(LifeSiteNews) — History was made on Saturday as 550 parishes and 16 Catholic Marian shrines across the globe processed with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, following the lead of 6,000 faithful in Derry, Ireland, in the first-ever united, worldwide Marian Eucharistic procession.
The outpouring of Catholics to pray for world peace, an end to the culture of death and of paganism, the conversion of souls, reparation for sin, and the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary shone as a bright ray of hope and real grace in a war-torn and spiritually dark world.
“These Eucharistic and Marian processions are like exorcisms on the land as our Blessed Mother crushes the head of evil,” said co-organizers Barry and Anthony of Guardians of the Faith, referring to the real spiritual power of Eucharistic processions explained by St. Peter Julian Eymard and other saints.
“The snakes which Saint Patrick cast out were only a symbolic term for the pagan spirits. Now, like St. Patrick, our bishops are leading the way in helping people to recognize more and more the spiritual battle which we’re all a part of, as Saint Paul tells us in Ephesians 6.”
Barry marveled at the “unbelievable” turnout in Derry, where the faithful began with Holy Mass at St. Mary’s Chapel, which “is the heart of the troubles in Northern Ireland.”
“It was one of the holiest, most reverent Masses that I’ve ever attended. The majority received on tongue. There was a reverence in the chapel that was incredible,” Barry told LifeSiteNews.
A stream of about 6,000 faithful proceeded to pray the rosary, sing hymns, and carry banners depicting the Blessed Mother and Christ the King as they accompanied Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, who was announced through the streets with the chime of bells and the peal of bagpipe music.
The Derry procession, which was joined by the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, Sisters of the Home of the Mother, 33 Knights of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and many Irish prayer groups ended with Benediction and the Holy Rosary at the Gasyard, “where bloody Sunday happened.”
“It was monumental,” Barry said. Several hundred thousand people at the Our Lady of Fatima shrine, thousands at the Our Lady of Lourdes shrine, and 13 other prominent shrines joined in unity with Ireland with Eucharistic processions, as did parishes in Canada, India, Dubai, Nigeria, Uganda, France, Poland, Germany, Spain, the United States, and other countries. The event was streamed live and was watched by over 23,000.
This is the third worldwide Eucharistic procession that Barry has helped organize after an initial local procession in Derry that marked the first time in 400 years that the Eucharist had been carried through the city. He believes at least some of the fruits of these processions have already been seen in Ireland and around the world.
“Last week, our Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin, reconsecrated Ireland to the Immaculate Heart seven days before the procession,” Barry said. “I believe it’s the fruit of all the processions happening together.”
He pointed out that last year, after the first worldwide Eucharistic procession was held in February, their archbishop reconsecrated Ireland to the Sacred Heart in June. They held another worldwide Eucharistic procession in November. “And the U.S. bishops decided to consecrate America to the Sacred Heart for the first time ever,” only two days before the global Marian procession, Barry noted.
“I think personally that because this is a public declaration and an explosion of Eucharistic Marian revival, synchronized throughout the world, (it) can only pour down super-abundant graces on the land for those that participate in it,” Barry told LifeSite.
“This is Mary’s Blue Army rising up,” he declared.
Some believe that these Eucharistic processions, based in Derry, Northern Ireland, are a fulfillment of a prophecy of St. Patrick about a revival of faith in Ireland, signified by a light shining from the land. In one account of St. Patrick’s life, from the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911, the saint is said to have seen “the whole of Ireland lit up with the brightest rays of Divine Faith,” which “continued for centuries,” and then “little by little, the religious glory faded away, until, in the course of centuries, it was only in the remotest valleys that some glimmer of its light remained.”
As St. Patrick prayed that the light would never be extinguished, he was told by an angel that his apostolate would never end and saw the remnants of light grow in brightness “until once more all the hills and valleys of Ireland were lit up in their pristine splendour, and then the angel announced to St. Patrick: ‘Such shall be the abiding splendour of Divine truth in Ireland.’”
According to tradition, St. Patrick saw a light shine specifically from the north of Ireland after this waning of the faith, to then spread throughout the whole country, and then through Europe and the world, Barry shared.
He believes that the worldwide processions are going to give the laity more confidence to organize Eucharistic processions as well as give clergy the “confidence to come out and join in.”
“Like every good book and every good movie: To be continued,” he teased.
