The Children Froze in Place… Then Our Lady of Revelation Appeared

In today’s episode of Advent Daily, we revisit the miraculous events at Tre Fontane, where three children witnessed the Virgin Mary in a burst of supernatural light. Their father—bitter toward the Church and lost in spiritual darkness—never expected that this apparition would ignite one of the most dramatic Catholic conversions ever recorded.

As the children knelt in awe, the Lady in white appeared before them, radiant and peaceful. This encounter with Our Lady of Revelation shattered years of hostility in their father’s heart and revealed the mercy, truth, and maternal intercession of Mary in a profound way.

Transcript

A man in Rome buys a dagger with the words engraved upon it, "Death to the Pope." The plan is set. The hatred, it's real, and nothing, he thinks, can stop him. Until days before the attack, when his three children wander into a grotto and kneel down and suddenly cannot move, as if the earth itself is holding them in place. Their father rushes to them. He lifts, pulls, strains, but not even the smallest child will budge. Something unseen is gripping them with absolute force. Then a burst of white blinding light fills the area, and the children raise their eyes up and they whisper, "A beautiful lady." What happens in that moment just doesn't stop an assassination. It shatters the darkness that fueled it. This is the story of an apparition that stopped an assassin. Welcome to episode 9 of Advent Daily, where we are exploring Mary and apparitions in preparation for Christmas. To understand how an assassination attempt ever entered this man's mind, we need to understand the world he came from. He grew up in poverty, moved from job to job, and carried deep wounds from a difficult, unstable past. Those wounds hardened into resentment, especially towards the Catholic Church. People he trusted had let him down and he came to see the church as part of the betrayal. That resentment deepened when he fought in the Spanish Civil War on the anti-clerical Republican side. There he witnessed hatred of the church firsthand and absorbed it into his own heart. But the turning point came later when a 7th Day Adventist preacher began teaching him that the pope was the enemy of scripture, a deceiver, someone who had to be opposed. And he believed it completely. His distrust of the church grew into an open hostility, a hostility strong enough that he spoke openly about it. And eventually that hostility focused on one man, the pope himself, which is what drove him to purchase a dagger engraved with these words, death to the pope. He believed that striking at the pope would strike at the church he despised. But before he could act, something would happen that no ideology, no bitterness, and no human plan could have ever prepared him for. A few days before he planned to strike, something completely ordinary happened. He decided to take his children on a simple Saturday outing, a picnic near the eucalyptus grove of Tontaine, just outside of Rome. It wasn't a religious place to him. It wasn't symbolic, just a quiet hillside where the children could play. While he gathered his thoughts and sorted through the bitterness he had carried for years, the children ran ahead, laughing, exploring the wooded hillside. He followed slowly behind, lost in his own thoughts. Thoughts filled with bitterness. And a plan he believed would strike at the church he despised. But then something happened that snapped him out of his thoughts entirely. The children wandered toward a small rocky area, knelt down on the ground, and suddenly went silent. He called out to them. No answer. And at first he thought they were playing a trick until he stepped closer and saw where they were looking. Their eyes were fixed upward, wide, unblinking, as if they were seeing something far above anything he could imagine. He shouted for them to get up. They didn't move, not even a flinch. And that was the moment in his life that everything began to crack. He rushed towards them, calling their names, but the children didn't move. Not a blink, not a twitch. It was as if time itself had stopped around them. He reached for the youngest child first, thinking maybe he was fainting or frightened or simply refusing to listen. Then he slipped his hands under the child's arms and pulled upward hard. Nothing. The child didn't budge as if the ground itself were gripping him. A wave of fear swept over him. He tried again harder and felt the same resistance like an invisible force holding the child down. He moved to the next child. Same thing. The next all three were kneeling motionless, fixed to the earth with a strength no human hand could overcome. He shouted at them to get up. He begged. He even tried to lift two at once. Anything to break whatever had seized them. But nothing changed. No response, no movement, only those wide upward turned eyes staring at something he couldn't see. In that moment, the man who had spent years hardening his heart felt something he hadn't felt in a very long time. Fear.

And then just as he braced himself to try again, a sudden burst of light filled the area and the entire atmosphere changed. Something or someone had arrived. The moment he braced himself to pull the children again, the entire area exploded with light. A sudden, brilliant, blinding white light that filled the entire space. It wasn't sunlight. It wasn't a reflection. It was a radiance unlike anything he had ever seen, a light with presence. The children's faces softened, their eyes lifted higher, and then he heard them whisper, barely audible, but unmistakable. Labella Senora, the beautiful lady. He turned and there, standing above the rock, was a woman clothed in light, surrounded by a luminosity that had no earthly source. She wore a white dress and a green mantle that draped softly over her head. In her hands, she held a book, a dark book, pressed gently to her chest. He froze. His anger, his hatred, his entire plan fell away in a single instant because the woman in light spoke his deepest wound aloud. She said, "I am the virgin of revelation. You persecute me. Enough now. Enter the true fold of God." Those words shattered him. Everything he believed, everything he preached, everything he planned collapsed in one breath. She continued, "Return to the sacraments, live the gospel, honor God's church." He fell to his knees. The man who moments earlier could not move his own children, was now unable to stand in the presence of the lady, clothed in light. She revealed the truth of his life, his errors, his hostility toward the church, and called him to repentance. It was the moment that ended the assassination. Not by force, not by fear, but by an encounter that pierced through a hardened heart like nothing else could. As suddenly as the light had appeared, the paralysis vanished. The children could move, they could smile, they could play. uh they were acting normal as if nothing had happened. But their father was not the same. He remained on his knees, shaking, overwhelmed by what he had just seen and by the words that had pierced through his life. The years of anger, the hostility towards the church, the plan he believed would strike at its heart, all of it collapsed under the weight of the encounter he could not deny. He reached into his coat and pulled out the weapon he had bought for the attack, the dagger engraved with the words, "Death to the Pope." He stared at it, the symbol of everything he had carried in his heart. And then, without hesitation, he threw it away. The children watched him, the same children he had tried to lift moments earlier, now seeing their father break open in a way they had never witnessed. He wept, not from fear of punishment, but from the overwhelming realization that everything he had believed about the church had been confronted by the lady clothed in light. It was a moment of surrender, a moment when a hardened heart simply could not hold its hatred any longer. The assassination was over. The hatred that fueled it was gone. And the man who came to Trey Fontaine with violence in his heart was leaving with a burden broken and a life changed forever. After the apparition, the man, it just wasn't the same. His wife noticed, his children noticed, everybody noticed. The hostility that had shaped him for years seemed to fall away almost overnight. He spoke differently. He acted differently. And most surprising of all, he felt drawn back to the very church he had spent so long despising. He went to his wife and told her what had happened. He described the lady, the light, the message, and the moment everything inside him had broken open. She listened in disbelief at first, but saw that something in him had truly changed. And then she said the words he never expected to hear. Then let's go to confession. And he did. The man who had once planned to kill the pope now found himself kneeling before a priest, admitting everything and seeking reconciliation with the church he had rejected. From that moment forward, he began to pray again to read scripture, to attend mass, to rebuild what he had torn down in his own heart. And the story of what had happened at Tron 10 did not stay hidden for long. The children spoke about it. His wife confirmed it and soon word began to spread about the man who had seen the Virgin of Revelation. Some believed him immediately, others dismissed him. Still others were cautious, unsure what to make of a man with his past. But everyone agreed on one thing. Something extraordinary had happened. Now, it didn't take long for the news of this apparition to reach the church. A man who was openly hostile to the church is now praying and he's going to mass and he's telling everyone that he has seen the blessed virgin. The church did not rush to believe him. If anything, his past made the story more suspicious. Investigators wondered whether this was a fabrication, a delusion, or an emotional reaction to something he misunderstood. So they questioned him again and again. They spoke with his wife, his children, his friends, the people who knew him best. What they found was startling. Everyone agreed. His conversion was real. The man they had known before the apparition was gone, completely transformed. Investigators examined every detail of his account of the lady, her appearance, her clothing, including the dark book she held close to her chest, and her exact words. They compared his description with church teaching. Marry and apparitions recognized in the past and the theological meaning of the message he claimed to have received. And while the church remained cautious, very cautious, they could not deny what stood in front of them. A man who had hated the church now loved it. With the conviction of someone who had encountered something beyond explanation, one investigator famously said, "If this is a lie, it is a lie that has made a saint." The church did not immediately approve the apparition itself, but they could not ignore the evidence of a profound lasting conversion, a change so dramatic that no human argument could account for it. And so quietly at first, the devotion to the virgin of revelation began to take root. In the next years that followed, the man who once hated the church became one of the most tireless witnesses. He spoke everywhere he was invited, parishes, prayer groups, schools, sharing the message he believed the Virgin of Revelation had given him. He didn't preach politics. He didn't defend his past. He simply told the story of what he had seen, what he had heard, and how that single encounter had overturned his entire life. Crowds grew, testimonies multiplied, and devotion to the Virgin of Revelation spread quietly but steadily throughout Italy and eventually throughout the world. Over time, popes allowed that devotion to take deeper root. They permitted the construction of the shrine at Trontin, encouraged prayer there, and even met personally with the man whose life had been transformed. But even with this pastoral support, the church remained careful. It never declared the apparitions to be of supernatural origin, only that the fruits of conversion were undeniable. His conversion itself became one of the strongest pieces of evidence that something extraordinary had happened, not a vision sought after, not an experience manufactured, but a man stopped in his tracks and turned around by an encounter he never expected. He spent the rest of his life living out the message he believed he had received. returned to the sacraments, lived the gospel, and remained faithful to the church he once rejected. And so, decades after the light faded, its echo remains, not in grand miracles or global declarations, but in a single life turned completely around. A reminder that even the hardest heart can be reached in a moment of grace.

So, how is this applicable to us? Well, this man Bruno, he hated the church. He hated what it stood for. And our lady found him and transformed his heart. Now, maybe I'm guessing you can't relate like Bruno to hatred of the church because you're you're journeying with us. But maybe maybe like me, you see the state of the church and sometimes you get angry. angry in an an unhealthy way, maybe even bitter when you think about what's unfolded in the last number of years within the church. Uh sometimes we can get stuck in that. So what can we do? Well, we can ask our lady of Revelation's intercession. She found Bruno stuck in caged caged in in bitterness towards the church and she broke him out. Our Lady can do that with our hearts. When it's we're stuck in anger and bitterness towards the church, by her intercession, she can break us out. Maybe this relates to you. Maybe not. But sometimes I wonder in these videos who I am really preaching to. You or myself? In any case, our Lady of Revelation, pray for us.