SSPX Asia newsletter: May - September 2007

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, came to the conclusion that the Vatican had 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 anchor man, 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.

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 Lucy’s death: “The Fatima Secret, the Cell of Sister Lucy Has Been Sealed”. Here Messori spoke of the many writings and “Letters to the Popes” that Sister Lucy 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 journalistic 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 Messori and him.

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 intensively, and had written a book on the Third Secret, Fatima, Don’t Despise Prophecies, which was published in Italy. To his great surprise, Socci found Paolini’s arguments worthy of consideration.

In short, Socci recognized that there were many questions left unanswered, many points about the Secret that were enigmatic.

In 2000, 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 that 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...”

Speculation was compounded by the fact that noted Fatima scholars, such as Father Alonso and Frere 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.

Of Fatima’s Third Secret, Cardinal Oddi remarked “It has nothing to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against the apostasy in the Church.”

Bishop Amaral, the third Bishop of Fatima, said the following about the Secret in a speech in Vienna, Austria, September 10, 1984: “Its content concerns only our faith. To identify the [Third] Secret with catastrophic announcements or with a nuclear holocaust is to deform the meaning of the message. The loss of faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that faith is continually diminishing in Europe.”

Then, there is the famous quote from Luigi Cardinal Ciappi, personal theologian to four Popes up to and including Pope John Paul II: “In the Third Secret, it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church wil begin at the top.”

Catholics had good reason to believe that there was still part of the Secret – a second text yet to be revealed – that contained “explosive content” regarding massive apostasy in the Church.

Mr. Socci had been in contact with Mr. Solideo Paolini, the young journalist who had originally challenged him about the Secret. Paolini generously turned over to Mr. Socci his findings about the Third Secret that came from the former secretary of Pope John XXIII, Archbishop Loris Francesco Capovilla.

Here is a summary of the various conclusions Mr. Paolini draws from his four meetings and many exchanges with Archbishop Capovilla:

The Archbishop is visibly bound to secrecy about what he knows over and above the official version disclosed in June 2000.
He openly admitted that there are two documents relating to the Third Secret.
He showed disbelief in the fact that both documents would be from Our Lady, thus echoing a Vatican distinction between ‘Fatima I’ (authentic) and ‘Fatima II’ (additions by Sister Lucy). The part undisclosed would simply correspond to ‘Fatima II’ according to Vatican authorities, thus not emanating from a supernatural message from the Mother of God.
There are some official contradictions in dates and places concerning these two documents.

This red hot piece of evidence, published for the first time in Mr. Socci’s book, is the first time a Vatican official, albeit a retired one, admitted that yes, there exists in Socci’s words: “a Fourth Secret, or better, a second part of the Third Secret (evidently the continuation of the words of Our Lady interrupted by that ‘etc.’), which has not yet been revealed, and which took a different path inside Vatican walls.”

Those Catholics who for the past six years have endured ridicule and contempt for insisting that the Vatican had not released the entire Secret, who insisted there are two texts, are vindicated by the findings revealed by Socci’s Fourth Secret of Fatima.

All of the above can be called Act I.

Act II of this ‘Fatima Third Secret’ Drama, is the mid-May 2007 reply Cardinal Bertone wrote to Socci’s book by a book of his own called The Last Seer of Fatima. In it, the Cardinal in fact resorted to insults toward Mr. Socci, but never answered any of Socci’s objections.

Act III is Socci’s immediate reply to the book, basically saying that the eminent Cardinal did not answer the major objections to the existence of an unrevealed part of the Third Secret, and thus, added more weight to the arguments that something is being hidden.

Act IV: Cardinal Bertone appeared on Italian TV two weeks later, on May 31, arguing that the so called ‘Fourth Secret’ did not exist. The Cardinal held up to the camera the envelope that had been opened in 2000 containing the section of the Secret that speaks of a bishop “clothed in white”. “Yet something that absolutely should have been on the envelope was actually missing: a phrase of Pope John XXIII”, says Socci. “In fact, Archbishop Capovilla, Secretary of John XXIII, declared in two interviews that in 1959, when Pope Roncalli read the Third Fatima Secret and decided to keep it hidden, he told the same Capovilla to ‘reclose the envelope’ and write on it, ‘I do not express any judgment’ because the message ‘may be a Divine manifestation or may not be’.” Socci then asks, “So where is the phrase John XXIII wanted? There is no trace of it on the envelopes Bertone showed. Therefore it must be somewhere else. Obviously, it can only be on the envelope containing the ‘Fourth Secret’, whose existence was sensationally confirmed by Capovilla himself to Mr. Paolini, as I report in my book. Bertone did not give any explanation about the absence of that phrase, and did not reply to what was revealed by Capovilla.”

Act V: Last September 21, at a Vatican Press Conference Cardinal Bertone gave as an official presentation of his recent Fatima book, Socci and Paolini came and were denied the possibility to ask any questions to the Cardinal who visibly avoided even meeting them. The two Italian journalists were even roughed up by Vatican bodyguards, and finally forced to withdraw from the auditorium.

“In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph” said Our Blessed Lady in that Third Secret. That implies that there was going to be a fierce battle before ‘the end’. Sadly enough, some who oppose Our Lady’s message have key positions in the Church. Let us continue to pray for that “Triumph”. It will come. She is indeed the new Queen Esther, who will provoke a last minute drastic change of scenario for the greater glory of her Divine Son.

(*) From various articles published in http://www.cfnews.org/cfn.htm )

“The Fourth Secret of Fatima”