Vatican City, Oct 17, 2025 / 07:00 amFather Stefano Cecchin, OFM, president of the Pontifical International Marian Academy, (PAMI by its Italian acronym), which reports directly to the Roman Curia, said in a recent interview that the Church faces persistent challenges regarding truths about the Virgin Mary.
Cecchin told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that PAMI encounters challenges every day from Protestants as well as certain groups within the Catholic Church, both openly and indirectly, who deny the dogma of the virginity of Mary established at the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 and the Lateran Council of 649.
“There are theologians and biblical scholars who are saying that the virginity of Mary is a myth, and this is very dangerous because the … Fathers of the Church, and even the Quran, defend the virginity of Mary,” the priest stated.
Devil is behind attacks on Immaculate Conception
Cecchin is an expert in Mariology and the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which refers to Mary’s preservation from original sin from the moment of her conception in her mother’s womb and was officially defined by Pope Pius IX on Dec. 8, 1854.
Mary has always been the target of attacks from the devil, Cecchin explained, especially because of her role in the economy of salvation.
“The devil works hard; I’ve seen it a great deal, especially against the Immaculate Conception,” he said. “I see how he continues to attack the figure of Mary, and right now he’s attacking her within the Church with those who, for example, say that Mary is not a virgin.”
“The first attack against Christ was an attack on the virginity of Mary, who [supposedly] had slept with a Roman soldier, so Jesus was not the true son of God. If we question Mary’s virginity, we put into doubt all of Christianity,” he pointed out.
Cecchin recalled that, from a biblical and theological perspective, Mary occupies a unique place in the history of salvation as the mother of God and a figure of the Church. He explained that her role is not limited to the Incarnation in the past, but she continues to be active in the spiritual life of believers.
“The point is that it is not we who seek God, but he who seeks us. And that is why, after Jesus ascended to heaven, the angels said [the apostles] would not see him again until he returned on the glorious day. But Jesus entrusts the Church to Mary: ‘Behold, your mother.’ That is why Mary continues to care for us and tries to bring us back to him,” he explained.
‘God doesn’t want anyone to go to hell’
The director of PAMI, which is charged with coordinating all Mariological scholars and societies around the world, emphasized that Marian apparitions and calls to conversion must be understood as expressions of divine mercy, not as manifestations of fear or punishment.
“All the apparitions, the calls she makes regarding hell, are not to frighten us, but to convert us, because God doesn’t want to punish us; he wants to convert us. This is a fundamental point taught by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. God doesn’t want anyone to go to hell, but if you don’t behave well, you will go to hell, because hell exists and is not empty,” he explained.
Cecchin also emphasized that the defense of Marian dogmas is not a secondary or devotional issue but a pillar of the Christian message. He recalled that, according to St. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of St. Peter and one of the earliest Fathers of the Church, denying the virginity of Mary means jeopardizing the truth about the incarnation of the Son of God.
“St. Ignatius of Antioch speaks of Mary and of Mary’s virginity. That is why it is important to educate oneself,” Cecchin said, “and to see that our Franciscan vision, according to which God desires the salvation of all, compels us to evangelize. The evangelization we propose today is a Marian evangelization.”
The friar noted that throughout the history of the Church, controversies and heresies have also been opportunities to delve deeper into the truth.
“In the struggle for the Immaculate Conception, for example, there were those who thought one thing and those who thought another. The Church is always alive, and we normally see that, in history, heretics help us delve deeper into the truth. They are an incentive to delve deeper, but we must defend the truth,” he maintained.
Shrines as a place of healing
In 2023, the Vatican established, within PAMI, the International Observatory on Apparitions and Mystical Phenomena, whose mission is to study and discern without issuing judgments.
“Its only task is to study, not to give opinions,” emphasized the Italian Franciscan, who noted that apparitions have always existed throughout history. “All shrines have a story behind them, an experience of encounter with the divine.”
“We want shrines to be not only a place of prayer but also of healing,” he added.
Currently, the International Observatory on Apparitions and Mystical Phenomena is conducting a theological and historical analysis of Marian shrines.
“We are conducting a study of the sanctuaries from Nazareth, which is the shrine that housed the relics of the Virgin, which were then taken to Constantinople, to Blacherne … We have seen that in the Middle Ages there are always minor apparitions that are at the origin of the shrines we have around the world,” he explained.
With Guadalupe, the great apparitions begin
Over time, these manifestations of faith took on an increasingly universal dimension. The great apparition of the Virgin Mary to the Indian St. Juan Diego in 1531 begins a long series of great apparitions, according to Cecchin.
“The first ones were a little more local, but with Guadalupe, the apparitions that interest nations, that interest continents, begin. Then come Lourdes, Fátima, Medjugorje, Kibeho… all these great apparitions that attract people because the shrine is always a special place where the Mother asks to see, as in all apparitions, the construction of a shrine,” he explained.
Cecchin pointed out that shrines, from a biblical perspective, are always a place of encounter.
“In the Old Testament, in the apparitions of God, there was always a place, a shrine. Therefore, the shrine becomes a moment of encounter with God through Mary, what Paul VI called the clinics of the spirit. That’s why we truly want shrines to be not only places of prayer but also of healing, of well-being, because Jesus told us: ‘Preach and heal,’” he emphasized.
PAMI’s work extends to the creation of study centers and the promotion of interreligious and ecumenical dialogue.
“Our task is to create centers and societies to study the figure of Mary in diverse cultures and also in dialogue with other Christian churches and other religions, because Mary plays this fundamental role in the history of the Church,” he explained.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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A sign of the times. Mary presents an obstacle to the dissolution of the family by a rapidly increasing apostate world/Church culture. Regards the Church we’re all aware of advocates for a change in sexual definition based on other than biological identity. Fr Cecchin is certainly justified in his concerns of satanic influence. Again the times we’re in.
With the spread of homosexual sentiment within our Church and planet, homosexual jealousy of Our Lady, the Woman is a token. The Woman prefigured from all eternity as the natural and holy means of entry into our world of the only means of our salvation is Lucifer’s premier adversary other than her Son, why the pursuit of the Woman by the Dragon after failing to devour her child as revealed in the Apocalypse.
Anyone devoted to Mary generally is not pro abortion or homosexually oriented. Insofar as Pope Francis he presents an enigma for good or for evil. Although Cardinal Caffarra believed in line with the Fatima apparitions and his endearment to Mary, Sr Lucia dos Santos – firmly believed the family was under assault as the last barrier to virtual complete apostasy of the Church. Mary is the very heart of that divinely ordained familial reality.
To put it another way, everything today is about sex, sex, sex and more sex.
The ethos is if you’re human you desire constant sexual gratification in any form, and that’s considered normal, therefore, how could anyone be a virgin?
Bingo.
Yes.
Charlie Kirk, who was a devout Christian, though not a Catholic, pointed out precisely that the Virgin Mary was and should be a model of womanhood and a counter to the materialist and/or witchcraft feminism that permeates today’s culture. BTW. Cardinal Dolan recognized CK hard and in many cases (he turned around many young people towards faith in Christ) successful work for Christianity by comparing CK to Saint Paul:
Cardinal Dolan: Charlie Kirk Is a ‘Modern Day Saint Paul’
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2025/09/19/cardinal-dolan-charlie-kirk-is-a-modern-day-saint-paul/
The more recent apparitions (Fatima, Akita…) of the Virgin Mary contain powerful indictments and warnings about the present. See the Fatima site and the Akita site for These issues:
https://fatima.org/suppression-of-the-third-secret/
https://schooloffaith.com/rosary-archive/akita
Father Cecchin is right to say that the challenge to Mary’s virginity strikes at the heart of faith. A recent conference in Montichiari on the Mystical Rose and Mother of the Church reminded us that the Virgin’s Fiat is not a poetic metaphor, but the hinge of Redemption itself. From her “yes” flows the Incarnation and the renewal of fallen humanity—intact, inviolate, all holy. The Mystical Rose reveals this mystery: in Mary, creation and redemption meet. Her Immaculate Conception anticipates the new creation, and her virginal motherhood becomes the model of every soul that receives grace through faith. I sadly recall hearing a young priest, once a religious, call this virginity a “symbolic myth.” He later set aside his habit. Such words show how easily theological reductionism leads to spiritual impoverishment.
The Marian title “Mystical Rose” is therefore ecclesiological: in her Fiat, Mary conceives the Christus totus—Christ the Head and His Mystical Body. As St Augustine said, she is the Mother of the Church because she believed; St Francis called her Virgo ecclesia facta, the Virgin-made-Church. Ratzinger and von Balthasar beautifully wrote that in her womb the nascent Church already exists. To call her virginity a myth is to lose sight of this mystery of faith and of anthropology: the virginal integrity of Mary signifies not repression but plenitude—the humanity fully possessed by grace. In her, the Church sees both her origin and her destiny.
Some say Mary is a bridge to the Muslim world.
Some even think Allah is the God worshiped by Christians and Jews. It is not, nor is their any validity to their understanding of Jesus of Nazareth or His Blessed Mother. The Islamic disingenuous confection is a self-serving enterprise established to unite diverse tribes of Arabia and Northern Africa into a effective fighting force for lucre and power. It is a cut and paste operation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Arianism and tribal cults. It has no origin in a revelation from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…the Most Holy Trinity fulfilled in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Yes, but a bridge to Muslims as persons, not so much to Islam as a religion (Bishop Sheen, appendix to Jomier OP, “The Bible and the Qur’an”, 1954). Islam replaces (!) the Incarnation of Christ with the Qur’an (“the word made book”). To compare the two scriptures misses this crucial point altogether.
Inaugurated on Monday, October 13, 2025, the new Tehran metro station bears the name “Holy Virgin Mary,” near the Cathedral of Saint Sarkis in the city’s sixth district. The choice is striking yet not entirely unexpected, since the Qur’an dedicates an entire sura (19, Maryam) to the Virgin—the only woman mentioned by name—honoured as the pure mother of Jesus (ʿIsā), prophet and Word of God. This Marian reverence runs deep in Islamic tradition, though Christians are often denied the freedom to profess the faith she embodies.
It is worth recalling, as Peter Beaulieu earlier noted, that the very name Fatima—later given to the Portuguese village—has its origin in Islamic history. The coincidence of dates is also meaningful: October 13, the anniversary of the sixth apparition at Fatima, and the 13th of Adar, when Haman was condemned in the Book of Esther, both evoke victory over darkness and point mysteriously toward co-redemption.
I believe that also Br. Jacques.
1415 years and counting…and countless millions of casualties. The bridge does not exist. They do not know the Blessed Virgin Mary or her Divine Son, Jesus Christ, Who Is God, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, the Logos. They believe in a confection of convenience, a fantasy, as is their Allah…no more real than the infinity of deities of Hinduism.
As it has been said, Marian dogmas, doctrines and devotions are support for an elevated Christology in conformity with the Gospel and the perennial Magisterium and indeed they do.
It is not widely understood by the Catholic faithful that the divinity of Jesus Christ is openly challenged presently in the theological academy — both protestant and Catholic. Within the Catholic academy very quietly…in the protestant academy far less covertly. I suspect that within a generation or two it will be the common perception among them. Will we be far behind? Recent history of theological “development” within the Church indicates a grave cause for concern. Belief in the Holy Trinity is openly rejected among a not small number of protestants. Of even more concern is the recent publication by Pew Research that only 9% of Roman Catholics believe in God as the Most Holy Trinity, One God in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, equal and of the same substance yet distinct.
The discipline of theology has slipped into a state appropriate to the atheistic academy where it subsists and where everything must be grounded in man’s ability to understand according to temporal logic. Yet oddly, Gabriel Marcel, protestant philosopher of the early twentieth century, counseled us that while mystery is beyond our categories and total understanding, yet mystery remains as a reality which comprehends us. He stood apart.
Far beyond time to sit with mysteries of the the Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity, Assumption and Queenship. They serve to magnify our relationship to the nature of her Son, Jesus Christ, True God and True Man. Her reality by God’s grace, is essential to our practice of the faith, it is not secondary and cannot be neglected. Always remember Mary.
The Council of Nicaea 325AD was 1700 years ago!
A group of bishops (numbers between 250-318) vote decided Jesus was divine! A group of humans determining the “prime mover”.
If as much time was spent on protecting our planet, all that is in it and on it, Jesus’s words would be followed. “Come Follow Me”.
Secular reasoning applied to Catholicism provides conclusions that negate Sacred Tradition: Stunning.
The Spirit of Vatican II lives on?
A more misguided, uninformed and delusional contribution would be difficult to find. More time on the knees, less on the seat of the pants.
“a group of humans determining the prime mover.”
Well, that WOULD be ridiculous IF the Prime Mover didn’t choose in fullness to “dwell bodily” in Jesus, and “make some, Apostles.”
Ms. Schuman:
Other than your own estimate, and regardless of anyone’s political views about environmental protection and “the planet,” it seems patently obvious that the number of people who worry about the environment and “the planet” overwhelmingly outweigh the number of people who believe in the Gospel testimony about the virginity of Mary in the conception of Jesus.
Chris. We are dedicated to both the Gospel of Mary and the salvation of Mother Earth.
The Council “determined” nothing; it simply recalled without ambiguity the extraordinary event of the Incarnation. If Christ was only a lesser manifestation as Arianism proposed, then other such manifestations were back on the table and paganism would have fully infiltrated the Church. The planetary goddess of fertility, Pachamama, comes to mind…
When a group of bishops affirm such things like the fact that we’re all sinners, they are not exactly “discovering” sin in the human condition for the first time.
Funny thing — geologists who deny that the earth is round are not a problem for the US Geological Survey. It’s ALMOST like the people who run the government agency take their subject more seriously than do the shepherds of the Church. But then, maybe “shepherds” is not the right word.
It has not always been so.
Isaiah 7, Luke 1, and Matthew 1. Maybe I am take a “leap of faith,” but who do you suppose told the Apostles of Jesus’ birth? Many Patristic writing supporting Catholic theology. Issue with Protestant opposition is that Protestantism is fundamentally based upon Luther own reinterpretation of scripture some 1500 years after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension.
Mary was present at Pentecost and several years thereafter. Told Luke, at least. She lived with her new “son”, John, where the Apostles surely visited.
They’re heretics. Simple.
https://prayforpeace.hcfm.org/ 🙏✝️💕🌹
On the “bridge” between religions provided by the Virgin Mary: A hadith of the religion of peace states that the Prophet will marry and deflower the Virgin Mary in Paradise. Sure, the religion of peace loves the Virgin Mary…. Scholar R. Ibrahim has exposed the lies used to cover up the relentless attacks against Christianity in the religion of peace lands and the accompanying lies about the “bridges” between Christianity and the religion of its relentless enemies. See this example of this debunking of the presumed bridge through the Virgin Mary. This is a facts rich eye opener:
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2024/09/23/is-mary-a-bridge-between-islam-and-christianity/
Is Mary a Bridge between Islam and Christianity?