The Omen of The Vatican Lightning Strikes

The Catholic website SPIRIT DAILY

It keeps rolling on: the implications, the signs, the symbols.

There was the lightning.
This is something that has always carried a spiritual connotation. Satan was seen (by Jesus) as falling like a bolt (Luke 10:18), and the meteorological phenomenon always has seemed a bit spooky -- the backdrop for countless suspense movies, for hauntings, a time during which the spiritual seems energized.

On February 11, 2013, it struck St. Peter's Basilica, twice.

It was just hours (around six p.m. Rome local time) after news broke that Benedict XVI was nearly immediately leaving the papacy.

The world was, yes, "thunderstruck."

We have seen it ourselves -- usually at times of decision or danger, sometimes appearing to indicate the presence of evil, other moments emphasizing some act within the Church. It was thunder that was heard during the apparitions at Lourdes (which were commemorated Monday -- the day of the Pope's announcement). It was thunder and a flash of lightning that introduced the Blessed Mother's first appearance at Fatima in 1917.

Affirming -- or an attack from the devil?

It seems it can be either, or none of the above. There are simple charges of atmospheric electricity.

At the same time, Fatima was also preceded the night before by a vicious storm. The same occurred in the hamlet of Medjugorje, when the night before Mary's first reported apparition lightning struck with such force (damaging the village's post office and first disco) that villagers rushed to the streets to sprinkle Holy Water the night before those reputed apparitions. We encountered unforgettable thunder on the mountain of LaSalette in France (where Mary appeared in 1846) as well as in Medjugorje (where lightning was so bright it even came through the shuttered windows). In Toronto, an incredible lightning bolt was once photographed hitting a cemetery dedicated to St. Michael.

See also:  As Predicted in PETRUS ROMANUS: Pope Benedict XVI Resigns