The Munich Mariensäule with the Fatima Madonna at the Drachensee in Furth im Wald, as a sign of hope in the fight against the dragon!

Pope Benedict XVI was elected on 19 April 2005. He was born in Bavaria, which is Mary's country, and even today, His Holiness remains an Honorary Professor at the University of Regensburg. The Drachensee lies in the Diocese of Regensburg, which is represented by the parish of the Assumption of Our Lady
("Maria Himmelfahrt")Furth im Wald.

We may recall that during the distress of the First World War, King Ludwig III of Bavaria and his Queen turned to Pope Benedict XV and asked him to declare the Mother of God to be Patroness of Bavaria and to permit the celebration of a feast under this title.

Pope Benedict XV accepted this request in a Decree published on April 26, 1916. He declared that the feast should be celebrated for the first time on 14 May 1917.

One day before this, on 13 May 1917, Our Lady appeared in Fatima to the children Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco and gave them this charge: "Pray the Rosary every day, for peace in the world and the end of the war!"

If we look at Fatima in Western Europe and Communism in Eastern Europe as two army camps drawn up against each other, we see that the battle will take place in the centre. Lenin, who hated God, wrote in the revolutionary periodical Iskra in Petersburg in 1917: "The fate of Europe will be decided at the Mariensäule in Munich." But things turned out differently: on 8 December 1991, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the Soviet Union disintegrated.

Seventeen years later, the town of Furth im Wald and the Drachensee are in the centre of the European Union - something that surely no one in 1917 would ever have thought possible. The twelve stars of the European Union flag symbolize "perfection and completion," and this is why the number of the stars is independent of the number of the member states.

The number of twelve stars points us to the Bible, where the twelve Apostles are the foundation on which Christ founded his Church. The prophecy of the woman clothed with the sun, with a crown of twelve stars on her head, can be interpreted as a symbol of the success and triumph of the Virgin of Fatima over the red dragon (Revelation 12:1).