THE THIRD SECRET OF FATIMA

Though every pope since has read it, and Fatima is viewed as an "official" miracle by the church, the contents of the 3rd and final message had remained unknown to the public - until June 26, 2000.


~Updated~ Conspiracy theorists and Web chatters have burned up the Internet with accusations of a Vatican coverup of what was revealed to the children in the third vision of Fatima.

The Final Secret of Fatima - Vatican Unveils Text; No Apocalypse.

The following is the text of the third part of the secret of Fatima as written down by Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children said to have seen the Madonna in visions in 1917.      The text is the Vatican’s English translation of the original Portuguese written by Sister Lucia in 1944 and known only until now by the pope and senior Vatican officials. The Vatican said the transcript respected Sister Lucia’s original punctuation.      “The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima, on 13 July 1917.      “I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your most Holy Mother and mine.      After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the 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: ‘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 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 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.”

Last Secret of Fatima Foretold Attack on Pope, Vatican Says. On Saturday, May 13th, 2000, as Pope John Paul II visited the Fatima shrine, the Vatican announced that the remaining secret was a "prophetic vision" of Christian suffering and martyrdom that foresaw, among other events, the 1981 assassination attempt that left John Paul wounded by gunfire in St. Peter's Square. The full secret--written down by the surviving shepherd, sealed in a letter to the Vatican in 1957 and kept under lock by five successive popes--will soon be published on John Paul's orders.


+ "In 1917, or so the story goes, the Virgin Mary descended on Fatima, Portugal, and spoke to three shepherd children. As the sun fluttered and zagged across the sky, Mary imparted what have become known as her three "secrets." The first was a harrowing vision of hell and a prediction that while the world war would end, a worse war would follow — which disciples interpret as a prediction of World War II. The second was a call for piety and the consecration of Russia. The third secret was supposed to be unveiled in 1960, when Pope John XXIII opened it and quickly had it resealed. Though every pope since has read it, and Fatima is viewed as an "official" miracle by the church, the contents of the final message remain unknown to the public.

Now, percolating fascination with the secret has boiled over into the belief among a growing number of Catholics that Mary predicted some sort of apocalypse. With the new millennium, many of them think the end is about to begin. Though Pope John Paul II has cautioned against millennial fever, some Catholics are convinced that the church has declined to reveal the secret because it predicts catastrophe. The Catholic Church officially teaches that the claim by the three children that they saw an apparition of Mary is "worthy of credence." Tens of millions of Catholics worldwide, including the pope himself, are devoted believers in Our Lady of Fatima. The number of people who contend that Mary foretold an apocalypse is unknown. But their conviction stems from a common belief among Fatima devotees that she predicted, at minimum, a spiritual crisis for the church.

The church acknowledges that increasing numbers of Catholics are clamoring for the release of the secret, but insists that the fears associated with the sealed message are unfounded. The secret is "nothing of tremendous consequence," Monsignor Francis Maniscalco, a spokesman for the Bishop's Conference in Washington, said last week. Then why not just divulge its contents? The church won't answer that. And that itself appears to be one reason why the Fatima fracas has grown. It's a maddening mystery begging for an answer, one that isn't coming any time soon.

"We love secrets. We love detective stories," said Dr. Gerald A. Larue, a professor emeritus of religion at University of Southern California and the author of "The Supernatural, the Occult and the Bible." Larue — who does not believe Mary visited Fatima — calls the visions "childish hallucinations." "It's dangling in front of you, and there is no way of knowing what's in it because it's in the hands of one person. Until that person says what it contains, we won't know. It may just be bland theology. But the hope for something mysterious, to unravel our destiny, to unravel our future — that's tantalizing." And, for some, agonizing. Andrew Wingate, the founder of a Minnesota sacred society called the Oblates of St. Therese, believes the millennium will act as the catalyst for political and social unrest that will lead, over the next few years, to an occupation by an Antichrist. And he believes it's all predicted in the third secret. "People are getting nervous," he said last week. "There is an inevitability to it. You are going to have social disaster. You are going to have political and economic disaster. You are going to have religious disaster. And then comes the great apocalypse."

The church is clearly trying to dispel such fears. In 1996, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who has read the secret, said it would be a "perversion" to yield to public pressure to release its text, and said that "the Virgin does not engage in sensationalism; she does not create fear." "There is no announcement of the end of the world or any other apocalyptic events in the third secret," Ratzinger said then. Maniscalco said the pope has no plans to release the secret. Lucia dos Santos, the only one of the three children who purportedly received the messages who is still alive, is a 92-year-old cloistered nun in Portugal. "No one can say when Christ will return again," Maniscalco said. "But the pope has seen (the millennium) as a joyful moment, a moment of recommitment to faith. He's certainly not called for the celebration of the millennium in an apocalyptic way."

Forty years ago, when the third secret was on the eve of being divulged at dos Santos' request, Catholics around the world waited with awe and some fear. Legend tells variously that Pope John XXIII fainted or cried when he read the secret, though the church will not confirm that. And when he ordered it resealed without telling the secret, many assumed that it was simply too horrible to reveal. But the furor over the secret soon began petering out.
Over the years, however, the story of Fatima has attracted an unusual assortment of steadfast believers. One was Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish terrorist who shot John Paul in St. Peter's Square. In court proceedings that followed the 1981 attack, Agca claimed he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ — then demanded that the Vatican "reveal the third mystery." Another was Charles H. Keating Jr., the head of Lincoln Savings & Loan, who spent $100,000 of his company's money on a Fatima movie. A devout Catholic, Keating was prepared to spend $20 million to produce the film, which was apparently about a Soviet plot to assassinate the pope, before he was cornered by federal thrift regulators and became a key figure in the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.

The assassination attempt itself, for many Catholics, sealed the veracity of the Fatima miracle. The attempt took place on the feast day of the Virgin of Fatima, and legend has it that John Paul was bending down to look at a young girl's Mary medallion when he was shot; the pope later credited the Madonna of Fatima with saving his life and placed the bullet, removed during surgery, in the crown of a statue to Mary in Portugal."

(The Los Angeles Times)