(LifeSiteNews) — One of the most important things that we can do is reclaim our towns and countries for Christ the King and Our Lady as Queen of Heaven and Earth. This is all the more important given where the culture wars stand at the moment.

Joining me for this episode of The John-Henry Westen Show is Daniel Potvin, who returns to discuss some of the things that inspired him to establish the Knights of St. John Paul II, a group of men who go in pairs around their towns praying the Rosary to reclaim them for Jesus and Mary.

Speaking to claiming towns for Jesus and Mary, Potvin explains that since they are already the King and Queen of the Universe, they already have a dominion over everything, and we are in a sense princes, and thus our towns belong to us also. He also says, however, that our towns are, for the most part, overrun. Referencing Fr. Richard Heilman, Potvin says that someone needs to stand in the breach.

“I’m not saying this is the end-all, be-all,” he says of the Knights. “There’s other ways to fight, but this is a great way to fight against the forces that are pushing up against us and taking over the place.”

The group meets every Saturday to pray and do their Rosary walks, and Potvin finds the camaraderie it’s developed to be something “edifying.” Describing the group’s activities, Potvin tells me that while there are normally eight to 12 men involved, the Knights offer each other counsel for problems, a “fruit” that he did not anticipate. He is also thankful that the group took off the way it did; he originally envisioned two Knights per town.

Speaking to what inspired him to establish the Knights, Potvin discusses a “prophecy” from then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyła in a talk he gave at Philadelphia in 1976 for the International Eucharistic Congress. In the talk, the future St. John Paul II stated that the Church was entering the “final confrontation” between the Church and the anti-Church, the Gospel and the anti-gospel, and between Christ and the Antichrist.

For Potvin, while there were “signs” that such was the case when the future pontiff spoke, “it’s unrolling fast right now,” such that even secular people are noticing a problem. He also recalls the words of Our Lord in Luke 10, when Christ sent out the seventy-two, and his own thought of the “full force of the enemy.” We discussed both concepts when he last appeared on the show in October.

Expounding on the concept of the “full force of the enemy,” Potvin explains that it represents the “brain of the Antichrist,” something any baptized and confirmed Catholic can take up, just as Our Lord told the Apostles in Luke 10 that they could pick up serpents. Providentially, Potvin came up with these ideas towards the end of summer in 2019, just before the COVID scare and the World Economic Forum (WEF) agenda entered the limelight.

“To see that God chose to put me in this time, put you in this time, have us born here, we get to fight against this cause it is breathing down on us,” he tells me. Connecting the thought to that of St. Louis de Montfort, Potvin notes that the Marian saint asserted that the saints of the last days would dwarf the cedars of Lebanon.

Potvin and I also discuss the other inspirations for the Knights, The Lord of the Rings, and St. Joan of Arc.

Potvin recalls that he got addicted to The Lord of the Rings films after his sons asked him if they could see them. He took Joseph Pierce’s six-part Catholic course on the series and heard a talk by Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft on it as well. Potvin relates that he was inspired by the characters’ quest to fight evil, and likens the Knights to the Fellowship of the Ring, a group that consisted of nine people who volunteered to fight the evil Sauron, a figure representing the devil.

He also maintains that the series is prophetic. “Everything about that movie is happening right now,” Potvin asserts. “We are living, real time, the Lord of the Rings. Darkness is enveloping the earth, and our little fellowship in my town, your town, we’re going out, and we’re like, ‘Hey!’” Potvin also observes that while the hobbits in the series are not trained to fight, they desire to fight, calling himself a hobbit in that regard.

Discussing St. Joan of Arc, Potvin says that she is “creeping her way into the Knights for some reason.” Recalling the story of a banner of St. Joan he brought to Washington, D.C., he explains that he brought it with him to a Rosary rally there and gave it to Sr. Deidre Byrne, maintaining that the sister has the “spirit” of St. Joan, namely that of a warrior. In Stockbridge, Massachusetts, meanwhile, he was given a wrapped bag by one of the brothers at the Divine Mercy Shrine after the fact, with instructions not to open it until he got home. When he did, he saw a note that said that St. Joan would be the “mascot” of the Knights.

Potvin also explains that he recently began reading Mark Twain’s biography of the saint, in which it is written that someone in her court proceedings that said the saint would be “more influential in the later days then in her time in France.”

“The truth is we are all born for these times, because God put us here,” Potvin explains, referencing a quote attributed to St. Joan of Arc. “But she’s popping up more and more in that sense. Just that quote is spreading all over. I see it on podcasts all the time. Everybody’s using it. And who’s behind that quote? Saint Joan.”

We close the interview with a discussion on an incident that happened to Potvin in November 2021.

While working late one day, he broke both bones in one of his legs. He was on a hillside and had trouble getting back to his equipment. While attempting to climb the hillside, it occurred to him about 15 or 20 times to stop and rest, even though he knew he would succumb to hypothermia. What kept him going, however, was the thought that he was going to miss the “biggest battle the world’s ever seen,” prompting him to pray to Sts. Joseph and Michael for help.

When he was in the hospital recovering from his injuries, he told his future son-in-law about the incident. The man, a Marine, told Potvin about the “40 percenters,” a rule discovered by the Marines which states that when people think they need to give up, they’re only at 40 percent of what they can actually take.

“I tell this to people a lot because I think the times we’re heading into, a lot of us are going to find ourselves, I’ll probably find myself at that point again, and to have knowledge that you’re only at 40 percent, and you can keep going, I think that’s an important point these days,” he says.

For more from Daniel Potvin, tune in to this episode of The John-Henry Westen Show.

The John-Henry Westen Show is available by video on the show’s YouTube channel and right here on my LifeSite blog.

It is also available in audio format on platforms such as Spotify, Soundcloud, and Acast. We are awaiting approval for iTunes and Google Play as well. To subscribe to the audio version on various channels, visit the Acast webpage here.

We’ve created a special email list for the show so that we can notify you every week when we post a new episode. Please sign up now by clicking here. You can also subscribe to the YouTube channel, and you’ll be notified by YouTube when there is new content.

You can send me feedback, or ideas for show topics by emailing [email protected].