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Hearts of Jesus and Mary - Marian Apparitions |
THE
THIRD PART OF THE SECRET OF FATIMA
J.M.J.
The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima,
on 13 July 1917.
I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through
his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy
Mother and mine.
After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of
Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in
his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though
they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with
the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right
hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out
in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an
immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear
in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White
‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. 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.
Tuy-3-1-1944”.
THEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY BY CARDINAL JOSEPH RATZINGER,
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
A
careful reading of the text of the so-called third “secret” of
Fatima, published here in its entirety long after the fact and by
decision of the Holy Father, will probably prove disappointing or
surprising after all the speculation it has stirred. No great
mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled. We see the Church
of the martyrs of the century which has just passed represented in a
scene described in a language which is symbolic and not easy to
decipher. Is this what the Mother of the Lord wished to communicate
to Christianity and to humanity at a time of great difficulty and
distress? Is it of any help to us at the beginning of the new
millennium? Or are these only projections of the inner world of
children, brought up in a climate of profound piety but shaken at
the same time by the tempests which threatened their own time? How
should we understand the vision? What are we to make of it?
Public Revelation and private revelations – their theological
status
Before attempting an interpretation, the main lines of which can be
found in the statement read by Cardinal Sodano on 13 May of this
year at the end of the Mass celebrated by the Holy Father in Fatima,
there is a need for some basic clarification of the way in which,
according to Church teaching, phenomena such as Fatima are to be
understood within the life of faith. The teaching of the Church
distinguishes between “public Revelation” and “private revelations”.
The two realities differ not only in degree but also in essence. The
term “public Revelation” refers to the revealing action of God
directed to humanity as a whole and which finds its literary
expression in the two parts of the Bible: the Old and New
Testaments. It is called “Revelation” because in it God gradually
made himself known to men, to the point of becoming man himself, in
order to draw to himself the whole world and unite it with himself
through his Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. It is not a matter
therefore of intellectual communication, but of a life-giving
process in which God comes to meet man. At the same time this
process naturally produces data pertaining to the mind and to the
understanding of the mystery of God. It is a process which involves
man in his entirety and therefore reason as well, but not reason
alone. Because God is one, history, which he shares with humanity,
is also one. It is valid for all time, and it has reached its
fulfilment in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In
Christ, God has said everything, that is, he has revealed himself
completely, and therefore Revelation came to an end with the
fulfilment of the mystery of Christ as enunciated in the New
Testament. To explain the finality and completeness of Revelation,
the Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes a text of Saint John of
the Cross: “In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no
other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word—and he
has no more to say... because what he spoke before to the prophets
in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is
His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or
revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of
offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by
living with the desire for some other novelty” (No. 65; Saint John
of the Cross,The Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 22).
Because the single Revelation of God addressed to all peoples comes
to completion with Christ and the witness borne to him in the books
of the New Testament, the Church is tied to this unique event of
sacred history and to the word of the Bible, which guarantees and
interprets it. But this does not mean that the Church can now look
only to the past and that she is condemned to sterile repetition.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says in this regard: “...even
if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made fully
explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full
significance over the course of the centuries” (No. 66). The way in
which the Church is bound to both the uniqueness of the event and
progress in understanding it is very well illustrated in the
farewell discourse of the Lord when, taking leave of his disciples,
he says: “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear
them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all
the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority... He will
glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (Jn
16:12-14). On the one hand, the Spirit acts as a guide who discloses
a knowledge previously unreachable because the premise was
missing—this is the boundless breadth and depth of Christian faith.
On the other hand, to be guided by the Spirit is also “to draw from”
the riches of Jesus Christ himself, the inexhaustible depths of
which appear in the way the Spirit leads. In this regard, the
Catechism cites profound words of Pope Gregory the Great: “The
sacred Scriptures grow with the one who reads them” (No. 94; Gregory
the Great,Homilia in Ezechielem I, 7, 8). The Second Vatican Council
notes three essential ways in which the Spirit guides in the Church,
and therefore three ways in which “the word grows”: through the
meditation and study of the faithful, through the deep understanding
which comes from spiritual experience, and through the preaching of
“those who, in the succession of the episcopate, have received the
sure charism of truth” (Dei Verbum, 8).
In this context, it now becomes possible to understand rightly the
concept of “private revelation”, which refers to all the visions and
revelations which have taken place since the completion of the New
Testament. This is the category to which we must assign the message
of Fatima. In this respect, let us listen once again to the
Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Throughout the ages, there have
been so-called ‘private' revelations, some of which have been
recognized by the authority of the Church... It is not their role to
complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully
by it in a certain period of history” (No. 67). This clarifies two
things:
1. The authority of private revelations is essentially different
from that of the definitive public Revelation. The latter demands
faith; in it in fact God himself speaks to us through human words
and the mediation of the living community of the Church. Faith in
God and in his word is different from any other human faith, trust
or opinion. The certainty that it is God who is speaking gives me
the assurance that I am in touch with truth itself. It gives me a
certitude which is beyond verification by any human way of knowing.
It is the certitude upon which I build my life and to which I
entrust myself in dying.
2. Private revelation is a help to this faith, and shows its
credibility precisely by leading me back to the definitive public
Revelation. In this regard, Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, the future
Pope Benedict XIV, says in his classic treatise, which later became
normative for beatifications and canonizations: “An assent of
Catholic faith is not due to revelations approved in this way; it is
not even possible. These revelations seek rather an assent of human
faith in keeping with the requirements of prudence, which puts them
before us as probable and credible to piety”. The Flemish theologian
E. Dhanis, an eminent scholar in this field, states succinctly that
ecclesiastical approval of a private revelation has three elements:
the message contains nothing contrary to faith or morals; it is
lawful to make it public; and the faithful are authorized to accept
it with prudence (E. Dhanis,Sguardo su Fatima e bilancio di una
discussione, in La Civiltà Cattolica 104 [1953], II, 392-406, in
particular 397). Such a message can be a genuine help in
understanding the Gospel and living it better at a particular moment
in time; therefore it should not be disregarded. It is a help which
is offered, but which one is not obliged to use.
The criterion for the truth and value of a private revelation is
therefore its orientation to Christ himself. When it leads us away
from him, when it becomes independent of him or even presents itself
as another and better plan of salvation, more important than the
Gospel, then it certainly does not come from the Holy Spirit, who
guides us more deeply into the Gospel and not away from it. This
does not mean that a private revelation will not offer new emphases
or give rise to new devotional forms, or deepen and spread older
forms. But in all of this there must be a nurturing of faith, hope
and love, which are the unchanging path to salvation for everyone.
We might add that private revelations often spring from popular
piety and leave their stamp on it, giving it a new impulse and
opening the way for new forms of it. Nor does this exclude that they
will have an effect even on the liturgy, as we see for instance in
the feasts of Corpus Christi and of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From
one point of view, the relationship between Revelation and private
revelations appears in the relationship between the liturgy and
popular piety: the liturgy is the criterion, it is the living form
of the Church as a whole, fed directly by the Gospel. Popular piety
is a sign that the faith is spreading its roots into the heart of a
people in such a way that it reaches into daily life. Popular
religiosity is the first and fundamental mode of “inculturation” of
the faith. While it must always take its lead and direction from the
liturgy, it in turn enriches the faith by involving the heart.
We have thus moved from the somewhat negative clarifications,
initially needed, to a positive definition of private revelations.
How can they be classified correctly in relation to Scripture? To
which theological category do they belong? The oldest letter of
Saint Paul which has been preserved, perhaps the oldest of the New
Testament texts, the First Letter to the Thessalonians, seems to me
to point the way. The Apostle says: “Do not quench the Spirit, do
not despiseprophesying, but test everything, holding fast to what is
good” (5:19-21). In every age the Church has received the charism of
prophecy, which must be scrutinized but not scorned. On this point,
it should be kept in mind that prophecy in the biblical sense does
not mean to predict the future but to explain the will of God for
the present, and therefore show the right path to take for the
future. A person who foretells what is going to happen responds to
the curiosity of the mind, which wants to draw back the veil on the
future. The prophet speaks to the blindness of will and of reason,
and declares the will of God as an indication and demand for the
present time. In this case, prediction of the future is of secondary
importance. What is essential is the actualization of the definitive
Revelation, which concerns me at the deepest level. The prophetic
word is a warning or a consolation, or both together. In this sense
there is a link between the charism of prophecy and the category of
“the signs of the times”, which Vatican II brought to light anew:
“You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky; why then
do you not know how to interpret the present time?” (Lk 12:56). In
this saying of Jesus, the “signs of the times” must be understood as
the path he was taking, indeed it must be understood as Jesus
himself. To interpret the signs of the times in the light of faith
means to recognize the presence of Christ in every age. In the
private revelations approved by the Church—and therefore also in
Fatima—this is the point: they help us to understand the signs of
the times and to respond to them rightly in faith.
The anthropological structure of private revelations
In these reflections we have sought so far to identify the
theological status of private revelations. Before undertaking an
interpretation of the message of Fatima, we must still attempt
briefly to offer some clarification of their anthropological
(psychological) character. In this field, theological anthropology
distinguishes three forms of perception or “vision”: vision with the
senses, and hence exterior bodily perception, interior perception,
and spiritual vision (visio sensibilis - imaginativa- intellectualis).
It is clear that in the visions of Lourdes, Fatima and other places
it is not a question of normal exterior perception of the senses:
the images and forms which are seen are not located spatially, as is
the case for example with a tree or a house. This is perfectly
obvious, for instance, as regards the vision of hell (described in
the first part of the Fatima “secret”) or even the vision described
in the third part of the “secret”. But the same can be very easily
shown with regard to other visions, especially since not everybody
present saw them, but only the “visionaries”. It is also clear that
it is not a matter of a “vision” in the mind, without images, as
occurs at the higher levels of mysticism. Therefore we are dealing
with the middle category, interior perception. For the visionary,
this perception certainly has the force of a presence, equivalent
for that person to an external manifestation to the senses.
Interior vision does not mean fantasy, which would be no more than
an expression of the subjective imagination. It means rather that
the soul is touched by something real, even if beyond the senses. It
is rendered capable of seeing that which is beyond the senses, that
which cannot be seen—seeing by means of the “interior senses”. It
involves true “objects”, which touch the soul, even if these
“objects” do not belong to our habitual sensory world. This is why
there is a need for an interior vigilance of the heart, which is
usually precluded by the intense pressure of external reality and of
the images and thoughts which fill the soul. The person is led
beyond pure exteriority and is touched by deeper dimensions of
reality, which become visible to him. Perhaps this explains why
children tend to be the ones to receive these apparitions: their
souls are as yet little disturbed, their interior powers of
perception are still not impaired. “On the lips of children and of
babes you have found praise”, replies Jesus with a phrase of Psalm 8
(v. 3) to the criticism of the High Priests and elders, who had
judged the children's cries of “hosanna” inappropriate (cf. Mt
21:16).
“Interior vision” is not fantasy but, as we have said, a true and
valid means of verification. But it also has its limitations. Even
in exterior vision the subjective element is always present. We do
not see the pure object, but it comes to us through the filter of
our senses, which carry out a work of translation. This is still
more evident in the case of interior vision, especially when it
involves realities which in themselves transcend our horizon. The
subject, the visionary, is still more powerfully involved. He sees
insofar as he is able, in the modes of representation and
consciousness available to him. In the case of interior vision, the
process of translation is even more extensive than in exterior
vision, for the subject shares in an essential way in the formation
of the image of what appears. He can arrive at the image only within
the bounds of his capacities and possibilities. Such visions
therefore are never simple “photographs” of the other world, but are
influenced by the potentialities and limitations of the perceiving
subject.
This can be demonstrated in all the great visions of the saints; and
naturally it is also true of the visions of the children at Fatima.
The images described by them are by no means a simple expression of
their fantasy, but the result of a real perception of a higher and
interior origin. But neither should they be thought of as if for a
moment the veil of the other world were drawn back, with heaven
appearing in its pure essence, as one day we hope to see it in our
definitive union with God. Rather the images are, in a manner of
speaking, a synthesis of the impulse coming from on high and the
capacity to receive this impulse in the visionaries, that is, the
children. For this reason, the figurative language of the visions is
symbolic. In this regard, Cardinal Sodano stated: “[they] do not
describe photographically the details of future events, but
synthesize and compress against a single background facts which
extend through time in an unspecified succession and duration”. This
compression of time and place in a single image is typical of such
visions, which for the most part can be deciphered only in
retrospect. Not every element of the vision has to have a specific
historical sense. It is the vision as a whole that matters, and the
details must be understood on the basis of the images taken in their
entirety. The central element of the image is revealed where it
coincides with what is the focal point of Christian “prophecy”
itself: the centre is found where the vision becomes a summons and a
guide to the will of God.
An attempt to interpret the “secret” of Fatima
The first and second parts of the “secret” of Fatima have already
been so amply discussed in the relative literature that there is no
need to deal with them again here. I would just like to recall
briefly the most significant point. For one terrible moment, the
children were given a vision of hell. They saw the fall of “the
souls of poor sinners”. And now they are told why they have been
exposed to this moment: “in order to save souls”—to show the way to
salvation. The words of the First Letter of Peter come to mind: “As
the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls”
(1:9). To reach this goal, the way indicated —surprisingly for
people from the Anglo-Saxon and German cultural world—is devotion to
the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A brief comment may suffice to explain
this. In biblical language, the “heart” indicates the centre of
human life, the point where reason, will, temperament and
sensitivity converge, where the person finds his unity and his
interior orientation. According to Matthew 5:8, the “immaculate
heart” is a heart which, with God's grace, has come to perfect
interior unity and therefore “sees God”. To be “devoted” to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore to embrace this attitude of
heart, which makes the fiat—“your will be done”—the defining centre
of one's whole life. It might be objected that we should not place a
human being between ourselves and Christ. But then we remember that
Paul did not hesitate to say to his communities: “imitate me” (1 Cor
4:16; Phil 3:17; 1 Th 1:6; 2 Th 3:7, 9). In the Apostle they could
see concretely what it meant to follow Christ. But from whom might
we better learn in every age than from the Mother of the Lord?
Thus we come finally to the third part of the “secret” of Fatima
which for the first time is being published in its entirety. As is
clear from the documentation presented here, the interpretation
offered by Cardinal Sodano in his statement of 13 May was first put
personally to Sister Lucia. Sister Lucia responded by pointing out
that she had received the vision but not its interpretation. The
interpretation, she said, belonged not to the visionary but to the
Church. After reading the text, however, she said that this
interpretation corresponded to what she had experienced and that on
her part she thought the interpretation correct. In what follows,
therefore, we can only attempt to provide a deeper foundation for
this interpretation, on the basis of the criteria already
considered.
“To save souls” has emerged as the key word of the first and second
parts of the “secret”, and the key word of this third part is the
threefold cry: “Penance, Penance, Penance!” The beginning of the
Gospel comes to mind: “Repent and believe the Good News” (Mk 1:15).
To understand the signs of the times means to accept the urgency of
penance – of conversion – of faith. This is the correct response to
this moment of history, characterized by the grave perils outlined
in the images that follow. Allow me to add here a personal
recollection: in a conversation with me Sister Lucia said that it
appeared ever more clearly to her that the purpose of all the
apparitions was to help people to grow more and more in faith, hope
and love—everything else was intended to lead to this.
Let us now examine more closely the single images. The angel with
the flaming sword on the left of the Mother of God recalls similar
images in the Book of Revelation. This represents the threat of
judgement which looms over the world. Today the prospect that the
world might be reduced to ashes by a sea of fire no longer seems
pure fantasy: man himself, with his inventions, has forged the
flaming sword. The vision then shows the power which stands opposed
to the force of destruction—the splendour of the Mother of God and,
stemming from this in a certain way, the summons to penance. In this
way, the importance of human freedom is underlined: the future is
not in fact unchangeably set, and the image which the children saw
is in no way a film preview of a future in which nothing can be
changed. Indeed, the whole point of the vision is to bring freedom
onto the scene and to steer freedom in a positive direction. The
purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed
future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize
the forces of change in the right direction. 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. Rather, the vision speaks of dangers and how we might
be saved from them.
The next phrases of the text show very clearly once again the
symbolic character of the vision: God remains immeasurable, and is
the light which surpasses every vision of ours. Human persons appear
as in a mirror. We must always keep in mind the limits in the vision
itself, which here are indicated visually. The future appears only
“in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor 13:12). Let us now consider the
individual images which follow in the text of the “secret”. The
place of the action is described in three symbols: a steep mountain,
a great city reduced to ruins and finally a large rough-hewn cross.
The mountain and city symbolize the arena of human history: history
as an arduous ascent to the summit, history as the arena of human
creativity and social harmony, but at the same time a place of
destruction, where man actually destroys the fruits of his own work.
The city can be the place of communion and progress, but also of
danger and the most extreme menace. On the mountain stands the
cross—the goal and guide of history. The cross transforms
destruction into salvation; it stands as a sign of history's misery
but also as a promise for history.
At this point human persons appear: the Bishop dressed in white (“we
had the impression that it was the Holy Father”), other Bishops,
priests, men and women Religious, and men and women of different
ranks and social positions. The Pope seems to precede the others,
trembling and suffering because of all the horrors around him. Not
only do the houses of the city lie half in ruins, but he makes his
way among the corpses of the dead. The Church's path is thus
described as a Via Crucis, as a journey through a time of violence,
destruction and persecution. The history of an entire century can be
seen represented in this image. Just as the places of the earth are
synthetically described in the two images of the mountain and the
city, and are directed towards the cross, so too time is presented
in a compressed way. In the vision we can recognize the last century
as a century of martyrs, a century of suffering and persecution for
the Church, a century of World Wars and the many local wars which
filled the last fifty years and have inflicted unprecedented forms
of cruelty. In the “mirror” of this vision we see passing before us
the witnesses of the faith decade by decade. Here it would be
appropriate to mention a phrase from the letter which Sister Lucia
wrote to the Holy Father on 12 May 1982: “The third part of the
‘secret' refers to Our Lady's words: ‘If not, [Russia] will spread
her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of
the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have
much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated'”.
In the Via Crucis of an entire century, the figure of the Pope has a
special role. In his arduous ascent of the mountain we can
undoubtedly see a convergence of different Popes. Beginning from
Pius X up to the present Pope, they all shared the sufferings of the
century and strove to go forward through all the anguish along the
path which leads to the Cross. In the vision, the Pope too is killed
along with the martyrs. When, after the attempted assassination on
13 May 1981, the Holy Father had the text of the third part of the
“secret” brought to him, was it not inevitable that he should see in
it his own fate? He had been very close to death, and he himself
explained his survival in the following words: “... it was a
mother's hand that guided the bullet's path and in his throes the
Pope halted at the threshold of death” (13 May 1994). That here “a
mother's hand” had deflected the fateful bullet only shows once more
that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces
which can influence history and that in the end prayer is more
powerful than bullets and faith more powerful than armies.
The concluding part of the “secret” uses images which Lucia may have
seen in devotional books and which draw their inspiration from
long-standing intuitions of faith. It is a consoling vision, which
seeks to open a history of blood and tears to the healing power of
God. Beneath the arms of the cross angels gather up the blood of the
martyrs, and with it they give life to the souls making their way to
God. Here, the blood of Christ and the blood of the martyrs are
considered as one: the blood of the martyrs runs down from the arms
of the cross. The martyrs die in communion with the Passion of
Christ, and their death becomes one with his. For the sake of the
body of Christ, they complete what is still lacking in his
afflictions (cf. Col 1:24). Their life has itself become a
Eucharist, part of the mystery of the grain of wheat which in dying
yields abundant fruit. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of
Christians, said Tertullian. As from Christ's death, from his
wounded side, the Church was born, so the death of the witnesses is
fruitful for the future life of the Church. Therefore, the vision of
the third part of the “secret”, so distressing at first, concludes
with an image of hope: no suffering is in vain, and it is a
suffering Church, a Church of martyrs, which becomes a sign-post for
man in his search for God. The loving arms of God welcome not only
those who suffer like Lazarus, who found great solace there and
mysteriously represents Christ, who wished to become for us the poor
Lazarus. There is something more: from the suffering of the
witnesses there comes a purifying and renewing power, because their
suffering is the actualization of the suffering of Christ himself
and a communication in the here and now of its saving effect.
And so we come to the final question: What is the meaning of the
“secret” of Fatima as a whole (in its three parts)? What does it say
to us? First of all we must affirm with Cardinal Sodano: “... the
events to which the third part of the ‘secret' of Fatima refers now
seem part of the past”. Insofar as individual events are described,
they belong to the past. Those who expected exciting apocalyptic
revelations about the end of the world or the future course of
history are bound to be disappointed. Fatima does not satisfy our
curiosity in this way, just as Christian faith in general cannot be
reduced to an object of mere curiosity. 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.
I would like finally to mention another key expression of the
“secret” which has become justly famous: “my Immaculate Heart will
triumph”. What does this mean? The Heart open to God, purified by
contemplation of God, is stronger than guns and weapons of every
kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart, has changed the
history of the world, because it brought the Saviour into the
world—because, thanks to her Yes, God could become man in our world
and remains so for all time. The Evil One has power in this world,
as we see and experience continually; he has power because our
freedom continually lets itself be led away from God. But since God
himself took a human heart and has thus steered human freedom
towards what is good, the freedom to choose evil no longer has the
last word. From that time forth, the word that prevails is this: “In
the world you will have tribulation, but take heart; I have overcome
the world” (Jn 16:33). The message of Fatima invites us to trust in
this promise.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
COMMENTARY BY TARCISIO BERTONE, SDB, ARCHBISHOP EMERITUS OF
VERCELLI
SECRETARY OF THE CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
As the
second millennium gives way to the third, Pope John Paul II has
decided to publish the text of the third part of the “secret of
Fatima”.
The twentieth century was one of the most crucial in human history,
with its tragic and cruel events culminating in the assassination
attempt on the “sweet Christ on earth”. Now a veil is drawn back on
a series of events which make history and interpret it in depth, in
a spiritual perspective alien to present-day attitudes, often
tainted with rationalism.
Throughout history there have been supernatural apparitions and
signs which go to the heart of human events and which, to the
surprise of believers and non-believers alike, play their part in
the unfolding of history. These manifestations can never contradict
the content of faith, and must therefore have their focus in the
core of Christ's proclamation: the Father's love which leads men and
women to conversion and bestows the grace required to abandon
oneself to him with filial devotion. This too is the message of
Fatima which, with its urgent call to conversion and penance, draws
us to the heart of the Gospel.
Fatima is undoubtedly the most prophetic of modern apparitions. The
first and second parts of the “secret”—which are here published in
sequence so as to complete the documentation—refer especially to the
frightening vision of hell, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of
Mary, the Second World War, and finally the prediction of the
immense damage that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning the
Christian faith and embracing Communist totalitarianism.
In 1917 no one could have imagined all this: the three pastorinhos
of Fatima see, listen and remember, and Lucia, the surviving
witness, commits it all to paper when ordered to do so by the Bishop
of Leiria and with Our Lady's permission.
For the account of the first two parts of the “secret”, which have
already been published and are therefore known, we have chosen the
text written by Sister Lucia in the Third Memoir of 31 August 1941;
some annotations were added in the Fourth Memoir of 8 December 1941.
The third part of the “secret” was written “by order of His
Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and the Most Holy Mother” on 3
January 1944.
There is only one manuscript, which is here reproduced
photostatically. The sealed envelope was initially in the custody of
the Bishop of Leiria. To ensure better protection for the “secret”
the envelope was placed in the Secret Archives of the Holy Office on
4 April 1957. The Bishop of Leiria informed Sister Lucia of this.
According to the records of the Archives, the Commissary of the Holy
Office, Father Pierre Paul Philippe, OP, with the agreement of
Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, brought the envelope containing the
third part of the “secret of Fatima” to Pope John XXIII on 17 August
1959.
“After some hesitation”, His Holiness said: “We shall wait. I shall
pray. I shall let you know what I decide”.(1)
In fact Pope John XXIII decided to return the sealed envelope to the
Holy Office and not to reveal the third part of the “secret”.
Paul VI read the contents with the Substitute, Archbishop Angelo
Dell'Acqua, on 27 March 1965, and returned the envelope to the
Archives of the Holy Office, deciding not to publish the text.
John Paul II, for his part, asked for the envelope containing the
third part of the “secret” following the assassination attempt on 13
May 1981. On 18 July 1981 Cardinal Franjo Šeper, Prefect of the
Congregation, gave two envelopes to Archbishop Eduardo Martínez
Somalo, Substitute of the Secretariat of State: one white envelope,
containing Sister Lucia's original text in Portuguese; the other
orange, with the Italian translation of the “secret”. On the
following 11 August, Archbishop Martínez returned the two envelopes
to the Archives of the Holy Office.(2)
As is well known, Pope John Paul II immediately thought of
consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and he
himself composed a prayer for what he called an “Act of
Entrustment”, which was to be celebrated in the Basilica of Saint
Mary Major on 7 June 1981, the Solemnity of Pentecost, the day
chosen to commemorate the 1600th anniversary of the First Council of
Constantinople and the 1550th anniversary of the Council of Ephesus.
Since the Pope was unable to be present, his recorded Address was
broadcast. The following is the part which refers specifically to
the Act of Entrustment:
“Mother of all individuals and peoples, you know all their
sufferings and hopes. In your motherly heart you feel all the
struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, that
convulse the world: accept the plea which we make in the Holy Spirit
directly to your heart, and embrace with the love of the Mother and
Handmaid of the Lord those who most await this embrace, and also
those whose act of entrustment you too await in a particular way.
Take under your motherly protection the whole human family, which
with affectionate love we entrust to you, O Mother. May there dawn
for everyone the time of peace and freedom, the time of truth, of
justice and of hope”.(3)
In order to respond more fully to the requests of “Our Lady”, the
Holy Father desired to make more explicit during the Holy Year of
the Redemption the Act of Entrustment of 7 May 1981, which had been
repeated in Fatima on 13 May 1982. On 25 March 1984 in Saint Peter's
Square, while recalling the fiat uttered by Mary at the
Annunciation, the Holy Father, in spiritual union with the Bishops
of the world, who had been “convoked” beforehand, entrusted all men
and women and all peoples to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in terms
which recalled the heartfelt words spoken in 1981:
“O Mother of all men and women, and of all peoples, you who know all
their sufferings and their hopes, you who have a mother's awareness
of all the struggles between good and evil, between light and
darkness, which afflict the modern world, accept the cry which we,
moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to your Heart. Embrace
with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord, this human
world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you, for we are
full of concern for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals
and peoples.
In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals
and nations which particularly need to be thus entrusted and
consecrated.
‘We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God!' Despise
not our petitions in our necessities”.
The Pope then continued more forcefully and with more specific
references, as though commenting on the Message of Fatima in its
sorrowful fulfilment:
“Behold, as we stand before you, Mother of Christ, before your
Immaculate Heart, we desire, together with the whole Church, to
unite ourselves with the consecration which, for love of us, your
Son made of himself to the Father: ‘For their sake', he said, ‘I
consecrate myself that they also may be consecrated in the truth' (Jn
17:19). We wish to unite ourselves with our Redeemer in this his
consecration for the world and for the human race, which, in his
divine Heart, has the power to obtain pardon and to secure
reparation.
The power of this consecration lasts for all time and embraces all
individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every evil that the
spirit of darkness is able to awaken, and has in fact awakened in
our times, in the heart of man and in his history.
How deeply we feel the need for the consecration of humanity and the
world—our modern world—in union with Christ himself! For the
redeeming work of Christ must be shared in by the world through the
Church.
The present Year of the Redemption shows this: the special Jubilee
of the whole Church.
Above all creatures, may you be blessed, you, the Handmaid of the
Lord, who in the fullest way obeyed the divine call!
Hail to you, who are wholly united to the redeeming consecration of
your Son!
Mother of the Church! Enlighten the People of God along the paths of
faith, hope, and love! Enlighten especially the peoples whose
consecration and entrustment by us you are awaiting. Help us to live
in the truth of the consecration of Christ for the entire human
family of the modern world.
In entrusting to you, O Mother, the world, all individuals and
peoples, we also entrust to you this very consecration of the world,
placing it in your motherly Heart.
Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so
easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose
immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and
seem to block the paths towards the future!
From famine and war, deliver us.
From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every
kind of war, deliver us.
From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver
us.
From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of
God, deliver us.
From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national
and international, deliver us.
From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us.
From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God,
deliver us.
From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.
Accept, O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of
all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole
societies.
Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin:
individual sin and the ‘sin of the world', sin in all its
manifestations.
Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the
infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love!
May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your
Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!”. (4)
Sister Lucia personally confirmed that this solemn and universal act
of consecration corresponded to what Our Lady wished (“Sim, està
feita, tal como Nossa Senhora a pediu, desde o dia 25 de Março de
1984”: “Yes it has been done just as Our Lady asked, on 25 March
1984”: Letter of 8 November 1989). Hence any further discussion or
request is without basis.
In the documentation presented here four other texts have been added
to the manuscripts of Sister Lucia: 1) the Holy Father's letter of
19 April 2000 to Sister Lucia; 2) an account of the conversation of
27 April 2000 with Sister Lucia; 3) the statement which the Holy
Father appointed Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State, to read
on 13 May 2000; 4) the theological commentary by Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith.
Sister Lucia had already given an indication for interpreting the
third part of the “secret” in a letter to the Holy Father, dated 12
May 1982:
“The third part of the secret refers to Our Lady's words: ‘If not
[Russia] will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars
and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy
Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be
annihilated' (13-VII-1917).
The third part of the secret is a symbolic revelation, referring to
this part of the Message, conditioned by whether we accept or not
what the Message itself asks of us: ‘If my requests are heeded,
Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will
spread her errors throughout the world, etc.'.
Since we did not heed this appeal of the Message, we see that it has
been fulfilled, Russia has invaded the world with her errors. And if
we have not yet seen the complete fulfilment of the final part of
this prophecy, we are going towards it little by little with great
strides. If we do not reject the path of sin, hatred, revenge,
injustice, violations of the rights of the human person, immorality
and violence, etc.
And let us not say that it is God who is punishing us in this way;
on the contrary it is people themselves who are preparing their own
punishment. In his kindness God warns us and calls us to the right
path, while respecting the freedom he has given us; hence people are
responsible”.(5)
The decision of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to make public the
third part of the “secret” of Fatima brings to an end a period of
history marked by tragic human lust for power and evil, yet pervaded
by the merciful love of God and the watchful care of the Mother of
Jesus and of the Church.
The action of God, the Lord of history, and the co-responsibility of
man in the drama of his creative freedom, are the two pillars upon
which human history is built.
Our Lady, who appeared at Fatima, recalls these forgotten values.
She reminds us that man's future is in God, and that we are active
and responsible partners in creating that future.
Tarcisio Bertone, SDB
Archbishop Emeritus of Vercelli
‘Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Link to Our Lady of Fatima Page>>
Link to
Official Page of Shrine in Fatima, Portugal>>
JPII's homily in
Fatima, 1982: "Mary's Maternal Love">>
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Mary
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