INTRODUCTION

HE Secret is made up of three distinct things, two of which I am now going to reveal», indicated Sister Lucy in August 1941, in her Third Memoir. «The first was the vision of hell […]. The second relates to devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.¹»

The seer had received permission from Heaven to disclose these two first parts of the Secret from 1927, but she did not do so before receiving a formal order from her superiors, and so she bided her time until 1941. As for the third part, she was not asked to put it into writing until the end of 1943.

Although divided into three elements like this, it is still one single Secret, revealed in its entirety by Our Lady to the three shepherd children at the apparition of July 13, 1917. It is therefore indispensable, before presenting its third part, to recapitulate the Secret as a whole.

We will cite the first two parts using Sister Lucy’s Third and Fourth Memoirs, dated respectively August 31, 1941 and December 8 of the same year. Then we will read, with great profit, a short but magisterial commentary by the Abbé de Nantes. Finally, we will reproduce the third part of the Secret, taken from Lucy’s manuscript, dated January 3, 1944, a facsimile of which was published in Rome by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on June 26, 2000. The three subtitles are ours.

FIRST SECRET:
THE VISION OF HELL

«Our Lady opened Her hands once more, as She had done during the two previous months. The rays [of light] seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire we saw demons and souls [of the damned]. These were like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronzed, having human form. They were floating about in this fire, lifted up by the flames that issued from within themselves, along with clouds of smoke. They fell back on all sides, like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid cries and groans of pain and despair that were horrifying to hear and made us tremble with fright. (It must have been this sight which caused me to let out the great shriek of pain heard by the people around me). The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals.

«This vision only lasted a moment, thanks to our good Mother in Heaven who, in the first apparition, had promised to take us to Heaven. Were it not for that, I believe we would have died of fear and terror.»

SECOND SECRET:
THE REQUESTS OF THE IMMACULATE HEART

«Terrified and as if to beg for help, we 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 am going to tell 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 reign 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 against the Church and 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, it will spread its errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against 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 it will be converted, and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world.

«In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, etc. [sic]²»

These first two parts of the Secret, so dense and so rich in content, were learnedly explained and commented on in the second and third volumes of The Whole Truth about Fatima. To reacquaint oneself with this theological, mystical and spiritual study, and to grasp the extraordinary significance of the Fatima revelations which define the clauses of a “new covenant”, one must reread our Father Superior’s editorial for January 1992, entitled “The light under the bushel: this adorable secret, our unique hope”³. Here are a couple of extracts from it:

«We must confess, we must proclaim, that what has guided us over these last thirty years and more in our close observation of world events, is the great revelation of Fatima on July 13, 1917, a light buried under the bushel of the so-called “new evangelization”. For it was on that day that Our Lady proposed to us a covenant between Her Son Jesus Christ, God, and men, a daughter covenant of the new and eternal covenant sealed for ever in the Blood of the Lamb and in the indefectible faith of His Church-Spouse, true daughter of Abraham and rightful holder of the promises made to him.

«It is a contractual covenant, an unequal treaty in which little is demanded of the creature and much is promised, provided only that it be faithful to its Saviour and devoted to the Mediatrix of this agreement, assiduous in satisfying all Their requests and faithful in this service. The conditions are minimal! And in exchange, peace upon earth and glory in Heaven will be our reward.

«In order that everyone might believe, everyone who went to Fatima on October 13, 1917 saw with their own eyes the “dance of the sun” – or, as I prefer to call it, “the fall of the sun” – and its extraordinary reinstatement at the very last second, just as it was about to burn up the earth. Those who did not witness it, like ourselves, learned sufficient from those who did see it to believe in it just as strongly. “Now, one cannot not believe in it”, said Maria Rosa, Lucy’s mother, who until then had been stubbornly opposed to her daughter’s visions – fancy, her daughter seeing the Blessed Virgin! –, “because no one can lay hands on the sun.”

«Thus the affairs of this century are conducted by God from On High in accordance with the terms of this covenant, just as the fortunes of the Hebrew people depended on their faithfulness to the Mosaic Covenant, and just as the blessings and woes of Christendom, particularly of France “the Church’s eldest daughter”, result from their fidelity to or falling away from the law of Jesus Christ their Head and their mystical Spouse. This may seem like madness to some on account of their blindness and hardness of heart, but for every good Catholic it is clear and satisfying.

«Therefore, it is how we have acted towards God’s requests expressed through the Virgin Mary at Fatima on July 13, 1917, that must prepare us for how God is going to act with us now. The world events we learn about through our radios and newspapers can only confirm these divine lights, notwithstanding all the deaf and blind shapers of world opinion who would contradict them.»

The Abbé de Nantes then went on to comment on the central prophecy contained in these first two parts of the Secret, which expresses the essence of what Our Lady came to teach us at the Cova da Iria:

«To save the souls of sinners who are going to hell, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart.»

«What a moving revelation this is! The desire of God’s Heart, therefore, in this particularly dangerous century, is to save the souls of poor sinners. Yet, in His Holiness of justice and mercy, He is bound to call upon the whole Church spread throughout the world to contribute to this salvation through the means He Himself has decreed in accordance with His good Will and pleasure, namely through a spectacular increase in universal devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Her whom He has also wished to make the messenger of this request, thus placing Her before Him as His own Queen and mistress!

«Although classified by specialists among “private revelations”, a divine wish of this kind really belongs to the sovereign and absolutely primary laws to which the Church must consent and entirely submit. It is a question of a divine wish revealed to the world, and in the most striking fashion, through the incomparable emissary that is the Immaculate Virgin Mary, and guaranteed by the most astounding miracles and prophecies in modern history. It involves the salvation of multitudes of poor sinners already headed for damnation, and it is therefore a duty of fraternal charity of the utmost urgency! Ultimately, it concerns the establishment of a devotion that is undoubtedly dearer than any other to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and which He wishes to see promoted even before His own, namely the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of His divine Mother!

«Therefore the eternal salvation of us all, our prosperity, our peace, our progress in grace and holiness here below, will be ensured by the Divine Power in response to our fidelity to this new work, or else on the contrary they will be blocked, compromised and confounded by our refusal.

«Let us first satisfy God in that which He has told us is most dear to His Heart, and then all the rest will follow! That is why the whole Church should, after the disclosure and publication of this secret, have fervently embraced devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But this is not the case. Well may Our Lord Jesus Christ, with great sadness and severity, tell this “rebellious and adulterous generation” on the Day of Judgement: “I wanted to save poor sinners from eternal hell, I wanted to see you honour My Mother so that you might thus touch My Father and so obtain every mercy from Him. But you, you wicked people, without love or respect for God, without love or compassion for your neighbour in peril of damnation, without a care even for your own salvation and your own immediate wellbeing! you would have none of it, you did nothing about it! Well, go now yourselves into the eternal fire there to meet the souls you had no wish to save, as far away as possible from My Mother whom you refused to honour, you unnatural children!”

«If what I am going to tell you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.»

«A marvellous, comforting and delightful prospect! And yet, having mentioned it, Our Lady immediately moves on without pausing, because She knows in the light of God that from the outset people will not do it, and She defers until further on, in Her well ordered speech, that which She must ask for and which She knows how to obtain, at the very end of ends, in such a manner that this peace and this salvation will then be won. We will remember in the meantime – a meantime of nearly a century! – that a door of grace had been opened and will remain ajar until such time as we are willing to approach it, and then, at last! enter in together.⁴»

Having taken stock of the extraordinary character of the Secret of July 13, 1917 – a document without equal in the whole of Church history, a divine oracle without precedent, which reveals to us the thoughts and the Heart of our Heavenly Father, as well as His great design of grace and mercy for our time –, we may now read its third part.

THIRD SECRET:
THE PURIFICATION OF THE UNDIVIDED CHURCH

«J. M. J.

«The third part of the secret revealed on July 13, 1917 at the Cova da Iria in Fatima.

«I write in obedience to You, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Most Reverend Lord Bishop of Leiria and through Your Most Holy Mother, who is also mine.

«After the two parts which I have already explained, we saw, to the left of Our Lady and a little higher up, an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; it flashed and gave off flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they were extinguished on contact with the brilliant light that Our Lady radiated against him with Her right hand: the Angel, pointing to the earth with his right hand, called 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 a premonition that it was the Holy Father.”

«Several other Bishops, Priests, men and women religious were climbing a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a large Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with its bark; before reaching there, the Holy Father passed through a large city half in ruins and, half trembling and with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the summit of the mountain, falling on his knees at the foot of the large 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 Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people, men and women 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.»

In August 2000, two months after the publication of this document, the Abbé de Nantes observed: «Almost immediately after it became known, the text of the Third Secret was subjected to some outrageous disputes. Explanations of the most absurd kind, highly insulting to the Virgin Mary, were published, often corresponding, it has to be said, to certain theories characterised by a very unenlightened devotion.⁵»

These disputes turned on the authenticity of the manuscript and they continued over the course of subsequent years. Clearly it is essential to begin by making an impartial survey of these controversies.

It is clear that both internal and external criticism of the document provide convergent indications and even proof of its authenticity. The Abbé Fabrice Delestre demonstrated this in his article, “Some remarks on Sister Lucy’s text published on June 26, 2000”⁶. What one finds distinctly indicated in this manuscript, in regard to both the place and date of its authorship no less than to the august persons who ordered Lucy to commit it to writing, fits well with what we knew of the Third Secret before its publication. Moreover, its content agrees with what the seer revealed, in 1941, in her Third Memoir: it concerns «something distinct» from the preceding part. «Distinct» by its nature, and not, as the experts had supposed, by its themes.

Let us recall two of the Abbé Delestre’s remarks. The manuscript published on June 26 contains at least ten spelling mistakes. This is because Sister Lucy writes certain words in a phonetic fashion, that is to say, as they are pronounced in the spoken language. One comes across these identical mistakes in her four Memoirs, «which clearly shows that it is the same person who wrote these different texts».

Furthermore, the seer has used in other contexts the comparison of the mirror to refer to the light of God. Thus, in regard to the apparition of June 13, 1917, she had replied to Father José Pedro da Silva in July 1947: «We saw in this light which we felt to be God, something like how we see ourselves in a mirror.⁷» It is not surprising, therefore, that Sister Lucy also employed this comparison, with the same clumsy expression, in the Third Secret⁸.

But let us move on to the objections of those who received this manuscript with scepticism. It is as well to present them with precision and to study them with rigour. The result of this detailed criticism will be to make the demonstration of its authenticity stronger and even incontestable.

Certain religious affairs writers, surprised and disconcerted by the contents of the Third Secret, claimed that it had not been fully revealed by the Roman authorities: «On June 26, we were presented with a truncated Third Secret, deliberately shorn of its first part consisting of Our Lady’s words, which alone permit a correct and authentic interpretation of the vision presented to us⁹»

Now the majority of the arguments advanced by the upholders of this theory are drawn from the works of Father Alonso and Brother Michel de la Sainte Trinité, and from our own writings, notably from the abridged version of the first three volumes of The Whole Truth on Fatima, published in 1991¹⁰. But as the Third Secret, until its official publication, truly remained a secret within the Church, certain of our surmises and hypotheses were erroneous.

That is why, since June 26, 2000, it has become necessary to re-examine the sources of every one of the experts’ statements, if one wishes to retain only those facts about the Secret that are reliable. Failing which, the accumulation of so much divergent and sometimes contradictory information can only lead to some unlikely theories.

For instance, according to Andrew M. Cesanek¹¹, the Third Secret has partially been concealed by the Roman prelates. For it was apparently written on two different but complementary manuscripts: one, dated January 3, 1944, is supposed to describe the visions, the other, written on January 9, 1944 and now still hidden in the Vatican, is supposed to report the words of the Virgin Mary. Cesanek bases this theory on the contradictions between what we affirmed in Fatima, Intimate Joy, World Event, and what the Roman prelates revealed on June 26, 2000. As an example, take the date of the transfer of the Secret from Leiria to Rome in 1957. We referred to one date: April 16, 1957. Msgr. Bertone, in the opuscule of June 26, gives another: April 4, 1957. Cesanek thereby concludes that there exist two documents. A critique free from such a priori reasoning would have commenced by examining the sources of the two historians to see if one of the two had published incorrect information. Now the date that we gave, following Father Alonso, is certainly faulty, for the latter did not have access to the Holy Office archives, whereas Msgr. Bertone examined them and therein found precise and certain information.

Following Father Alonso and Brother Michel, who had based themselves on the testimonies of Msgr. Venancio¹² and Cardinal Ottaviani, we had believed that the Secret was written on a single sheet of paper and took up about twenty-five lines. But there existed a divergent testimony: Msgr. Loris Capovilla, John XXIII’s former secretary, had stated that the Third Secret took up «four or five small pages»¹³, and he spoke the truth! The manuscript facsimile shows that it is written on four small pages, probably the rectos and versos of two sheets, and that it counts no less than sixty-two lines.

Certain critics have gone so far as to maintain that the manuscript published on June 26, 2000 was a total forgery.

For example, Laurent Morlier claims that the authentic Third Secret consists not of visions, but of Our Lady’s words. Certainly, the cornerstone of his argument is a quote from Lucy, taken from a work by Canon Barthas, but the phrase has been taken out of context: «“In the documents of the canonical process, there is a mention of the Secret for the first time in Lucy’s interrogation at the 1924 inquiry. Describing the apparition of July 13, Sister Lucy declared: Then the Lady entrusted to us a few short words (palavrinhas), advising us to tell them to no-one, only to Francisco.” So here, comments Morlier, there is no possibility of mistake as Canon Barthas records in his work the precise Portuguese term used by Sister Lucy during this official interrogation of 1924: palavrinhas, i.e. words.¹⁴» Morlier’s interpretation is fallacious. There is no question of the Third Secret. Twelve lines further on, Canon Barthas¹⁵ plainly indicates that these palavrinhas are those of the second part of the Secret, revealed to the world in 1942. During this interrogation of 1924, Sister Lucy spoke neither of the third part of the Secret nor of its first part, namely the vision of hell¹⁶.

In the final analysis, a meticulous examination of the testimonies and documents justifies the following statement: at no time did Sister Lucy, nor any of the Popes who read the Third Secret, personally affirm that it contained words of Our Lady. So much is the case that an expert, Father Joao de Freitas Alves, envisaged back in 1967 that it might just as well consist of visions as of words of the Most Blessed Virgin¹⁷.

Those who deny any authenticity to the manuscript published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith base their arguments on an hypothesis that Father Alonso had believed to be decisive for learning the contents of the Third Secret. The official expert had presumed that Our Lady’s prophecy, «In Portugal the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, etc. (sic)», a prophecy revealed by Sister Lucy for the first time in her Fourth Memoir, in 1941, was the first sentence of the Third Secret¹⁸. Now this was an error, one of Father Alonso’s rare errors. This promise concerning Portugal is the last sentence of the second part of the Secret¹⁹.

It is notable that Sister Lucy stated in her Fourth Memoir what she was going to divulge: «With the exception of that part of the Secret which I am not permitted to reveal at present, I shall say everything.²⁰» Now that which Heaven had not yet permitted her to reveal was the Third Secret. She would only put it into writing later, and we know under what circumstances: even after having received from Msgr. da Silva a formal order to write it down, she could not bring herself to do so. She would only manage it after receiving confirmation of this order, on January 2, 1944, from the Virgin Mary Herself. In short, it is not surprising that, three years earlier, in 1941, she had disclosed nothing of the Third Secret, something that was very «distinct»²¹ from the preceding part, as she said.

We remember, however, that she had declared in 1943, six months before writing down the Third Secret, that «in a certain way she had already told it». How can such a statement be explained? As follows:

She had already revealed that her mission was to remind the world of the necessity of doing «penance»²². She had already described the visions of the Holy Father with which Blessed Jacinta had been favoured and about which Lucy had said to Jacinta, «Don’t you see that that’s part of the Secret?²³»

Moreover, she had «in a certain way already told it» since, in its third part, the Secret, as we are going to see, resumes the prophecies of the preceding part in symbolic form.

It is notable that Cardinals Ottaviani and Ratzinger²⁴, who had had the privilege of reading the Secret, revealed several of its themes, the former in 1967, the latter in 1984.

During his lecture of February 11, 1967²⁵, Cardinal Ottaviani clearly had present in his mind the visions that would be revealed on June 26, 2000, as he declared: «We have here a sign which is as though veiled; it is not a language which is completely manifest and clear.²⁶» What is more, he partially revealed the content of these visions by twice referring in his speech to a mysterious call to «penance» and also by alluding to other elements of the Secret, as we shall see further on²⁷.

To understand the Secret, one must use the interpretation key given by Sister Lucy in her letter of May 12, 1982 to Pope John Paul II:

«The third part of the Secret refers to Our Lady’s words: “If not, Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.” (July 13, 1917)

«The third part of the Secret, which you are anxious to understand, is a symbolic revelation which refers 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, it will spread its 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.²⁸»

Thus the visions of the Third Secret are related to the words of the Virgin that precede them: they describe, in an allegorical form, the divine promises, and above all the chastisements that are tied to the refusal of the Church’s highest authorities to satisfy Heaven’s requests.

Thanks to the exegetical and theological commentaries published by the Abbé de Nantes and by his disciple, Brother Bruno de Jésus, we will discover that these visions apply biblical symbolism to the events of our time, from 1917 up to our present day and beyond to our future, events predicted by the Most Blessed Virgin.

During this account, we will meet with wonderment the Secret’s central character, namely this mysterious «Bishop dressed in White».

Need we recall that, before the apparitions of 1917, the three seers were quite unaware of who the Holy Father was?

«We did not know», Lucy would confide to Father Jongen in 1946, «what the words king, pope or Pius XI meant.²⁹»

Now on July 13, 1917, having heard Our Lady speak three times to them of the «Holy Father», they had «a premonition», as they beheld the visions of the Secret, that they were in fact seeing «the Holy Father»: this «Bishop dressed in White», who appeared «in an immense light which is God», was him!

Shortly afterwards, recounts Lucy, «two priests came to question us and recommended us to pray for the Holy Father. Jacinta asked who the Holy Father was. These good priests explained to us who he was, and how much he needed prayers.

«Jacinta then asked me: “Is he the same one I saw weeping, the one Our Lady spoke about in the Secret?”

– He is, I replied.

«From that moment we never offered God any prayer or sacrifice without addressing Him a petition for His Holiness.³⁰»

We will identify the Pope whom the three seers of Fatima beheld on July 13, 1917: it is Albino Luciani, our good Shepherd, or at least, not to prejudge the future, let us say that we shall regard Albino Luciani as the figure of the Pope of the Secret. For the prophecy may still be fulfilled, in the future, in a more literal manner. We will learn to get to know, to love and to venerate him. We will admire the virtues that predestined him to become Mary’s chosen one and to die as a victim of expiation, killed by his brothers.

As a counterpart to this, we will observe with alarm that his predecessors and his successor on the See of Peter have adopted a very different attitude towards the Fatima revelations. That is because, ever since 1917, the message of the Virgin of the Immaculate Heart has produced within the Church, at every degree of the hierarchy, a revelation of hearts. Our Father Superior has repeatedly warned us of this:

«To believe in the events and messages of Fatima is a token of predestination; whereas to reject Fatima is a terrifying sign of reprobation. He who believes is the object of a grace that equips him to please the Virgin Mary and to know the joys of Heaven […]. Our eternal destiny hangs, therefore, on these four little pages of the Secret. From the viewpoint of reason and of the great movements of thought down the centuries, it counts for little. Or, to put it better: it is very simple. And yet: very mysterious. From the viewpoint of the heart, what is at issue is our trust in God, our whole devotion and our love for the Virgin Mary. After the appeal of Christ, “I thirst!”, here we have that of His divine Mother, pleading with us insistently to love Her Heart because that is what God wishes.³¹»

As we discover and meditate on the unfathomable riches of the Secret of Mary’s Heart, each of us will thus be interiorly solicited to respond to our divine Mother’s appeal. Such is the incomparable grace which is offered to us by our most merciful Heavenly Father.
 

Endnotes

(1) Mémoires de soeur Lucie, Vice-Postulaçao dos Videntes, Fatima, 1991, p. 108.
(2) Toute la verité sur Fatima, volume 1, p. 224.
(3) CRC no. 279, January 1992, p. 1 sq.
(4) CRC no. 279, January 1992, p. 2.
(5) CRC no. 369, August 2000, p. 1.
(6) Nouvelles de Chrétienté, no. 78, Nov-Dec 2002.
(7) Ibid, p. 15.
(8) Here is a word-for-word translation of the sentence in the Secret: «And we saw in an immense light which is God: “Something like how people see themselves in a mirror when they pass in front”»…
(9) Bulletin Saint-Jean-Eudes, no. 56, June 2000, p. 2.
(10) Fatima, joie intime, événement mondial, 2nd ed., CRC, 1993, 455 pages.
(11) The Fatima Crusader, no. 64, summer 2000, p. 3 sq.
(12) One recalls how in 1957 Msgr. Venancio believed he could make out, inside the two envelopes containing the Secret, a single sheet of paper whose size he noted: 11.25 cm by 17.25 cm (Aura Miguel, Le secret de Jean-Paul II, Mame-Plon, 2000, p. 182). The manuscript facsimile, published on June 26, 2000, shows that the pages of the Secret were indeed of these dimensions.
(13) Conversation between Msgr. Loris Capovilla and Marco Tosatti, La Stampa, October 20, 1997.
(14) Laurent Morlier, Le troisième Secret de Fatima publié par le Vatican le 26 juin 2000 est un faux, D.F.T., 2001, p. 47; 118.
(15) Barthas, Fatima, merveille du vingtième siècle, Fatima Publications, 1952, p. 81.
(16) Documentaçao critica de Fatima, vol. 2, Santuario de Fatima, 1999, p. 128, 141.
(17) Joao de Freitas Alves, O segredo de Fatima, Reinado, 1967, p. 6.
(18) Alonso, La vérité sur le secret de Fatima,  Téqui, 1979, p. 16 and 55. Toute la vérité sur Fatima, vol. 3, p. 457 sq.
(19) Regarding the manner in which one can interpret the etc on which the second part of the Secret ends, cf. infra, p. 145.
(20) Mémoires de soeur Lucie, p. 156.
(21) Ibid., p. 108.
(22) Ibid., p. 116.
(23) Ibid., p. 114.
(24) After having read the Secret, Cardinal Ratzinger abstracted the following themes: «A radical call to conversion, the absolute gravity of history, the dangers threatening the faith and the life of a Christian, and therefore the world. And also the importance of the last times.» He would come back to this later, in his book Conversation on the Faith, linking the «message of Fatima» to «the possibility of the imminent end of history»: «The Church, hearkening to the message of Christ delivered through Mary to our time, feels the threat of ruin to all and to each individual, and responds with a decisive conversion and penance.” (Toute la vérité sur Fatima, vol. 3, p. 553 sq.)
(25) According to the transcription and translation published in the Documentation catholique, Cardinal Ottaviani did not say on February 11, 1967, regarding the Third Secret, «What the Virgin dictated to Lucy.» But he stated, «What the Virgin had asked Lucy to say.» (D.C., 1967, col. 542)
(26) Ibid. col. 545.
(27) Infra, chap. 2.
(28) Facsimile of the manuscript in The Message of Fatima, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on June 26, 2000. Regarding this letter, cf. infra, p. 420.
(29) “En visite chez Lucia”, Médiatrice et Reine, May 1946, p. 11.
(30) Mémoires de Lucie, p. 35, 84, and 114. Sister Lucy added: «We had conceived such a great love for the Holy Father that when the parish priest told my mother one day that I should probably have to go to Rome to be questioned by His Holiness, I clapped my hands with delight, and I told my cousins: “Ah! what happiness, if I am going to see the Holy Father!” And they shed tears of disappointment: “We will not be going, but we will offer this sacrifice for him.”» (ibid.)
(31) CRC no. 369, August 2000, p. 1.