Let us pray to Mary Queen of Nations, with Saint Louis

Saint Louis had wished to die on a Saturday (a day dedicated to the Virgin Mary) and this grace was granted to him by Mary: it was on Saturday, August 25, that she received him and crowned him in Paradise. The Pope had previously addressed this beautiful letter to him:

"God, whom the celestial legions obey, having established different kingdoms here on earth according to the diversity of languages and climates, has conferred on a great number of governments special missions for the accomplishment of his designs. And as in the past he preferred the tribe of Judah to those of the other sons of Jacob, and as he bestowed special blessings upon it, so he chose France in preference to all the other nations of the earth for the protection of the Catholic faith and for the defense of religious liberty.

For this reason, France is the very kingdom of God, and the enemies of France are the enemies of Christ. For this reason, God loves France because he loves the Church which spans the centuries and recruits legions for eternity. God loves France, which no effort has ever been able to detach entirely from the divine cause. God loves France, where at no time has the faith lost its vigor, where kings and soldiers have never hesitated to face perils and to give their blood for the preservation of the faith and of religious liberty." Letter from Pope Gregory IX to King Saint Louis addressed in 1230.

This letter was recalled by Pope St. Pius X on December 13, 1908, during the beatification of Joan of Arc. It was received with a holy fervor by an anticlerical government, gathered at Saint Peter's in Rome for the occasion.

Today's France is far, far from deserving the beautiful title of Eldest Daughter of the Church conferred upon her by the Roman Pontiffs. But could Mary, our Mother, abandon even a single one of her daughters among the nations to her errors? 

Let us also remember the prophecy of St. Pius X precisely about the eldest daughter: "Her faults will not go unpunished, but she will never perish, the daughter of so many merits, of so many sighs and so many tears" (St. Pius X, November 29, 1911).

Marian Encyclopedia