First Saturday devotion: the promise of the five first Saturdays

The First Saturday devotion: five Saturdays against indifference

On the first Saturday of each month, an identical reminder appears again in the same place. The last visible entry corresponds to October 2026. The practice has a name —the First Saturday devotion— and four requirements: going to confession, receiving communion, praying a third of the rosary and dedicating fifteen minutes to meditating on the mysteries of the rosary. It is repeated on five consecutive Saturdays. The promise attached to it, dated to an apparition to Sister Lúcia dos Santos on December 10, 1925, admits no verification whatsoever: to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for the salvation of the soul.

Why five first Saturdays and not another number?

The answer that circulates attributes the number to five kinds of offense: blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception, against Mary's virginity, against her divine motherhood, against those who sow indifference or contempt toward her in children, and against those who desecrate her images. One Saturday for each type of offense. The messages accompanying the calendar also insist on an underlying idea taken from the revelations attributed to Saint Bridget of Sweden: that very few people show compassion for those sorrows, and that consoling the Virgin is left to a chosen few.

From the rosary to the dispute over the Second Vatican Council

Here the devotional reminder crosses paths with a rather far-fetched thesis. Part of the messages claims that the Church was infiltrated from the nineteenth century onward, that the last legitimate pope was Pius XII, who died in 1958, and that the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) destroyed the sacramental heart of the institution. From there they jump to apocalyptic arithmetic: seventy years from the closing of the Council, in 1965, to a final judgment they place around 2035. Everything is stated as certainty, though without a single document to support it; the personal accusations against current Church officials repeated in those messages lack any evidence.

Is the Prayer to Saint Michael still said at the end of Mass?

It depends on the parish. The Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, attributed to Leo XIII, used to be said at the end of Mass, after the blessing, and one of the messages in the thread claims that the Second Vatican Council removed it from the ordinary form of the Mass. Actual experience is more varied: some recount hearing it not long ago from a priest of about seventy, and that in the basilica he attends he is the only priest who says it. The scene sums up the tone of the calendar: little statistics and much individual persistence.

What the calendar does not say is how many people actually keep it. No one has measured real adherence to the five Saturdays —not that it matters for the stated purpose— and that absence of numbers leaves the discussion where it began: whether the First Saturday devotion is a private exercise of piety or one more trench. The next date falls again on the first Saturday of the month.