On the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, May 13, the 105th anniversary of Mary’s first appearance to the Fatima seers, children and youth around the world are invited to join in prayer and song for peace through entrustment to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

This worldwide effort is being led by the Children of the Eucharist, Young Missionaries of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the group is under the patronage of the International World Apostolate of Fatima.

Why entrustment to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in prayer and song?

“God desires it!” says Connie Schneider, president of Children of the Eucharist. Lucia wrote that Our Lady told the Fatima children, “Jesus wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. I promise salvation to those who embrace it, and these souls will be loved by God, like flowers placed by me to adorn his throne.”

What better way to reach our students, children and grandchildren than with such a promise from Our Lady?

“Jesus wishes you to make me known and loved on earth. He wishes also for you to establish devotion in the world to my Immaculate Heart.”

The entrustment prayer has been adapted into song, too, with beautiful, easy-to-sing music that has already been capturing the hearts of children, youth and adults — and doing so internationally since it was recorded earlier this year. Anna Nuzzo, international singer-songwriter and Catholic recording artist, put this Children’s Entrustment Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to music.

“Children and adults alike love it,” Schneider said. “It has the ability to resonate joy throughout the world, singing this gift of entrustment to our Immaculate Mother.” Schools like St. Josaphat Catholic School in Toronto have taken to the entrustment song immediately.

The EWTN Children’s Choir will be singing “Children Entrustment to the Immaculate Heart of Mary” during Mass on May 13. Nuzzo said she “feels very honored and excited that the EWTN Music Director Derek Kluz and Youth Choir Director Deborah Garcia really enjoy this song. They have created a new choral arrangement of it for their Youth Choir.

 

Reaching Beyond Borders

The entrustment effort is international. Antonia Salzano Acutis, the mother of Blessed Carlo Acutis, has joined her voice to this call for the world’s children and young people to unite in this entrustment. In a video interview being taped for Children of the Eucharist, Salzano encouraged everyone to live the message of Fatima and to bring about the much-promised peace in the world and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart.

“Carlo was a special devotee of the little shepherds of Fatima,” his mother said. “All his life was centered to Jesus. And (he was) very devoted to the vision of Fatima and the little shepherds.” He “would go to Mass each day” and be “praying the Rosary each day.”

She said he had two “very important signs from the little shepherds.” One was from Jacinto Marto, who told him there are no words to explain beauty of heaven and the horror of hell.

“He also had a very important sign when Sister Lucia died in 2005. Sister Lucia told Carlo in a dream that it’s very, very important, the devotion of the First Saturday of the month — that you can change the destiny of the world. So Carlo was very devoted to Fatima. In fact, the last year he was alive we went to Fatima.”

“We have heard as far away as Slovakia,” Schneider said, even though “it did get out late, especially with schools preparing to finish the school year. This is why we are hoping that parents and teachers will help take the lead on the Entrustment to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, because God desires it.”

Angela Carboni is taking care of this international effort in Canada. She has worked with Schneider since 2017, sanctioned by the World Apostolate of Fatima and leading the Children of the Eucharist in Canada. Carboni sees the blessing of this children’s entrustment in song. As founder of the St. Bernadette Family Resource Centre, she has seen the power and joy of singing this prayer.

“My daycare sings it twice a day — in the morning and afternoon before eating snacks. It’s become a theme song.” It even continues throughout the day.

“These kids are singing it all the time because they like it. It’s now spontaneous — through Our Lady, I believe. Even while playing with toys they are all singing it on their own.” It’s so easy to learn that children in even early grades “are picking it up in a minute.” In a separate program of the center, so are the intellectually and physically challenged adults. Carboni even taught her parish to sing this entrustment the week Pope Francis consecrated Russia and Ukraine. “Everything has a divine spiritual intervention,” she said.

In Toronto, Halyna Danko at St. Josaphat School, a primarily Ukrainian community, taught the song to children from kindergarten to fourth grade. The timing coincided with all that is happening in Ukraine. They were going to make a video of the children singing.

“They had only one day of practice,” Sanko said. “They all liked it, and the song got stuck in their minds.” The children added it to the daily school prayers to St. Michael and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and they say the Rosary and the Divine Mercy chaplet.

“They know everything by heart now. They learned it fast and love to pray and singing together.” She believes the song will also bring them “closer to the Blessed Mother.”

“It’s easy to remember the song, and the meaning is huge,” Carboni emphasizes. “I hope to spread it all over the world.”

“They love the refrain, ‘I am not afraid, because you are always with me,’” adds Schneider. On May 13, “These were the first words spoken by Our Lady of Fatima to the shepherds of Fatima, Please don’t be afraid.”

Schneider is trying to reach everyone in the country and beyond with the invitation. Carboni is sending the invitation and entrustment song throughout Canada and asking all different schools to teach it and join the May 13 (and continuing) entrustment effort. This invitation is also going to youth groups and churches, and a TV station has plans to videotape children singing it at Our Lady of Gratitude Shrine associated with the center.

 

Divine, Providential Timing

Nuzzo came across the Children of the Eucharist’s entrustment prayer four years ago when Schneider contacted her about an event. Finding that prayer on the website, Nuzzo “felt the Holy Spirit urging me to turn it into a song,” she said. But as it happened, she did not finish and record it until recently. “I believe it is due to God’s timing that this song is meant for the now — 2022, not 2018,” she believes. “I feel it will be a very powerful prayer by children and youth to sing this song with their pure hearts, to help bring needed hope, consolation and peace after the pandemic and with the war in Ukraine.  As St. Augustine said, ‘When you sing, you pray twice!’”

There was no second thought about teaming up with Children of the Eucharist for this May 13 and beyond.  “I naturally sent Connie the song after I finished it. Little did I know that God had planned this as the start of a beautiful and powerful new collaboration.”

Nuzzo shared that she is happily “shocked at how quickly this song has and is spreading across the world. I truly feel as if Our Lady has had her Blue Army in the International WAF and the Children of the Eucharist apostolate primed and ready to go the instant I finished composing this song. She knew it was coming and had these wonderful organizations ready to create translations and spread it worldwide very quickly!”

Nuzzo also credits Our Lady for creating her network of musician friends from locally in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to India and Florida to help complete the recording and notation. “Each individual has been crucial for every step of this journey. And I thank God and Our Lady so much for all of this.”

 

Free and Hopes for Entrustment Song

The Entrustment song has been translated from English into 11 languages. Nuzzo’s website makes available free sheet music and lyrics in English, Spanish and Italian — plus lyrics in French, Polish, Portuguese, German, Slovak, Ukrainian, Tagalog and Arabic.

For this May 13 and the continuing entrustment, Nuzzo hopes the song will “continue to be spread so all Catholic schools, churches and families around the world can sing it, and thereby fulfill God’s wish that all children who consecrate to the Immaculate Heart of Mary will gain peace, hope, joy, consolation and offer reparation for sin. And that we all grow in love and relationship with our Heavenly Mother.”

Schneider hopes for countless responses. “We humbly ask everyone who has the souls of our children and young in their care to introduce to them the Entrustment prayer and song,” she said. “Help send this prayer from our children and young people as a plea to the Queen of Peace. Prayerfully ask her intercession to put an end to the atrocities in Ukraine and to bring peace to all families and to the whole world.”

Schneider would like to see parish choir directors, school choirs and all Catholic musicians take a look at the sheet music and introduce the song to their children and young people. She adds, “We are hoping if the choirs are recorded, we would like to produce an International Video of children and youth around the world, entrusting their lives to our Immaculate Mother.”

 

Entrustment Essential

In addition, Children of the Eucharist said participation in this worldwide day can be done in a variety of ways, especially an hour of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, praying the Rosary for peace, praying or singing the Children’s Entrustment Prayer.

“Through the prayers of our children and young people we believe they can reach God’s heart in a very special way,” Carboni explained when appearing in a video message with Salzano. “As in the past apparitions all over the world, in particular Fatima, our Blessed Mother always turned to the children and young people of the world when the world was in dire straits, as it is now. It will be the children who save the world.”

During a personal interview late, she said, “The children are the ones who are going to do it. Our Lady is making it happen.”

Schneider has no doubt of what will happen if people respond. “We are looking forward filled with hope that Our Lady of Fatima will open the hearts of those who have the care of the souls of our children and young people,” she says. “It will start like a mustard seed and grow into something beautiful for God from the children and youth of the world. All from Our Lady of Fatima.”

For more information about entrustments for families, youth and children, visit Children of the Eucharist’s website — Children of the Eucharist.