Mainstream Italian author demonstrates the Third Secret of Fatima is not entirely revealed. One of the last living witnesses, Archbishop Loris Capovilla, the former secretary of Pope John XXIII, admits there are two texts.
Editor’s Note: We recently mailed a new flyer to all our donors, entitled The Third Secret of Fatima in Brief, which we encourage you to share with others. For those interested in the topic of the Third Secret, we encourage you to read The Fatima Crusader, Issue 130, Spring 2023.
This article by John Vennari (R.I.P.) was originally published in The Fatima Crusader, Issue #85 (2007), pp. 32-44 and has been slightly edited.
PART 1 OF 3
On November 22, 2006, Antonio Socci’s Il Quarto Segreto di Fatima (“The Fourth Secret of Fatima”) hit bookstores in Italy. The author, after much investigation, comes to the conclusion that the Vatican has not formally released the entire Third Secret.
The importance of this book cannot be overemphasized. Mr. Socci is a famous, mainstream Italian author and TV anchorman, not associated with any “traditionalist” group. In fact, he began the project firmly believing the Vatican had released the entire Secret on June 26, 2000. Yet the more he investigated, the more he became convinced that the entire Secret was not revealed.
Paolini’s Challenge
Socci writes in the book’s “Introduction” that he was intrigued by an article published by Italian journalist Vittorio Messori at the time of Sister Lucia’s death: “The Fatima Secret, the Cell of Sister Lucia Has Been Sealed.” (See Christopher Ferrara’s report in The Fatima Crusader Issue 79, page 5.) Here Messori spoke of the many writings and “Letters to the Popes” that Sister Lucia would have left in her cell. Messori then mentioned the Vatican’s June 26, 2000 revelation of the Secret “which instead of solving the mystery, has opened other ones: regarding its interpretations, its contents, and about the completeness of the revealed text.”
This launched a burst of questions in Socci’s mind. Why would Messori, “a great journalist, extremely precise … the most translated Catholic columnist in the world”, cast such suspicion on the Vatican? How could a person like Messori, so close to the Vatican ambient, be persuaded that the official version of the Third Secret was not convincing?
This was especially puzzling because five years previously, with the release of the Vision of the Secret, Messori expressed no reservations about what the Vatican published. Now he seems to have doubts. Now he seems to have questions.
Socci responded by engaging in a courteous journalists’ dispute with Messori in which Socci defended the Vatican position. But then, says Socci, “I was hit by an article written by a young Catholic writer, Solideo Paolini”, which appeared in a traditionalist magazine that entered the debate between Socci and Messori.
Socci says Paolini “listed a series of arguments against the official Vatican version (which was mine too, at the time).” Paolini argued that the Vatican is still holding the principal part of the Third Secret from being revealed “due to its explosive content”. Mr. Paolini had researched the subject of Fatima intensely, and had written a book on the Third Secret, Fatima, Don’t Despise Prophecies, which was published in Italy. To his own surprise, Socci found Paolini’s arguments worthy of consideration.
Mr. Socci expresses his view that it was a mistake of the Curia and the Catholic media to ignore the challenge of traditional Catholics who argue that the Third Secret was not fully released. “For instance”, he writes, “in the book edited by Father Paul Kramer [The Devil’s Final Battle] which united the works and articles of various authors, there is the denouncement of the failure by the Vatican to heed the requests of Our Lady of Fatima, and it is affirmed that ‘the price of indecision in the Vatican could well be extremely high and will be paid by mankind’.”
In short, Socci recognized that there were many questions left unanswered, many points about the Secret that were enigmatic.
No Response from Bertone
Socci’s misgivings only intensified when he sought answers from the Vatican hierarchy, especially from Cardinal Bertone, who had coauthored with Cardinal Ratzinger the June 26, 2000 document on the Secret, The Message of Fatima.
Socci writes: “I’ve searched many influential authorities inside the Curia, like Cardinal Bertone, today Secretary of State in the Vatican, who was central to the publication of the Secret in 2000 … The Cardinal, who actually favored me with his personal consideration, having asked me to conduct conferences in his former diocese of Genoa, didn’t deem it necessary to answer my request for an interview. He was within his rights to make this choice, of course, but this only increased the fear of the existence of embarrassing questions, and most of all, that there is something (extremely important) which needs to be kept hidden.”
He closes his “Introduction”, saying that he had not expected to find such a “colossal Enigma” regarding the Third Secret. And while he may not subscribe to each and every theory on this subject contained in traditionalist literature, “in the end I had to surrender”, he said, to the conclusion that there exist two texts of the Secret, one of which has yet to be revealed to the world.
Cardinal Bertone did not respond to Mr. Socci’s request for an interview.
“I Think There’s More”
Readers will recall that on May 13, 2000, during the Pope’s beatification of Jacinta and Francisco Marto at Fatima, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, then Vatican Secretary of State, announced that the Third Secret would be revealed, and disclosed what he claimed was a portion of it. Sodano announced that the Secret speaks of “a bishop clothed in white” who, while making his way amid the corpses of martyrs, “falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire.”
Cardinal Sodano went on to indicate that this was a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt against John Paul II.
Though most of the crowd applauded Sodano’s speech, some were immediately skeptical. On May 13, 2000 Associated Press quoted Julio Esteleo, 33, a Portuguese car salesman: “What they said all happened in the past. This isn’t a prediction. It’s disappointing, I think there’s more.”
Indeed, many Catholics said, “I think there’s more.”
Then on June 26, 2000, when the Vision of the Secret was finally published, we learned that Cardinal Sodano had not told the truth. The Secret does not say that the Pope falls “apparently dead” but says that he is killed.
Even the Washington Post noted the discrepancy in its July 1 report: “Third Secret Spurs More Questions: Fatima Interpretation Departs from Vision”:
“On May 13, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a top Vatican official, announced the imminent release of the carefully guarded text. He said the Third Secret of Fatima foretold not the end of the world, as some had speculated, but the May 13, 1981, shooting of Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square.
“Sodano said the manuscript … tells of a ‘bishop clothed in white’ who, while making his way amid corpses of martyrs, ‘falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire.’[1]
“But the text released Monday [June 26] leaves no doubt about the bishop’s fate, saying that he ‘was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him.’ Everyone with the pontiff also dies: bishops, priests, monks, nuns and lay people. John Paul survived his shooting at the hands of a single gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, and no one in the crowd was harmed in the attack.”
This secular newspaper cannot help but look at Cardinal Sodano with a jaundiced eye, since it is clear that Cardinal Sodano gave a falsified picture of the Third Secret to which he force-fit a faulty interpretation.
Concerned Catholics immediately contrasted what the Vatican revealed as the complete Third Secret with what Cardinal Ratzinger had said about it in 1984. In his famous interview with Vittorio Messori, Cardinal Ratzinger said the Secret concerns “the dangers threatening the faith and life of the Christian, and therefore the world. And also the importance of the last times (novissimi).” The Cardinal further explained that “things contained in this Third Secret correspond to what is announced in Scripture and are confirmed by many other Marian apparitions …”
Yet the vision of a Pope being killed by soldiers does not necessarily reflect the “dangers threatening the faith”, nor does it necessarily correspond to the “last times”. Further, one can search “other Marian apparitions” in vain to find any reference to prophecy of a Pope being shot by a group of soldiers. Nor is there any reference to such an event in Scripture.
Speculation was compounded by the fact that noted Fatima scholars, such as Father Alonso and Frère Michel of the Holy Trinity, deduced from extensive study of what has been previously said about the Third Secret, that the contents concerned the prophecy of a great crisis of Faith in the Catholic Church.
END NOTES
[1] Editor’s Note: Readers should be aware of how Sodano misrepresented even the vision the Vatican published. The Washington Post likewise gets it wrong, apparently relying more on Sodano’s words than on the text of the vision written by Sister Lucia. The Fatima visionary distinctly wrote that she saw “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.” A few lines later she then wrote: “the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins…” and goes on to explain that he prays for souls, climbs a mountain, and is executed at the foot of a cross. She clearly called this man “The Holy Father.” There is nothing in the vision which indicates that the Bishop Dressed in White is the same as the Pope who prays for the dead and is executed. In fact, she suggests otherwise by saying that they only had the ‘impression’ that this bishop which they saw, as if in a mirror, was the Holy Father. One should ask, why did Sister Lucia choose such curious wording?