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On 8/31/41, Sr Lucia wrote her 3rd memoir elucidating some details of Jacinta’s life. In this 3rd memoir, Sr Lucia for the 1st time mentioned that the Secret was in 3 distinct parts. She wrote,
"The Secret is composed of three distinct parts, and I shall disclose two of them."
The first is the vision of hell and the designation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as the supreme remedy offered by God to humanity for the salvation of souls. Our Lady said,
"In order to save them, God wishes to establish in the
world devotion to My Immaculate Heart."
The second is the great prophecy concerning a miraculous peace which God wishes to grant to the world through the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the practice of communions of reparation on the 1st Saturdays of the month.
"If people attend to my requests, Russia will be converted
and the world will have peace."
And there is also the great announcement of terrible punishments if people persist in not obeying her requests. Sr Lucia stated that at that time she was not permitted to reveal the 3rd part of the secret.
Bishop da Silva was given permission to read it, but he did not want the responsibility. He tried to get it to the Holy Office, but Rome refused to receive it. It was then agreed that if Bishop da Silva happened to die, the envelope would be entrusted to Cardinal Cerejeira, the Patriarch of Lisbon.
In 1957 the Holy Office demanded the text of the 3rd secret, which until then had been kept at the palace of the bishop of Leira. The auxiliary Bishop Venancio was entrusted with the delivery of the sealed document to Bishop Cento, then Apostolic Nuncio to Lisbon.
On 4/16/57, the sealed envelope arrived in Rome. It was placed in the office of Pope Pius XII, in a little chest bearing the note, "Secret of the Holy Office".
It appears that Pope Pius XII did not read the secret. According to Cardinal Ottaviani and Monsignor Capovilla, secretary of Pope John XXIII, the envelope was still sealed when Pope John XXIII opened it in 1959, one year after the death of Pope Pius XII. Pope Pius XII had apparently decided to wait until 1960. He died on 10/9/58 without having read it.
In 1957, Sr Lucia confided to Fr Fuentes:
"The Most Holy Virgin has told me that the devil is about to engage in a decisive battle against the Virgin... and the devil knows what most offendsGod, and what will make him gain the most souls in the shortest possible time, he does everything to win consecrated souls from God, for in this manner he will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful defenseless, and so he will lay hold of them more easily."
On 12/25/57, Sr Lucia told Fr Fuentes, the Postulator of the beatification causes of Jacinta and Francisco:
"The Blessed Virgin is very sad, for no one attaches any importance to her message. Neither the good nor the bad. The good continue on their way, but without paying attention to the message. I cannot give any other details, since it is still a secret. Only the Holy Father and His Excellency, the Bishop of Fatima would be able to know it in accordance with the will of the Blessed Virgin. But they haven’t willed to know it as they did not want to be influenced."
In 1959 there was a great wave of devotion in all Italy to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On 9/13/59 all the bishops of Italy solemnly consecrated Italy to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
On 8/17/59 Pope John XXIII had the envelope brought to him at Castelgandolfo, by Mosignor Philippe, then an official of the Holy Office. Pope John XXIII did not immediately open the envelope but stated:
"I am waiting to read it with my confessor."
The secret was read a few days later, according to Monsignor Capovilla. Assistance in reading the Portuguese was given by Monsignor Paulo Jose Tavarezof the Secretariat of State. Later John XXIII had it read by Cardinal Ottaviani, Prefect of the Holy Office. On 2/8/60 it was suddenly learned through a simple Portuguese press agency communiqué that the 3rd secret of Fatima would not be published, and that it probably never would be disclosed. The Vaticancommuniqué ended:
"Although the Church recognizes the Fatima apparitions, She does not desire to take the responsibility of guaranteeing the veracity of the words the three shepherd children said that the Virgin Mary had addressed to them."
Bishop Venancio, on his own initiative, decided to launch an appeal to all the bishops of the world and attempted to organize a world day of prayer and penance for the following October 13, but the Vatican turned a deaf ear to this proposal, and nothing was done. This did immense harm to the Fatima cause. It was from this date, after this public disregard for the 3rd secret, that devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin began to decrease in a perceptible and then alarming manner in the Church.
This fault was to have incalculable consequences. For by disregarding the prophecies and requests of Fatima, it was the Virgin Mary -- it was God Himself -- who had been disregarded, who had been ridiculed in front of the world. The conditional punishment announced through the maternal warning of Our Lady was in consequence destined to be accomplished tragically, inevitably by disobeying the message of the Virgin.
Cardinal Ottaviani related that Pope John XXIII placed the Secret,
"in one of those archives which are like a very deep, dark well, to the bottom of which papers fall and no one is able to see them anymore."
Pope Paul VI straightway adopted the same attitude toward the 3rd secret.
The Virgin had asked that the secret be made public in 1960 because, as Sr Lucia told Cardinal Ottaviani, "in 1960, the Message will appear more clear." Other statements from Sr Lucia have said that "the punishment predicted by Our Lady in the third secret has already begun."
We are now in the period of which the message speaks. We are now living through the 3rd secret. We are witnessing the events that it announces.
Catholics throughout the world by 1960 were waiting for the Pope to open the letter and reveal the 3rd secret. But Pope John XXIII and the subsequent Popes have greatly disappointed the faithful by refusing to reveal its contents.
Why this is so we are not sure. In Pope John XXIII’s "Journal of a Soul", the diary of his life, he says the Second Vatican Council was a success because of the Blessed Mother’s intervention. Pope John XXIII had read the secret of Fatima and said that the secret did not pertain to the reign of his pontificate. Why several Popes did not reveal the secret is a mystery.
There is continuing controversy concerning why Popes since Fatima have not revealed the 3rd secret. Scholars disagree on whether or not the 3rd secret was meant only for the eyes of the Popes or if it was to be released to the general public. The comment by Pope John XXIII and others upon reading the secret -- indicating that it did not pertain to their pontificates -- lends credulity to this argument. Also, Pope John Paul II is under Mary’s protective mantle, and he has not released the contents either. It seems that the 3rd secret was to be made available to the world from may sources.
On 10/11/92, an interview took place between Sr Lucia and Anthony Cardinal Padiyara of India, Bishop Francis Michaelappa of India, and Fr Francisco Pacheco of Fort Ceara, Brazil. Sr Lucia was asked by Cardinal Padiyara,
"Do God and Our Lady still want the Church to reveal the Third Secret?" Sr Lucia answered, "The Third Secret is not intended to be revealed. It was only intended for the Pope and immediate Church hierarchy. Our Lady never said that it was to be revealed to the public by 1960 at the latest. The Secret was for the Pope."
The controversy continues.
The secrets of Fatima still have not been released by the Church, but through the intervention of the Blessed Mother at apparition sites we have a good idea of the contents.
We do know from the Akita message of 10/13/73 and the 5/13/90 message of Fr Gobbi that the secret seems to deal with the apostasy and chastisement.
"The Blessed Virgin has told us," confided Sr Lucia to Fr Fuentes, that "many nations will disappear from the face of the earth, and Russia will be the instrument of heavenly punishment for the world, if we do not obtain beforehand the conversion of that poor nation."
Bishop Venancio named the late Fr Alonso in 1966 as the official expert on Fatima. Fr Alsonso concluded that the 3rd secret refers mainly to a spiritual chastisement which will be far worse, and even more fearsome, than famine, wars, and persecution, for it concerns souls and their salvations or their eternal perdition. His work consisted of 14 volumes which, unfortunately, he was forbidden to publish. Before his death, however, on 12/12/81, he was able to make known his conclusions in various pamphlets and numerous articles in theological journals.
In a series of letter in 1969-1970, Sr Lucia reveals more:
"It is indeed sad that so many people let themselves be dominated by the diabolical wave that is sweeping the world, and that they are blinded to the point of being incapable of seeing error! Their principle fault is they have abandoned prayer; in this way they have become estranged from God, and without God everything fails. The devil is very cunning and looks for our weak points in order to attack us. If we are not diligent and careful to obtain strength from God, we shall fail, for our age is very wicked and we are weak. Only the strength of God can keep us on our feet."
Sr Lucia wrote:
"Let people say the rosary every day. Our Lady stated that repeatedly in all her apparitions, as if to fortify us against these times of diabolical disorientation, so that we would not allow ourselves to be deceived by false doctrines .. Unfortunately, the great majority of people are ignorant in religious matters and allow themselves to be led in any direction. Hence, the great responsibility of one who has the task of leading them... A diabolical disorientation is invading the world, deceiving souls! It must be resisted."
On 9/16/70, Sr Lucia wrote:
"Our poor Lord, He has saved us with so much love and He is so little understood! So little loved! So badly served! It is painful to see such great confusion, and in so many persons who occupy positions of responsibility! The fact is the devil has succeeded in bringing in evil under the appearance of good; the blind are beginning to lead others, as the Lord tells us in His Gospel, and souls are allowing themselves to be deceived. Gladly I sacrifice myself and offer my life to God for peace in His Church, for priests and for all consecrated souls, especially for those who are deceived and misguided!"
Sr Lucia insists that, "the Virgin knew that these times of diabolical disorientation were to come." To someone who was questioning her on the content of the 3rdsecret, Sr Lucia replied,
"It’s in the Gospel and in the Apocalypse, read them." She also confided to Fr Fuentes that the Virgin Mary made her see clearly that "we are in the last times of the world."
Cardinal Ratzinger in August 1984 said that the 3rd secret concerned the,
"dangers which threaten the faith and the life of Christians." Responding to the question, "Why is the faith in crisis?", he stated, "The dangers threatening the faith, the importance of the last times, and the fact that the prophecies contained in this Third Secret correspond to what Scripture announces."
On 9/10/84, Bishop Amaral of Leira, Portugal, declared in the great hall of the Technical University in Vienna,
"The Secret of Fatima speaks neither of atomic bombs nor of nuclear warheads, nor of SS20 missiles. Its content concerns only our faith. To identify the secret with catastrophic announcements or a nuclear holocaust is to distort the meaning of the message. The loss of faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that the faith is continually diminishing in Europe."
Fr Alonso’s thesis is now publicly confirmed by the Bishop of Fatima. The message foretells a terrible crisis within the Church. It is the loss of the faith, which the Immaculate Virgin predicted would occur in our era, if her requests were not sufficiently carried out. This loss of faith and all it entails is the drama that we have been witnessing since 1960.
So we must ask why have such good and saintly men in the Church such as Pope John Paul II not disclosed the 3rd secret? In 1980, while speaking in Fulda, Germany, John Paul II stated in response to a question about the 3rd secret that Lucia’s text does speak of chastisements. In response to another question, he stated that "the chastisements cannot be averted, it is too late." He stated that "the die was cast. [The chastisements] can be mitigated by praying the rosary." He reiterated that he, as his predecessors, preferred to postpone publication so as not to encourage the world power of communism to make certain moves.
These questions also shed light on why he has not undertaken any papal-directed and comprehensive effort to reverse the continual and rapid deterioration of the Church. Pope John Paul II said at the Fulda meeting, "No, the Church cannot be reformed at the present moment." He, too, chose not to disclose the 3rd secret.
Understood in its depth and extent, John Paul’s statement can be shocking: "so as not to encourage the world power of communism to make certain moves." For the Pope to come to such a conclusion illustrates how accurate the message must be.
Fr Malachi Martin in "The Keys of This Blood" writes about this issue:
"In that ’Third Secret’, Lucia’s words are so explicit and so verifiable -- and therefore so authentic -- that, were the leaders of the Leninist Party-State to know these words, they would in all probability decide to undertake certain territorial and militaristic moves against which the West could have few if any means of resisting, and the Church would be plunged into further and deeper subjugation to the Party-State."
This is the seriousness of Lucia’s words. The capitalist West could be entrapped by the USSR. In Vatican parlance, Lucia’s words have dire geographical meaning. They must not be treated as pious and devotional outpourings. Fatima relates to the fierce politics of nations. Ever since Pope John XXIII opened and read those words, the Vatican has treated them gingerly. Fatima has been politicized. John Paul II from the start has gone along with the politicization. The secret has to be buried, as Cardinal Ottaviani said in 1957,
"in the most hidden, the deepest, the most obscure and inaccessible place on earth. If there was one dominant element to the Third Secret, it isRussia."
"It must also be added, however, that the anti-Church partisans in the Vatican bureaucracy and throughout the Church abhor anything savoring devotion to Mary, to Fatima, and to divine revelation. They have forsaken the divine faith of Catholicism, of which Mary, the Mother of God, is an integral part. They also know the present Pope is under the special protection of Mary. This Mary has said so many times to the visionaries of the world and most notably to Fr Gobbi when she said, "he is the Pope of my secret." When Mary says, "and I will receive his sacrifice," she seems to point to a violent death of Pope John Paul II -- soon.
What is John Paul II to do? He is precisely aware what the future holds with its chastisements, disasters, earthquakes, tidal waves, the betrayal of his churchment, and the geopolitics of the world and its sensitive implications. While recuperating from his wounds inflicted by Mehmet Ali Agea, his attempted assassin, he came to realize the only hope for the world was the collegial consecration of Russia as requested at Fatima.
Hoping for a mitigation of the coming tribulations -- but only a mitigation -- he attempted to consecrate the world to Mary, "with a special mention of Russia." John Paul’s immediate step was to write all of his bishops, telling them he would do just that on 5/13/82, in Fatima, and inviting them to join him -- either by a physical presence or by parallel actions in their home dioceses. The apostasy of the last 50 years produced an anemic response. Many of the bishops were no longer in union with Rome.
Has the Blessed Mother revealed the 3rd secret of Fatima in other messages? Many people who have studied these messages clearly believe that the Blessed Mother revealed it on 10/13/73 to Sr Agnes Sasagawa at Akita, Japan. The apparitions at Akita have been approved by the local bishop. The message was as follows:
"As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves,
the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all of
humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the Deluge,
such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall
from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity,
the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor
faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate
that they will envy the dead. The only weapons which will
remain for you will be the rosary and the Sign left by my
Son. Each day recite the prayers of the rosary. With the
Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops, and the priests.
"The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church
in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing
cardinals, bishops against other bishops. The priests who
venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres
... churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of
those who accept compromises and the demon will press many
priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the
Lord.
The demon will be especially implacable against souls
consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many
souls is the cause of my sadness. If sins increase in
number and gravity, there will no longer be pardon for
them.
Pray very much the prayers of the rosary. I alone am able
still to save you from calamities which approach. Those
who place their confidence in me will be saved."
Others point our that Our Lady seems to have revealed again the 3rd secret in a locution to the Marian Movement of Priests on 9/15/87 at Akita, Japan, the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows:
"A chastisement worse than the flood is about to come upon
this poor and perverted humanity. Fire will descend from
Heaven and this will be the sign that the justice of God
has as of now fixed the hour of His great manifestation. I
am weeping because the Church is continuing along the road
of division, of loss of the true faith, of apostasy and of
errors which are being spread more and more without anyone
offering opposition to them. Even now, that which I
predicted at Fatima and that which I have revealed here in
the third message confided to a little daughter of mine is
in the process of being accomplished. And so, even for the
Church the moment of its great trial has come, because the
man of iniquity will establish himself within it and the
abomination of desolation will enter into the holy temple
of God."
Fr Gobbi, in a locution on 2/11/79, received this message (similar to the warnings of LaSalette):
"This interior division sometimes even leads priests to set
themselves against priests, bishops against bishops, and
cardinals against cardinals, for never before as in these
times has Satan so succeeded in finding his way into their
midst, rending asunder the precious bond of their mutual
love."
On 6/13/89, Fr Gobbi received the following:
"Thus errors are spread in every part of the Catholic
Church itself. Because of the spread of these errors, many
are moving away from the true faith, bringing to
fulfillment the prophecy which was given to you by me at
Fatima: The times will come when many will lose the true
faith. The loss of the faith is apostasy."
Cardinal Ratzinger has written in the Ratzinger Report (see below) that the 3rd secret of Fatima has to do with what he called "de nivissimis". The Cardinal had good reason to know, having previously read the still unrevealed secret. The Latin expression "de novissimis" means "dealing with the end times", pertaining to the latter days, or about the final events. These "end times" to which Ratzinger and the 3rd secret refer, and about which Pope Paul VI and his predecessors spoke, are well known to Biblical scholars.
FILE TWO:
Subject: Fatima and environs
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 93 17:12:44 CST
disclaimer.txt:
This article is being posted for information purposes only,
I do not claim it’s validity, and I leave it to the reader
to decide upon the truthfulness of it themselves. I did NOT
write this article, so please don’t flame me for something
I didn’t write.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: The following file was originally picked up from the Catholic
Information Network (CIN #1) in San Francisco (415-387-3251) PCP
Although I’ve had this file for sometime, I have just
recently deemed it appropriate to upload this to ParaNet in
light of a number of references to Fatima and the "3rd"
Secret" in certain UFO related material. In particular,
I’ve seen this subject referenced in the "Krill" files
and in msg threads both on ParaNet and in the Compuserve
Paranormal Issues Forum. Some feel that it is related, at
least in part, to some element of the UFO phenomenon.
Personally, I feel it relates to some "end time" event which
could lie over the not so distant horizon. Although much of
the speculation surrounding the 3rd Secret of Fatima seems
to indicate some kind of earthly catastrophe, its my own
feeling that it also has an explicit political dimension to
it, most probably in relation to the Soviet Union.
The Ratzinger ReportAn Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church
| The session represented extremely unusual journalistic access to a prefect of the doctrinal office, requiring months of wizardry by Moody to negotiate. But Ratzinger had already lowered barriers with lengthy interviews that friendly writerVittorio Messori turned into a book called "The Ratzinger Report." The cardinal's candid and downbeat comments on the health of the church had caused a sensation in 1985. |
(Ignatius Press 1985)
 Fatima and environs
One of the four sections of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the so-called disciplinary section) is entrusted with the task of judging Marian apparitions.
I ask:
"Cardinal Ratzinger, have you read the so-called ’third secret of Fatima’, which Sister Lucia, the only survivor of the group of those who beheld the apparition, forwarded to Pope John XXIII, and which the Pope, after he had examined it, passed on to your predecessor, Cardinal Ottaviani, ordering him to deposit it in the archives of the Holy Office?"
The reply is immediate and dry: "Yes, I have read it."
Undenied versions are circulating in the world, I continue, which describe the contents of that "secret" as disquieting, apocalyptic, as warning of terrible sufferings. John Paul II himself, in his personal visit to Germany, seemed to confirm (albeit with prudent circumlocutions, privately, to a select group) the undeniably disconcerting contents of that text. Before him, Paul VI, during his pilgrimage to Fatima, also seems to have alluded to the "apocalyptic" themes of the "secret". Why was it never decided to make it public, if only to counter rash speculations?
"If this decision has not yet been made", he answers, "it is not because the Popes want to hide something terrible."
Then there is "something terrible" in Sister Lucia’s manuscript, I insist?
"If that were so", he replies, avoiding going further, "that after all would only confirm the part of the message of Fatima already known. A stern warning has been launched from that place that is directed against the prevailing frivolity, a summons to the seriousness of life, of history, to the perils that threaten humanity. It is that which Jesus himself recalls very frequently: ’... Unless you repent you will all perish...’ (Lk 13:3). Conversion--and Fatima fully recalls it to mind--is a constant demand of Christian life. We should already know that from the whole of sacred Scripture."
So there will be no publication, at least for now?
"The Holy Father deems that it would add nothing to what a Christian must know from Revelation and also from the Marian apparitions approved by the Church in their known contents, which only reconfirmed the urgency of penance, conversion, forgiveness, fasting. To publish the ’third secret’ would mean exposing the Church to the danger of sensationalism, exploitation of the content."
Perhaps also political implications, I venture, since it seems that here, also, as in the two other "secrets", Russia is mentioned?
At this point, however, the Cardinal declares that he is not in a position to go further into the matter and firmly refuses to discuss other particulars. On the other hand, at the time of our interview, the Pope proceeded to reconsecrate the world (with a particular mention of Eastern Europe) to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, precisely in accordance with the exhortation of the Virgin of Fatima, and the same John Paul II, wounded by his would-be assassin, on May 13-- anniversary of the first apparition in the Portuguese locality--went to Fatima in order to thank Mary, "whose hand (he said) had miraculously guided the bullet", and seemed to refer to the forewarnings that had been transmitted through a group of children to humanity and that seemed to refer also to the person of the Pontiff.
On the same theme, it is well known that for years, now, a village in Yugoslavia, Medjugorje, is at the center of world attention because of reported "apparitions" which --whether true or not-- have already drawn millions of pilgrims. But they have also provoked deplorable conflicts between the Franciscans who govern the parish and the bishop of the local diocese. Is a clarifying statement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the highest court in this matter, to be expected, with, of course, the approval of the Pope, which is indispensable for each one of its documents?
He replies:
"In this area, more than ever, patience is the fundamental principle of the policy of our Congregation. No apparition is indispensable to the faith; Revelation terminated with Jesus Christ. He himself is the Revelation. But we certainly cannot prevent God from speaking to our time through simple persons and also through extraordinary signs that point to the insufficiency of the cultures stamped by rationalism and positivism that dominate us. The apparitions that the Church has officially approved--especially Lourdes and Fatima- -have their precise place in the development of the life of the Church in the last century. They show, among other things, that Revelation-- still unique, concluded and therefore unsurpassable--is not yet a dead thing but something alive and vital. Moreover--prescinding Medjugorje, on which I cannot express a judgment since the case is still being examined by the Congregation--one of the signs of our times is that the announcements of ’Marian apparitions’ are multiplying all over the world. For example, reports are arriving from Africa and from other continents at the section of the Congregation that is competent to deal with such reports."
But, I ask, besides the traditional element of patience and prudence, on what criteria does the Congregation base itself for a judgment, in the face of the multiplication of these facts?
"One of our criteria", he says, "is to separate the aspect of the true or presumed ’supernaturality’ of the apparition from that of its spiritual fruits. The pilgrimages of ancient Christianity were often concentrated on places with respect to which our modern critical spirit would be horrified as to the ’scientific truth’ of the tradition bound up with them. This does not detract from the fact that those pilgrimages were fruitful, beneficial, rich in blessings and important for the life of the Christian people. The problem is not so much that of modern hypercriticism (which ends up later, moreover, in a form of new credulity), but it is that of the evaluation of the vitality and of the orthodoxy of the religious life that is developing around these places."
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