The Apparitions at Fatima
The greatest World War will happen in the second half of the twentieth century
Then fire and smoke will fall from the sky, and the waters of the oceans will be turned to steam, hurling their foam towards the sky; and all that is standing will be cast down
Millions and millions of men will lose their lives from one hour to the next, and those who remain living will envy those who are dead
There will be tribulation as far as the eye can see, and misery all over the Earth, and desolation in every country
Sister Mary of the Sorrows
On May 13, 1917, three children, Lucia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto, were herding sheep near the village of Fatima, Portugal, when they saw two dazzling flashes of light. Then, suspended in the centre of a ball of light, they saw the image of a luminous woman. The woman told the children not to be afraid, and that she was ‘the Lady of the Rosary’, thereby identifying herself as the Virgin Mary. She said she had three secrets to tell them, and instructed them to come back on the thirteenth day of each month until October, when she would reveal the final secret to them.
When the children told their parents about the vision they were beaten for telling lies, but they stuck to their story and returned the next month with about 50 local villagers. Mary appeared again, and although only the children could see her, the villagers heard a buzzing sound and saw lightning come out of a clear sky. When Mary left the apparition site the children pointed towards her, and witnesses claim they heard a rushing sound and saw the branches of a nearby oak tree bend in the direction the children were pointing.
During this visit Mary told the children that two of them would ‘soon be called to heaven’, and only Lucia, the oldest at ten, would survive to spread the message. Rather than being upset by the news, Jacinta and Francisco ecstatically predicted their deaths to their mother and several other people, with Jacinta correctly foretelling the time and nature of her death.
On July 13 around 5,000 people attended the visitation. Again the crowd heard a buzzing sound, and then they saw a cloud move over the oak tree. At the end of the visit they heard the sound of thunder and the cloud moved away. This time Mary had warned of a coming catastrophe that would be even greater than World War I. She said that before it happens there would be a ‘bright, unknown light, which will be God’s sign that He is about to punish the people of the world for their crimes.’
On the night of January 25, 1938, the Aurora Borealis could be seen throughout Western Europe. This is believed to have been the sign that Mary spoke of, and World War II the punishment. Mary also told the children that in October she would give a sign everyone could see to convince people that she was real.
The children persisted with their claims despite being beaten again, and to prevent them from attending the next visit they were locked in jail. While in jail the local Administrator Artur Santos (no relation to Lucia), an anticlerical Freemason, threatened to have them boiled in oil if they did not reveal their secrets, but they would not relent.
Despite the children not being present on August 13, the 15,000 people who turned up still saw a cloud hover over the oak tree, heard explosions, and felt the ground shake. Mary then appeared to the children on August 19 at nearby Valinhos to reassure them that she would continue to visit them at the usual time and place.
The attempt to stop the apparitions by detaining the children failed, and serving to increase public interest. On September 13 an estimated 30,000 people attended the visitation. Witnesses claim to have seen a luminous globe move from east to west in an otherwise clear sky. Mary repeated her promise of a miracle for her next and last visit that all those present would see.
On October 13, despite heavy rain, an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 people attended the visitation site in the hope that they would see something. They were not disappointed.
Just before 1:30pm the rain stopped and the sun broke through the clouds. The sun then appeared to tremble and jump about, whirling through the sky at incredibly speed, colouring it like a giant palette, and shining down on the crowd in all the colours of the rainbow. This lasted for several minutes before the sun returned to its normal position in the sky. This apparent movement of the sun was observed by people up to 40 kilometres away. The onlookers, who had been soaked to the skin before it began, were now completely dry.
Mary then revealed the third secret to the children, which Lucia claimed was a prediction of ‘vast destruction by disease and fire… Nature will protest at the evil done by men and earthquakes will occur in protest.’ Lucia was told she would not receive the details of this catastrophe for several decades.
Jacinta and Francisco Marto died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1920, thereby fulfilling Mary’s prophecy that they would soon be called to heaven. Their bodies were exhumed in 1935 and again in 1951, and while Francisco’s body had decayed, Jacinta’s body was found to be ‘incorrupt’ (had not decomposed).
Lucia entered a convent in 1926 where she adopted the name Sister Mary of the Sorrows. She continued to have visions of the Virgin Mary throughout her life, and in 1929 she claimed Jesus had visited her and told her that she would receive her last and most important message from Mary in 1960. This was to include further details of the third secret.
In 1941, at the insistence of her Bishop, Lucia wrote accounts of the first two secrets in her Memoirs. At the end of World War II, also at the insistence of her Bishop, Lucia wrote an account of the third secret as received in 1917. This single sheet of paper was sealed in an envelope and conveyed to Bishop Jose da Silva of Fatima. By agreement between Lucia and Bishop da Silva the letter was to be made public in 1960 if not released before. In 1957 the still-sealed envelope was transferred to the Vatican, where it was placed in a safe in the papal apartments.
Lucia described the first secret as a vision of people being tormented in a sea of fire under the earth. I am not sure how this qualifies as a secret since the Catholic Church have been using this story to frighten people into submission for centuries. The visionaries at Kibeho and Medjugorje all claim to have had a similar vision of hell, so Lucia may well have had a vision like this, but I doubt it was one of the secrets.
Lucia’s account of the second secret was essentially the Virgin Mary’s instructions on how to save souls from this hell, and convert the world to the Catholic faith. It included a warning that ‘although the war (World War I) was about to end, if people did not stop offending God then a worse one would break out during the pontificate of Pope Pius XI.’ This would occur after Europe saw the ‘night illuminated by an unknown light… the great sign given by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and the Holy Father.’
Pope Pius XI died in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, but before he died he signed a treaty with Mussolini to give the Papacy temporal authority over the Vatican, signed a concordat with Hitler to protect the rights of the Church under the Third Reich, and supported the fascist dictator Francisco Franco during the Spanish civil war.
It seems, then, that the Church ignored the warning and allied itself with the fascists, and that World War II was the result. Blaming the Church for the war would be a bit harsh, but they could have done more to protect the people persecuted by the Nazis.
In her account of the second secret Lucia claimed Mary said the punishment could be avoided if the Church consecrated Russia to her Immaculate Heart. Lucia quoted Mary as saying that ‘if my requests are heeded then Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecution of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.’
This means that to prevent a war started by a Christian country in league with the Vatican, Russia, the country that did the most to stop Hitler, had to be blessed by the Catholics, rather than Germany, the country that started the war. I find this very hard to believe, and if it were true then surely the Church would have performed the consecration of Russia before, or at the start of, the pontificate of Pope Pius XI, which it did not.
While there have been several ceremonies performed that are claimed to have fulfilled Mary’s request, such as the general consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart performed by Pope Pius XII in 1942, none have been deemed satisfactory by Lucia. As she explained in an interview in 1946, to fulfil Mary’s request it must be a specific consecration of Russia performed by the Pope and all the Catholic bishops of the world combined.
On December 26, 1957, 12 years after the end of World War II, Lucia told Friar Augustin Fuentes that whole nations still risked ‘disappearing from the world and many souls going to hell’ as a result of ignoring Mary’s request for the consecration of Russia. It seems likely, then, that if Mary did ask for this to be done it was to prevent a third world war, not the second one.
In 1960, when Lucia received the third secret, the Vatican withheld it, saying that it would ‘remain forever under absolute seal.’ Sister Lucia was then placed under an order of silence and forbidden to speak about it without permission from the Vatican.
The Church may have been motivated to act by it though since Pope John XXIII instigated major reforms during Vatican Council II, which opened on October 11, 1962.
Although the Catholic Church did not release the third secret to the public, they may have given it a limited release. According to the German newspaper Neues Europa, the Church sent copies of the third secret to Prime Minister MacMillan of Great Britain, President Kennedy of the US, and Premier Khrushchev of Russia, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and this may have helped to prevent a global nuclear war.
The Cuban Missile Crisis arose after Cuba had nationalised about a billion dollars’ worth of US property. The US responded by imposing a trade embargo on Cuba in October 1960—the year the third secret was to be released. This led to a complete breakdown in diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba by the end of January 1961.
In April 1961 the US financed and directed the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles. The invasion failed, but the Cubans were worried the US would try again, so they asked the Soviets to install a military base in Cuba with nuclear missiles. The USSR agreed, partly because the US had similar facilities in Italy and Turkey. President Kennedy saw this as a serious threat to American security, and ordered a blockade of Cuba to try to prevent the base from being established (which they called a quarantine because a blockade is officially an act of war).
Tensions between the US and the USSR reached an all-time high, with the US military going to DEFCON-2 (at DEFCON-2 more than 90% of Strategic Air Command weaponry are at a state of readiness, and around 10% of bombers are airborne at any given time. DEFCON-1 is where nuclear war is imminent or has already begun). The potential for a nuclear war between the cold war superpowers was averted when Russian Premier Khrushchev agreed to dismantle and remove all Soviet missiles from Cuba on October 28, 1962.
On October 23, 1963, Neues Europa published the following text, which they claim to be the version of the third secret that was sent to MacMillan, Kennedy and Khrushchev.1
Don’t worry, dear child. I am the mother of God speaking to you and begging you to proclaim in my name the following message to the entire world. In doing this, you will meet great hostility. But be steadfast in the Faith and you will overcome this hostility. Listen, and note well what I say to you:
Men must become better. They must implore the remission of the sins which they have committed, and will continue to commit
You ask me for a miraculous sign so that all may understand the words in which, through you, I address mankind. This miracle which you have just seen was the great miracle of the sun! Everyone has seen it – believers and unbelievers, country and city dwellers, scholars and journalists, laymen and priests
And now, announce this in my name:
A great punishment shall come to all mankind, not today as yet, nor even tomorrow, but in the second half of the twentieth century. What I have already made known at La Salette through the children Melanie and Maximin, I repeat to you today
Mankind has not developed as God expected
Mankind has gone astray and has trampled underfoot the gifts which were given it
There is no order in anything. Even in the highest positions, it is Satan who governs and decides how affairs are to be conducted. He will even know how to find his way to the highest positions in the Church. He will succeed in sowing confusion in the minds of the great scientists who invent arms, with which half of humanity can be destroyed in a few minutes
If mankind does not refrain from wrongdoing and be converted I shall be forced to let fall my son’s arm. If those at the top, in the world and in the Church, do not oppose these ways, I shall pray to God my Father to visit His justice on mankind
There will also come a time of the hardest trials for the Church. Cardinals will be against Cardinals and Bishops against Bishops. Satan will put himself in their midst
In Rome, also, there will be big changes. What is rotten will fall, and what falls must not be maintained. The Church will be darkened and the world plunged into confusion
God will punish men still more powerfully and harshly than He did by means of the Flood, and the great and powerful will perish just as much as the small and the weak
The greatest World War will happen in the second half of the twentieth century. Then fire and smoke will fall from the sky, and the waters of the oceans will be turned to steam, hurling their foam towards the sky; and all that is standing will be cast down
Millions and millions of men will lose their lives from one hour to the next, and those who remain living will envy those who are dead
There will be tribulation as far as the eye can see, and misery all over the Earth, and desolation in every country
The time is continually approaching, the abyss is growing wider, and there is no end in sight
The good will die with the wicked, the big with the small, the Princes of the Church with their subjects. Satan’s henchmen will then be the only sovereigns on Earth
This will be a time in which neither King nor Emperor, Cardinal nor Bishop expects, but it will come, nevertheless, in accordance with my Father’s plan to punish and take vengeance
Later, however, when those who survive all this are still alive, God and His glory will once more be invoked, and He will once more be served as He was, not so long ago, when the world had not yet become corrupted
I call on all true imitators of my son, Jesus Christ, all true Christians and apostles of the latter days!
The time of times is coming and the end of everything, if mankind is not converted, and if this conversion does not come from above, from the leaders of the world and the leaders of the Church
But woe! Woe if this conversion does not come about, and if all remains as it is, nay, if all becomes even worse!
Go, my child and proclaim this! I shall always remain by your side to help you
If Kennedy and Khrushchev read this text then it must surely have made them reconsider their stance over the Cuban Missile Crisis. The passages ‘the greatest World War will happen in the second half of the twentieth century’; ‘arms, with which half of humanity can be destroyed in a few minutes’; and ‘millions and millions of men will lose their lives from one hour to the next, and those who remain living will envy those who are dead’, do sound like predictions of global a nuclear war.
If this is indeed the third secret then the fact that the Catholic Church did not release it in 1960 as instructed means that they were willing to risk a global nuclear war rather than release a letter that would damage the reputation of the Church. It seems then that it really is ‘Satan who governs and decides how affairs are to be conducted’ in the Church.
If the Catholic Church thought that calls for the release of the third secret would fade away they were wrong, and the pressure remained unrelenting. On June 26, 2000, 40 years after they should have released it and at an event which Sister Lucia did not attend, the Vatican released the following document, which they claimed to be the real third secret.
After the two parts which I have already explained, 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 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
There are several reasons for doubting that this document is authentic. The third secret and the final message of 1960 should have been a more detailed version of the prediction given to Lucia in 1917 of ‘vast destruction by disease and fire… Nature will protest at the evil done by men and earthquakes will occur in protest.’ The text does not mention disease, fire, or earthquakes, and a ‘big city half in ruins’ is as close as it gets to vast destruction.
The third secret’s theme of vast destruction was confirmed by Pope John Paul II in a discussion at Fulda in November 1980, as reported in the October 1981 issue of the German Catholic magazine Stimme des Glaubens. When Pope John Paul was asked why he had not revealed the third secret of Fatima, he said ‘If you read that the oceans will inundate continents, and millions of people will die suddenly in a few minutes, once this is known, then in reality it is not necessary to insist on the publication of this secret.’
In the November 11, 1984, edition of the Catholic magazine ‘Jesus’, Cardinal Ratzinger claimed he had read the third secret. When asked why it had not been released to the public he replied: ‘Because, according to the judgment of the Popes, it adds nothing to what a Christian must know concerning what derives from Revelation: that is, a radical call for conversion; the absolute importance of history; the dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore of the world; and the importance of the end times. If it is not made public—at least for the time being—it is in order to prevent religious prophecy from being mistaken for a quest for the sensational.’
The official version of the third secret could be vaguely related to the Book of Revelation and the End Times, but it does not state that ‘oceans will inundate continents, and millions of people will die suddenly in a few minutes.’ Nor does it demonstrate ‘the absolute importance of history.’ And finally, Cardinal Ratzinger told the Philippine Ambassador to the Vatican in 1998 that ‘the messages of Fatima and Akita are essentially the same.’
Although the messages of Akita are very different from the official version of the third secret of Fatima, they have a lot in common with the unofficial version, which is also consistent with the message of La Salette. The latter contains the passages ‘God is going to exhaust His wrath, and no one will be able to take himself away from so many afflictions combined’, and ‘Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist. Pagan Rome will disappear’.
The official version may have been based on a dream Lucia had, and might include information she received in visions of Mary or Jesus, but it is not the third secret of Fatima. If it was then Lucia should have attended its release, or at least been allowed to talk about it afterwards. Instead she was forbidden from discussing the secret by the Vatican, which kept her under an order of silence until her death on February 13, 2005, and no one was allowed to see her without permission from the Pope.
After Sister Lucia’s death Cardinal Ratzinger (later to become Pope Benedict XVI) ordered her cell to be sealed, ensuring that if she hid anything in there no one could go in and find it.
What is important here is not which, if either, of these documents is genuine; it is whether Satan has infiltrated the Catholic Church. If this is the case then we need to do something about it. When we do we must remember that the vast majority of Catholics, and Christians in general, are good people who have been deceived by their Church, and not persecute them for being Christians.
We should also bear in mind that while the great chastisement was prevented from occurring in the twentieth century, it was only delayed, not averted altogether. This is apparent from the third message of Sister Agnes at Akita, which repeated the warning of an impending punishment a decade after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
What we should consider now is, despite the fact that the Catholic Church has been infiltrated by Satan, are Catholics best placed to prevent the great chastisement from occurring in the future? The fact that Satan is firmly entrenched in their Church may mean that the Catholics are in the best position to stop him.
In Chapter 14 of the Book of Revelation there are 144,000 people described as ‘virgins’ and ‘followers of the lamb’ who become the main supporters of the Saviour of the End Times. This does sound like it might be referring to Catholic priests.
Reference
- Neues Europa, no. 20, October 15, 1963, Stuttgart, p. 5.