CONGREGATION
FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA
C
As the second
millennium gives way to the third, Pope John Paul II has decided to publish
the text of the third part of the “secret of Fatima”.
The twentieth
century was one of the most crucial in human history, with its tragic and
cruel events culminating in the assassination attempt on the “sweet Christ on
earth”. Now a veil is drawn back on a series of events which make history and
interpret it in depth, in a spiritual perspective alien to present-day
attitudes, often tainted with rationalism.
Throughout
history there have been supernatural apparitions and signs which go to the
heart of human events and which, to the surprise of believers and non-believers
alike, play their part in the unfolding of history. These manifestations can
never contradict the content of faith, and must therefore have their focus in
the core of Christ's proclamation: the Father's love which leads men and
women to conversion and bestows the grace required to abandon oneself to him
with filial devotion. This too is the message of Fatima which, with its
urgent call to conversion and penance, draws us to the heart of the
Gospel.
Fatima is
undoubtedly the most prophetic of modern apparitions. The first and second
parts of the “secret”—which are here published in sequence so as to complete
the documentation—refer especially to the frightening vision of hell,
devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Second World War, and finally
the prediction of the immense damage that Russia would do to humanity by
abandoning the Christian faith and embracing Communist totalitarianism.
In 1917 no one
could have imagined all this: the three pastorinhos of Fatima see,
listen and remember, and Lucia, the surviving witness, commits it all to
paper when ordered to do so by the Bishop of Leiria and with Our Lady's
permission.
For the account
of the first two parts of the “secret”, which have already been published and
are therefore known, we have chosen the text written by Sister Lucia in the
Third Memoir of 31 August 1941; some annotations were added in the Fourth
Memoir of 8 December 1941.
The third part
of the “secret” was written “by order of His Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and
the Most Holy Mother ...” on 3 January 1944.
There is only
one manuscript, which is here reproduced photostatically. The sealed envelope
was initially in the custody of the Bishop of Leiria. To ensure better
protection for the “secret” the envelope was placed in the Secret Archives of
the Holy Office on 4 April 1957. The Bishop of Leiria informed Sister Lucia
of this.
According to
the records of the Archives, the Commissary of the Holy Office, Father Pierre
Paul Philippe, OP, with the agreement of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, brought
the envelopecontaining the third part of the “secret of Fatima” to Pope John
XXIII on 17 August 1959. “After some hesitation”, His Holiness said: “We
shall wait. I shall pray. I shall let you know what I decide”.(1)
In fact Pope
John XXIII decided to return the sealed envelope to the Holy Office and not
to reveal the third part of the “secret”.
Paul VI read
the contents with the Substitute, Archbishop Angelo Dell'Acqua, on 27 March
1965, and returned the envelope to the Archives of the Holy Office, deciding
not to publish the text.
John Paul II,
for his part, asked for the envelope containing the third part of the
“secret” following the assassination attempt on 13 May 1981. On 18 July 1981
Cardinal Franjo Šeper, Prefect of the Congregation, gave two envelopes to
Archbishop Eduardo Martínez Somalo, Substitute of the Secretariat of State:
one white envelope, containing Sister Lucia's original text in Portuguese;
the other orange, with the Italian translation of the “secret”. On the
following 11 August, Archbishop Martínez returned the two envelopes to the
Archives of the Holy Office.(2)
As is well
known, Pope John Paul II immediately thought of consecrating the world to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary and he himself composed a prayer for what he called
an “Act of Entrustment”, which was to be celebrated in the Basilica of Saint
Mary Major on 7 June 1981, the Solemnity of Pentecost, the day chosen to
commemorate the 1600th anniversary of the First Council of Constantinople and
the 1550th anniversary of the Council of Ephesus. Since the Pope was unable
to be present, his recorded Address was broadcast. The following is the part
which refers specifically to the Act of Entrustment:
“Mother of
all individuals and peoples, you know all their sufferings and hopes. In
your motherly heart you feel all the struggles between good and evil, between
light and darkness, that convulse the world: accept the plea which we make in
the Holy Spirit directly to your heart, and embrace with the love of the
Mother and Handmaid of the Lord those who most await this embrace, and also
those whose act of entrustment you too await in a particular way. Take
under your motherly protection the whole human family, which with
affectionate love we entrust to you, O Mother. May there dawn for everyone
the time of peace and freedom, the time of truth, of justice and of hope”.(3)
In order to
respond more fully to the requests of “Our Lady”, the Holy Father desired to
make more explicit during the Holy Year of the Redemption the Act of
Entrustment of 7 May 1981, which had been repeated in Fatima on 13 May 1982.
On 25 March 1984 in Saint Peter's Square, while recalling the fiat
uttered by Mary at the Annunciation, the Holy Father, in spiritual union with
the Bishops of the world, who had been “convoked” beforehand, entrusted all
men and women and all peoples to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in terms which
recalled the heartfelt words spoken in 1981:
“O Mother of
all men and women, and of all peoples, you who know all their sufferings
and their hopes, you who have a mother's awareness of all the struggles
between good and evil, between light and darkness, which afflict the modern
world, accept the cry which we, moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to
your Heart. Embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of
the Lord, this human world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you,
for we are full of concern for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals
and peoples.
In a special
way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals and nations
which particularly need to be thus entrusted and consecrated.
‘We have
recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God!' Despise not our
petitions in our necessities”.
The Pope then
continued more forcefully and with more specific references, as though
commenting on the Message of Fatima in its sorrowful fulfilment:
“Behold, as we
stand before you, Mother of Christ, before your Immaculate Heart, we desire,
together with the whole Church, to unite ourselves with the consecration
which, for love of us, your Son made of himself to the Father: ‘For their
sake', he said, ‘I consecrate myself that they also may be consecrated in the
truth' (Jn 17:19). We wish to unite ourselves with our Redeemer in
this his consecration for the world and for the human race, which, in his
divine Heart, has the power to obtain pardon and to secure reparation.
The power of
this consecrationlasts for all
time and embraces all individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every
evil that the spirit of darkness is able to awaken, and has in fact awakened
in our times, in the heart of man and in his history.
How deeply we
feel the need for the consecration of humanity and the world—our modern
world—in union with Christ himself! For the redeeming work of Christ must be shared
in by the world through the Church.
The present
Year of the Redemption shows this: the special Jubilee of the whole
Church.
Above all
creatures, may you be blessed,
you, the Handmaid of the Lord, who in the fullest way obeyed the divine
call!
Hail to you,
who are wholly united to the redeeming consecration of your Son!
Mother of the
Church! Enlighten the People of God along the paths of faith, hope, and love!
Enlighten especially the peoples whose consecration and entrustment by us you
are awaiting. Help us to live in the truth of the consecration of Christ for
the entire human family of the modern world.
In entrusting
to you, O Mother, the world, all individuals and peoples, we also entrust
to you this very consecration of the world, placing it in your
motherly Heart.
Immaculate
Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in
the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already
weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the
future!
From famine and
war, deliver us.
From nuclear
war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver
us.
From sins
against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us.
From hatred and
from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us.
From every kind
of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver
us.
From readiness
to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us.
From attempts to
stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us.
From the loss
of awareness of good and evil, deliver us.
From sins
against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.
Accept, O
Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual
human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies.
Help us with
the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin: individual sin and the ‘sin
of the world', sin in all its manifestations.
Let there be revealed,
once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the
Redemption: the power of merciful Love! May it put a stop to evil! May
it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light
of Hope!”.(4)
Sister Lucia
personally confirmed that this solemn and universal act of consecration
corresponded to what Our Lady wished (“Sim, està feita, tal como Nossa
Senhora a pediu, desde o dia 25 de Março de 1984”: “Yes it has been done
just as Our Lady asked, on 25 March 1984”: Letter of 8 November 1989). Hence
any further discussion or request is without basis.
In the
documentation presented here four other texts have been added to the
manuscripts of Sister Lucia: 1) the Holy Father's letter of 19 April 2000 to
Sister Lucia; 2) an account of the conversation of 27 April 2000 with Sister
Lucia; 3) the statement which the Holy Father appointed Cardinal Angelo
Sodano, Secretary of State, to read on 13 May 2000; 4) the theological
commentary by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith.
Sister Lucia
had already given an indication for interpreting the third part of the
“secret” in a letter to the Holy Father, dated 12 May 1982:
“The third
part of the secret refers to Our Lady's words: ‘If not [Russia] will spread
her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.
The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various
nations will be annihilated' (13-VII-1917).
The third
part of the secret is a symbolic revelation, referring to this part of the
Message, conditioned by whether we accept or not what the Message itself asks
of us: ‘If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will
be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world,
etc.'.
Since we did
not heed this appeal of the Message, we see that it has been fulfilled,
Russia has invaded the world with her errors. And if we have not yet seen the
complete fulfilment of the final part of this prophecy, we are going towards
it little by little with great strides. If we do not reject the path of sin,
hatred, revenge, injustice, violations of the rights of the human person,
immorality and violence, etc.
And let us
not say that it is God who is punishing us in this way; on the contrary it is
people themselves who are preparing their own punishment. In his kindness God
warns us and calls us to the right path, while respecting the freedom he has
given us; hence people are responsible”.(5)
The decision of
His Holiness Pope John Paul II to make public the third part of the “secret”
of Fatima brings to an end a period of history marked by tragic human lust
for power and evil, yet pervaded by the merciful love of God and the watchful
care of the Mother of Jesus and of the Church.
The action of
God, the Lord of history, and the co-responsibility of man in the drama of
his creative freedom, are the two pillars upon which human history is
built.
Our Lady, who
appeared at Fatima, recalls these forgotten values. She reminds us that man's
future is in God, and that we are active and responsible partners in creating
that future.
Tarcisio
Bertone, SDB
Archbishop Emeritus of Vercelli
Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
THE “SECRET” OF
FATIMA
FIRST AND
SECOND PART OF THE “SECRET”
ACCORDING TO
THE VERSION PRESENTED BY SISTER LUCIA
IN THE “THIRD MEMOIR” OF 31 AUGUST 1941 FOR THE BISHOP OF LEIRIA-FATIMA
(original
text)
(translation) (6)
... This will
entail my speaking about the secret, and thus answering the first
question.
What is the
secret? It seems to me that I can reveal it, since I already have permission
from Heaven to do so. God's representatives on earth have authorized me to do
this several times and in various letters, one of which, I believe, is in
your keeping. This letter is from Father José Bernardo Gonçalves, and in it
he advises me to write to the Holy Father, suggesting, among other things,
that I should reveal the secret. I did say something about it. But in order
not to make my letter too long, since I was told to keep it short, I confined
myself to the essentials, leaving it to God to provide another more
favourable opportunity.
In my second
account I have already described in detail the doubt which tormented me from
13 June until 13 July, and how it disappeared completely during the
Apparition on that day.
Well, the
secret is made up of three distinct parts, two of which I am now going to
reveal.
The first part
is the vision of hell.
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.
We then looked
up at Our Lady, who said to us so kindly and so sadly:
“You have seen
hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save 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 war is going
to end: but 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, and the
Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. 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 shall be converted, and
a period of peace will be granted to the world”.(7)
THIRD PART OF
THE “SECRET”
(original text)
(translation) (8)
“J.M.J.
The third part
of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima, on 13 July 1917.
I write in
obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the
Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine.
After the two
parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little
above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it
gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but
they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards
him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel
cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!'.
And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people
appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White
‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests,
men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there
was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before
reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and
half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed
for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the
mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group
of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there
died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious,
and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms
of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his
hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it
sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.
Tuy-3-1-1944”.
INTERPRETATION
OF THE “SECRET”
LETTER OF HIS
HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II
TO SISTER LUCIA
(original text)
(translation)
To the Reverend
Sister
Maria Lucia
of the Convent of Coimbra
In the great joy
of Easter, I greet you with the words the Risen Jesus spoke to the disciples:
“Peace be with you”!
I will be happy
to be able to meet you on the long-awaited day of the Beatification of
Francisco and Jacinta, which, please God, I will celebrate on 13 May of this
year.
Since on that
day there will be time only for a brief greeting and not a conversation, I am
sending His Excellency Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to speak with you. This is the Congregation
which works most closely with the Pope in defending the true Catholic faith,
and which since 1957, as you know, has kept your hand-written letter
containing the third part of the “secret” revealed on 13 July 1917 at Cova da
Iria, Fatima.
Archbishop
Bertone, accompanied by the Bishop of Leiria, His Excellency Bishop Serafim
de Sousa Ferreira e Silva, will come in my name to ask certain questions
about the interpretation of “the third part of the secret”.
Sister Maria
Lucia, you may speak openly and candidly to Archbishop Bertone, who will
report your answers directly to me.
I pray
fervently to the Mother of the Risen Lord for you, Reverend Sister, for the
Community of Coimbra and for the whole Church. May Mary, Mother of pilgrim
humanity, keep us always united to Jesus, her beloved Son and our brother,
the Lord of life and glory.
With my special
Apostolic Blessing.
IOANNES PAULUS
PP. II
From the
Vatican, 19 April 2000.
CONVERSATION
WITH SISTER MARIA LUCIA OF JESUS
AND THE IMMACULATE HEART
The meeting
between Sister Lucia, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sent by the Holy Father, and
Bishop Serafim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva, Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, took place
on Thursday, 27 April 2000, in the Carmel of Saint Teresa in Coimbra.
Sister Lucia
was lucid and at ease; she was very happy that the Holy Father was going to
Fatima for the Beatification of Francisco and Jacinta, something she had
looked forward to for a long time.
The Bishop of
Leiria-Fatima read the autograph letter of the Holy Father, which explained
the reasons for the visit. Sister Lucia felt honoured by this and reread the
letter herself, contemplating it in own her hands. She said that she was
prepared to answer all questions frankly.
At this point,
Archbishop Bertone presented two envelopes to her: the first containing the
second, which held the third part of the “secret” of Fatima. Immediately,
touching it with her fingers, she said: “This is my letter”, and then while
reading it: “This is my writing”.
The original
text, in Portuguese, was read and interpreted with the help of the Bishop of
Leiria-Fatima. Sister Lucia agreed with the interpretation that the third
part of the “secret” was a prophetic vision, similar to those in sacred
history. She repeated her conviction that the vision of Fatima concerns above
all the struggle of atheistic Communism against the Church and against
Christians, and describes the terrible sufferings of the victims of the faith
in the twentieth century.
When asked: “Is
the principal figure in the vision the Pope?”, Sister Lucia replied at once
that it was. She recalled that the three children were very sad about the
suffering of the Pope, and that Jacinta kept saying: “Coitadinho do Santo
Padre, tenho muita pena dos pecadores!” (“Poor Holy Father, I am very sad
for sinners!”). Sister Lucia continued: “We did not know the name of the
Pope; Our Lady did not tell us the name of the Pope; we did not know whether
it was Benedict XV or Pius XII or Paul VI or John Paul II; but it was the
Pope who was suffering and that made us suffer too”.
As regards the
passage about the Bishop dressed in white, that is, the Holy Father—as the
children immediately realized during the “vision”—who is struck dead and
falls to the ground, Sister Lucia was in full agreement with the Pope's claim
that “it was a mother's hand that guided the bullet's path and in his throes
the Pope halted at the threshold of death” (Pope John Paul II, Meditation
from the Policlinico Gemelli to the Italian Bishops, 13 May 1994).
Before giving
the sealed envelope containing the third part of the “secret” to the then
Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, Sister Lucia wrote on the outside envelope that it
could be opened only after 1960, either by the Patriarch of Lisbon or the
Bishop of Leiria. Archbishop Bertone therefore asked: “Why only after 1960?
Was it Our Lady who fixed that date?” Sister Lucia replied: “It was not Our
Lady. I fixed the date because I had the intuition that before 1960 it would
not be understood, but that only later would it be understood. Now it
can be better understood. I wrote down what I saw; however it was not for me
to interpret it, but for the Pope.
Finally,
mention was made of the unpublished manuscript which Sister Lucia has
prepared as a reply to the many letters that come from Marian devotees and
from pilgrims. The work is called Os apelos da Mensagem de Fatima, and
it gathers together in the style of catechesis and exhortation thoughts and
reflections which express Sister Lucia's feelings and her clear and
unaffected spirituality. She was asked if she would be happy to have it
published, and she replied: “If the Holy Father agrees, then I am happy,
otherwise I obey whatever the Holy Father decides”. Sister Lucia wants to
present the text for ecclesiastical approval, and she hopes that what she has
written will help to guide men and women of good will along the path that
leads to God, the final goal of every human longing.The conversation ends
with an exchange of rosaries. Sister Lucia is given a rosary sent by the Holy
Father, and she in turn offers a number of rosaries made by herself.
The meeting
concludes with the blessing imparted in the name of the Holy
Father.
ANNOUNCEMENT
MADE BY CARDINAL ANGELO SODANO
SECRETARY OF STATE
At the end
of the Mass presided over by the Holy Father at Fatima, Cardinal Angelo
Sodano, the Secretary of State, made this announcement in Portuguese, which
is given here in English translation:
Brothers and
Sisters in the Lord!
At the
conclusion of this solemn celebration, I feel bound to offer our beloved Holy
Father Pope John Paul II, on behalf of all present, heartfelt good wishes for
his approaching 80th Birthday and to thank him for his vital pastoral
ministry for the good of all God's Holy Church; we present the heartfelt
wishes of the whole Church.
On this solemn
occasion of his visit to Fatima, His Holiness has directed me to make an
announcement to you. As you know, the purpose of his visit to Fatima has been
to beatify the two “little shepherds”. Nevertheless he also wishes his
pilgrimage to be a renewed gesture of gratitude to Our Lady for her
protection during these years of his papacy. This protection seems also to be
linked to the so-called third part of the “secret” of Fatima.
That text
contains a prophetic vision similar to those found in Sacred Scripture, which
do not describe photographically the details of future events, but synthesize
and compress against a single background facts which extend through time in
an unspecified succession and duration. As a result, the text must be
interpreted in a symbolic key.
The vision of
Fatima concerns above all the war waged by atheistic systems against the Church
and Christians, and it describes the immense suffering endured by the
witnesses of the faith in the last century of the second millennium. It is an
interminable Way of the Cross led by the Popes of the twentieth
century.
According to
the interpretation of the “little shepherds”, which was also confirmed
recently by Sister Lucia, “the Bishop clothed in white” who prays for all the
faithful is the Pope. As he makes his way with great difficulty towards the
Cross amid the corpses of those who were martyred (Bishops, priests, men and
women Religious and many lay people), he too falls to the ground, apparently
dead, under a hail of gunfire.
After the
assassination attempt of 13 May 1981, it appeared evident that it was “a
mother's hand that guided the bullet's path”, enabling “the Pope in his
throes” to halt “at the threshold of death” (Pope John Paul II, Meditation
from the Policlinico Gemelli to the Italian Bishops, Insegnamenti,
XVII, 1 [1994], 1061). On the occasion of a visit to Rome by the then Bishop
of Leiria-Fatima, the Pope decided to give him the bullet which had remained
in the jeep after the assassination attempt, so that it might be kept in the
shrine. By the Bishop's decision, the bullet was later set in the crown of
the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.
The successive
events of 1989 led, both in the Soviet Union and in a number of countries of
Eastern Europe, to the fall of the Communist regimes which promoted atheism.
For this too His Holiness offers heartfelt thanks to the Most Holy Virgin. In
other parts of the world, however, attacks against the Church and against
Christians, with the burden of suffering they bring, tragically continue.
Even if the events to which the third part of the “secret” of Fatima refers
now seem part of the past, Our Lady's call to conversion and penance, issued
at the start of the twentieth century, remains timely and urgent today. “The
Lady of the message seems to read the signs of the times—the signs of our
time—with special insight... The insistent invitation of Mary Most Holy to
penance is nothing but the manifestation of her maternal concern for the fate
of the human family, in need of conversion and forgiveness” (Pope John Paul
II, Message for the 1997 World Day of the Sick, No. 1, Insegnamenti,
XIX, 2 [1996], 561).
In order that
the faithful may better receive the message of Our Lady of Fatima, the Pope
has charged the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with making public
the third part of the “secret”, after the preparation of an appropriate
commentary.
Brothers and
sisters, let us thank Our Lady of Fatima for her protection. To her maternal
intercession let us entrust the Church of the Third Millennium.
Sub tuum
praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix! Intercede pro Ecclesia. Intercede
pro Papa nostro Ioanne Paulo II. Amen.
Fatima, 13 May
2000
THEOLOGICAL
COMMENTARY
A careful
reading of the text of the so-called third “secret” of Fatima, published here
in its entirety long after the fact and by decision of the Holy Father, will
probably prove disappointing or surprising after all the speculation it has
stirred. No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled. We see the
Church of the martyrs of the century which has just passed represented in a
scene described in a language which is symbolic and not easy to decipher. Is
this what the Mother of the Lord wished to communicate to Christianity and to
humanity at a time of great difficulty and distress? Is it of any help to us
at the beginning of the new millennium? Or are these only projections of the
inner world of children, brought up in a climate of profound piety but shaken
at the same time by the tempests which threatened their own time? How should
we understand the vision? What are we to make of it?
Public
Revelation and private revelations – their theological status
Before
attempting an interpretation, the main lines of which can be found in the
statement read by Cardinal Sodano on 13 May of this year at the end of the
Mass celebrated by the Holy Father in Fatima, there is a need for some basic
clarification of the way in which, according to Church teaching, phenomena
such as Fatima are to be understood within the life of faith. The teaching of
the Church distinguishes between “public Revelation” and “private
revelations”. The two realities differ not only in degree but also in
essence. The term “public Revelation” refers to the revealing action of God
directed to humanity as a whole and which finds its literary expression in
the two parts of the Bible: the Old and New Testaments. It is called
“Revelation” because in it God gradually made himself known to men, to the
point of becoming man himself, in order to draw to himself the whole world
and unite it with himself through his Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. It is not
a matter therefore of intellectual communication, but of a life-giving
process in which God comes to meet man. At the same time this process
naturally produces data pertaining to the mind and to the understanding of
the mystery of God. It is a process which involves man in his entirety and
therefore reason as well, but not reason alone. Because God is one,
history, which he shares with humanity, is also one. It is valid for all
time, and it has reached its fulfilment in the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has said everything, that is, he has revealed
himself completely, and therefore Revelation came to an end with the
fulfilment of the mystery of Christ as enunciated in the New Testament. To
explain the finality and completeness of Revelation, the Catechism of the
Catholic Church quotes a text of Saint John of the Cross: “In giving us
his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us
at once in this sole Word—and he has no more to say... because what he spoke
before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us
the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or
revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behaviour but also of
offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with
the desire for some other novelty” (No. 65; Saint John of the Cross,The
Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 22).
Because the
single Revelation of God addressed to all peoples comes to completion with
Christ and the witness borne to him in the books of the New Testament, the
Church is tied to this unique event of sacred history and to the word of the
Bible, which guarantees and interprets it. But this does not mean that the
Church can now look only to the past and that she is condemned to sterile
repetition. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says in this regard:
“...even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made fully
explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full
significance over the course of the centuries” (No. 66). The way in which the
Church is bound to both the uniqueness of the event and progress in
understanding it is very well illustrated in the farewell discourse of the
Lord when, taking leave of his disciples, he says: “I have yet many things to
say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he
will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own
authority... He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it
to you” (Jn 16:12-14). On the one hand, the Spirit acts as a guide who
discloses a knowledge previously unreachable because the premise was
missing—this is the boundless breadth and depth of Christian faith. On the
other hand, to be guided by the Spirit is also “to draw from” the riches of
Jesus Christ himself, the inexhaustible depths of which appear in the way the
Spirit leads. In this regard, the Catechism cites profound words of
Pope Gregory the Great: “The sacred Scriptures grow with the one who reads
them” (No. 94; Gregory the Great,Homilia in Ezechielem I, 7, 8). The
Second Vatican Council notes three essential ways in which the Spirit guides
in the Church, and therefore three ways in which “the word grows”: through
the meditation and study of the faithful, through the deep understanding
which comes from spiritual experience, and through the preaching of “those
who, in the succession of the episcopate, have received the sure charism of
truth” (Dei Verbum, 8).
In this
context, it now becomes possible to understand rightly the concept of
“private revelation”, which refers to all the visions and revelations which
have taken place since the completion of the New Testament. This is the
category to which we must assign the message of Fatima. In this respect, let
us listen once again to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“Throughout the ages, there have been so-called ‘private' revelations, some
of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church... It is not
their role to complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more
fully by it in a certain period of history” (No. 67). This clarifies two
things:
1. The
authority of private revelations is essentially different from that of the
definitive public Revelation. The latter demands faith; in it in fact God
himself speaks to us through human words and the mediation of the living
community of the Church. Faith in God and in his word is different from any
other human faith, trust or opinion. The certainty that it is God who is speaking
gives me the assurance that I am in touch with truth itself. It gives me a
certitude which is beyond verification by any human way of knowing. It is the
certitude upon which I build my life and to which I entrust myself in
dying.
2. Private revelation
is a help to this faith, and shows its credibility precisely by leading me
back to the definitive public Revelation. In this regard, Cardinal Prospero
Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV, says in his classic treatise, which
later became normative for beatifications and canonizations: “An assent of
Catholic faith is not due to revelations approved in this way; it is not even
possible. These revelations seek rather an assent of human faith in keeping
with the requirements of prudence, which puts them before us as probable and
credible to piety”. The Flemish theologian E. Dhanis, an eminent scholar in
this field, states succinctly that ecclesiastical approval of a private
revelation has three elements: the message contains nothing contrary to faith
or morals; it is lawful to make it public; and the faithful are authorized to
accept it with prudence (E. Dhanis,Sguardo su Fatima e bilancio di una
discussione, in La Civiltà Cattolica 104 [1953], II, 392-406, in
particular 397). Such a message can be a genuine help in understanding the
Gospel and living it better at a particular moment in time; therefore it
should not be disregarded. It is a help which is offered, but which one is
not obliged to use.
The criterion
for the truth and value of a private revelation is therefore its orientation
to Christ himself. When it leads us away from him, when it becomes
independent of him or even presents itself as another and better plan of
salvation, more important than the Gospel, then it certainly does not come from
the Holy Spirit, who guides us more deeply into the Gospel and not away from
it. This does not mean that a private revelation will not offer new emphases
or give rise to new devotional forms, or deepen and spread older forms. But
in all of this there must be a nurturing of faith, hope and love, which are
the unchanging path to salvation for everyone. We might add that private
revelations often spring from popular piety and leave their stamp on it,
giving it a new impulse and opening the way for new forms of it. Nor does
this exclude that they will have an effect even on the liturgy, as we see for
instance in the feasts of Corpus Christi and of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus. From one point of view, the relationship between Revelation and
private revelations appears in the relationship between the liturgy and
popular piety: the liturgy is the criterion, it is the living form of the
Church as a whole, fed directly by the Gospel. Popular piety is a sign that
the faith is spreading its roots into the heart of a people in such a way
that it reaches into daily life. Popular religiosity is the first and
fundamental mode of “inculturation” of the faith. While it must always take
its lead and direction from the liturgy, it in turn enriches the faith by
involving the heart.
We have thus
moved from the somewhat negative clarifications, initially needed, to a
positive definition of private revelations. How can they be classified
correctly in relation to Scripture? To which theological category do they
belong? The oldest letter of Saint Paul which has been preserved, perhaps the
oldest of the New Testament texts, the First Letter to the Thessalonians,
seems to me to point the way. The Apostle says: “Do not quench the
Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything, holding fast to what
is good” (5:19-21). In every age the Church has received the charism of
prophecy, which must be scrutinized but not scorned. On this point, it should
be kept in mind that prophecy in the biblical sense does not mean to predict
the future but to explain the will of God for the present, and therefore show
the right path to take for the future. A person who foretells what is going
to happen responds to the curiosity of the mind, which wants to draw back the
veil on the future. The prophet speaks to the blindness of will and of
reason, and declares the will of God as an indication and demand for the
present time. In this case, prediction of the future is of secondary
importance. What is essential is the actualization of the definitive Revelation,
which concerns me at the deepest level. The prophetic word is a warning or a
consolation, or both together. In this sense there is a link between the
charism of prophecy and the category of “the signs of the times”, which
Vatican II brought to light anew: “You know how to interpret the appearance
of earth and sky; why then do you not know how to interpret the present
time?” (Lk 12:56). In this saying of Jesus, the “signs of the times”
must be understood as the path he was taking, indeed it must be understood as
Jesus himself. To interpret the signs of the times in the light of faith
means to recognize the presence of Christ in every age. In the private
revelations approved by the Church—and therefore also in Fatima—this is the
point: they help us to understand the signs of the times and to respond to
them rightly in faith.
The
anthropological structure of private revelations
In these
reflections we have sought so far to identify the theological status of
private revelations. Before undertaking an interpretation of the message of
Fatima, we must still attempt briefly to offer some clarification of their
anthropological (psychological) character. In this field, theological
anthropology distinguishes three forms of perception or “vision”: vision with
the senses, and hence exterior bodily perception, interior perception, and
spiritual vision (visio sensibilis - imaginativa - intellectualis). It
is clear that in the visions of Lourdes, Fatima and other places it is not a
question of normal exterior perception of the senses: the images and forms
which are seen are not located spatially, as is the case for example with a
tree or a house. This is perfectly obvious, for instance, as regards the
vision of hell (described in the first part of the Fatima “secret”) or even
the vision described in the third part of the “secret”. But the same can be
very easily shown with regard to other visions, especially since not
everybody present saw them, but only the “visionaries”. It is also clear that
it is not a matter of a “vision” in the mind, without images, as occurs at
the higher levels of mysticism. Therefore we are dealing with the middle
category, interior perception. For the visionary, this perception certainly
has the force of a presence, equivalent for that person to an external
manifestation to the senses.
Interior vision
does not mean fantasy, which would be no more than an expression of the
subjective imagination. It means rather that the soul is touched by something
real, even if beyond the senses. It is rendered capable of seeing that which
is beyond the senses, that which cannot be seen—seeing by means of the
“interior senses”. It involves true “objects”, which touch the soul, even if
these “objects” do not belong to our habitual sensory world. This is why
there is a need for an interior vigilance of the heart, which is usually
precluded by the intense pressure of external reality and of the images and
thoughts which fill the soul. The person is led beyond pure exteriority and
is touched by deeper dimensions of reality, which become visible to him.
Perhaps this explains why children tend to be the ones to receive these
apparitions: their souls are as yet little disturbed, their interior powers
of perception are still not impaired. “On the lips of children and of babes
you have found praise”, replies Jesus with a phrase of Psalm 8 (v. 3) to the
criticism of the High Priests and elders, who had judged the children's cries
of “hosanna” inappropriate (cf. Mt 21:16).
“Interior
vision” is not fantasy but, as we have said, a true and valid means of
verification. But it also has its limitations. Even in exterior vision the
subjective element is always present. We do not see the pure object, but it
comes to us through the filter of our senses, which carry out a work of
translation. This is still more evident in the case of interior vision,
especially when it involves realities which in themselves transcend our
horizon. The subject, the visionary, is still more powerfully involved. He
sees insofar as he is able, in the modes of representation and consciousness
available to him. In the case of interior vision, the process of translation
is even more extensive than in exterior vision, for the subject shares in an
essential way in the formation of the image of what appears. He can arrive at
the image only within the bounds of his capacities and possibilities. Such
visions therefore are never simple “photographs” of the other world, but are
influenced by the potentialities and limitations of the perceiving
subject.
This can be
demonstrated in all the great visions of the saints; and naturally it is also
true of the visions of the children at Fatima. The images described by them
are by no means a simple expression of their fantasy, but the result of a
real perception of a higher and interior origin. But neither should they be
thought of as if for a moment the veil of the other world were drawn back,
with heaven appearing in its pure essence, as one day we hope to see it in
our definitive union with God. Rather the images are, in a manner of
speaking, a synthesis of the impulse coming from on high and the capacity to
receive this impulse in the visionaries, that is, the children. For this
reason, the figurative language of the visions is symbolic. In this regard,
Cardinal Sodano stated: “[they] do not describe photographically the details
of future events, but synthesize and compress against a single background
facts which extend through time in an unspecified succession and duration”.
This compression of time and place in a single image is typical of such
visions, which for the most part can be deciphered only in retrospect. Not
every element of the vision has to have a specific historical sense. It is
the vision as a whole that matters, and the details must be understood on the
basis of the images taken in their entirety. The central element of the image
is revealed where it coincides with what is the focal point of Christian
“prophecy” itself: the centre is found where the vision becomes a summons and
a guide to the will of God.
An attempt
to interpret the “secret” of Fatima
The first and
second parts of the “secret” of Fatima have already been so amply discussed
in the relative literature that there is no need to deal with them again
here. I would just like to recall briefly the most significant point. For one
terrible moment, the children were given a vision of hell. They saw the fall
of “the souls of poor sinners”. And now they are told why they have been
exposed to this moment: “in order to save souls”—to show the way to salvation.
The words of the First Letter of Peter come to mind: “As the outcome of your
faith you obtain the salvation of your souls” (1:9). To reach this goal, the
way indicated —surprisingly for people from the Anglo-Saxon and German
cultural world—is devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A brief comment
may suffice to explain this. In biblical language, the “heart” indicates the
centre of human life, the point where reason, will, temperament and
sensitivity converge, where the person finds his unity and his interior
orientation. According to Matthew 5:8, the “immaculate heart” is a heart
which, with God's grace, has come to perfect interior unity and therefore
“sees God”. To be “devoted” to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore
to embrace this attitude of heart, which makes the fiat—“your will be
done”—the defining centre of one's whole life. It might be objected that we
should not place a human being between ourselves and Christ. But then we
remember that Paul did not hesitate to say to his communities: “imitate me” (1
Cor 4:16; Phil 3:17; 1 Th 1:6; 2 Th 3:7, 9). In the
Apostle they could see concretely what it meant to follow Christ. But
from whom might we better learn in every age than from the Mother of the
Lord?
Thus we come
finally to the third part of the “secret” of Fatima which for the first time
is being published in its entirety. As is clear from the documentation
presented here, the interpretation offered by Cardinal Sodano in his
statement of 13 May was first put personally to Sister Lucia. Sister Lucia
responded by pointing out that she had received the vision but not its
interpretation. The interpretation, she said, belonged not to the visionary
but to the Church. After reading the text, however, she said that this
interpretation corresponded to what she had experienced and that on her part
she thought the interpretation correct. In what follows, therefore, we can
only attempt to provide a deeper foundation for this interpretation, on the
basis of the criteria already considered.
“To save souls”
has emerged as the key word of the first and second parts of the “secret”,
and the key word of this third part is the threefold cry: “Penance, Penance,
Penance!” The beginning of the Gospel comes to mind: “Repent and believe the
Good News” (Mk 1:15). To understand the signs of the times means to
accept the urgency of penance – of conversion – of faith. This is the correct
response to this moment of history, characterized by the grave perils
outlined in the images that follow. Allow me to add here a personal
recollection: in a conversation with me Sister Lucia said that it appeared
ever more clearly to her that the purpose of all the apparitions was to help
people to grow more and more in faith, hope and love—everything else was
intended to lead to this.
Let us now
examine more closely the single images. The angel with the flaming sword on
the left of the Mother of God recalls similar images in the Book of
Revelation. This represents the threat of judgement which looms over the world.
Today the prospect that the world might be reduced to ashes by a sea of fire
no longer seems pure fantasy: man himself, with his inventions, has forged
the flaming sword. The vision then shows the power which stands opposed to
the force of destruction—the splendour of the Mother of God and, stemming
from this in a certain way, the summons to penance. In this way, the
importance of human freedom is underlined: the future is not in fact
unchangeably set, and the image which the children saw is in no way a film
preview of a future in which nothing can be changed. Indeed, the whole point
of the vision is to bring freedom onto the scene and to steer freedom in a
positive direction. The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an
irrevocably fixed future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to
mobilize the forces of change in the right direction. Therefore we must
totally discount fatalistic explanations of the “secret”, such as, for
example, the claim that the would-be assassin of 13 May 1981 was merely an
instrument of the divine plan guided by Providence and could not therefore
have acted freely, or other similar ideas in circulation. Rather, the vision
speaks of dangers and how we might be saved from them.
The next
phrases of the text show very clearly once again the symbolic character of
the vision: God remains immeasurable, and is the light which surpasses every
vision of ours. Human persons appear as in a mirror. We must always keep in
mind the limits in the vision itself, which here are indicated
visually. The future appears only “in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor
13:12). Let us now consider the individual images which follow in the text of
the “secret”. The place of the action is described in three symbols: a steep
mountain, a great city reduced to ruins and finally a large rough-hewn cross.
The mountain and city symbolize the arena of human history: history as an
arduous ascent to the summit, history as the arena of human creativity and
social harmony, but at the same time a place of destruction, where man
actually destroys the fruits of his own work. The city can be the place of
communion and progress, but also of danger and the most extreme menace. On
the mountain stands the cross—the goal and guide of history. The cross
transforms destruction into salvation; it stands as a sign of history's
misery but also as a promise for history.
At this point
human persons appear: the Bishop dressed in white (“we had the impression
that it was the Holy Father”), other Bishops, priests, men and women
Religious, and men and women of different ranks and social positions. The
Pope seems to precede the others, trembling and suffering because of all the
horrors around him. Not only do the houses of the city lie half in ruins, but
he makes his way among the corpses of the dead. The Church's path is
thus described as a Via Crucis, as a journey through a time of
violence, destruction and persecution. The history of an entire century can
be seen represented in this image. Just as the places of the earth are synthetically
described in the two images of the mountain and the city, and are directed
towards the cross, so too time is presented in a compressed way. In the
vision we can recognize the last century as a century of martyrs, a century
of suffering and persecution for the Church, a century of World Wars and the
many local wars which filled the last fifty years and have inflicted
unprecedented forms of cruelty. In the “mirror” of this vision we see passing
before us the witnesses of the faith decade by decade. Here it would be
appropriate to mention a phrase from the letter which Sister Lucia wrote to
the Holy Father on 12 May 1982: “The third part of the ‘secret' refers to Our
Lady's words: ‘If not, [Russia] will spread her errors throughout the world,
causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the
Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be
annihilated'”.
In the Via
Crucis of an entire century, the figure of the Pope has a special role.
In his arduous ascent of the mountain we can undoubtedly see a convergence of
different Popes. Beginning from Pius X up to the present Pope, they all
shared the sufferings of the century and strove to go forward through all the
anguish along the path which leads to the Cross. In the vision, the Pope too
is killed along with the martyrs. When, after the attempted assassination on
13 May 1981, the Holy Father had the text of the third part of the “secret”
brought to him, was it not inevitable that he should see in it his own fate? He
had been very close to death, and he himself explained his survival in the
following words: “... it was a mother's hand that guided the bullet's path
and in his throes the Pope halted at the threshold of death” (13 May 1994).
That here “a mother's hand” had deflected the fateful bullet only shows once
more that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces
which can influence history and that in the end prayer is more powerful than
bullets and faith more powerful than armies.
The concluding
part of the “secret” uses images which Lucia may have seen in devotional
books and which draw their inspiration from long-standing intuitions of
faith. It is a consoling vision, which seeks to open a history of blood and
tears to the healing power of God. Beneath the arms of the cross angels
gather up the blood of the martyrs, and with it they give life to the souls
making their way to God. Here, the blood of Christ and the blood of the
martyrs are considered as one: the blood of the martyrs runs down from the
arms of the cross. The martyrs die in communion with the Passion of Christ,
and their death becomes one with his. For the sake of the body of Christ,
they complete what is still lacking in his afflictions (cf. Col 1:24).
Their life has itself become a Eucharist, part of the mystery of the grain of
wheat which in dying yields abundant fruit. The blood of the martyrs is the
seed of Christians, said Tertullian. As from Christ's death, from his wounded
side, the Church was born, so the death of the witnesses is fruitful for the
future life of the Church. Therefore, the vision of the third part of the
“secret”, so distressing at first, concludes with an image of hope: no
suffering is in vain, and it is a suffering Church, a Church of martyrs,
which becomes a sign-post for man in his search for God. The loving arms of
God welcome not only those who suffer like Lazarus, who found great
solace there and mysteriously represents Christ, who wished to become for us
the poor Lazarus. There is something more: from the suffering of the
witnesses there comes a purifying and renewing power, because their suffering
is the actualization of the suffering of Christ himself and a communication
in the here and now of its saving effect.
And so we come
to the final question: What is the meaning of the “secret” of Fatima as a
whole (in its three parts)? What does it say to us? First of all we must
affirm with Cardinal Sodano: “... the events to which the third part of the
‘secret' of Fatima refers now seem part of the past”. Insofar as individual
events are described, they belong to the past. Those who expected exciting
apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the future course of
history are bound to be disappointed. Fatima does not satisfy our curiosity in
this way, just as Christian faith in general cannot be reduced to an object
of mere curiosity. What remains was already evident when we began our
reflections on the text of the “secret”: the exhortation to prayer as the
path of “salvation for souls” and, likewise, the summons to penance and
conversion.
I would like
finally to mention another key expression of the “secret” which has become
justly famous: “my Immaculate Heart will triumph”. What does this mean? The
Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is stronger than guns
and weapons of every kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart,
has changed the history of the world, because it brought the Saviour into the
world—because, thanks to her Yes, God could become man in our world
and remains so for all time. The Evil One has power in this world, as we see
and experience continually; he has power because our freedom continually lets
itself be led away from God. But since God himself took a human heart and has
thus steered human freedom towards what is good, the freedom to choose evil
no longer has the last word. From that time forth, the word that prevails is
this: “In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart; I have
overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). The message of Fatima invites us to
trust in this promise.
JosephCard.
Ratzinger
Prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith
(1) From the
diary of John XXIII, 17 August 1959: “Audiences: Father Philippe, Commissary
of the Holy Office, who brought me the letter containing the third part of
the secrets of Fatima. I intend to read it with my Confessor”.
(2) The Holy
Father's comment at the General Audience of 14 October 1981 on “What happened
in May: A Great Divine Trial” should be recalled: Insegnamenti di Giovanni
Paolo II, IV, 2 (Vatican City, 1981), 409-412.
(3) Radio
message during the Ceremony of Veneration, Thanksgiving and Entrustment to
the Virgin Mary Theotokos in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major: Insegnamenti
di Giovanni Paolo II, IV, 1 (Vatican City, 1981), 1246.
(4) On the
Jubilee Day for Families, the Pope entrusted individuals and nations to Our
Lady: Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, VII, 1 (Vatican City, 1984),
775-777.
(5)
(6) In the
“Fourth Memoir” of 8 December 1941 Sister Lucia writes: “I shall begin then
my new task, and thus fulfil the commands received from Your Excellency as
well as the desires of Dr Galamba. With the exception of that part of the
Secret which I am not permitted to reveal at present, I shall say everything.
I shall not knowingly omit anything, though I suppose I may forget just a few
small details of minor importance”.
(7) In the
“Fourth Memoir” Sister Lucia adds: “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will
always be preserved, etc. ...”.
(8) In the
translation, the original text has been respected, even as regards the
imprecise punctuation, which nevertheless does not impede an understanding of
what the visionary wished to say.