Newsletter of the District of Asia

 July-August 2000

June 26, 2000 :

Revelation of the Third Secret Fatima
or

Curtailed Revelation

By Father Fabrice Delestre, SSPX

(The following article, by this Society priest assigned in Fatima, consists of the main extracts of his 18 page article published in the French Bulletin St Jean Eudes, no.56, June/July 2000.)

There was a great expectation for the revelation of the Third Secret last June 26, but an expectation mixed with worries. Cardinal Sodano, in his allocution of May 13, didn’t say a word about a crisis within the Church, about the lost, world-wide of the most precious gift of the Church: the true Catholic Faith.  This was the obvious content announced by all the experts of Fatima for many years. 

Moreover, the Vatican spokesman, M. Navarro-Valls, indicated one of the goals of this publication: “The publication of the third secret does not intend to give any papal support to the anti-ecumenical traditionalism which had abusively appropriated to itself certain aspects of the message of Fatima, speculating in a millenarist perspective on presumed, not authentic, contents of this unpublished text.” (Monthly Portuguese Christus, June 2000, p.27)

The text presented by the Vatican, sadly, confirmed fully our worries.  The text was deficient first in its form since not a single word of Our Lady was included with the vision, and secondly, without a key, the interpretation of the vision becomes very difficult, moreover by the absence of the two great themes announced by all the experts: the wide-scale lost of faith, which would be the result of the failure of the highest hierarchy of the Church.

With the help of a whole series of arguments, we can nevertheless come to an almost definite conclusion: the text presented last June 26 was a curtailed third secret, voluntarily amputated of its first part which consists of words of Our Lady, the only key for the correct and authentic interpretation of the vision published.

Here are some of the objective arguments of this series.

I – The testimony of Sr. Lucia herself, 1943-1960

a) The 4th Memoir.

In her 4th Memoir, completed on December 8, 1941 Sr. Sr. Lucia wrote, in a way almost identical to the 3rd Memoir (to the exception of very few words in the description of her vision of hell), the first two parts of the secret.  This time however she adds two sentences of utmost importance about the third part of the secret : “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved; etc…Do not tell this to anybody. To Francisco, yes, you may tell him.” (In Fatima in Sr. Lucia’s own words, Postulation Center, Fatima, 1976, p.169)

These two sentences disclosed by Sr. Sr. Lucia are essential as they give a key to the main aspect of the contents and nature of the third secret.

1.- Firstly, Sr. Sr. Lucia gives us the first sentence of the third part of the secret “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved; etc…”  In fact, in 1943, as she was mentioning this sentence, she said to the Bishop of Leiria that it was not absolutely necessary that she draft the text of the third secret, ‘since, in some way, she had said it.” (cf. Rev. Fr. Alonso : La Vérité sur le Secret de Fatima, Madrid, 1976, page 64.)

- She is talking about a spiritual matter, a supernatural one, regarding the Faith, quite different in fact from material and temporal chastisements as announced in the second part of the secret, and which should come if the Catholic world did not submit to the two requests made by Our Lady : the communion in reparation of the first Saturdays and the act of reparation and consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart.

- The general context of the October 13, 1917 secret having to do with the world as a whole (the word ‘world’ is used four times in the twenty two lines of the manuscript of the second part of the secret), Portugal cannot be mentioned in that sentence but as an exception, in contrast with the general situation of the Catholic Faith in the rest of the world and the other parts of the Church.  It is then truly a loss of the true Faith, at a big scale, which is announced in the third part of the Secret.

2.- Moreover, Sr. Lucia added the last words of Our Lady, “Do not tell this to anybody. To Francisco, yes, you may tell him.”  These words, which appeared meaningless until last June 26, have become essential since that date. This is why:  They are not in the 3rd Memoir. Sr. Lucia added them in the 4th Memoir, to signify that they concerned only the 3rd part of the secret. By the way in Portuguese the word ‘isto’, which is translated by ‘this’ always relate to the last thing that has been done, seen or heard, or nearest to us. By giving us these words, Sr. Lucia was saying that Our Lady Herself insisted, on July 13, 1917 on the extreme gravity of the contents of the 3rd part of the secret about which She ordered the most absolute silence until further instruction. This also explains better the two and a half months of spiritual agony that Sr. Lucia underwent before being able to write this terrible secret until Our Lady appeared to her on January 2, 1944, and ordering her to write it.

Another very important indication is given to us by these words : Blessed Francisco in all the apparitions of Fatima (both those of the angel as those of Our Lady) has always seen every thing (including the vision of hell) but has never heard the heavenly words. Now, Our Lady says, speaking of the 3rd part of the secret : “Do not tell this to anybody. To Francisco, yes, you may tell him.” We have here the formal proof that the third part of the secret cannot consist only of the description of the vision, but must also particularly include a group of words of Our Lady! These words must be the main key of the interpretation of the published vision.

It is clear that if the Vatican had wished to completely bring into light the 3rd part of the secret, without hiding, chopping or diluting it, it would have published the manuscript of the 4th Memoir, with its important last sentence, and not that of the 3rd Memoir.

Not everyone however has been duped by the deceit: the great Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias saw the anomaly: “… Ratzinger… has not been able to find an explanation or a justification for one of Sr. Lucia’s statements according to which “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved; etc…” (June 27, p.22)

b) Meeting between Sister Sr. Lucia and Fr. Fuentes - December 26, 1957.

In this meeting Sr. Lucia brought in new themes and thus already revealed the essential contents of the third part of the secret and the description of the vision published last June 26 confirms this fully, while at the same time manifesting that Sr. Lucia knows more than us on the interpretation of this vision, and that, therefore, she has a key for the interpretation of this vision which the Vatican has refused to provide and continues to hide.

Here are some of the words of Sr. Lucia :

“Father, the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin. […] That which afflicts the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Heart of Jesus is the fall of religious and priestly souls. The devil knows that religious and priests who fall away from their beautiful vocation drag numerous souls to hell… The devil wishes to take possession of consecrated souls. He tries to corrupt them in order to lull to sleep the souls of lay people and thereby lead to final impenitence. He employs all tricks, even going so far as to suggest the delay of entrance into religious life. Resulting from this is the sterility of the interior life and, among the lay people, coldness regarding the subject of renouncing pleasures and the total dedication of themselves to God.” (The Whole Truth About Fatima, The Third Secret, by Frère Michel, Immaculate heart Publications, p.505)

He re we are given with great precision the infernal strategy orchestrated by the devil for the eternal of the greatest possible of souls: in priority to conquer consecrated souls! And Sr. Lucia strongly insist on the immense responsibility of consecrated souls in relation the eternal salvation of the whole flock of the faithful as she will also say in other letters which have been published (1970-71).

Similarly, in the vision published on June 26, there is quite an insistence on consecrated souls: “Bishops, priests, brothers and sisters”, a list which appears twice in the text of the description of the vision.  All these consecrated souls eventually die one after the other following the Pope at the foot of the great cross.  But it is difficult to see a link between this insistence in the vision and the previous words of Sr. Lucia of 1957.  Obviously we are lacking a piece of the 3rd part of the secret composed of words of Our Lady which would give us the key to interpret this death and which would clarify the link.

“Father, we should not wait for an appeal to the world to come from Rome, on the part of the Holy Father, to do penance, nor should we wait for the call to penance to come from our bishops in our dioceses, nor from the religious congregations.”

These words of 1957 of Sister Sr. Lucia obviously relate directly to the angel in the published vision, who was holding a sword of fire in his left hand and pointed to the earth with his right hand and said with a loud voice : “Penance ! Penance ! Penance !”

Now, Sr. Lucia has visibly the key to interpret that detail of the vision which we don’t have when she warned in 1957 with a great assurance and a great firmness in her words not to expect a call to penance from any hierarchical authority. The knowledge of the vision alone does not authorize us to make such an interpretation.  This is therefore a new proof that she knows more than we do and that a piece of the 3rd part of the secret has been hidden which speaks of a great crisis within the hierarchy of the Church to its very summit, the Papacy.

II - Testimony of Pope John XXIII

After reading the secret in Castelgondolfo in August 1959, John XXIII declared: “This does not concern the years of my pontificate.” (Fr. Alonso, La Vérité sur le Secret de Fatima, French edition, Tequi, 1979, page 106).  Now, Cardinal Sodano last May 13 said that the vision evoked : “An interminable Way of the Cross, guided by the Popes of the XXth century.”  There is therefore an incoherence and total contradiction between the words of John XXIII and the interpretation of the vision given last May 13 and June 26 by Cardinals Sodano and Ratzinger.  The 3rd secret manifestly announces a new plague for the Church much more serious than the persecution of atheistic communism since the 1930’s.

A few months later, on February 8, 1960, when the News Agency ANI announced in a press release that the secret would not be published, the 3rd reason given “to justify” its non-publication was:

“3.- Although the Church recognizes the apparitions of Fatima, it does not want to take the responsibility of the truth of the words the three young shepherds claimed the Blessed Virgin had told them.” This press release refers to “words” of Our Lady and therefore clearly indicates that the 3rd part of the secret consist, at least partially, of words of the Blessed Virgin and not just the description of a vision without any verbal message.  It must be said that this press release has never been denied by the Holy See neither in its totality or in part.  

Cardinal Cerejeira even made the following declaration two weeks later, on February 24, 1960: “About the press release – and I am sure of the truth of what it states – this document (the third secret) must be with the Vatican and His Holiness must know its content.” (Documentation Catholique, 1960, col.752)

III - Interview of Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, in November 1984

(Heading of the article publishing it:) The Madonna as defense of the Faith.  Why it is necessary to turn to Mary.

V.M.    Cardinal Ratzinger, have you read the so-called ‘third Secret of Fatima’ (…)?
R.         Yes, I have.
V.M.    Why hasn’t it been revealed?
R.         Because according to the judgement of the Popes, it would add nothing to what a Christian must know from Revelation:

-radical call to conversion,
-the absolute seriousness of history
-the dangers threatening the faith and life of the Christian, and therefore of the world.
-And also the importance of the last times. (…)”

Notice the “dangers threatening the faith” and “the importance of the last times”.  Again, this points to the fact that the essential is missing in what was published on June 26: a reference to a spiritual chastisement.

IV - Fr. Joaquin Maria Alonso

“In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved; etc…”  This sentence clearly insinuates a critical state of the faith of which the other nations will undergo, i.e. a crisis of faith. If “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved; etc, we can evidently deduct that in other parts of the Church, these dogmas, either will be dimmed, or they might even be lost.” (La Vérité sur le Secret de Fatima, Madrid, 1976, page 64-72-73.)

V – The Declaration of Bishop do Amaral, bishop of Leiria-Fatima, September 10, 1984, in Vienna, Austria.

“The Secret of Fatima speaks neither of atomic bombs, nor of nuclear heads, or Purshing missiles or SS 20.  Its content only concerns our faith.   (…) The lost of the faith for a continent is worse than the complete destruction of a nation; and it is true that faith is continuously diminishing in Europe.” (Monthly Mensagem de Fatima, no.161, Feb. 1985, p.1)

VI - Fr. Luis Kondor, SVD, Postulator of the cause for the beatification of Francisco and Jacinta

“Anyone who has deeply studied this matter will say that the third part of the secret is about the loss of faith in Europe and the fact that different religions are getting together.” (Weekly Euronoticias, March 24, 2000, p.9)

Conclusion

1. From all the above testimonies and reasons, it now appears clearly that last June 26, we were willfully given an incomplete third secret, amputated from its first part which consisted of words of Our Lady giving the great key for the interpretation of the vision that has been published.  Without this key, the vision remains obscure and difficult to interpret.  It is obvious that the Vatican is hiding the essential, i.e., the announcement, by Our Lady, by very clear, very explicit words and without ambiguities, of a very serious crisis within the Catholic Church, touching the very substance of what it has most precious: the ‘Dogma of the Faith’.

1. For what purpose, has the Pope decided to publish this vision?  It  now appears very clear that the Vatican had two precise goals:

a) To finish once and for all with all the eschatological, political, social and prophetic supernatural events of Fatima.  “Cardinal Ratzinger de-dramatizes Fatima”, was the heading of the French Newspaper Le Monde, on June 27.  Thus, we fall back to the erroneous position of Fr Dhanis, S.J., a position which finally prevailed in the Vatican, even under Pius XII. 

This position can be summarized like this: There is no doubt on the fact of the six apparitions of our Lady and the nucleus of her message as the three shepherd transmitted it immediately after the apparitions: a call to prayer, penance, conversion.  All the rest – the apparitions of the Angel, the vision of hell and the whole secret of July 13 – is the fruit of “a more or less conscious invention” of Sr. Lucia and remains very uncertain and even dubious.  Cardinal Ratzinger quoted Fr. Dhanis in his official commentary of June 26 to show the origins of his own thoughts.

b) More grievous still: the second goal of the Vatican is the excessive glorification of the person of John Paul II, manifestly arriving at the end of his pontificate.

Many Portuguese personalities have pointed this out as the daily Diario de Noticias reported on June 27.  Here is one.  Professor Jose Jacinto de Farias, of the Theology Faculty and a member of the Scientific Counsel of the Catholic University of Lisbon said:  “The position of John Paul II in relation to the message must be understood in the context of the idea that he himself has of his own mission.  He doesn’t see himself only as the head of the Church but also as a prophet in the sense of a reader of the events of history  (…) to such a degree that he concentrates all mankind in himself, and, in this sense, re-reads, in relation to himself, the history of this century.”

But to glorify the person of John Paul II also implies to glorify the orientations of a pontificate that has had no rest to apply in all domains the ‘new conciliar orientations’.  Thus we arrive at the glorification of Vatican II itself with the help of an amputated third secret to which is given a meaning totally opposed to the true meaning which must be in the integral third secret.  This is truly a perfidious inversion behind which one can find the powers of Darkness!

2)  What are the profound causes of such an odious maneuver against Fatima and the message of Fatima on the part of the conciliar authorities? 

It seems that we could reduce them to two:

a) A profound intellectual and spiritual blindness, seen as a chastisement for the infidelity of consecrated souls to their priestly or religious vocations.

b) An important communist infiltration in the Catholic Church, and inside the very Vatican, to its highest summits.

Our Lady had come to ask for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, on June 13, 1929, at Tuy.  Pope Pius XI heard about this as early as 1930-1931, and refused to do it.  As a result, the terrible material chastisements announced in the second part of the secret began to fall on the world. 

But there is worst. It is during these years that Moscow began to give the order to all the communist parties of the world to infiltrate Catholic seminaries.  In France, this started in 1936, according to the testimony of Henri Barbé: (See Jean Madiran, in Itinéraires, no.227, Nov. 1978, p.151).  This politic of infiltration was done at a wide scale: “ in 1949, Pius XII had admitted that to his knowledge, there were about 2000 priests, communist infiltrators, in the Church.  And ten years later, the police of the Renseignements Généraux of Paris estimated that there were at least 300 priests infiltrated in the Church of France and belonging to the CP.” (Bulletin Introibo, no.4, 1974, p.7)

Let us not be discouraged with all this, but as darkness thickens all around us, let redouble our prayers and sacrifices and our hope in the final promise of the great secret of July 13, 1917: “In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph!”

****************************************

Appendix by Fr. D. Couture

With this study of Fr. Delestre and the previous one, it is interesting to draw a parallel between what the Third Secret actually says and the official interpretation of the Vatican.

The Third Secret speaks for sure of

The Vatican interprets it as if

future events “the importance of the last times”

Fatima was now of the past.

an internal crisis to the Church

the sufferings announced are those who came from outside the Church during the whole XXth century

a crisis of faith

they were "the struggles of atheistic systems against the Church”

the failure of the hierarchy

it meant the glorification of John Paul II and of Vatican II.


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