The Secret in Three Parts: The First Part

The Secret imparted to the three shepherd children at Fatima on July 13, 1917 had three parts. The first part was fully revealed in Sr. Lucy’s Third and Fourth Memoirs, written at the command of her bishop, in 1941. This first part of the Secret of Fatima describes what Lucy, Jacinta and Francisco saw on that day. We quote from Sister Lucy’s memoirs:

She [Our Lady of Fatima] 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 were demons and souls [of the damned] 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 huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons could be distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals.1 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.2

Our Lady then explained to the children, “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go.”

Notes:

1. English translation of text in Sister Lucy, “Fourth Memoir”, Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, (Postulation Centre, Fatima, Portugal, 1976) p. 162. See also Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima, Volume I: Science and the Facts, (Immaculate Heart Publications, Buffalo, New York, U.S.A., 1989) pp. 181-182.

2. English translation of text in Sister Lucy, “Third Memoir”, Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, p. 104. See also The Whole Truth About Fatima, Volume I, p. 182.