Revealing The Secret

On 17 December 1927, Sister Lucia approached the tabernacle in the chapel of the Dorothean house of Tuy to ask Our Lord how she was to carry out her confessor's order to write about some graces she had received from God, since the secret confided to her by the Blessed Virgin was connected with them. With a clear voice, Jesus made her hear the following words: "My daughter, write what they ask you, as well as everything that the Blessed Virgin revealed to you in the apparition in which she spoke about this devotion [to the Immaculate Heart of Mary]. As for the rest of the secret, remain silent".⁶⁵

In compliance with this order, Sister Lucia made public what had happened during the apparition of June.

In 1941 when the Bishop of Leiria, The Rt. Rev. José Alves Correia da Silva, ordered the seer to recall everything of interest in Jacinta's life for a new book that was going to be published, she revealed two of the three parts of the July secret after obtaining permission from heaven.

She wrote: "The secret is composed of three different parts, two of which I am going to reveal.

"Well, then, the first was the vision of hell."

She continues with the narration of the two parts of the secret as they appear in the description of the July apparition. ⁶⁶

As for the third part of the Secret, the seer wrote it in the Dorothean house of Tuy on 3 January 1944. She wrote it on a letter size sheet of ruled paper, having first folded it in half so as to become 4 pages, approx. 12 x 18 cm, with 16 lines on each page. Sister Lucia wrote the Secret at the insistence of the Bishop of Leiria when she was gravely ill as we have already mentioned in the Introduction to this work.

In a letter dated 9 January, Sister Lucy communicated to the prelate that the text was ready and at his disposition in a sealed envelope just as he had specified.

On 17 June, at the request of the Bishop of Leiria, the titular Bishop of Gurza, The Rt. Rev. Manuel Maria Ferreira da Silva, went to Valença, a Portuguese city on the border with Tuy, next to the Minho river. There, in the Fonseca retirement home, he received the precious document from Sister Lucia who had also gone there for that purpose. That same afternoon he gave it to the Bishop of Leiria at Quinta da Formigueira, the latter’s country home near Braga, Portugal.

In Leiria, Bishop Correia da Silva placed it in a larger envelope, which was also sealed, and placed in the diocesan safe. On the outside of the larger envelope, he wrote: “This envelope with its contents will be given to His Eminence Cardinal Manuel Cerejeira, Patriarch of Lisbon, after my death. Leiria, 8 December 1945. José, Bishop of Leira”.

The document was only taken out of the diocesan safe on rare occasions, merely to be seen by some privileged persons. The famous photo of the Bishop of Leiria with the sealed envelope was taken on one of these occasions. The prelate had agreed to be photographed by Life magazine who published it on 3 January 1949.

When sending the sealed envelope to the Bishop of Leiria, Sister Lucia wrote, on the outside of the envelope, that it could only be opened after 1960 by the Patriarch of Lisbon or by the Bishop of Leiria.

At the beginning of 1957, the Sacred Congregation for the Holy Office (presently the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) asked the Bishop of Leiria to send the envelope containing the Secret to Rome. The auxiliary Bishop of Leiria, The Rt. Rev. João Pereira Venâncio took it to the Apostolic Nunciature in Lisbon. ⁶⁷ From Lisbon, the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop (later Cardinal Cento) Fernando Cento, took it to the Vatican where it was entered into the Secret Archive of the Holy Office on 4 April 1957.

It is not known whether Pius XII, who died on 9 October 1958, read the secret. Fr. Leiber, an intimate friend of this Pontiff, said that the rumour according to which the pope supposedly cried or even fainted upon reading the Secret “is entirely gratuitous; nothing of the sort occurred”. ⁶⁸

Naturally, as the year 1960 drew near, curiosity worldwide regarding the Secret gradually increased.

On 8 February 1960, a press release distributed by the Agência Nacional de Informação of Portugal stated that it was “very probable that the Secret of Fatima would be kept totally secret forever”. It based its declarations on “highly reputable Vatican sources”. And added: “These same sources said that the Vatican had been pressured by some to open the letter and reveal its content to the world; and by others not to reveal it, supposing the letter to contain alarming revelations. In view of this the Vatican had decided that the text of Sister Lucia’s letter would not be revealed and will continue to be maintained in strictest secrecy.” ⁶⁹

What actually happened? On 17 August 1959, Pope John XXIII received the envelope containing the Secret from Fr. Pierre Paul Philippe, OP, then the Commissary of the Holy Office and later a cardinal. He read it a few days later with the help of a Portuguese translator of the Secretariat of State, Mgr. Paulo José (later Bishop of Macau), decided not to publish it and gave it back to the Holy Office. ⁷⁰

Pope Paul VI also read it on 27 March 1965 and took the same decision. ⁷¹

On 11 February 1967, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, then Secretary of the Holy Office, gave a speech – which became famous – in the solemn hall of the International Pontifical Marian Academy in Rome as part of the preparations for the fiftieth anniversary of the Fatima apparitions. He said that he had been with Sister Lucia in the Carmel at Coimbra in May 1955 and had asked the seer what was the significance of the date 1960 for the revelation of the Secret. “Because then it would be clearer”, the seer responded. The Cardinal commented: “This makes me think that the message was of a prophetic nature, because the nature of prophecy, as one can see in Sacred Scripture, is covered with a mysterious veil. They are not generally expressed in an open, clear and understandable language to everyone.” ⁷²

We now come to the pontificate of John Paul II whose interest in Fatima is not recent, but rather gradually grew in intensity after the sacrilegious assassination attempt on 13 May 1981. On 18 July of that year, he asked that the envelope with the Secret be brought to him. He immediately identified himself with the figure of the “Bishop dressed in white” of whom the text speaks. In this regard, he later expressed his conviction “it was a mother's hand that guided the bullet's path and in his throes the Pope halted at the threshold of death”. ⁷³

He did not, nevertheless, decide on its immediate publication. Only more recently did His Holiness declare, “since the times seemed ripe, did I deem it opportune to make public the content of the so-called third part of the Secret”. ⁷⁴

On 13 May 2000, on the esplanade of the Sanctuary of Fatima, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State, was asked by Pope John Paul II to announce the historic decision. It became the background to the announcement of the beatification of the seers Francisco and Jacinta that the Holy Father was doing that very day, having come especially from Rome for this purpose.

The publication of the Secret was to be accompanied by an “adequate commentary”, according to the words of Cardinal Sodano, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. On 26 June 2000, this Congregation published the document The Message of Fatima and distributed it with great publicity in the Sala Stampa of the Vatican and over the internet. It was published in six languages: German, Spanish, French, English, Italian and Portuguese. The press conference in the Sala Stampa was presided over by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger himself, Prefect of the Congregation, and accompanied by Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop-emeritus of Vercelli and Secretary of the Congregation. It was transmitted live by the Italian State television and other TV stations from around the world.

The document – from which we have extracted several of the aforementioned historical data – contains several very important parts:

a)      a general “Introduction” by Archbishop Bertone;

b)      the facsimile of Sister Lucia’s manuscripts of the three parts of the Secret of Fatima (used to describe the folio format of the sheets containing the third Secret), as well as its typewritten format;

c)      letter of 19 April 2000 from Pope John Paul II to Sister Lucy requesting her to answer “openly and candidly” the questions regarding the interpretation of the Secret what the Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was to make in the Pontiff’s name;

d)      report of Archbishop Bertone’s and the Bishop of Leiria’s conversation with Sister Lucia in the Carmel of Coimbra on 7 April 2000;

e)      Cardinal Sodano’s announcement in Fatima on 12 May 2000;

f)        and, finally, the “Theological Commentary”, made and signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, containing a substantive and concise explanation regarding the “theological status” of public and private revelations in the Church. This was followed by “an attempt to interpret the ‘Secret’ of Fatima”.

Cardinal Ratzinger, in the press conference in the Sala Stampa emphatically affirmed that the Holy See had no intention of imposing its interpretation. We may understand this to mean that scholars may attempt to study the matter and even to offer insights into its interpretation. It is superfluous to add that this should be done with utmost prudence and circumspection.

This is what we attempted to do unpretentiously in our commentary included in this work. We also added concepts of Montfortian spirituality (of St. Louis Grignion de Montfort), as well as enriching it with concepts coming from the eminent Brazilian Catholic thinker and man of action Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, who died in 1995. Excerpts from two of his articles have been included. One from 1958 is this work’s postface. The other, from 1953, can be found on the back cover. Although published over four decades ago, they are veritable comments on the third Secret.

As the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, The Rt. Rev. Serafim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva pointed out, with “the official publication of the Secret”, it is obvious that Fatima – without ceasing to be a private revelation – has become more important in the eyes of the faithful, especially when we consider it was done by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. ⁷⁵ It also increased in timeliness as the aforementioned bishop said when answering another question in the same interview:

“Do you believe that the 20th century has somehow come to a close with the publishing of the Secret?”

“I would not say that something has been closed, but rather that a window of hope has been opened for this century. I refer to a hope of personal conversion for each one of us, of the whole of mankind so that finally peace may be found”. ⁷⁶

It will be the Great Return of humanity to God to which we referred in our commentary on the final scene of the third Secret.