he Marian Movement of Priests (MMP) is intimately connected with Fatima and its message.  On May 8^th, 1972, while praying in the Chapel of the Apparitions at Fatima, Rev. Fr. Stefano Gobbi, an Italian priest from Milan, felt an interior call to start The Marian Movement of Priests. 

He had been praying for some priests who, besides having personally given up their own vocation, were attempting to organise themselves against the Church’s authority. 

The MMP would rally around the Pope priests willing to accept Mary’s invitation, and form with them a powerful cohort endowed with the strength that springs from silence, from prayer, from suffering, and from constant fidelity to one’s duties. 

Reassured by an unmistakable sign that it was God’s will, and with the approval of his spiritual director, Fr Gobbi and two other priests launched the Movement on October 13^th, 1972.  It was exactly 55 years since the stupendous miracle of the Sun at Fatima had underlined the importance and urgency of the message Our Lady had been commissioned to bring to earth. 

After overcoming, the initial timidity, the movement soon spread, silently yet irresistibly, to every part of the world.  More than 60,000 priests have already enrolled, including many cardinals and bishops. 

Thus it can be said that today the MMP is the only international movement for priests.