“The Church will be in eclipse; the world will be in dismay. Who will be the Victor if God does not shorten the duration of the test?”
Francoise Melanie was born on November 7, 1831, in Corps, France, and was the 4th of 10 children to Pierre, a stonemason, and Julie Barnaud who mistreated Melanie. Her father took whatever job he could find in order to support his family but they were so poor that the young were sometimes sent to beg on the street. She never attended school and did not have religious instruction.
Maximin was born on August 26, 1835, in the same town, and was the youngest of 2 to Germain Giraud, a wheelwright, and Anne-Marie Templier. His mother died when he was 17 months old and his father remarried, but his new wife neglected him and so he grew up spending much of his time with carefree abandon, roaming the streets. He never attended school, and his family was not religious.
At the age of 14, Melanie had been hired out to tend to cattle, several kilometers out from the town, where she met Maximin Giraud who was 11. He was boisterous, fickle, and outgoing, and she was sullen, melancholic, and not talkative.
Several days after having become friends, on September 19, 1846, at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, at the top of a mountain, they both beheld in a resplendent light a “beautiful lady” clad in ornate dress. Our Lady passed on messages which the children were “to deliver to all her people”. This included 2 separate secrets for each of the children.
The local bishop approved the apparition in 1851, and the children were persuaded to write down information the Virgin Mary had given them. The secrets weren’t revealed until they were relentlessly pestered so that it may be given to the Pope but were apparently “lost” as they revealed the sinfulness of France and the clergy and the Masonic plot to destroy Catholicism. The visionaries were disturbed by interrogations and violent threats.
At the age of 20, Melanie entered the religious life but was soon exiled from France by her bishop to England and sequestered in a Carmel for several years. She was finally able to publish the Secret as the Blessed Mother had commanded in 1878, in Italy, with the approbation of Pope Pius IX. She moved frequently, convent to convent, country to country, settling in Altamura, Italy, with her identity concealed. She was found dead in her home on December 14, 1904.
Maximin’s family passed away and he was left in the care of his stepmother’s brother. He was placed as a boarder in a convent school but soon moved around frequently and settled in the Minor Seminary of Rondeau. Like Melanie, he was constantly pestered about the secrets. He moved onto Rome and then Paris trying his vocation as a seminarian. After he failed as a medical student, he enlisted with the Corps of Papal Zouaves, who defended the Papal States and Pope. The Freemasons discovered him and tried to ruin his reputation.
He did not re-enlist and in 1870, he was drafted by the Imperial Army and assigned to Fort Barrau for a short time but then returned to his hometown. He was poor and his health was failing. He made one last pilgrimage to La Salette and on March 1, 1875, he received Last Rites and Communion just before he died.
For God’s Glory.
