such that ‘Mary, Help of Christians’ was decided upon as the Patroness of Australasia. As the trials of Popes Pius VI and VII show us, the Church must often endure tumultuous storms in her relations with the State: periods of peace and harmony, but also periods of hostility, deceit and malevolence.
As the chasm widens between the values of the Church and those of the civil State we can expect those tensions to continue to mount. The Church’s stance on abortion, marriage, gender ideology, euthanasia and many other issues, continues to stick in the craw of civil norms and government legislation. Just last week the Catholic Weekly reported on the ACT Government’s “compulsory acquisition” of Calvary Hospital. Canberra Archbishop Christopher Prowse stated that he was “totally shocked and stunned” by the decision “which came without warning or discussion”. Archbishop Prowse said: “The lack of transparency of the ACT Government raises several questions and concerns. It is a very sad day when governments can simply decide to mount a take-over of any enterprise they like without any justification. This is certainly a worrying precedent.” (See: https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/act-government-will-take-over-calvary-hospital-one-month-after-scathing-abortion-inquiry/). The Government’s apparent justification for the move is the hospital’s refusal to perform abortions. If such a misalignment of values between Government and Church can justify this kind of a heavy-handed ‘Napoleonic’ response, then what other Catholic institutions will the government be able to justify “compulsorily acquiring”. Why would any other Catholic hospital, school, university, nursing home or indeed any institution be safe. Those who imagine that such things can’t happen show themselves to be very, very poor students of history. Just ask Pius VII.
Let’s invoke our Patroness, Our Lady, Help of Christians, that she may indeed intercede in our own times for the needs of the Church in Australia and Australian society as a whole.
Fr Francis Denton

Mary Help of Christians patroness of Australia and of the Military Ordinariate

Almighty God, deepen in our hearts
our love of Mary Help of Christians.
Through her prayers and under her protection,
may the light of Christ shine over our land.
May Australia be granted harmony, justice and peace.
Grant wisdom to our leaders and integrity to our citizens.
Bless especially the men and women
of the Australian Defence Force and their families.
We ask this through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.