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From May to October, 1917, three young Portuguese shepherds, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, claimed to have witnessed an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On July 13 Mary is supposed to have entrusted three secrets to the young visionaries, two of which they were free to reveal, while the third was to remain secret, although the bishop of Leira commanded Lucia to put it in writing and to present it to the Holy Father, for revelation before 1960.
The first secret was a vision of Hell:
- Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.
The second included Mary's instructions of how to save souls from Hell and reconvert the world to Christianity:
- You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. 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. 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.
Due to the long delay in revealing the third secret, all manner of theories circulated in the Church. Some claimed that it spoke of nuclear war, the deposition of the Pope, the assassination of a Pope, or the replacement of a Pope by an imposter. Finally, during a visit to Portugal for the beatification of the visionaries Francisco and Jacinta (Lucia was still alive), Pope John Paul II announced through his Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, that he had decided to make the text of the third secret public. A few months later, the text was released by the Vatican, together with a discussion of the meaning of the text.
- 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.
Pope John Paul II believes that the text refers to the failed assassination attempt by Mehmet Ali Acga on May 13, 1981, against his person. He indicated that he believes that the Blessed Virgin Mary spared him from death. "It was a motherly hand that guided the bullet's path." In thanksgiving, he traveled to Portugal to have the bullet mounted in the crown of the image of Our Lady of Fatima.
Despite the revelation by the Vatican, many persons claim that only part of the secret was revealed or that a completely falsified secret was revealed. The main argument for this lies in the refusal of the Popes to reveal the secret, even though most Catholics believed that the secret was commanded to be revealed no later than 1960. The non revelation of the secret caused a lot of controversy for the subsequent 40 years from 1960, and it was assumed that somehow revealing the secret would be even more contraversial or have some negative effect. Some speculated that the secret might critize the reigning Pope (who would be therefor natually shy from revealing it), or that it might heavily critize Russia (something that would be contraversial during the Cold War). Instead, the secret as revealed is much agruably much less controversial and specific then any of the other writings of the Fatima seers.
Further reading
Complete text (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html) of the secret, together with analysis by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and scanned images of the original.
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