Three Secrets of Fátima
Two of the secrets were revealed in 1941 in a document written by Lúcia, at the request of José Alves Correia da Silva, Bishop of Leiria, to assist with the publication of a new edition of a book on Jacinta.
[1] When asked by the Bishop in 1943 to reveal the third secret, Lúcia struggled for a short period, being "not yet convinced that God had clearly authorized her to act".
[citation needed] As early as July 1917, mention was made that the Lady of the apparitions had entrusted to the children a secret, "that was good for some and bad for others".
In this, she follows the French visionary Mélanie Calvat who saw Our Lady of La Salette in 1846, who wrote down the secrets from that event almost twenty years after.
Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear.
When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.
[5] In her third memoir, written in 1941, Sister Lúcia recalled that at the apparition of 13 July 1917, the Virgin Mary had first mentioned the consecration of Russia, and said that she would return to give particulars.
[9] Skeptics have questioned whether Mary, in 1917, referred explicitly to Pope Pius XI, as Ambrogio Ratti did not choose that regnal name until after his election in 1922.
On 25 January 1938, The New York Times reported "Aurora Borealis Startles Europe; People Flee in Fear, Call Firemen.
In his announcement, Cardinal Sodano implied that the secret was about the 20th century persecution of Christians that culminated in the failed Pope John Paul II assassination attempt on 13 May 1981, the 64th anniversary of the first apparition of the Lady at Fátima.
Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions.
Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.
Therefore we must totally discount fatalistic explanations of the "secret", such as, for example, the claim that the would-be assassin of 13 May 1981 was merely an instrument of the divine plan guided by Providence and could not therefore have acted freely, or other similar ideas in circulation.
As for the meaning of the message: "What remains was already evident when we began our reflections on the text of the 'secret': the exhortation to prayer as the path of 'salvation for souls' and, likewise, the summons to penance and conversion."
"[25] He then expressed the hope that the centenary of the 1917 apparitions may "hasten the fulfillment of the prophecy of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the glory of the Blessed Trinity."
According to The New York Times, speculation ranged from "worldwide nuclear annihilation to deep rifts in the Roman Catholic Church that lead to rival papacies.
"[27] On 2 May 1981, Laurence James Downey hijacked an airplane and demanded that Pope John Paul II make public the third secret of Fátima.
Clergy as well as laypeople were offended that the text had been read in Rome and not at the Fátima shrine in Portugal where the reported events took place.
The Times for 29 June 2000 reported that "The revelation on Monday that there were no doomsday predictions has provoked angry reactions from the Portuguese church over the decision to keep the prophecy secret for half a century".
[30] The argument is based on the following: Because of the seriousness of its contents, in order not to encourage the world wide power of Communism to carry out certain coups, my predecessors in the chair of Peter have diplomatically preferred to withhold its publication.
"[44]However, during the 26 June 2000 press conference that saw the publication of the third secret, Cardinal Ratzinger denied that John Paul II had made these remarks.
[47] Bertone, along with Cardinal Ratzinger, co-authored The Message of Fatima,[19] the document published in June 2000 by the Vatican that contains a scanned copy of the original text of the third secret.
[48] Bertone, who was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 2003 and held the position of Vatican Secretary of State until September 2013, wrote a book in 2007 titled The Last Secret of Fatima.
At one point in the interview, De Carli comments on an unsourced accusation that the Vatican is concealing a one-page text of the third secret which predicts a great apostasy where Rome will "lose the faith and become the throne of the Antichrist."
Anybody can take sentences out of context and present them as clues to some supposed plot to avoid divulging the truth and to transmit it in a code that only the initiates can understand.
[50]At another point in the interview, De Carli claimed that Cardinal Ottaviani had once stated, "the [third] Secret was written on a single sheet of paper.
Describing these observations as "feeble bits of evidence that neither prove nor disprove anything", De Carli asks Cardinal Bertone about the possibility of there being two texts, where the "first document" contains the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the other contains the description of the vision published by the Vatican.
[58] Michael Cuneo notes "Secret messages, apocalyptic countdowns, cloak-and-dagger intrigue within the highest echelons of the Vatican: not even Hollywood could ask for better material than this".
[5] Jeffrey S. Bennett takes note of how, starting in the 1930s, the image of Our Lady of Fátima developed into a rallying point for anti-communism, an idea that spread far beyond the Iberian peninsula.
According to Maunder, Fátima demonstrates not only how seriously Catholics took "the revelations of an enclosed nun remembering visions she had experienced at the age of ten, but also show how difficult it is for the hierarchy to manage a movement of popular piety, despite critics claims of manipulation.
