Posted on 03/10/2017 4:03:00 PM PST by BlessedBeGod
In May of 2016, OnePeterFive received a public denial from the Vatican’s Press Office with regard to a story that we had published about the apparently still missing part of the Third Secret of Fatima. On 15 May 2016, Dr. Ingo Dollinger, a saintly priest and long-time friend of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had confirmed to us that Cardinal Ratzinger – shortly after the 26 June 2000 publication of the Third Secret of Fatima – had admitted to him that one part of that secret was still not published.
However, in the 21 May 2016 Press Communique from the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI was himself quoted as having said “never to have spoken with Professor Dollinger about Fatima” and, secondly, that “the publication of the Third Secret is complete.” Right after this denial and added affirmation, Dr. Dollinger insisted again upon bearing his own witness. In the wake of this somewhat unsettling development, we therefore inquired further about the virtuous life and witness of Dr. Dollinger – who himself was also a close collaborator of Saint Padre Pio – and we then also published a short story of his life in order to give more credence and even a moral certitude to his story.
It is with much gratitude, therefore, that we can report today that Giuseppe Nardi, the editor of the German Catholic website, Katholisches.info, has found an additional personal source who now confirms our earlier story, namely that Cardinal Ratzinger had told Dr. Dollinger that there is still a part of the Third Secret of Fatima missing and not yet officially published.
Giuseppe Nardi was able to meet in Austria and then interview a close friend of Dr. Dollinger himself for many years: Gottfried Kiniger. Kiniger is a hatmaker and lives in the little beautiful village of Sillian in the East Tirol of Austria. He is now also in his late 80s and he was in his lifetime very active politically, having been supportive of the monarchist cause and of the Pan-European Movement (Paneuropa Bewegung) of Otto von Habsburg, and having also always been a public defender of the Catholic Church. As he told Giuseppe Nardi, he regularly met with Dr. Dollinger at least twice a year after they had first met in the 1990s in Salzburg, Austria. Only these recent years, due to their advanced age, these two friends have not any more been able to meet in person. Inasmuch as Father Dollinger has lived in Wigratzbad, Germany since his own retirement in 2004, the two friends often had met in that village where also the Fraternity of St. Peter’s own seminary is now located.
As Nardi now reports, he first happened to visit Gottfried Kiniger on 21 December 2016, where he incidentally and quite informally mentioned the Dollinger story, as it had been publicly discussed more broadly after that 21 May of 2016. Kiniger, who does not use the Internet, had not yet heard about that story. Nardi continues, by saying:
After hearing about the [21 May 2016] denial coming from Rome, Kiniger became very upset. He could not imagine that Benedict XVI was to have made such a statement, because what Hickson had reported is what Dollinger had told him already in 2000. For this reason, there took place a second conversation at which Kiniger’s own description was recorded.
That second and recorded conversation took place some three weeks later, on 17 January 2017. Kiniger has now wholeheartedly given his approval for the publication of his own personal witness with regard to the Dollinger case. In the following, we shall present Nardi’s own report and technical recording of Kiniger’s own words:
“I do not remember the exact date,” says Kiniger, “but it was still in the year 2000, I am sure about that. I still remember the press conference [about the publication of the Third Secret of Fatima] in Rome, as it was then shown on television. In the fall, I visited again, as usual, Dollinger with whom I am friends for many years. On this occasion, he told me of his having met Cardinal Ratzinger – then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – shortly after that [June 2000] press conference. He even then con-celebrated with him, something which Dollinger usually does not do, but Ratzinger had invited him to do it. After the celebration [of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass], Dollinger spoke with the cardinal and brought up the topic of Fatima and the Third Secret. Ratzinger told him: ‘What we have published is not the whole secret. [‘Was wir veröffentlicht haben, ist nicht das ganze Geheimnis.’] In the sacristy, there were also present other priests – some of them high-ranking priests – to whom the cardinal had to attend intermittently. But he soon returned to Dollinger and said to him: ‘We were instructed to do so.’ [‘Es ist uns so aufgetragen worden.’] This same sentence Dollinger, a second time, repeated: ‘We were instructed to do so.’ He [Dollinger] has interpreted these words, as such: namely, that John Paul II wanted it and ordered it this way. At this meeting, when Dollinger told me all these things, other people were also present, among them my own companion.
In the years to follow, Dollinger told of this episode again and again, several times, at our meetings. Most of the time, there were also several other people present. It was no secret, there was nothing that he kept secret. This is what the cardinal told him, this is what he passed on to others. Sometimes, there were priests and seminarians also sitting with us at the table who came from the seminary of the Fraternity of St. Peter in Wigratzbad. I do not know their names. In any event, numerous people have heard this story over the course of the years. I personally can witness to the story since the fall of 2000, when Dollinger told it to me for the first time. There is for me no doubt that Professor Dollinger, in whom I have complete trust, has described the story in a truthful manner. What would have been his reason to invent such a conversation and such a content – and so shortly after the press conference at the time – and then also to tell it freely and openly to everybody who wanted to hear it? That Benedict denies it suddenly, after 16 years, is hard for me to imagine. That seems to me rather implausible. I do not know why Rome does this. I cannot account for it. It seems as if one wishes to put the lid upon Fatima and to close the case. But that does not work. But, I do not know why Rome has acted in such a manner.”
May this additional witness and testimony now give further trustworthy support to the honest report of Dr. Ingo Dollinger. May these two friends now go down in history as having helped to bring out the fuller truth about Fatima and especially about the Third Secret of Fatima. May Rome finally release to the faithful and to others, as well, the full Third Secret of Fatima – so direly needed now in our time of disorder, and of intimately broken trust.
I’m not a Catholic, but if you ask others they’ll say I’m very respectful.
My question is a simple one. Could someone summarizd for me the background on this story?
Thanks.
I was never fully certain what to make of Father Malachi but he sounded quite sincere to me.........???......... anyway here is a short compilation of what he had to say about the Third Secret of Fatima...
it is, at any event, intersting...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvy2ADhwBKY
I’m Catholic and have no idea :)
Whatever it is, if it happens, it happens.
I’m still gonna enjoy my pizza tonight!
“My question is a simple one. Could someone summarizd for me the background on this story?”
Per Wiki: (I left the footnote references to Wiki article)
The Three Secrets of Fátima consist of a series of apocalyptic visions and prophecies which by some are believed to have been given to three young Portuguese shepherds, Lúcia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto, by a Marian apparition, starting on May 13, 1917.
According to Lucia, on July 13, 1917, around noon, the Virgin Mary is said to have entrusted the children with three secrets. Two of the secrets were revealed in 1941 in a document written by Lúcia, at the request of José Alves Correia da Silva, Bishop of Leiria, to assist with the publication of a new edition of a book on Jacinta.[1] When asked by the Bishop in 1943 to reveal the third secret, Lúcia struggled for a short period, being “not yet convinced that God had clearly authorized her to act.”[2] However, in October 1943 the Bishop ordered her to put it in writing.[3] Lúcia then wrote the secret down and sealed it in an envelope not to be opened until 1960, when “it will appear clearer.”[4] The text of the third secret was officially released by Pope John Paul II in 2000, although some claim that it was not the entire secret revealed by Lúcia, despite repeated assertions from the Vatican to the contrary.
According to the official Catholic interpretation, the three secrets involve Hell, World War I and World War II, and the Pope John Paul II assassination attempt.
Third secret
Sister Lucia chose not to disclose the third secret in her memoir of August 1941. In 1943, Lúcia fell seriously ill with influenza and pleurisy. Bishop Silva, visiting her on 15 September 1943, suggested that she write the third secret down to ensure that it would be recorded in the event of her death. Lúcia was hesitant to do so, however. At the time she received the secret, she had heard Mary say not to reveal it, but because Carmelite obedience requires that orders from superiors be regarded as coming directly from God, she was in a quandary as to whose orders took precedence. Finally, in mid-October, Bishop Silva sent her a letter containing a direct order to record the secret, and Lúcia obeyed.
The third part of the secret was written down “by order of His Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and the Most Holy Mother” on January 3, 1944.[14] In June 1944, the sealed envelope containing the third secret was delivered to Silva, where it stayed until 1957, when it was finally delivered to Rome.[15]
It was announced by Cardinal Angelo Sodano on May 13, 2000, 83 years after the first apparition of the Lady to the children in the Cova da Iria, that the Third Secret would finally be released. In his announcement, Cardinal Sodano implied that the secret was about the 20th century persecution of Christians that culminated in the failed Pope John Paul II assassination attempt on May 13, 1981, the 64th anniversary of the first apparition of the Lady at Fátima.[16]
The text of the Third Secret, according to the Vatican, was published on June 26, 2000:
J.M.J.
The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fátima, on 13 July 1917.
I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine.
After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’. And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.
Along with the text of the secret, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, (the future Pope Benedict XVI), published a theological commentary in which he states: “A careful reading of the text of the so-called third ‘secret’ of Fatima ... will probably prove disappointing or surprising after all the speculation it has stirred. No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled.” After explaining the differences between public and private revelations, he cautions people not to see in the message a determined future event:
The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize the forces of change in the right direction. Therefore we must totally discount fatalistic explanations of the “secret”, such as, for example, the claim that the would-be assassin of 13 May 1981 was merely an instrument of the divine plan guided by Providence and could not therefore have acted freely, or other similar ideas in circulation. Rather, the vision speaks of dangers and how we might be saved from them.[14][18]
He then moves on to talk about the symbolic nature of the images, noting: “The concluding part of the ‘secret’ uses images which Lucia may have seen in devotional books and which draw their inspiration from long-standing intuitions of faith.” As for the meaning of the message: “What remains was already evident when we began our reflections on the text of the ‘secret’: the exhortation to prayer as the path of ‘salvation for souls’ and, likewise, the summons to penance and conversion.”
Third Secret controversy
Prior to the 1930s the main focus of devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, (which was at that time not widely known outside Portugal and Spain) was on the need to pray the rosary for an end to World War I and for world peace. After the publication of Sister Lucia’s memoirs, starting in 1935, Fatima came to be seen as presenting the victory of the Blessed Virgin over Communism. Nicholas Gruner and others have interpreted the message of Fatima in a more extreme fashion. Gruner has been censured by the Church. These groups are generally opposed to the innovations of the Second Vatican Council. “The reported messages of Marian apparitions in the modern era (that is, since 1830) represent Mary as anti-modernist, anti-communist, and opposed to Catholic Church innovations such as Vatican II and the new liturgy. The strongest image of the militantly anti-communist Mary belongs to Our Lady of Fatima.”[19]
After the fall of Communism, this emerging network of groups and movements found new enemies, including apostasy, social degeneracy, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia and the corruption of the church and its priests.[20] According to Chris Maunder, senior lecturer in Theology & Religious Studies at York St John University; “Thus began another fringe Catholic campaign directed against the Vatican. ... This is the stuff of sensationalism and conspiracy theories and it has spawned many publications, some by genuinely concerned Fatima devotees, others by people seeking gain by mass publication.”[7]
In 1960 the Vatican issued a press release stating that it was “most probable the Secret would remain, forever, under absolute seal.”[21] This announcement produced considerable speculation over the content of the secret. According to the New York Times, speculation ranged from “worldwide nuclear annihilation to deep rifts in the Roman Catholic Church that lead to rival papacies.”[22] On 2 May 1981, Laurence James Downey hijacked an airplane and demanded that Pope John Paul II make public the Third Secret of Fatima.[23]
The release of the text sparked criticism from the Catholic Church in Portugal. Clergy as well as laypeople were offended that the text had been read in Rome and not at the Fátima shrine in Portugal where the reported events took place. The Times for June 29, 2000 reported that “The revelation on Monday that there were no doomsday predictions has provoked angry reactions from the Portuguese church over the decision to keep the prophecy secret for half a century.”
Critics such as Italian journalist and media personality Antonio Socci claim that the four-page, handwritten text of the Third Secret released by the Vatican in 2000 is not the real secret, or at least not the full secret.[24] The argument is based on the following:
Written on one sheet of paper: the text of the Third Secret released by the Vatican is handwritten on four sheets of paper.[14] Father Joaquin Alonso, official Fátima archivist for sixteen years, reports in his book that, “Lucy tells us that she wrote it on a sheet of paper.[25] In a taped interview, Charles Fiore quoted Malachi Martin as saying the following regarding the text of the Third Secret: “I cooled my heels in the corridor outside the Holy Father’s apartments, while my boss, Cardinal Bea, was inside debating with the Holy Father, and with a group of other bishops and priests, and two young Portuguese seminarians, who translated the letter, a single page, written in Portuguese, for all those in the room.”[26]
Written in the form of a letter: Another reason why critics argue the full Third Secret has not been released is because of indications that the Third Secret was written in the form of a signed letter to the Bishop of Leiria and the text of the Third Secret released by the Vatican is not written in the form of a letter.[14] Lúcia was interviewed by Father Jongen on February 3, 1946. When Fr. Jongen asked Lúcia when the time would arrive for the Third Secret, Lúcia responded, “I communicated the third part in a letter to the Bishop of Leiria.” Also, Canon Galamba, an advisor to the Bishop of Leiria, is quoted as saying, “When the bishop refused to open the letter, Lucy made him promise that it would definitely be opened and read to the world either at her death or in 1960, whichever came first.”[27]
Contains words attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary: the text of the Third Secret released by the Vatican contains no words attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary.[14] Socci asserts that the Third Secret likely begins with the words, “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc”, words which Lúcia included in her Fourth Memoir, but which are included only as a footnote to the text released by the Vatican.[28]
Contains information about the Apocalypse, apostasy, Satanic infiltration of the Church: in an interview published in the November 11, 1984 edition of Jesus Magazine, Cardinal Ratzinger was asked whether he had read the text of the Third Secret and why it had not been revealed.[29] Ratzinger acknowledged that he had read the Third Secret, and stated in part that the Third Secret involves the “importance of the novissimi”, and “dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian and therefore (the life) of the world.” Ratzinger also commented that, “If it is not made public – at least for the time being – it is in order to prevent religious prophecy from being mistaken for a quest for the sensational.”[30] Also, a news article quoted former Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, Howard Dee, as saying that Cardinal Ratzinger had personally confirmed to him that the messages of Akita and Fátima are “essentially the same.”[31] The Akita prophecy, in part, contains the following: “The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. … churches and altars sacked ....”[32][33] On May 13, 2000, Cardinal Sodano announced that the Third Secret would be released, during which he implied the secret was about the persecution of Christians in the 20th century that culminated in the failed assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981.[16] In a syndicated radio broadcast, Malachi Martin stated that the Third Secret “doesn’t make any sense unless we accept that there will be, or that there is in progress, a wholesale apostasy amongst clerics, and laity in the Catholic Church ...”.[34]
In a 1980 interview for the German magazine Stimme des Glaubens published in October 1981, John Paul II was asked explicitly to speak about the third secret. He said:
Because of the seriousness of its contents, in order not to encourage the world wide power of Communism to carry out certain coups, my predecessors in the chair of Peter have diplomatically preferred to withhold its publication. On the other hand, it should be sufficient for all Christians to know this much: if there is a message in which it is said that the oceans will flood entire sections of the earth; that, from one moment to the other, millions of people will perish... there is no longer any point in really wanting to publish this secret message. Many want to know merely out of curiosity, or because of their taste for sensationalism, but they forget that ‘to know’ implies for them a responsibility. It is dangerous to want to satisfy one’s curiosity only, if one is convinced that we can do nothing against a catastrophe that has been predicted.” He held up his rosary and stated “Here is the remedy against this evil. Pray, pray and ask for nothing else. Put everything in the hands of the Mother of God.” Asked what would happen in the Church, he said: “We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-too-distant future; trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives, and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because it is only in this way that the Church can be effectively renewed. How many times, indeed, has the renewal of the Church been effected in blood? This time, again, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong, ... we must entrust ourselves to Christ and to His holy Mother, and we must be attentive, very attentive, to the prayer of the Rosary.”[35]
According to one source, when Lúcia was asked about the Third Secret, she said it was “in the Gospels and in the Apocalypse”, and at one point she had even specified Apocalypse chapters 8 to 13, a range that includes the Book of Revelation 12:4, the chapter and verse cited by Pope John Paul II in his homily in Fátima on May 13, 2000.[36]
Cardinal Bertone’s response
The Vatican has maintained its position that the full text of the Third Secret was published in June 2000. A report from the Zenit Daily Dispatch dated December 20, 2001 based on a Vatican press release, reported that Lúcia told then-Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, in an interview conducted the previous month, that the secret has been completely revealed and published, and that no secrets remain.[37] Bertone, along with Cardinal Ratzinger, co-authored The Message of Fatima,[14] the document published in June 2000 by the Vatican that contains a scanned copy of the original text of the Third Secret.
Cardinal Bertone.
Bertone, who was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 2003 and held the position of Vatican Secretary of State until September 2013, wrote a book in 2007 titled, The Last Secret of Fatima.[38] The book contains a transcribed interview between journalist Giuseppe De Carli and Bertone in which Bertone responds to various criticisms and accusations regarding the content and disclosure of the Third Secret. At one point in the interview, De Carli comments on an unsourced accusation that the Vatican is concealing a one-page text of the Third Secret which predicts a great apostasy where Rome will “lose the faith and become the throne of the Antichrist.” Bertone responds as follows:
That’s absolutely crazy. Look, are you claiming that the prophecy of Fatima is about the apostasy of the Church of Rome? That Fatima is a prediction of Rome’s transformation into the throne of the Antichrist? Despite the love Our Lady has for the Pope and the Popes for Our Lady? Anyone can write books based on conspiracy theories, on biased interpretations. Anybody can take sentences out of context and present them as clues to some supposed plot to avoid divulging the truth and to transmit it in a code that only the initiates can understand. No, the whole theory you allude to is a fabrication. And this supposedly factual account is actually the sort of device the Masons used to invent to discredit the Church. I’m surprised that journalists and writers who claim to be Catholic let themselves be taken in.[39]
At another point in the interview, De Carli mentions that Cardinal Ottaviani had once stated that the Third Secret was written on a single sheet of paper. He also mentions that one of Lúcia’s memoirs contains the words, “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved etc”, words which some believe introduce the real Third Secret. Describing these observations as “feeble bits of evidence that neither prove nor disprove anything”, De Carli asks Cardinal Bertone about the possibility of there being two texts, where the “first document” contains the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the other contains the description of the vision published by the Vatican. Bertone answers in part, “There is no first document. There never was any such text in the archives of the Holy Office.” Bertone also says, “So I’m not sure what Cardinal Ottaviani was talking about.” Bertone also states that, “We have the word, better, the official confirmation of Sister Lúcia: ‘Is this the Third Secret, and is this the only text of it?’ ‘Yes, this is the Third Secret, and I never wrote any other’.”[40]
Later on in the interview, Bertone again addresses the question as to whether a text exists with words attributed to the Blessed Virgin that was censored: “The part of the text where the Virgin speaks in the first person wasn’t censored, for the simple reason that it never existed. ...I’m basing my statement on Sister Lucia’s own direct confirmation that the Third Secret is none other than the text that was published in the year 2000.”[41]
In early September 2007, archbishop Loris Francesco Capovilla, private secretary to Pope John XXIII, who witnessed Pope John open the envelope of the third secret, said there was no truth in the rumor that the Vatican was suppressing a vision of the end of the world. “There are not two truths from Fatima and nor is there any fourth secret. The text which I read in 1959 is the same that was distributed by the Vatican.” Capovilla is also quoted as saying, “I have had enough of these conspiracy theories. It just isn’t true. I read it, I presented it to the Pope and we resealed the envelope.”[42]
On September 21, 2007 writers Antonio Socci and Solideo Paolini, who have competing books on Fatima, attempted to crash a reception at the Pontifical Urbanianum University where Bertone was to introduce his book The Last Fatima Visionary: My Meetings with Sister Lucia. They stated that they wished to participate in the question and answer part of the reception. When told that the cardinal would not be taking questions, they then tried to confront Bertone, who is the Vatican Secretary of State. Security guards hustled them. In talking to reporters afterwards, Socci and Paolini produced a tape recording in which they claimed Archbishop Loris Francesco Capovilla, revealed that there were two texts of the Third Secret,[43] although Capovilla had stated otherwise less than two weeks before.[42]
Pope John Paul I
The Catholic Counter-Reformation group, founded by theologian Abbé George de Nantes, takes the position that the released text is the complete Third Secret, but refers to Pope John Paul I rather than John Paul II, pointing out that the latter, after all, did not die when he was attacked, while the bishop in the Third Secret did.[44] John Paul I had met Lúcia Santos while he was Patriarch of Venice, and was deeply moved by the experience. In a letter to a colleague after his election, he vowed to perform the Consecration of Russia which Lúcia said Mary had asked for.[45]
I just took the pizza out of the oven for 2 of my grandsons. Their mother is at a retreat at a center called something like ‘Holy Spirit of Sorrow’. It’s supposed to be no talking all weekend. In any case we’re to turn the grandsons over at their church on Sunday morn. I was hoping to have esoteric Catholic knowledge to impress them. :>)
Funny how some people still have not read the entire third secret from Fatima. Funny, too, how some people still have not memorized the Ten Commandments.
One Peter Five has many stories, some excellent, some dramatic and some good. The drama between Fr. Dollinger and Pope Benedict XVI is fun to read about.
Hope it’s cheese or vegetarian since today is Friday and it’s Lent......no meat on Fridays during Lent.
Alice Von Hildebrand is beyond reproach, so I place great weight on what she says.
Father Martin was an amazing person
Something to ponder, google “the great sign” September 23, 2017. Very interesting. And think about it being 20 days before Oct. 13, 2017 the 100 year anniversary of the Fatima miracle.
In a letter to a colleague after his election, he vowed to perform the Consecration of Russia which Lúcia said Mary had asked for.[45]
!!!!!!!!!!!!........
What happened in Fatima in 1917, is well known. Our Lady appeared to three poor shepherd children, she asked them to come to the same place on the 13th of the month for 5 more times. She told them three secrets (prophecies), that the war would end soon but if man did not return to God a new and more terrible war would occur was one. In the course of her appearances to the children (she was not visible to anyone else) she said that God would perform a miracle on October 13, so that all may believe in Him. Many thousands of believers and skeptics came that day. It had been raining all morning and everyone who waited was drenched. At noon Our Lady appeared and gestured to the sun in the sky, it started to dance and whirl in the sky, many colors were seen. Pictures exist of the crowds staring at the sun, they could do so without harm to their eyes. It lasted for about 10 minutes. When it was over the people and the ground were dry and many healings took place. There were accounts of this in the secular papers at the time.
Lucia later wrote down what she was told, all three secrets. The third was for the Pope, he was supposed to open it in 1960, he did and we really don't know much about that. The controversy is about if the Third Secret was released in its entirety. Some say yes, some say no.
An excellent article on the reference to the Virgin Mary in Canticls vi:3 is here:
http://www.traditioninaction.org/SOD/j105sdImmaculateConception_12-8.htm
And, also in the 1960s, I was told what was claimed to be part of the Third Secret. I remember his exact words:
"The Antichrist will arise and become the Head of the Church"
He was also a Master Mason; make of that what you will.
In August 1941 Sister Lúcia wrote her third memoir in which she described the apparition of 13 July 1917. She said that the Virgin told them:
“God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The [First World] war is going to end; if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace. If not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”
Pope John Paul II on 25 March 1984 allegedly consecrated Russia in a public ceremony though Russia was never specifically mentioned in the consecration prayer; the consecration was in the form of a ‘whole-world consecration’. Cardinal Bertone said to the press many times that the message of Fátima was finished; however the Pope in 2010 publicly announced that “we are mistaken if we think the prophecies of Fátima have been fulfilled”, fueling belief that the consecration has not properly taken place. Cardinal Bertone reported that Lúcia Santos had said that the consecration requested by the Virgin Mary had been fulfilled and accepted in Heaven, and that everyone should live out the consecration personally by faithfully wearing the brown scapular.[8] Others devoted to the cause of Fátima say that Russia has not yet been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.[9]
The entrance to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima, to the south of the rectory, is a segment of the Berlin Wall intended to emphasize the belief that the Rosary prayers influenced the fall of the Berlin Wall related to the Consecration of Russia based on the Our Lady of Fátima messages.[10]
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