The Third Fatima Secret
The following is the text of the (above) third part of the secret of Fatima as written down by Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children believed to have seen the Virgin Mary in 1917.
"I write in obedience to you, my God, who commands 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 then pass in front of it, a bishop dressed in white.
We had the impression that it was the Holy Father.
Other bishops, priests, religious men and women were 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 bishops, priests, religious men and women, 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."
BBC, June 26, 2000
According to the Fatima Network, "The Vatican has officially declared the Fatima apparitions "worthy of belief, and the present Pope has gone much further, acknowledging that the Message of Fatima imposes an obligation on the Church, and on all mankind. . . . Every Catholic has the right to follow the dictates of his or her own conscience regarding Fatima. And whatever their choice, both believers in Fatima and unbelievers are entitled to have their convictions respected."
However, through lack of information and ignorance of contemporary events as revealed at this website the Fatima Network and other similar sites are unable to grasp the events already taking place on earth. The situation is more critical than what they have posted as the very redemption and salvation of humanity is at stake.
Since this is the case it is absolutely imperative that all Catholics, and humankind for the matter, be given every opportunity and right to examine in detail all online postings of the Fatima Network pertaining to Fatima’s Third Secret in relation to this website. Only by being allowed to cross-examine all relevant information will they be able to separate fact from fiction and ascertain Truth for themselves.
Certain eschatological events have set in motion the fulfillment of the prophecy of Fatima’s Third secret. We have already entered the period prior to the Second Coming of Christ. The revelation of Fatima's Third Secret was delayed for decades and that has allowed the moral and spiritual decay of humanity. Despite the Virgin requesting the pope to open and read it to the world in 1960, it was not done. But there is time for humanity to repent as the Divine Message is one of hope, joy and eternal life for those who understand the true meaning. Please read this carefully:
"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."
This means a grace period (Last Judgment) is given by the Great Holy Spirit to human beings before the End (Second Coming). Our Lady, being q Mother, has no desire to bring forth the Second Coming without first issuing a warning. She wants to save as many of Her Children as possible.
"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."
The fulfillment of the Third Fatima Secret begins the destruction of the papacy and the man who spiritually holds one billion souls ransom by claiming to be the Vicar of Christ. The same goes for Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs and others. All humans must be set free from the shackles of organized religions first because the later will not set them free to take part in the Last Judgment. The pope holds the maximum of God's children in spiritual ransom. That is why it is necessary that he is destroyed first..
"and in the same way there died one after another the bishops, priests, religious men and women, and various lay people of different ranks and positions."
The guardians of the religious regimes — priests, reverends, bishops, popes, rabbis, clerics, imams, mullahs, shaikhs, ulema, ayatollahs, gurus, swamis, pandits, brahmins, acaryas, bhagwans, granthis, gianis, lamas, monks, dalai lamas — will be meeting their spiritual deaths for defying the Last Judgment. That is why it is absolutely necessary to free ourselves from their clutches and learn about God's Plan for all humanity.
Those subscribing to the Catholic Church should read the followings facts of the papacy to realize why the Third Fatima Secret particularly ends in the killing of the Pope, bishops, priests, religious men and women:
The First Commandment
The Second Commandment
The Third Commandment
The Fourth Commandment
The Fifth Commandment
The Sixth Commandment
The Seventh Commandment
The Eight Commandment
The Ninth Commandment
The Tenth Commandment
“Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the angel cried in a loud voice: "Penance, penance, penance." ”
This is God Almighty's message to humanity to change our immoral and decadent ways by taking part in the Last Judgment prior to the Second Coming. Taking part in the Last Judgment is the only hope left.
"the souls that were making their way to God."
Hundreds of thousands are already actively taking part in the Resurrection and Last Judgment by purifying themselves in mind, body and spirit. This website has links for those who wish to learn these spiritual techniques absolutely required to purify ourselves. Instructions are given free at these sites:
www.sahajayoga.org/
www.sahajayoga.org/worldwid...fault.asp
"Information on 3rd Secret of Fatima
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.
“Fatima is a village in the center of Portugal about 70 miles north of Lisbon. It was there in 1915 that three humble peasant children began having a series of apparitions of angels and, later, the "Virgin Mary." The children were: Lucia Santos and her two cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto. . . .
Lucia would keep the Third Secret until 1941, when she received an inner "locution" from the Virgin giving her leave to publish all but the last of its three parts. As for the final part, which has come to be known as the Third Secret Sister Lucy's nearly fatal bout of pleurisy in 1943 moved the Bishop of Fatima to ask her to write it down and seal it up in an envelope, so that it might be read if she died. After much agonizing and another visitation by the Lady, she complied with the Bishop's request in January 1944, and forwarded the envelope to him with the instructions that it was to be opened by the Pope and read to the world in 1960, "because the Virgin wishes it so."
But the Vatican refused to disclose the Third Secret in 1960 and continues to suppress it to this day. All the popes since John XXIII, as well as a few Curia cardinals, have read the contents of Lucy's envelope, as John Paul II is reported to have done shortly after his inauguration in October 1978.
While conversing with a small group of pilgrims in the cathedral square of Fulda, West Germany, in November 1980, the Holy Father was asked to explain why the Third Secret had not been published in 1960, as the Lady of Fatima had directed. . . .
A question was then posed concerning the fate of the Church in Fatima's apocalyptic scenario.
John Paul: "We have to be prepared to suffer, before long, great trials which will require of us the disposition to sacrifice even our life for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is still possible to diminish this trial, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only in this manner can the Church be effectively renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church been brought about in blood! It will not be different this time."
Evidently, from John Paul's remarks at Fulda quoted above, the Third Secret of Fatima addresses this unprecedented crisis of faith and in fact predicts its onset in the latter decades of this century. This would explain the Lady's desire to have the message revealed in 1960, when a veritable epidemic of universal apostasy began to sweep across the globe. Another strong inference here is that the Church "renewal" which will resolve this great crisis may involve the martyrdom of one or more popes.
A tangible "marker" was left behind by Jacinta Marto, the younger seeress of Fatima. Shortly after the children received Our Lady's Secret in July 1917, Jacinta had two visions which she recounted to Lucia, who recorded them in her memoirs with the remark that they comprise "part of the [third] secret." Both visions concern the Holy Pope or Angelic Pastor:
"I don't know how it was, but I saw the Holy Pope in a very large house. He was kneeling by a table with his face in his hands and he was crying. Outside the house were many people. Some of them were throwing stones at him, others were cursing him and using bad language." . . .
The mysterious Third Secret of Fatima remains under lock and key in a Vatican archive, while Vatican bureaucrats attempt to silence a Canadian priest leading a movement for its disclosure. On February 8, 1960 Catholics around the world were stunned when the Vatican announced in an unsigned press release that the famous Third Secret would not be disclosed that year, as expected, and would probably remain a secret forever. Thus began a controversy in the Catholic Church which shows no signs of dying out, more than 35 years later.
What is the Third Secret, and why is a Canadian priest, Father Nicholas Gruner, under fire by the Vatican bureaucracy for probing into it?
Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II all read the Secret in private, as has John Paul II's right hand man, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The suppression of the Third Secret has naturally led to speculation among Catholics that its contents must be nothing short of explosive. Yet the official Vatican line is that the Secret contains nothing that has not already been revealed in Scripture. If that is so, then why is it being suppressed? In November 1984 Ratzinger gave a tantalizing hint of what the Third Secret contains when he admitted that it refers to "dangers which threaten the Faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore of the world."
Father Nicholas Gruner has widely publicized the work of several Fatima experts who believe they have deduced what the Third Secret contains: a warning that the Catholic Church will undergo a catastrophic loss of faith and discipline . . . the great apostasy predicted in Scripture as a harbinger of the end times.”
Morgana’s Observatory www.dreamscape.com/
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 offends God, 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." . . .
The secret was read a few days later, according to Monsignor Capovilla. Assistance in reading the Portuguese was given by Monsignor Paulo Jose Tavarez of 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 Vatican communiqué 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 many 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. . . .
Bishop Venancio named the late Fr Alonso in 1966 as the official expert on Fatima. Fr Alonso 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 salvation 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 3rd secret, 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. . . .
Cardinal Ratzinger has written in the Ratzinger Report 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."
www.netizen.org/
"FATIMA, Portugal, May 13: After years of speculation, the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said Saturday that the "third part of the secret of Fatima" speaks of a "bishop clothed in white" who "falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire." . . .
Many in the crowd applauded when they heard the long-awaited third secret, announced at the end of the pope’s Mass. Some said they were eager to hear more details, while others expressed disappointment that the secret did not foretell a momentous event, as many had speculated.
"What they said all happened in the past," said Julio Estela, a 33-year-old car salesman from the northern Portuguese town of Trofa. "This isn’t a prophecy. It’s disappointing. I think there’s more." "
Associated Press, May 13, 2000
MSNBC full report
If the second apparition of Fatima was interpreted as the fall and end of the vast communist Russia empire why shouldn't the third apparition prophesy the fall and end of the papacy and the Catholic Church?
But the Vatican has interpreted it as the assassination attempt on Pope Paul II in 1981, even though "he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him." How arrogantly deceitful are those vested with temporal power!
And why guard it so secretly for 19 years? Wouldn't revealing it in 1981 have brought the full force of a fulfilled prophecy and the pope's survival erupting into Catholic ecstasy and strengthening of faith. Common sense dictates that this would have been the most momentous time to reveal the Third Secret of Fatima and lay to rest the consistent clamoring and 'rumor mongering' by a large number of Catholics to be told the truth. One should not forget that the "Virgin had asked that the secret be made public in 1960." At least then make the secret public in 1981.
Unless, of course, the top officials of the papacy at that time endorsed this Truth: "Cardinal Ratzinger has written in the Ratzinger Report 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."
And believed that they had to wait until after December 31, 1999 had passed without incident before releasing the Third Secret.
How obviously devious is the May 13, 2000 Vatican interpretation after one reads the full text of the Third Fatima Secret!
So now do these "bishops, priests, religious men and women, and various lay people of different ranks and positions" feel safe and secure from its terrible foreboding secret?
And who are the many believers who "will fall into an erroneous name" and "will be ruled heretically"?
Last, but not the least, why is the Antichrist "killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him" and why must those who give him power also die "in the same way . . . one after another"?
"The coming of God's kingdom means the defeat of Satan's: "If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." Jesus' exorcisms free some individuals from the domination of demons. They anticipate Jesus' great victory over "the ruler of this world."
J. C. Ratzinger, Catechism of the Catholic Church
(J. C. Ratzinger, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, p. 121.)
“As for the final part, which has come to be known as the "Third Secret," Sister Lucy's nearly fatal bout of pleurisy in 1943 moved the Bishop of Fatima to ask her to write it down and seal it up in an envelope, so that it might be read if she died. After much agonizing and another visitation by the Lady, she complied with the Bishop's request in January 1944, and forwarded the envelope to him with instructions that it was to be opened by the Pope and read to the world in 1960, "because the Virgin wished to do so."
However the Vatican refused to disclose the Third Secret in 1960 and continues to suppress it to this day. All the Popes since John XXIII, as well as a few curia Cardinals, have read the contents of Lucy's envelope, as John Paul II is reported to have done shortly after his inauguration in October 1978 . . .
While conversing with a small group of pilgrims in the cathedral square of Fulda, West Germany, in November 19080, the Holy Father was asked to explain why the Third Secret had not been published in 1960, as the Lady of Fatima had directed. John Paul responded that "the gravity of its contents" was such as to possibly provoke a hostile response to its release on the part of the "world power of communism." . . .
A question was then posed concerning the fate of the Fatima's apocalyptic scenario, John Paul: "We have to be prepared to suffer, before long, great trials which will require of us the disposition to sacrifice even our life . . . for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is still possible to avert it, because only in this manner can the Church be effectively renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church been brought about in blood! It will not be different this time." . . .
The idea that a vacant Papal throne is part of the "or else" scenario in the Third Secret is very intriguing, because it confirms so neatly to a voluminous body of Christian prophecy dealing with the coming of the "Antichrist." It is here we begin to venture into the darkest recesses of the Third Secret of Fatima.”
Gilbert Grisé, The Time of Antichrist
“Subject: * Fatima and environs Date: Mon, 13 Dec 93 17:12:44 CST
From *The Ratzinger Report* Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori (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."
Undefined 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." ”
www.netizen.org
“Some people have even wondered whether the pope believes himself to be possessed of special knowledge about the millennium. It may be, for example, that 2000 is central to the "third secret" of Fatima, a revelation about the future of the world which the Virgin Mary is said to have entrusted to a group of Portuguese peasant children in 1917, and which was transmitted in confidence to the Vatican alone. If so, then the pope is giving fresh credence to a millenarianism that is at least as old as Christianity itself.”
An End and a Beginning, Economist, January 4, 1997
“After Peter, the centuries roll by, full of controversies, any one of which today would involve immediate recourse to Rome for a decision . . . We have already noted that not a single Father can find any hint of a Petrine office in the great biblical texts that refer to Peter. Papal supremacy and infallibility, so central to the Catholic church today, are simply not mentioned. Not a single creed, nor confession of faith, nor catechism, nor passage in patristic writings contains one syllable about the pope, still less about faith and doctrine being derived from him. . . .
The Pope and the Council contained aspects of papal history completely unknown to me. I had been brought up as a Catholic, had gone through the usual six-year seminary course prior to ordination, had graduated from a Catholic university, the Gregorianum in Rome, and had never come across such ideas. This is partly to be explained by the partisan nature of seminary education and the fact that in such establishments history is a Cinderella subject. The misbehaviour of popes is lightly dwelt or even excised, rather in the way that Trotsky was cut out of all Soviet history by Stalin . . . My ignorance must also be set down to the preference Catholics have for a history of the papacy that can be read with white gloves on. It is not easy to admit that one's leaders were often barbarians, or that the good popes sometimes did far more harm than good.
Thus, quite late in my career, I felt obliged to examine the history of Catholic ideas and institutions, the later of course including the papacy. It was a long and sometimes painful form of a self-education.”
Peter de Rosa
Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy
(Peter de Rosa is author of many books including Bless Me, Father, Christ and Original Sin, and Jesus Who became Christ. In Vicars of Christ he dispels myths about the papacy in favor of hard facts, and provides everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, with the true, alarming story of the dark origins of the Church.)
“The Apocalypse of Peter, probably among the latest writings discovered at Nag Hammadi (c. 200-300), tells how dismayed Peter was to hear that many believers "will fall into an erroneous name" and "will be ruled heretically." The risen Christ explains to Peter that those who "name themselves bishop, and also deacon, as if they had received their authority from God," are, in reality, "waterless canals." Although they "do not understand mystery," they "boast that the mystery of truth belongs to them alone." ”
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels
“Although a devout Catholic himself, Nostradamus' prophecies do not bode well for the Vatican. In his letter to Henry II of France on June 27, 1558, Nostradamus wrote that the "great Vicar of the Cope (the Pope) shall be put back to his pristine state; but, desolated and abandoned by all, will return to the sanctuary destroyed by Paganism, when the Old and New Testament will be thrust out and burnt."
Nostradamus is not the only prophet to foresee the collapse of the papacy. St. Malachy's predictions about the succession of popes from 1143 to the present have proven correct, even though he died in 1148 . . .
Malachy's prophecies were supposed to extend from 1143 to "the end of the world." And, according to them, there are but two popes remaining. Malachy called the last "Petrus Romanus," or Peter of Rome, and said he "will feed his flock among many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the Judge will judge the people." Further evidence of the coming collapse of the Catholic Church is also believed to have been foretold by no less than the Virgin of Fatima . . .
The third prophecy was kept hidden until 1942. The children refused to reveal what they had been told, but one of them forwarded it to the Vatican, where it was kept secret. Even now, only the part concerning the war has been released, despite the Lady's instruction that it should be fully disclosed in 1960. There is reason to belief that the remainder deals with the destruction of the Church somewhere around the year 2000. On October 15, 1963, a German newspaper printed what it said was the text of the prophecy: "For the Church too, the time of its greatest trial will come. Cardinals will oppose cardinals and bishops against bishops. Satan will march in their midst and there will be great changes in Rome. What is rotten will fall, never to rise again. The church will be darkened and the world will shake in terror." La loy du Sol, & Venus contendens.”
Walter Mercado, Beyond The Horizon
“The Popes of the Renaissance
Against the Catholic claim that the Church promoted the recovery of Europe, history records, not only that the causes of it were purely secular and that the new civilization flagrantly defied the Christian code of conduct, but that the Papacy was an idle spectator of the recovery; and when at a late hour it began to co-operate by patronizing art and letters, the Papal Court, most of the Popes, and the majority of the Italian bishops, adopted the characteristic vices of the age. In the earlier part of the period the Popes lived in the luxurious indolence of the "Babylonian Captivity" at Avignon (1309-77) , in a palace and city which Petrarch, who lived near, describes as a sink of iniquity. From this they passed into the futile days of the Great Schism (1378-1414), when their greed excited the disgust of Christendom. When the Emperor put an end to this, and bade them reform, the new Popes disregarded the injunction; but about 1450 they began on a modest scale the secular rehabilitation of Rome — so modest, indeed, that, in 1450, cattle still browsed in the streets, and as late as 1484 the Vatican Library, which the Catholic writer who was permitted to deal with this phase in the Cambridge Modern History (Vol.1) calls "the most important library in the West in the fifteenth century," had only 2,000 manuscripts. The Alexandrian and Cordovan libraries had had half a million. Then every source of tainted wealth (sale of offices and indulgences, dispensations, etc.) was exploited, and the more powerful of the Roman families, who fought like brigands, dominated (as Cardinals or Popes) and corrupted the Papal Court. In the pagan imperial history of Rome, which brings a blush to the cheek of the preacher, twenty-one out of twenty-nine Emperors were good men, and these ruled for 245 years, while the eight disreputable Emperors held the throne for only seventy-five years. But, in the 250 years of Papal history, ten out of twenty-four Popes (omitting Pontiffs who lasted only a few months) were or had been notoriously men of immoral life, and these ruled for 100 years: three only, who ruled for fifteen years, attempted to reform the Church; all except these three permitted an extraordinary corruption in the Papal Court; and even the three reformers did not suppress the flagrant simony, graft, and judicial corruption. Nicholas V (1447-55), whom Pastor, admitting that "the reforming zeal of his early days cooled down," praises as the restorer of culture, included in his patronage the most obscene writers of the age. Calixtus III (1455-8) introduced the Borgia family and, blind to their vices, raised them to the highest offices. Pius II (1458-64), a defiant apologist for his vices in his youth, made no effort to check the growing licence. Paul II (1464-71) was "wholly given over to sensual pleasure" (Bishop Creighton). Sixtus IV (1471-84), a friar, promoted his grossly immoral friar — nephews of the Rovere family, permitted his Court to be thoroughly debauched, and connived at the murder of a Medici prince in church during solemn mass. The Papacy was now so rich that the Colonna, Borgia, Orsini, and Rovere families fought for it by colossal bribery and murder, and in the impasse they had to let the tiara go to Innocent VIII (1484-92), whose bastard children moved in the highest society in the city and the Vatican. Incredible pictures of clerical corruption are to be found even in Pastor's History of the Popes, while some of the scenes in the Vatican itself, described in the private diary of the head of the Court, Burchard , were so vicious that the publisher struck even a discreet version of them out of the present writer's historical novel The Pope's Favourite (1917). The next thirty years were covered by the pontificates of Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X — two sodomists and one satyr and murderer — and form a unique chapter in the history of religion. [See notice of each.] Clement VII (1523-34), a bastard of the Medici House, and Paul III (1534-49), father of four well-known children (Pastor), next sustained the gaiety of the Court. This is the period of the Reformation, which we are now asked to believe had little or nothing to do with the corruption of the Church. Rome had been terribly ravaged and impoverished by a sack of the city (1527) and massacre of the Romans, by the Catholic Emperor, which threw into the shade the work of Goths and Vandals; but the gaiety of the prelates ran on, with fifteen years of partial reform [see Counter-Reformation], for another century and a quarter. Julius III (1550-5) was grosser than Leo X, and Pastor can plead only that it is not proved that a sordid youth whom he favoured was either his son or his mignon. Under Pius IV (1559-65) "the evil elements immediately awakened once more into activity" (Pastor) after one of the three short spells of reform (by a Pope, Paul IV, who loved strong wine and good cheer and was a scandalous nepotist), and after another short spell of reform, Gregory XIII (1572-85), notorious for his earlier looseness, let the Court and city return to such licence that one courtesan, chiefly ministering to prelates, made a fortune of £150,000 (Rodocanachi, Courtisanes et buffons, 1894). A few colourless Popes followed the third and last short spasm of reform, and this extraordinary series of Holy Fathers closed with the scandalous Pontificates of Urban VIII and Innocent X.”
J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia
The following is the text of the (above) third part of the secret of Fatima as written down by Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children believed to have seen the Virgin Mary in 1917.
"I write in obedience to you, my God, who commands 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 then pass in front of it, a bishop dressed in white.
We had the impression that it was the Holy Father.
Other bishops, priests, religious men and women were 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 bishops, priests, religious men and women, 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."
BBC, June 26, 2000
According to the Fatima Network, "The Vatican has officially declared the Fatima apparitions "worthy of belief, and the present Pope has gone much further, acknowledging that the Message of Fatima imposes an obligation on the Church, and on all mankind. . . . Every Catholic has the right to follow the dictates of his or her own conscience regarding Fatima. And whatever their choice, both believers in Fatima and unbelievers are entitled to have their convictions respected."
However, through lack of information and ignorance of contemporary events as revealed at this website the Fatima Network and other similar sites are unable to grasp the events already taking place on earth. The situation is more critical than what they have posted as the very redemption and salvation of humanity is at stake.
Since this is the case it is absolutely imperative that all Catholics, and humankind for the matter, be given every opportunity and right to examine in detail all online postings of the Fatima Network pertaining to Fatima’s Third Secret in relation to this website. Only by being allowed to cross-examine all relevant information will they be able to separate fact from fiction and ascertain Truth for themselves.
Certain eschatological events have set in motion the fulfillment of the prophecy of Fatima’s Third secret. We have already entered the period prior to the Second Coming of Christ. The revelation of Fatima's Third Secret was delayed for decades and that has allowed the moral and spiritual decay of humanity. Despite the Virgin requesting the pope to open and read it to the world in 1960, it was not done. But there is time for humanity to repent as the Divine Message is one of hope, joy and eternal life for those who understand the true meaning. Please read this carefully:
"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."
This means a grace period (Last Judgment) is given by the Great Holy Spirit to human beings before the End (Second Coming). Our Lady, being q Mother, has no desire to bring forth the Second Coming without first issuing a warning. She wants to save as many of Her Children as possible.
"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."
The fulfillment of the Third Fatima Secret begins the destruction of the papacy and the man who spiritually holds one billion souls ransom by claiming to be the Vicar of Christ. The same goes for Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs and others. All humans must be set free from the shackles of organized religions first because the later will not set them free to take part in the Last Judgment. The pope holds the maximum of God's children in spiritual ransom. That is why it is necessary that he is destroyed first..
"and in the same way there died one after another the bishops, priests, religious men and women, and various lay people of different ranks and positions."
The guardians of the religious regimes — priests, reverends, bishops, popes, rabbis, clerics, imams, mullahs, shaikhs, ulema, ayatollahs, gurus, swamis, pandits, brahmins, acaryas, bhagwans, granthis, gianis, lamas, monks, dalai lamas — will be meeting their spiritual deaths for defying the Last Judgment. That is why it is absolutely necessary to free ourselves from their clutches and learn about God's Plan for all humanity.
Those subscribing to the Catholic Church should read the followings facts of the papacy to realize why the Third Fatima Secret particularly ends in the killing of the Pope, bishops, priests, religious men and women:
The First Commandment
The Second Commandment
The Third Commandment
The Fourth Commandment
The Fifth Commandment
The Sixth Commandment
The Seventh Commandment
The Eight Commandment
The Ninth Commandment
The Tenth Commandment
“Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the angel cried in a loud voice: "Penance, penance, penance." ”
This is God Almighty's message to humanity to change our immoral and decadent ways by taking part in the Last Judgment prior to the Second Coming. Taking part in the Last Judgment is the only hope left.
"the souls that were making their way to God."
Hundreds of thousands are already actively taking part in the Resurrection and Last Judgment by purifying themselves in mind, body and spirit. This website has links for those who wish to learn these spiritual techniques absolutely required to purify ourselves. Instructions are given free at these sites:
www.sahajayoga.org/
www.sahajayoga.org/worldwid...fault.asp
"Information on 3rd Secret of Fatima
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.
“Fatima is a village in the center of Portugal about 70 miles north of Lisbon. It was there in 1915 that three humble peasant children began having a series of apparitions of angels and, later, the "Virgin Mary." The children were: Lucia Santos and her two cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto. . . .
Lucia would keep the Third Secret until 1941, when she received an inner "locution" from the Virgin giving her leave to publish all but the last of its three parts. As for the final part, which has come to be known as the Third Secret Sister Lucy's nearly fatal bout of pleurisy in 1943 moved the Bishop of Fatima to ask her to write it down and seal it up in an envelope, so that it might be read if she died. After much agonizing and another visitation by the Lady, she complied with the Bishop's request in January 1944, and forwarded the envelope to him with the instructions that it was to be opened by the Pope and read to the world in 1960, "because the Virgin wishes it so."
But the Vatican refused to disclose the Third Secret in 1960 and continues to suppress it to this day. All the popes since John XXIII, as well as a few Curia cardinals, have read the contents of Lucy's envelope, as John Paul II is reported to have done shortly after his inauguration in October 1978.
While conversing with a small group of pilgrims in the cathedral square of Fulda, West Germany, in November 1980, the Holy Father was asked to explain why the Third Secret had not been published in 1960, as the Lady of Fatima had directed. . . .
A question was then posed concerning the fate of the Church in Fatima's apocalyptic scenario.
John Paul: "We have to be prepared to suffer, before long, great trials which will require of us the disposition to sacrifice even our life for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is still possible to diminish this trial, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only in this manner can the Church be effectively renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church been brought about in blood! It will not be different this time."
Evidently, from John Paul's remarks at Fulda quoted above, the Third Secret of Fatima addresses this unprecedented crisis of faith and in fact predicts its onset in the latter decades of this century. This would explain the Lady's desire to have the message revealed in 1960, when a veritable epidemic of universal apostasy began to sweep across the globe. Another strong inference here is that the Church "renewal" which will resolve this great crisis may involve the martyrdom of one or more popes.
A tangible "marker" was left behind by Jacinta Marto, the younger seeress of Fatima. Shortly after the children received Our Lady's Secret in July 1917, Jacinta had two visions which she recounted to Lucia, who recorded them in her memoirs with the remark that they comprise "part of the [third] secret." Both visions concern the Holy Pope or Angelic Pastor:
"I don't know how it was, but I saw the Holy Pope in a very large house. He was kneeling by a table with his face in his hands and he was crying. Outside the house were many people. Some of them were throwing stones at him, others were cursing him and using bad language." . . .
The mysterious Third Secret of Fatima remains under lock and key in a Vatican archive, while Vatican bureaucrats attempt to silence a Canadian priest leading a movement for its disclosure. On February 8, 1960 Catholics around the world were stunned when the Vatican announced in an unsigned press release that the famous Third Secret would not be disclosed that year, as expected, and would probably remain a secret forever. Thus began a controversy in the Catholic Church which shows no signs of dying out, more than 35 years later.
What is the Third Secret, and why is a Canadian priest, Father Nicholas Gruner, under fire by the Vatican bureaucracy for probing into it?
Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II all read the Secret in private, as has John Paul II's right hand man, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The suppression of the Third Secret has naturally led to speculation among Catholics that its contents must be nothing short of explosive. Yet the official Vatican line is that the Secret contains nothing that has not already been revealed in Scripture. If that is so, then why is it being suppressed? In November 1984 Ratzinger gave a tantalizing hint of what the Third Secret contains when he admitted that it refers to "dangers which threaten the Faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore of the world."
Father Nicholas Gruner has widely publicized the work of several Fatima experts who believe they have deduced what the Third Secret contains: a warning that the Catholic Church will undergo a catastrophic loss of faith and discipline . . . the great apostasy predicted in Scripture as a harbinger of the end times.”
Morgana’s Observatory www.dreamscape.com/
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 offends God, 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." . . .
The secret was read a few days later, according to Monsignor Capovilla. Assistance in reading the Portuguese was given by Monsignor Paulo Jose Tavarez of 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 Vatican communiqué 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 many 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. . . .
Bishop Venancio named the late Fr Alonso in 1966 as the official expert on Fatima. Fr Alonso 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 salvation 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 3rd secret, 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. . . .
Cardinal Ratzinger has written in the Ratzinger Report 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."
www.netizen.org/
"FATIMA, Portugal, May 13: After years of speculation, the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said Saturday that the "third part of the secret of Fatima" speaks of a "bishop clothed in white" who "falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire." . . .
Many in the crowd applauded when they heard the long-awaited third secret, announced at the end of the pope’s Mass. Some said they were eager to hear more details, while others expressed disappointment that the secret did not foretell a momentous event, as many had speculated.
"What they said all happened in the past," said Julio Estela, a 33-year-old car salesman from the northern Portuguese town of Trofa. "This isn’t a prophecy. It’s disappointing. I think there’s more." "
Associated Press, May 13, 2000
MSNBC full report
If the second apparition of Fatima was interpreted as the fall and end of the vast communist Russia empire why shouldn't the third apparition prophesy the fall and end of the papacy and the Catholic Church?
But the Vatican has interpreted it as the assassination attempt on Pope Paul II in 1981, even though "he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him." How arrogantly deceitful are those vested with temporal power!
And why guard it so secretly for 19 years? Wouldn't revealing it in 1981 have brought the full force of a fulfilled prophecy and the pope's survival erupting into Catholic ecstasy and strengthening of faith. Common sense dictates that this would have been the most momentous time to reveal the Third Secret of Fatima and lay to rest the consistent clamoring and 'rumor mongering' by a large number of Catholics to be told the truth. One should not forget that the "Virgin had asked that the secret be made public in 1960." At least then make the secret public in 1981.
Unless, of course, the top officials of the papacy at that time endorsed this Truth: "Cardinal Ratzinger has written in the Ratzinger Report 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."
And believed that they had to wait until after December 31, 1999 had passed without incident before releasing the Third Secret.
How obviously devious is the May 13, 2000 Vatican interpretation after one reads the full text of the Third Fatima Secret!
So now do these "bishops, priests, religious men and women, and various lay people of different ranks and positions" feel safe and secure from its terrible foreboding secret?
And who are the many believers who "will fall into an erroneous name" and "will be ruled heretically"?
Last, but not the least, why is the Antichrist "killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him" and why must those who give him power also die "in the same way . . . one after another"?
"The coming of God's kingdom means the defeat of Satan's: "If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." Jesus' exorcisms free some individuals from the domination of demons. They anticipate Jesus' great victory over "the ruler of this world."
J. C. Ratzinger, Catechism of the Catholic Church
(J. C. Ratzinger, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, p. 121.)
“As for the final part, which has come to be known as the "Third Secret," Sister Lucy's nearly fatal bout of pleurisy in 1943 moved the Bishop of Fatima to ask her to write it down and seal it up in an envelope, so that it might be read if she died. After much agonizing and another visitation by the Lady, she complied with the Bishop's request in January 1944, and forwarded the envelope to him with instructions that it was to be opened by the Pope and read to the world in 1960, "because the Virgin wished to do so."
However the Vatican refused to disclose the Third Secret in 1960 and continues to suppress it to this day. All the Popes since John XXIII, as well as a few curia Cardinals, have read the contents of Lucy's envelope, as John Paul II is reported to have done shortly after his inauguration in October 1978 . . .
While conversing with a small group of pilgrims in the cathedral square of Fulda, West Germany, in November 19080, the Holy Father was asked to explain why the Third Secret had not been published in 1960, as the Lady of Fatima had directed. John Paul responded that "the gravity of its contents" was such as to possibly provoke a hostile response to its release on the part of the "world power of communism." . . .
A question was then posed concerning the fate of the Fatima's apocalyptic scenario, John Paul: "We have to be prepared to suffer, before long, great trials which will require of us the disposition to sacrifice even our life . . . for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is still possible to avert it, because only in this manner can the Church be effectively renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church been brought about in blood! It will not be different this time." . . .
The idea that a vacant Papal throne is part of the "or else" scenario in the Third Secret is very intriguing, because it confirms so neatly to a voluminous body of Christian prophecy dealing with the coming of the "Antichrist." It is here we begin to venture into the darkest recesses of the Third Secret of Fatima.”
Gilbert Grisé, The Time of Antichrist
“Subject: * Fatima and environs Date: Mon, 13 Dec 93 17:12:44 CST
From *The Ratzinger Report* Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori (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."
Undefined 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." ”
www.netizen.org
“Some people have even wondered whether the pope believes himself to be possessed of special knowledge about the millennium. It may be, for example, that 2000 is central to the "third secret" of Fatima, a revelation about the future of the world which the Virgin Mary is said to have entrusted to a group of Portuguese peasant children in 1917, and which was transmitted in confidence to the Vatican alone. If so, then the pope is giving fresh credence to a millenarianism that is at least as old as Christianity itself.”
An End and a Beginning, Economist, January 4, 1997
“After Peter, the centuries roll by, full of controversies, any one of which today would involve immediate recourse to Rome for a decision . . . We have already noted that not a single Father can find any hint of a Petrine office in the great biblical texts that refer to Peter. Papal supremacy and infallibility, so central to the Catholic church today, are simply not mentioned. Not a single creed, nor confession of faith, nor catechism, nor passage in patristic writings contains one syllable about the pope, still less about faith and doctrine being derived from him. . . .
The Pope and the Council contained aspects of papal history completely unknown to me. I had been brought up as a Catholic, had gone through the usual six-year seminary course prior to ordination, had graduated from a Catholic university, the Gregorianum in Rome, and had never come across such ideas. This is partly to be explained by the partisan nature of seminary education and the fact that in such establishments history is a Cinderella subject. The misbehaviour of popes is lightly dwelt or even excised, rather in the way that Trotsky was cut out of all Soviet history by Stalin . . . My ignorance must also be set down to the preference Catholics have for a history of the papacy that can be read with white gloves on. It is not easy to admit that one's leaders were often barbarians, or that the good popes sometimes did far more harm than good.
Thus, quite late in my career, I felt obliged to examine the history of Catholic ideas and institutions, the later of course including the papacy. It was a long and sometimes painful form of a self-education.”
Peter de Rosa
Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy
(Peter de Rosa is author of many books including Bless Me, Father, Christ and Original Sin, and Jesus Who became Christ. In Vicars of Christ he dispels myths about the papacy in favor of hard facts, and provides everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, with the true, alarming story of the dark origins of the Church.)
“The Apocalypse of Peter, probably among the latest writings discovered at Nag Hammadi (c. 200-300), tells how dismayed Peter was to hear that many believers "will fall into an erroneous name" and "will be ruled heretically." The risen Christ explains to Peter that those who "name themselves bishop, and also deacon, as if they had received their authority from God," are, in reality, "waterless canals." Although they "do not understand mystery," they "boast that the mystery of truth belongs to them alone." ”
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels
“Although a devout Catholic himself, Nostradamus' prophecies do not bode well for the Vatican. In his letter to Henry II of France on June 27, 1558, Nostradamus wrote that the "great Vicar of the Cope (the Pope) shall be put back to his pristine state; but, desolated and abandoned by all, will return to the sanctuary destroyed by Paganism, when the Old and New Testament will be thrust out and burnt."
Nostradamus is not the only prophet to foresee the collapse of the papacy. St. Malachy's predictions about the succession of popes from 1143 to the present have proven correct, even though he died in 1148 . . .
Malachy's prophecies were supposed to extend from 1143 to "the end of the world." And, according to them, there are but two popes remaining. Malachy called the last "Petrus Romanus," or Peter of Rome, and said he "will feed his flock among many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the Judge will judge the people." Further evidence of the coming collapse of the Catholic Church is also believed to have been foretold by no less than the Virgin of Fatima . . .
The third prophecy was kept hidden until 1942. The children refused to reveal what they had been told, but one of them forwarded it to the Vatican, where it was kept secret. Even now, only the part concerning the war has been released, despite the Lady's instruction that it should be fully disclosed in 1960. There is reason to belief that the remainder deals with the destruction of the Church somewhere around the year 2000. On October 15, 1963, a German newspaper printed what it said was the text of the prophecy: "For the Church too, the time of its greatest trial will come. Cardinals will oppose cardinals and bishops against bishops. Satan will march in their midst and there will be great changes in Rome. What is rotten will fall, never to rise again. The church will be darkened and the world will shake in terror." La loy du Sol, & Venus contendens.”
Walter Mercado, Beyond The Horizon
“The Popes of the Renaissance
Against the Catholic claim that the Church promoted the recovery of Europe, history records, not only that the causes of it were purely secular and that the new civilization flagrantly defied the Christian code of conduct, but that the Papacy was an idle spectator of the recovery; and when at a late hour it began to co-operate by patronizing art and letters, the Papal Court, most of the Popes, and the majority of the Italian bishops, adopted the characteristic vices of the age. In the earlier part of the period the Popes lived in the luxurious indolence of the "Babylonian Captivity" at Avignon (1309-77) , in a palace and city which Petrarch, who lived near, describes as a sink of iniquity. From this they passed into the futile days of the Great Schism (1378-1414), when their greed excited the disgust of Christendom. When the Emperor put an end to this, and bade them reform, the new Popes disregarded the injunction; but about 1450 they began on a modest scale the secular rehabilitation of Rome — so modest, indeed, that, in 1450, cattle still browsed in the streets, and as late as 1484 the Vatican Library, which the Catholic writer who was permitted to deal with this phase in the Cambridge Modern History (Vol.1) calls "the most important library in the West in the fifteenth century," had only 2,000 manuscripts. The Alexandrian and Cordovan libraries had had half a million. Then every source of tainted wealth (sale of offices and indulgences, dispensations, etc.) was exploited, and the more powerful of the Roman families, who fought like brigands, dominated (as Cardinals or Popes) and corrupted the Papal Court. In the pagan imperial history of Rome, which brings a blush to the cheek of the preacher, twenty-one out of twenty-nine Emperors were good men, and these ruled for 245 years, while the eight disreputable Emperors held the throne for only seventy-five years. But, in the 250 years of Papal history, ten out of twenty-four Popes (omitting Pontiffs who lasted only a few months) were or had been notoriously men of immoral life, and these ruled for 100 years: three only, who ruled for fifteen years, attempted to reform the Church; all except these three permitted an extraordinary corruption in the Papal Court; and even the three reformers did not suppress the flagrant simony, graft, and judicial corruption. Nicholas V (1447-55), whom Pastor, admitting that "the reforming zeal of his early days cooled down," praises as the restorer of culture, included in his patronage the most obscene writers of the age. Calixtus III (1455-8) introduced the Borgia family and, blind to their vices, raised them to the highest offices. Pius II (1458-64), a defiant apologist for his vices in his youth, made no effort to check the growing licence. Paul II (1464-71) was "wholly given over to sensual pleasure" (Bishop Creighton). Sixtus IV (1471-84), a friar, promoted his grossly immoral friar — nephews of the Rovere family, permitted his Court to be thoroughly debauched, and connived at the murder of a Medici prince in church during solemn mass. The Papacy was now so rich that the Colonna, Borgia, Orsini, and Rovere families fought for it by colossal bribery and murder, and in the impasse they had to let the tiara go to Innocent VIII (1484-92), whose bastard children moved in the highest society in the city and the Vatican. Incredible pictures of clerical corruption are to be found even in Pastor's History of the Popes, while some of the scenes in the Vatican itself, described in the private diary of the head of the Court, Burchard , were so vicious that the publisher struck even a discreet version of them out of the present writer's historical novel The Pope's Favourite (1917). The next thirty years were covered by the pontificates of Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X — two sodomists and one satyr and murderer — and form a unique chapter in the history of religion. [See notice of each.] Clement VII (1523-34), a bastard of the Medici House, and Paul III (1534-49), father of four well-known children (Pastor), next sustained the gaiety of the Court. This is the period of the Reformation, which we are now asked to believe had little or nothing to do with the corruption of the Church. Rome had been terribly ravaged and impoverished by a sack of the city (1527) and massacre of the Romans, by the Catholic Emperor, which threw into the shade the work of Goths and Vandals; but the gaiety of the prelates ran on, with fifteen years of partial reform [see Counter-Reformation], for another century and a quarter. Julius III (1550-5) was grosser than Leo X, and Pastor can plead only that it is not proved that a sordid youth whom he favoured was either his son or his mignon. Under Pius IV (1559-65) "the evil elements immediately awakened once more into activity" (Pastor) after one of the three short spells of reform (by a Pope, Paul IV, who loved strong wine and good cheer and was a scandalous nepotist), and after another short spell of reform, Gregory XIII (1572-85), notorious for his earlier looseness, let the Court and city return to such licence that one courtesan, chiefly ministering to prelates, made a fortune of £150,000 (Rodocanachi, Courtisanes et buffons, 1894). A few colourless Popes followed the third and last short spasm of reform, and this extraordinary series of Holy Fathers closed with the scandalous Pontificates of Urban VIII and Innocent X.”
J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia
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Florida
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You really should check about my book Grounding the Phoenix Lights: Prophesies and Fulfillment of the Old Millennium www.groundingthelights.com
Free to download at mysite.verizon.net/ressgrst...ights.pdf
Here's the chapter that relates to the topic at hand.
Our Lady of the Shekinah
Following through my investigation I looked into facts or discoveries about the Phoenix Lights other observers had made about the event. I turned to Dr. Lynne Kitei’s book “The Phoenix Lights: A Skeptic’s Discovery That We Are Not Alone.” Kitei discusses some notable similarities between photographs of the Phoenix Lights and photographs of the miraculous lights that appeared in 1917. In fact in an attempt to resolve the mystery of the Lights Jim Dilettoso of Village Labs performed a light analysis on a selection of images from other famous mysterious light events. He determined that the only match to the Phoenix Lights was found in the photographs taken at Fatima in 1917. As unbelievable as this sounds a few other details connect the two events beginning with the dates themselves.
I find this especially strange because as a young Jewish boy growing up in Los Angeles in the 50s and 60s I was enamored with the television program “Million Dollar Movie.” This particular program selected a movie that would then play the entire week. One of the first films I watched over and again thanks to “Million Dollar Movie” was “The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima.” The 1952 film depicted the experiences of three Portuguese children who encountered apparitions of the Mother Mary in 1917. I thought I knew the story well.
As the film told it the children encountered the Virgin on specific days. The Virgin Mother gave the children information and messages for the religious authorities. The children were threatened with torture to reveal three particular secrets they were told. They refused even though their captors convinced them their siblings had already been boiled in oil.
A miracle finally convinces authorities that the children are telling the truth. The miracle transpired after an entire day of rain when the “sun” appears and dried the rain drenched cloaks, boots, and caps of the observers. After which the sun then mysteriously grew large and began zigging and zagging around the sky before nose diving beyond the horizon. I learned there were other forces afoot that perhaps ‘sanitized’ the prophetic message that Mary gave to the children for mass consumption.
I learned quite a bit from referring to a 1942 memoir written by one of the children who had grown up to become a nun, Sr. Lucia. The apparitions began appearing to the children on May 13th 1917. They received this apparition at approximately the same hour of the day on the 13th of every month between May and November of that year. The miracle of the rain and sun occurred on October 13th. Sister Lucia the oldest of the children who lived to age 97 died on February 13th 2005.
Sister Lucia described the lights of the Virgin apparition as “brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal glass filled with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of the sun.” Delittosa noted that the Phoenix Lights were a match to the lights as they were photographed on November 13th 1917.
The content of the secret messages the children received also line up with the Phoenix Lights landscape images in such a way as to give us pause on accepted religious assumptions. Or may perhaps have the capacity to revolutionize everything we’ve ever thought as true and unshakeable.
The first message the children received was a short vision of people burning in hell. In Lucia’s 1942 memoir she says.
Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. 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. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.
Documents on Fatima & Memoirs of Sr. Lucia.
Fr. Antonio and Maria Martin S.J.
These visions are not unlike the images found in the landscape we will soon visit in Southern Arizona. In fact, Lucia was restricted from revealing the third secret and only spoke of it at last in 2000. Many people believe only part of the third message was ever revealed by the Roman Catholic Church. Until 2000 Sr. Lucia has always referred inquiring minds to St. John’s Book of Revelation – chapters 8-13 when they asked about the third message.
John’s Revelation Chapter 8 begins with the opening of the seventh seal of the Book of Revelation. After the blaring trumpets heaven is quiet for half an hour. A golden sensor filled with fire goes before the throne of God in all his glory prompting earthquakes, lighting, thunder and what ever else you might expect when religious worldviews turn upside down. From a Kabbalistic standpoint 30 (30 minutes or half an hour) equates to the Hebrew letter lamed also meaning to teach (my opinion is that the sightings across Arizona also formed the Hebrew letter lamed in its flight path from Henderson, Nevada to Phoenix and Phoenix to Tucson). As a result of the transformative teaching we feel our own mortality as well as the earth’s as everything begins to burn. Hail, fire, and blood fall on the earth. A third of this and a third of that as we realize our earth itself suffers from our immature heavenly wishful thinking. Somehow the damage is constrained to the 33rd parallel around the earth which we’ll find out is significant in making sense of why this episode occurred in the Phoenix area.
Next according to St. John’s Revelation the star Wormwood falls into a third of the rivers and springs poisoning them and the many who drink from them. The Hebrew word for Wormwood is Leaana – lamed ayin nun hey which has the root to curse. Water of the rivers and springs is symbolic of receptivity and purification which is represented by the Hebrew letter mem. The Mother letter for water, mem has a gematria value 40. This is why 40 years is used so often in the bible to mark transitions from one state of consciousness to another. In the story of John’s Revelations Chapter 8 what becomes poisoned in this case is our false worldview as we come to terms with the realization that these lights are much more than we initially imagined.
Sister Lucia’s memoir refers to this notion of coming to terms with a false worldview and the ramifications of judgments made from a position of righteousness and zeal. In other words the chickens have come home to roost and we all must confront our ignorance of what is really true versus what we were led to believe. This is why the Catholic Church suppressed the release of the entire third secret – it is the ultimate death of religious authority itself. Here’s only part of what was released in vision form from Lucia.
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 splendor 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. In a manner similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it, was a bishop dressed in white. We had the impression that it was the Holy Father. Other bishops, priests, men and women religious, were 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 bark. Before reaching there, the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins, half trembling with a halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow as 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 they 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.
Documents on Fatima & Memoirs of Sr. Lucia.
Fr. Antonio and Maria Martin S.J.
Here we get a clue of the themes of the apparition’s earlier secrets where the Virgin implored the world and especially Russia to embrace Mary. Or what I would characterize as the feminine spirit in Hebrew the Shekinah. This divine feminine aspect is capable of warding off the fire of the sword because she is the grail itself.
Further details circulating about the rest of the third secret have to do with corruption within the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church. The third secret also warns of an impending disaster in the second half of the 20th Century which we’ve evidently averted. In The Isaiah Effect Gregg Braden addresses how this dire prophesy was averted though collective prayer itself with focused intent and positive visualization. This combination has been scientifically proven to work at curing illnesses and changing emotional fields of those receiving the energy. With this in mind many people believe the Harmonic Convergence of 1987 was a pivotal mass event canceling any manner of approaching Armageddon or Apocalypse.
This excerpt from the second secret message from Mary leads me to believe this is true:
When you see a night illuminated 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.
Documents on Fatima & Memoirs of Sr. Lucia.
Fr. Antonio and Maria Martin S.J.
If our “great sign” from the ”unknown light” is the images, symbols, and signs the Phoenix Lights pointed out then Sr. Lucia describes a world much like ours that struggles to incorporate a transforming worldview. Such an expanded worldview demands we include an unlimited universe with beings beyond our understanding. Since they are beyond our understanding that suggests they can live in an open system of time that includes the past present and future all at once. If that is our ‘punishment’ then I say amen. We’ll take a deeper dive into this notion of an open system of time later on.
The content of the secret messages the children received in Fatima become involved through the similarities of the photographs of the Phoenix Lights and the mysterious lights that appeared around the time of the prophetic apparitions of Mary the Virgin Mother of God. Sister Lucia one of the children refers to coming to terms with a false worldview. The Virgin Mary apparition implored the world to embrace Mary or the feminine spirit Shekinah. This divine feminine aspect is capable of warding off the fire of the sword because she is the grail itself. Her healing may help lead us beyond the corruption within the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church alluded to in the prophecies.
The Lights suggest a hidden message and allude to the transformative resurrection of Quetzalcoatl and Jesus. The Phoenix Lights chart depicts the Star of David pattern connecting the event to Jesus reinforcing the Mexico City connection to Quetzalcoatl. The idea of a master instructing his pupil came to light as did the idea that the Lights were an indicator that the Hopi Fifth World, Mayan Sixth Sun and the Age of Aquarius were coming into being. Through Dr. Lynne Kitei’s and Jim Dilettoso the Phoenix Lights connect to the 1917 visitations at Fatima. The memoirs of one of the child witnesses reveal that we are dealing with a false worldview as we transition from one state of consciousness to another. We all must confront our ignorance of what is really true versus what we were led to believe. For me part of doing that is coming to terms with the realization that these Lights are much more than we initially imagined. -
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Steven have you seen the new movie 2012?
It's no Dvd
anyway your quatzelcotal to Jesus connection reminds me of this movie
I admire yyou research and efforts
Yes of couse I'll check out your site
Thanks
Keep us posted brother -
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Thanks Passenger. I will search out the 2012 movie.
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It's not a great movie
But it does have an intestesting take on the subject -
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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 offends God, 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 Tavarez of 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 Vatican communiqué 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 3rd secret, 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 is Russia."
"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.
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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 Report
An 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 writer Vittorio 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.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori
(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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