The First Five Saturdays devotion explained

Initially Our Lady spoke of the Communions of Reparation devotion of the Five First Saturdays on 13 July 1917. She then explained the devotion more fully at Pontevedra, Spain, in December 1925.


After showing Jacinta, Francisco and Lucia the vision of hell, she said:


“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father."

Our Lady continued... “To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.


“In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me and she will be converted, and a of peace will be granted to the world.”


Apostolic Penitentiary Grants Papal Blessing and Plenary indulgence for Pontevedra Centenary

Special Announcement:  Apostolic Penitentiary Grants Papal Blessing and Plenary indulgence for Pontevedra Centenary


On the 10th December 1925, Our Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in Pontevedra to Sr Lucia. Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, declared this centenary year (from the 10 December 2025 to 10 December 2026) as a Marian Jubilee Year for Pontevedra. The Jubilee Year offers a unique opportunity for spiritual renewal, and for a deeper understanding of the importance of the practice of the First Saturdays of Reparation


The Apostolic Penitentiary acting under the authority of Pope Leo, has granted the Most Reverend Francisco José Prieto Fernández, Metropolitan Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, the faculty to impart after the celebration of Holy Mass, the Papal Blessing with a Plenary Indulgence, on the occasion of the solemn celebrations, which took place in Pontevedra, on the 10th December 2025, in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary centenary apparition to Sister Lúcia.


When Mary appeared to Sr Lúcia in Pontevedra, she promised to assist at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary and meditate with her for fifteen minutes on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to Her Immaculate Heart.

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Agony in the garden

First Saturday Meditation: Mar 2026

The 1st sorrowful mystery- The Agony of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives. The God-Man suffers for love of men
Crucifixion and Death of Our Lord

First Saturday Meditation: Apr 2026

The 5th sorrowful mystery- Crucifixion and Death of Our Lord
The Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ

First Saturday Meditation: May 2026

The 2nd Glorious Mystery- The Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ

FULFILLING THE FIRST SATURDAYS DEVOTION


So to summarise what is achieved by fulfilling the Five First Saturdays devotion, in the first instance we comply with the desire of Jesus to establish devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Heart, as revealed by Our Lady in her second apparition on 13th June 1917. She then went on to say, “I promise salvation to those who embrace it, and these souls will be loved by God, like flowers placed by me to adorn his throne.”


When we fulfil the requirements for making this devotion, as revealed by Our Lady on 10th December 1925, we make reparation for the thorns of blasphemies and ingratitude which pierce Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart and by which she is offended. Our Lady then promises to assist those souls who make this devotion “at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation.”


What a wonderful consolation, to know that at the moment of death when it is natural to feel a sense of apprehension, one need not fear because Our Lady will be there to assist with the graces needed to ensure eternal salvation!


And lastly, by making this devotion, we are thereby helping to fulfil the request of Our Lady on 13th July 1917 which she said will bring about the conversion of Russia and peace — “if my requests are heeded.”


By 1925 Lucia, who was now 18, had become a postulant with the Sisters of St Dorothy at Pontevedra in Spain, and on Thursday 10 December, the Blessed Virgin appeared to her and by her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. Lucia recounted that Mary rested her hand on her shoulder, while showing her a heart encircled by thorns which she was holding in her other hand.


The Child Jesus spoke first: “Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother. It is covered with the thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to remove them with an act of reparation.”


Then Mary said:


“My daughter, look at My Heart surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You, at least, try to console me, and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months go to confession and receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary and keep me company for a quarter of an hour while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.”


The Child Jesus again appeared to Lucia in February 1926 to encourage her to propagate this devotion, and additionally on the night of 29-30 May 1930, as she was praying before the Blessed Sacrament, she received an interior locution from Our Lord in which He said that people who had difficulty in getting to confession on the Saturday could do so within eight days, or longer still, provided that “when they receive Me they are in the state of grace and have the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary” (Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, vol I, pp. 193-196).


Also, Our Lord explained that the Communion of Reparation was to be made on five first Saturdays in reparation for the five kinds of offences and blasphemies uttered against Our Lady, namely: blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception, against Our Lady’s perpetual virginity, against her divine maternity and refusal to recognise her as the mother of mankind, blasphemies by those seeking to alienate children from her, and in reparation for those who outrage Our Lady in her sacred images.When we come together to pray in the presence of Jesus and Mary, we are on the threshold of the divine mystery which is perceived not with the senses but with the eyes of faith. This is the point where, in order to proceed and enter into this mystery, we need to be sensitive to who we are, as His creatures, made in His image and likeness, and into Whose divine Presence we are entering. To do this we need to dispose ourselves in a way that corresponds to what we believe.


When you go to a concert that you know is going to be special, you want to enjoy it as fully as possible. Hence you take care that you sit in the best place in which to relax, so that you can forget about everything else and let yourself be absorbed into the uplifting music. The atmosphere of the concert hall and the people you are with, all help to heighten one’s enjoyment of the experience.


This is how it should be in our Rosary prayer. With a little effort, we can create an atmosphere which disposes us more readily to believe. Put up an image or a prayer card of Our Lady, with perhaps some flowers, light a candle in front it, and maybe dim the lights.


We know by faith that in our prayer, Jesus and Mary will come to us. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18: 20), and Mary herself likewise prays with us when we pray the Rosary, as Pope John Paul II said. They will come to us because we have chosen this precious moment in which we want to unite ourselves with them in prayer.


So let us prepare our hearts and minds for this important meeting with a moment of quiet, in which to lift up our thoughts to God. Try to imagine in your mind that your heavenly Mother is there in person—as indeed she is, albeit invisibly. This helps to lift one’s spirit to her, and also to remove distractions and the risk of saying the words of the prayer mechanically.

On 13 July 1917 Our Lady had requested “the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart [by the Pope] and the Communion of reparation [by the Church] on the First Saturdays”. The first part of her request was fulfilled when Pope St John Paul II consecrated Russia in union with all the Bishops on 25 March 1984, and as a result in December 1991 the Soviet Union and its violently anti-Christian Communist ideology was dissolved, peacefully, from within.


The second part of Our Lady’s request — for the Five First Saturdays devotion — has received only a partial response in some countries, and little if at all in many others. This regrettable lack of an adequate response has permitted the grave negative consequences for the Church and the world to take place, about which Our Lady had warned, because, as Pope St John Paul II said.

In a letter to the Bishop of Fatima dated 1st October 1997, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun, St John Paul II wrote that Fatima is certainly one of the greatest signs of the times of the 20th century “because its message announces many of the later events and conditions them on the response to its appeals” (our emphasis).


Today, some 30 years after he fulfilled Our Lady’s request for the consecration of Russia, we see that on the one hand the violent persecution of the Church has ceased in Russia, as a consequence of this act of consecration, and churches and monasteries are now being restored and rebuilt there at an astonishing rate, and the countries of Eastern Europe that were formerly under the sway of the Soviet Union have regained their freedom; whereas on the other hand we also see an ever-increasing proliferation of evil through the world in new forms that are continuously evolving, especially in the once-Christian West.


The one factor all these latter developments have in common, to a greater or lesser degree, is that they are animated by the spirit of the denial and rejection of God, and this, Pope St John Paul II explained in his homily at Fatima in May 1982, is what Our Lady meant by the “errors of Russia” when she warned that these errors would spread throughout the world, causing wars and persecution of the Church, etc, if people did not comply with her requests.

Papal approval and recommendation of the Five First Saturdays devotion

Sr. Lucia received a locution from Jesus on 29 May 1930 on the Five First Saturdays Devotion, which she described in a letter to her spiritual director, Fr Gonsalves: 

 

“If I am not mistaken, the Good Lord promises to make an end of the persecution in Russia, if the Holy Father condescends to make, and likewise ordains the Bishops of the Catholic world, to make a solemn and public act of reparation and consecration of Russia to the Most Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary. In response to the end of this persecution, His Holiness is to promise to approve and recommend the practice of the already mentioned devotion of reparation.” [the Five First Saturdays] 

 

The Collegial Consecration was done by Pope John Paul II in 1984 and did lead to the cessation of persecution in Russia (and Eastern Europe), but there has yet to be official Papal approval and recommendation of the Five First Saturdays devotion. Therefore this is something for which we should all pray.


And the fact that the persecution ceased in Russia and Easter Europe is an indication that the consecration has in fact been carried out correctly, despite assertions to the contrary.

 

Source: Fr. A.M. Martins, S.J. & Fr. Robert Fox, Documents on Fatima & The Memoirs of Sister Lucia, Fatima Family Apostolate, Alexandria, 1992, trans. of Novos Documentos de Fatima, Porto, 1984, page 243.