Posted on 05/11/2007 1:27:17 PM PDT by NYer
Fatima: The secret's out, despite claims to the contrary
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Despite claims there are still secrets connected to the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, Pope Benedict XVI and his secretary of state said the entire message has been published and has been interpreted accurately.
The Marian apparitions to three children in Fatima, Portugal, began 90 years ago May 13, and Pope John Paul II ordered the so-called "third secret" of Fatima to be published in 2000.
As the Fatima anniversary approached, the Vatican bookstore was selling copies of "The Last Fatima Visionary: My Meetings With Sister Lucia." The 140-page, Italian-language interview with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, opens with a letter of presentation from Pope Benedict.
The two men worked with Pope John Paul to publish the "third secret" and to write an official commentary on it, describing its depiction of a "man dressed in white" shot down amid the rubble of a ruined city as a prophetic vision of the 1981 attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul.
In the new book, Cardinal Bertone said Carmelite Sister Lucia dos Santos, at the time the last surviving visionary, confirmed the Vatican's interpretation.
He also said Pope John Paul felt that since the assassination attempt had already taken place and he survived, the 2000 beatification of Sister Lucia's cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, was an appropriate occasion for announcing the publication of the secret.
The continuing rumors that the Vatican is still hiding something puzzle Cardinal Bertone and, he said, they irritated Sister Lucia, who died in February 2005 at the age of 97.
In the book, Cardinal Bertone said, "The most diehard 'Fatimists,' like those who follow Father Nicholas Gruner's Fatima Crusader magazine, remain disappointed."
Father Gruner, a priest based in Canada, repeatedly has said that the Vatican's text does not match other accounts by Sister Lucia and, basically, does not contain anything worrying enough to have prevented Popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II from publishing it earlier.
The strange thing, Cardinal Bertone said in the new book, is that Pope John Paul decided to publish the secret precisely to put an end to the wild speculation that had surrounded it.
"The pressure from the 'Fatimists' was extremely strong," the cardinal said.
"The most absurd theses" were being spread, mainly presuming that the secret predicted catastrophic world events or widespread heresy at the top levels of the church, Cardinal Bertone said.
"Clearing up the question was a pastoral concern," he said.
Pope Benedict's letter, written in late February, reflects that concern.
The publication of the third secret "was a time of light, not only because the message could be known by all, but also because it unveiled the truth amid the confused framework of apocalyptic interpretations and speculation circulating in the church, upsetting the faithful rather than asking them for prayers and repentance," Pope Benedict wrote.
The pope, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said he wrote the Vatican commentary "after having prayed intensely and meditated deeply on the authentic words of the third part of the secret of Fatima, contained on sheets written by Sister Lucia."
Pope Benedict said that for him the secret can be summarized "by the consoling promise of the Most Holy Virgin: 'My immaculate heart will triumph.'"
Cardinal Bertone's knowledge of the Fatima secret is not something that comes just from a book.
As secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was sent by Pope John Paul to Fatima to discuss the upcoming publication of the secret with Sister Lucia.
What was known as the "third secret" was, in fact, the third part of a vision shown to Sister Lucia and her cousins.
Sister Lucia had made the first two parts public in the late 1930s. They included a vision of hell shown to the children, along with prophecies concerning the outbreak of World War II, the rise of communism and the ultimate triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially in Russia if the country was consecrated to her Immaculate Heart.
Sister Lucia wrote down the third part of the message, sealed it in an envelope and gave it to her local bishop. The message was sent to the Vatican in 1957, where successive popes read it, but decided not to reveal its contents.
As for objections that the secret could not refer to Pope John Paul since he did not die, Cardinal Bertone said such objections show an ignorance of the spiritual purpose of prophecy.
"Prophecy is not guided by a deterministic fatalism," he said. "Prayer and penance are stronger than evil and than bullets."
While prophecy warns of what could happen if people do not pray and repent, he said, it also demonstrates the fact that "conversion, penance and prayer can change the course of history."
You made here, after all.
I thought we were going to miss you.
Where would a post like this be without my entertaining observations?
How can I deny the masses of lurkers checking out these posts a bit of comic relief?
After all, I’ve got my fans to consider.
I agree that kids shouldn’t have to be terrorized with things they aren’t capable of understanding or correcting.
I agree that nuns often did, said and taught foolish things.
Having acknowledged that, I also don’t believe that the events of Fatima were fake or false. Nor were the events at Lourdes. Nor were the events at Guadalupe.
As for children being terrified, they have just as many things, people and events to terrify them today and the present day terrors are very real nor do they hold out the same hope as the events at Fatima, Lourdes and Guadalupe.
I am not ashamed of those events and only regret that they weren’t (and still aren’t) presented in a correctly prophetic and hope-filled way.
Fans are always helpful when there is hot air around.
All your ridicule won’t make a difference to me.
Knock it off!
I didn’t realize this was a “caucus” thread. It was my understanding that as long as I don’t make it personal, which I hadn’t, my posts demonstrating my disagreement with the topic were acceptable.
Please clarify which specific forum rule(s) I have violated.
Thank you.
Are you the same as the “Admin Moderator”?
There were quite a few martyrs in the church during the Papacy of Pope John Paul II.
Additionally, there were many vocations lost to the Catholic Church after Vatican II (priests, sisters, brothers).
One only need to read The Miracle of Hope about the life of Francis Xavier Cardinal Nguyen van Thuan to see the persecution in Vietnam, let alone other places such as Africa, the Middle East, China, and in the Soviet Union (under Communist rule).
Reading the story of Josyp Terelya of the Ukraine can give one the sense of persecution in the Soviet Union...
As for Pope John Paul II, there is one red square (where the assassination attempt occurred on his life) in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican. Seminarians from the North American College point this out to visitors when they give tours...
Devout Catholics are fine people. Their faith produces good fruit.
One reason the movie was made was that four of the predictions made by the woman from heaven had come true by that time.
One was that Jacinto would go to heaven shortly (she died about 1919). The second one was that her brother Francesco would join her in heaven. He also died about 1919. But the woman from Heaven said that Lucia Santos would have to remain on earth for a while to perform work that heaven wanted done (she died almost 85 years after the apparitions, and just weeks before Pope John Paul II).
The third prediction of the woman from heaven was that Russia would spread its errors through the world. This made the three kids the laughing stock of people in 1917, and the last apparition occurred in October of 1917 -- the month of Red October -- the Russian Revolution.
Russia had been knocked out early in World War I because it was falling apart. So the fact Russia would spread its errors throughout the world seemed like a joke at the time.
But the warning was about atheistic communism, which Russia did spread in the 1920's until the fall of Communism in Russia in 1990...
The last prediction (that people would know about it) was that if people did not repent, an even worse war would come upon the earth than the War going on then (World War I). This was the prediction for World War II -- but it was a conditional prediction.
Lastly, the children were mocked by the freemason government of Portugal, and since the children predicted a miracle on October 13, 1917, this event was going to be covered by the Lisbon newspaper -- because the freemasons knew the miracle would not occur (which it did).
If you can read Portugese, you can read the article about the Miracle of the Sun that occurred that day -- October 13, 1917 -- at the Cove de Iria (Cove of Peace) at Fatima, Portugal.
There were many predictions that did came true. One prediction the children muffed was because they did not understand time and heaven. The woman from heaven said that World War I would end soon. It ended over a year later... But the children thought that it would be over in days or a few weeks...
That is sort of like what the womand from heaven said about Lucia Santos staying on earth -- for a while longer. That for a while longer was over 85 years and almost 90 years...
Our Lady showed those children a vision of hell. They said that if she had not assured them they would go to heaven before hand they would have dropped dead on the spot it was so terrifying. However, it did make them lead very holy lives and do penance so that poor sinners might not suffer that fate. Of course, Our Lady would probably be brought up on child abuse charges today...
Sometimes.
Could you explain to me why my post was pulled? I made no personal attack, nor was the thread posted as a caucus. If there is some other criteria of which I am unaware, I’d like to know for future reference.
Thanks.
These “predictions” aren’t all that specific. Surely the Psychic Hotline could do equally well.
Deu 18:20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
Deu 18:21 And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken?
Deu 18:22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that [is] the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, [but] the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.
Blessed Feast day of Our Lady of Fatima.The Pope is on for Holy Mass right now on EWTN in Brazil.
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