Fátima

On 13 May 1917, in Fátima, Portugal, three children, Lúcia, Francisco, and Jacinta, said they saw and spoke with Our Lady. So begins one of the most famous and respected apparitions of this Catholic saint, followed by further appearances in the same place on 13 June, 13 July, 15 August, 13 September, and 13 October of that same year. At the last of these, on 13 October, around sixty thousand people witnessed a miracle: a little after midday the sun seemed to move in the sky, spinning and lurching in every direction before returning to its place several minutes later.

Of the three children, Jacinta and Francisco died very young. Lúcia lived on for many years more. The secrets that Our Lady passed to the children on the afternoon of 13 July 1917, in Sister Lúcia’s own words, “consist of three distinct things”:

• First, the vision of Hell.
• Second, the punishment of the world.
• Third, long withheld, but believed to complete the second part.

On that third part there has always been suspicion. In his book on the apparitions, drawing on Sister Lúcia’s manuscripts, António Borelli Machado notes that in the preface to the Brazilian edition of her writings, Father António Maria Martins states flatly that the third secret, its text not yet released, “deals only with the so-called Crisis of the Church.” He does not explain how he came to know this, nor offer anything more.

So there is reason to suspect that the third secret, so carefully guarded by the Vatican, might confirm other warnings of a coming persecution of Christians. The same conclusion is suggested by a vision Jacinta had and described to Lúcia:

“I don’t know how it was, but I saw the Holy Father in a very large house, kneeling before a table, his hands over his face, weeping. Outside the house there were many people, and some of them were throwing stones at him, others cursing him and saying many ugly words to him. Poor Holy Father, we must pray very much for him.”

In 1944 Sister Lúcia wrote down the third secret and sent it to the Bishop of Leiria, who passed it to the Apostolic Nunciature in Lisbon, and from there it reached the Vatican. By her own account, the secret was not to be made public before 1960, and yet that year came and went without it. In 1967, Pope Paul VI fell ill and fainted after reading the third secret of Fátima, and it was announced that he had decided not to reveal it.

It was Pope John Paul II who finally opened it. On a visit to the Sanctuary of Fátima on 13 May 2000, to beatify the two seer children who had already died, Jacinta and Francisco, he revealed part of the third secret. On 26 June 2000 the Vatican at last released the full text in Sister Lúcia’s own hand. It reads:

“J.M.J. The third part of the secret revealed on 13 July 1917 in the Cova da Iria, Fátima.

I write in an act of obedience to You, my God, who command it of me through His Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through Your Most Holy Mother and mine.

After the two parts I have already described, we saw at the left of Our Lady, a little higher up, an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand. Flickering, it gave out flames that seemed they would set the world on fire. But they died down at the touch of the brightness that Our Lady sent toward them from her right hand. The Angel, pointing to the earth with his right hand, cried out in a loud voice: Penance, Penance, Penance! And we saw in an immense light that is God, something like how people appear in a mirror when they pass before it, a Bishop dressed in white. We had the feeling that it was the Holy Father. Various other Bishops, priests, men and women religious were climbing a steep mountain, at the top of which stood a great Cross of rough-hewn trunks, like cork-oak with its bark. Before reaching it the Holy Father passed through a great city half in ruins, and trembling with a faltering step, weighed down with grief and pain, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met along the way. Reaching the top of the mountain, kneeling at the foot of the great 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, 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 vessel in his hand, in which they gathered the blood of the Martyrs and with it watered the souls that were drawing near to God.”