Father Gobbi is a priest in the Catholic Church. On May 8th of 1972, Don Stefano Gobbi was taking part in a pilgrimage to Fatima. He was praying in the Chapel of the Apparitions when he felt an interior force urge him to have confidence in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This event led to the formation of the Marian Movement of Priests. Since then Father Gobbi believes he is receiving messages from the Blessed Mother in the form of interior locutions. These type of messages are an inner knowing inspired from Heaven, neither a voice nor a vision.

Among the many messages received since July 1973 are numerous references to end-time prophecy. Many of the interpretations of the elements match what is presented in the book Don't Worry... Be Faithful. One, though, is very different. The interpretation of the removal of the daily sacrifice. According to the Apparitions of the Blessed Mother of Jesus, the Eucharist of the Catholic Church is the sacrifice, the pure oblation, that is offered in the mass everyday throughout the world. Sometime in the future a great schism will arise in the church and one branch will except the Protestant view of the Eucharist, that it is a remembrance and not an actual sacrifice. In the view presented by the Apparitions, this downgrading of the status of the Eucharist is the removal of the daily sacrifice and will thereby fulfill prophecy. One should be cautious of this view.

Presented here are messages through Father Gobbi which interpret the end-time prophetic elements. Notice how the time elements are taken literally while many of the symbols are interpreted.

When they will say: 'Tranquillity and security,' then could begin the very greatest overthrow of peoples and individuals.

A chastisement worse than the flood is about to come upon this poor and perverted humanity. Fire will descend from Heaven and this will be the sign that the justice of God has as of now fixed the hour of His great manifestation. ... Even now, that which I predicted at Fatima and that which I have revealed here in the third message confided to a little daughter of mine is in the process of being accomplished. And so, even for the Church the moment of its great trail has come, because the man of iniquity will establish himself within it and the abomination of desolation will enter into the holy temple of God.

The Holy Spirit will come, to establish the glorious reign of Christ ... With his divine love, He will open the doors of hearts and illuminate all consciences. Every person will see himself in the burning fire of divine Truth. It will be like a judgment in miniature. And then Jesus Christ will bring his glorious reign in the world.

The heart of the Pope is bleeding today because of one Bishop of the holy Church of God who, through an arbitrary episcopal ordination carried out against his will, is opening up a painful schism in the Catholic Church.

In this terrible struggle, there comes up from the sea, to the aid of the Dragon, a beast like a leopard. If the Red Dragon is Marxist atheism, the black beast is Freemasonry. The Dragon manifests himself in the force of his power; the black beast on the other hand acts in the shadow, ... He has the claws of a bear and the mouth of a lion. ... The seven heads indicate the various Masonic lodges, which act everywhere in a subtle and dangerous way. This black beast has ten horns and, on the horns, ten crowns, which are signs of dominion and royalty. ... The horn, in the biblical world, has always been an instrument of amplification, ... For this reason, God communicated his will to his people by means of ten horns which made his law known: the ten commandments. ... if the Red Dragon works to bring all humanity to do without God, to the denial of God, and therefore spreads the error of atheism, the aim of Masonry is not to deny God, but to blaspheme Him. ... The greatest blasphemy is that of denying the worship due God alone by giving it to creatures and to Satan himself. ... Each Masonic lodge has the task of making a different divinity adored
.[Please note: No beast colored black is mentioned in Revelation. The Apparitions have added the dimension black to this beast. This label of black was used earlier on June 29, 1983. In my view, this beast represents the rise of the end-time government of the Antichrist.]

... there comes out of the earth, by way of aid to the black beast which arises out of the sea, a beast which has two horns like those of a lamb. The lamb, in holy scripture, has always been a symbol of sacrifice. ... The beast has on its head two horns like those of a lamb. To the symbol of the sacrifice there is intimately connected that of the priesthood: the two horns. The high priest of the Old Testament wore a headpiece with two horns. The bishops of the Church wear the mitre - with two horns - to indicate the fullness of their priesthood. The black beast like a leopard indicates Freemasonry; the beast with two horns like a lamb indicates Freemasonry infiltrated into the interior of the Church, that is to say, ecclesiastical Masonry, which has spread especially among the members of the hierarchy. ... If the task of Masonry is to lead souls to perdition, bringing them to the worship of false divinities, the task of ecclesiastical Masonry on the other hand is that of destroying Christ and his Church, building a new idol, namely a false christ and a false church.

... the fall of Babylon, when the vintage of the earth will be harvested and the grapes will be cast into the wine press, which represents the great chastisement of God.

The mark on the forehead and on the hand is an expression of a total dependency on the part of those who are designated by this sign.

... I am seen as the Woman Clothed with the Sun, who has the task of fighting the Red Dragon and his powerful army, ... The twelve stars represent the twelve tribes of Israel, ...The twelve stars also signify the twelve Apostles, ...The twelve stars also signify a new reality.

'Come, Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well-beloved Spouse.' - Repeat this invocation frequently. Let it become your habitual prayer during these years which still separate you from the great jubilee of the year two thousand, ... You are drawing close to the moment when the great prodigy of the Second Pentecost will come to pass.

You are entering into the last decade of this century of yours, when the events of which I have foretold you will come to completion and when my secrets will be revealed to you.

...O Pastors of the holy Church of God! You continue along the path of division from the Pope and of rejection of his Magisterium; indeed, in a hidden way, there is in preparation a true schism which could soon become open and proclaimed.

... my Pope, John Paul II, ... Today I confirm for you that this is the Pope of my secret; the Pope about whom I spoke to the children during the apparitions; ... When this Pope will have completed the task which Jesus has entrusted to him and I will come down from heaven to receive his sacrifice, all of you will be cloaked in a dense darkness of apostasy, which will then become general.

I have announced to you many times that the end of the times and the coming of Jesus in glory is very near. Now, I want to help you understand the signs described in the Holy Scriptures, which indicate that his glorious return is now close. ... The first sign is the spread of errors, which lead to the loss of faith and to apostasy. ... 'The day of the Lord will not come unless the great apostasy comes first.' (2 Thes 2,3) ... The second sign is the outbreak of wars and fratricidal struggles, which lead to the prevalence of violence and hatred and ... natural catastrophes ... The third sign is the bloody persecution of those who remain faithful to Jesus and to his Gospel and who stand fast in the true faith. ... The fourth sign is the horrible sacrilege, perpetrated by him who sets himself against Christ, that is, the Antichrist. He will enter into the holy temple of God and will sit on his throne, and have himself adored as God. 'This one will oppose and exalt himself against everything that men adore and call God. ...' (2 Thes 2,4.9) ... 'One day, you will see in the holy place he who commits the horrible sacrilege. The prophet Daniel spoke of this. Let the reader seek to understand.' (Mt 24,15) ... 'Now, from the moment that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the horrible abomination is set up, there shall be one thousand two hundred and ninety days. ...' (Dn 12,9-12) The Holy Mass is the daily sacrifice, the pure oblation which is offered to the Lord everywhere, from the rising of the sun to its going down. The sacrifice of the Mass renews that which was accomplished by Jesus on Calvary. By accepting the protestant doctrine, people will hold that the Mass is not a sacrifice but only a sacred meal, that is to say, a remembrance of that which Jesus did at His Last Supper. And thus, the celebration of Holy Mass will be suppressed. In this abolition of the daily sacrifice consists the horrible sacrilege accomplished by the Antichrist, which will last about 3½ years, namely, 1,290 days. The fifth sign consists in extraordinary phenomena, ... sun ... moon ... stars ... [are darkened]

I confirm to you that, by the great jubilee of the year two thousand, there will take place the triumph of my Immaculate Heart, of which I foretold you at Fatima, and this will come to pass with the return of Jesus in glory, to establish his Reign in the world. Thus you will at last be able to see with your own eyes the new heavens and the new earth.

My secret concerns the Church. In the Church, the great apostasy, which will spread throughout the whole world, will be brought to its completion; the schism will take place through a general alienation from the Gospel and from the true faith. There will enter into the Church the man of iniquity, who opposes himself to Christ, and who will bring into her interior the abomination of desolation, thus bringing to fulfillment the horrible sacrilege, of which the prophet Daniel has spoken.

The Issue of the Sacrifice of the Mass

Controversy has surrounded the Catholic assertion that the Lord's Supper, as performed in their church, is a sacrifice. The theological concerns with this doctrine are best explained by Martin Luther, the one who made the historic attack upon this position. The following quote comes from pages 107-8 and 156 of the 1961 edition of Here I Stand. A Life of Martin Luther by Roland H. Bainton.

But Luther's rejection of the five sacraments might even have been tolerated had it not been for the radical transformation which he effected in the two which he retained. ...

Most serious of all was Luther's reduction of the mass to the Lord's Supper. The mass is central for the entire Roman Catholic system because the mass is believed to be a repetition of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion. When the bread and wine are transubstantiated, God again becomes flesh and Christ again dies upon the altar. This wonder can be performed only by priests empowered through ordination. Inasmuch as this means of grace is administered exclusively by their hands, they occupy a unique place within the Church; and because the Church is the custodian of the body of Christ, she occupies a unique place in society.

Luther did not attack the mass in order to undermine the priests. His concerns were always primarily religious and only incidentally ecclesiastical or sociological. His first insistence was that the sacrament of the mass must be not magical but mystical, not the performance of a rite but the experience of a presence. This point was one of several discussed with Cajetan at the interview. The cardinal complained of Luther's view that the efficacy of the sacrament depends upon the faith of the recipient. The teachings of the Church is that the sacraments cannot be impaired by any human weakness, be it the unworthiness of the performer or the indifference of the receiver. The sacrament operates by virtue of a power within itself ex opere operato. In Luther's eyes such a view made the sacrament mechanical and magical. He, too, had no mind to subject it to human frailty and would not concede that he had done so by positing the necessity of faith, since faith is itself a gift from God, but this faith is given by God when, where, and to whom he will and even without the sacrament is efficacious; whereas the reverse is not true, that the sacrament is of efficacy without faith. 'I may be wrong on indulgences, declared Luther, 'but as to the need for faith in the sacraments I will die before I will recant.' This insistence upon faith diminished the role of the priests who may place a wafer in the mouth but cannot engender faith in the heart.

The second point made by Luther was that the priest is not in a position to do that which the Church claims in the celebration of the mass. He does not 'make God,' and he does not 'sacrifice Christ.' The simplest way of negating this view would have been to say that God is not present and Christ is not sacrificed, but Luther was ready to affirm only the latter. Christ is not sacrificed because his sacrifice was made once for all upon the cross, but God is present in the elements because Christ, being God, declared, 'This is my body.' The repetition of these words by the priest, however, does not transform the bread and wine into the body and blood of God, as the Catholic Church holds. The view called transsubstantiation was that the elements retain their accidents of shape, taste, color, and so on, but lose their substance, for which is substituted the substance of God. Luther rejected this position less on rational than on biblical grounds. Both Erasmus and Melanchthon before him had pointed out that the concept of substance is not biblical but a scholastic sophistication. For that reason Luther was averse to its use at all, and his own view should not be called consubstantiation. The sacrament for him was not a chunk of God fallen like a meteorite from heaven. God does not need to fall from heaven because he is everywhere present throughout his creation as a sustaining and animating force, and Christ as God is likewise universal, but his presence is hid from human eyes. For that reason God has chosen to declare himself unto mankind at three loci of revelation. The first is Christ, in whom the Word was made flesh. The second is Scripture, where the Word uttered is recorded. The third is the sacrament, in which the Word is manifest in food and drink. The sacrament does not conjure up God as the witch of Endor but reveals him where he is.

Next came the reform of the liturgy, ...

Luther laid the theoretical groundwork for the most significant changes. His principle was that the mass is not a sacrifice but a thanksgiving to God and a communion with believes. It is not a sacrifice in the sense of placating God, because he does not need to be placated; and it is not an oblation in the sense of something offered, because man cannot offer to God, but only receive. What then should be done with such expressions in the mass as 'this holy sacrifice,' 'this oblation,' 'these offerings'? In The Babylonian Captivity, Luther had interpreted them figuratively, but at the Wartburg he came to the more drastic conception: 'The words of the canon are plain; the words of Scripture are plain. Let the canon yield to the gospel.' The liturgy then would have to be revised.

Biblical Concerns with the Sacrifice of the Mass

Hebrews 9:24-28 seems to have been written to warn against any interpretation that involves a recurring sacrifice of Jesus.

For Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands, a copy of the true one, but heaven itself, that he might now appear before God on our behalf. Not that he might offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters each year into the sanctuary with blood that is not his own; if that were so, he would have had to suffer repeatedly from the foundation of the world. But now once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages to take away sin by his sacrifice. Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment, so also Christ, offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to take away sin but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him.

In reference to the Catholic Church's assertion that only priests ordained by the church can perform the rite of transubstantiation, Malachi 2:4-7 makes the point that for a priest to be a pure vessel he simply must follow the law and be an upright person.

I have a covenant with Levi, says the LORD of hosts. My covenant with him was one of life and peace; fear I put in him, and he feared me, and stood in awe of my name. True doctrine was in his mouth, and no dishonesty was found upon his lips; He walked with me in integrity and in uprightness, and turned many away from evil. For the lips of the priest are to keep knowledge, and instruction is to be sought from his mouth, because he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.

Malachi also shows (in 1:11) that it is possible to bring an acceptable sacrifice and pure offering to the Lord even outside the church, for in Malachi's time the nations around Israel brought a better offering to the Lord than did Israel itself.

For from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, my name is great among the nations; And everywhere they bring sacrifice to my name, and a pure offering; For great is my name among the nations, says the LORD of hosts.
[It is interesting that the Catholic church sees the Eucharist as fulfillment of this passage.]

Lack of Fulfillment

In addition to the theological and biblical concerns, there is the issue of lack of fulfillment. The message from Dec 5, 1994 makes a commitment to the Second Coming by the year 2000. If that is the case, then we should have seen the fulfillment of the midpoint of Daniel's 70th Week in the spring of 1997. We did not, so there is a problem with the messages of Father Gobbi.

Due to these concerns, the source of Father Gobbi's messages must be brought into question. Therefore, his messages will be set aside as not a reliable source of inspiration from Heaven.