The Day The Sun Danced

In 1917, in Fatima, Portugal, the Virgin Mary appeared to three illiterate, peasant children. She showed them a vision of hell and warned that if Russia was not converted and consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart, that country would spread its errors around the world. The last apparition on October 13, 1917, was accompanied by a strange event: the sun danced in the sky! Before an estimated seventy thousand people gathered in an open field, it zigzagged overhead and appeared to be rushing toward the crowd. There was no screaming, no panic and no stampede. Scientific instruments around the world, failed to record this terrifying event. It became known as the "Miracle of the Sun." More than a century has passed and the Vatican has yet to proclaim it a miracle. Nevertheless, these apparitions with its anti-Russian message were shamelessly used by the Catholic Church as a rallying war cry against Russia and its purported godlessness.

Part religious-political treatise, but mostly, history, The Day The Sun Danced, traces the history that for centuries, saw Christians slaughter fellow Christians across Europe -- the cradle of Christianity, in the firm belief, that God was on their side. From the time of the Crusades to Martin Luther's nailing of his ninety-five theses, to the Holocaust, to World War II, the Cold War and beyond, author Leslie Michael pays special attention to the role Christianity played in the rise of Hitler. Pope Pius XII was not Hitler's Pope. He firmly believed Jews were the architect of their own misfortune. Instead of accepting Christ as their Lord, they murdered him - and Hitler was taking good care of them. Pius XII had his own agenda. Godless Communism was not his sole concern. He agonized over the division between the Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. It was his fervent hope that "Operation Barbarossa" the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union, joined by several Eastern European nations, would form a "Christian Crusade" that would would wipe out those godless communists and faithless Jews from the face of Europe. That country would be conquered, converted to Catholicism and consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, thus fulfilling the promises of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima -- and seeing Pope Pius XII emerge as the Supreme head of all Christendom.