The Third Secret

On weekends, I allow myself the occasional non-political post, and what you are about to read is just such an indulgence. Our topic is the alleged "miracle" of Fatima, and the silly rumors associated with that event. From today's Democratic Underground:

My super Catholic cousin just told me that the Fatima predictions are coming to pass. From what I remember, there was supposed to be a war in the ME which moved northward to Europe, and Rome was supposed to be sacked, the pope taken hostage. It's been awhile, but I wondered if anyone had better info than I do. My cousin is not exactly preparing for some Catholic rapture, but she's quoting Fatima predictions all over the place.

The only "Catholic rapture" known to me would be Bernini's gorgeous statue of St. Teresa, which has forced generations of pilgrims to find a polite way to say: "Hey, she looks like she's coming!"

As for those "secrets of Fatima" – well, to be frank, I have no idea just which secrets this poster's cousin may have quoted. And I know a little about the ins and outs of this story, having followed it for three decades.

I first learned about these events from a youthful viewing of the 1952 Warner Brothers' epic Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima -- which features horrible Warnercolor, a goofy turn by Gilbert Roland, Max Steiner's worst score, and three child actors who present a compelling case for legalized strangulation. Compared to Song of Bernadette (the finest film on a religious subject ever made), MOOLOF is, well, crummy.

Still, the movie tells a genuinely weird story, and I was a genuinely weird kid. I had to find out more.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

The basics: In Portugal, between May and October of 1917, Lucia dos Santos (10) and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto (8 and 9, respectively) reported visions of the Virgin Mary in the Cova da Iria, which is near the city of Fatima. During one of these apparitions, Lucia received "secrets" from the Virigin; alas, these secrets were neither written down nor orally transmitted at the time. During the final apparition, a large crowd reported a "solar miracle," which has been variously described -- some say the sun danced, some say it changed colors.

Most "official" versions of the tale neglect to mention the fact that quite a few people saw nothing at all. The number of reported witnesses has grown over the years; early accounts give 15,000 or thereabouts, although the figure of 70,000 took hold in later years.

Jacinta and Francisco died in the post-WWI flu pandemic. Lucia joined a convent and died only last year, thereby dispatching rumors that she would live to see the end of the world. Over the course of time, Lucia revealed that the three children had received a previous set of angelic visitations in 1916, the year before the Virgin appeared. Apparition-ologists refer to this "retconned" story as "Fatima II."

For an ultra-skeptical response to the Fatima story, check out this site.

Before continuing with Fatima, I should offer a general note on Marian secrets. This tradition began with the 1846 La Sallette apparition, the model for most subsequent visionary events. In that case, the witnesses were two shepherd children, Melanie Calvet (14) and Maximum Giraud (11). Maximum was a lovable dolt who, in later years, could never hold down a steady job, while Melanie was one of those "difficult" women for whom menopause starts at puberty and lasts until death. I long ago gave up on trying to figure out whether Melanie's secret (which exists in several variants) was simply her way of staying in the limelight.

Most sources agree that Lucia dos Santos, who assumed the name Sister Dolores, was not a Melanie-esque attention seeker -- in fact, she was a very private person. Still, she too may have been, in her own way, a "difficult" woman. I base that assessment on a book I read in the downtown Los Angeles library, back in the 1970s. (The volume -- published in the 1940s, if I recall aright -- is no longer in the catalogue and may have been lost in one of the two great fires to hit that structure.) The book was written by an American priest tasked to sculpt the Virgin at Sister Lucia's directions, and he drops amusing hints that his client was not exactly easy to get along with. Of course, he expressed his feelings in a diplomatic fashion -- after all, he must have suspected that Lucia might one day be beatified.

At any rate, Lucia wrote down the first two secrets at the start of World War II. The first "secret" was, supposedly, a vision of Hell -- although I fail to see why a basic doctrine of Christianity should count as a "secret."

The second was rather more complex. The Virgin herself supposedly said these words in 1917, as the Great War raged:

The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.

As a prophecy of World War II, this text has little value, since Lucia did not divulge this message until after the fact. Lucia interpreted a January, 1938 aurora borealis, visible in Europe, as a fulfillment of the "unknown light" prediction -- if we can use the word "prediction" in this instance. While some Catholics were indeed persecuted under Hitler’s rule, Catholics in Croatia were the ones doing the persecuting. One cannot fairly say that the Pope himself suffered during the war.

The text of the second secret continues:

To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

These words were, for obvious reasons, incautiously interpreted during the Cold War years. Many Catholics believed that Mary had requested the consecration of Russia in order to prevent the Third World War. A more careful reading indicates something quite different: The text states that this proposed consecration would prevent World War II -- as though Russia were the cause of that conflict!

Of course, Lucia kept Mary's admonition to herself, thereby insuring that no such consecration could occur. What, then, was the purpose of this absurd exercise? The words "I shall come to ask" may be taken as a prediction of a further Marian visitation -- presumably to someone else, perhaps someone within the Church hierarchy. No evidence suggests that such a thing has ever occurred.

Thus, Secret #2 fails to impress. What about Secret #3?

In 1944, Lucia wrote out the text, sealed the letter up, and handed it to her Bishop, who passed it on (unread) to the Vatican. Lucia advised that the message should remain sealed until 1960, because it would be "better understood" at that time.

That year came and went, with no official word as to the secret's contents. You can imagine how Catholics felt about that. Naturally, the rumors started flying.

According to a commonly-heard (but unverified) story, the beloved Pope John XXIII opened the secret, shook his head, said "This is not for our time," and then re-sealed the message. A rumor circulated that the letter described a nuclear holocaust. There were even wild reports that the Pope confided the "secret" to Kruschev during the missile crisis.

A few surly old grumpusses suspected that the message remained hidden because the "prophecy" was silly and might embarrass the Church. Personally, I always preferred the tale told by Cecil Adams, whose sources revealed the message to be the following:

"What's all this about birth control? We said nothing about birth control. Please revise ASAP. PS: Kennedy for president!"

In 2000, Pope John Paul II finally revealed the real, no-foolin’ text of the Third Secret, as preserved in Lucia’s own handwriting:

After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: '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'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.

The Vatican floated the idea that the violent parts of this text referred to the 1981 assassination attempt by Mehmet Ali Agca. I fail to see any linkage. The Pope was not killed on that occasion, there were no corpses in the area, and there was but one crazed civilian attacker -- not a group of soldiers firing "bullets and arrows." (Arrows? In this day and age?) Even if we allow for a highly symbolic interpretation, the Third Secret does not relate to the events of 1981.

You may have noticed the utter lack of any reference to events in the Middle East. The cousin of that DU poster should sleep easier at night.

So what was Lucy -- or Mary -- really getting at?

Keep in mind that Lucia wrote this text in 1944, at a time when the Vatican was surrounded by Nazi soldiers. She may have "foreseen" a Nazi invasion of St. Peter's Basilica. Conversely, she may have believed that those Nazis were the only force keeping the godless Bolshies from marching into Vatican City.

We really don't know what kind of political propaganda may have affected her thinking. Portugal was, at that time, under the rule of the arguably-Fascist, fiercely pro-Catholic António de Oliveira Salazar, and Lucia's religious superiors were, almost certainly, Salazar supporters. (Lucia herself was a naive peasant woman who would have absorbed the views of others.) Salazar hated the Communists and distrusted the Nazis, so one cannot really be sure just who Lucia might have seen as the likeliest "bad guys" in her scenario.

The bottom line: The text of the fabled Third Secret makes some sense when seen as a failed prediction of the outcome of World War II. Of course, believers in Fatima cannot allow themselves to admit that their beloved Lucia may have put the words of a failed prophecy into the mouth of the Blessed Virgin.

The unsatisfactory nature of this text has led some to speculate that the Vatican still hides the Real Third Secret of Fatima – or, as I like to call it, the RTSOF (pronounced “Rit-Sof”). Lots of RTSOF rumors are floating around out there. One recent visionary insists that the RTSOF proclaims Mary herself to be...um, er, well...

...God.

A Jewish mother as the Supreme Being? Goethe would have liked that one. Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan, and all that.