Santuário de Nossa Senhora do Rosário de Fátima

... This will entail my speaking about the secret, and thus answering the first question.

What is the secret? It seems to me that I can reveal it, since I already have permission from Heaven to do so. God's representatives on earth have authorized me to do this several times and in various letters, one of which, I believe, is in your keeping. This letter is from Father José Bernardo Gonçalves, and in it he advises me to write to the Holy Father, suggesting, among other things, that I should reveal the secret. I did say something about it. But in order not to make my letter too long, since I was told to keep it short, I confined myself to the essentials, leaving it to God to provide another more favourable opportunity.

In my second account I have already described in detail the doubt which tormented me from 13 June until 13 July, and how it disappeared completely during the Apparition on that day.

Well, the secret is made up of three distinct parts, two of which I am now going to reveal.

The first part is the 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.

We then looked up at Our Lady, who said to us so kindly and so sadly:

“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”.

The First and Second Secrets of Fatima, also known as the First and Second Parts of the Secret of Fatima, as recorded by Sister Lúcia de Jesus dos Santos, O.C.D. (* 28 March 1907 – 13 February 2005 †), setting forth Sister Lúcia's recollection of the words of the very Mother of God and Queen of Heaven to the three children seers at the Cova da Iria fields of Sister Lúcia's family, located near Fátima, Portugal, on 13 July 1917, but, extremely confusingly in the view of the present writer, given the identity of the speaker and the Earth-shaking importance of the message, as recorded by Sister Lúcia in her so-called Third Memoir only on 31 August 1941. N.B. The Pontificate of Pius XI, 6 February 1922 to 10 February 1939, had not begun on 13 July 1917. www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html

This date of 31 August 1941 is all the more strange as it comes, not only more than 24 years after the Marian Apparition in question, the third of six such, that of 13 July 1917 — the others having taken place on 13 May 1917, 13 June 1917, 13 August 1917, 13 September 1917 and 13 October 1917 — but also because 31 August 1941 is years, 13 years, after Mary appeared again to Sister Lúcia, this time on 13 June 1929, in which Mary called for the Consecration of Russia. Recall that Sister Lúcia is telling us — in 1941 — that on 13 July 1917 the Most Blessed Thetokos and Queen of Heaven had said that she was going to ask for the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. So Sister Lúcia tells us that Mary then did so ask on 13 June 1929, but Sister Lúcia writes of this in 1941, World War II and indeed Operation Barbarosa, already long underway!

And yet, the 13 October 1917 Miracle of the Sun was very far indeed from being confined to private revelation to three Portuguese shepherd children, two of whom then promptly died in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Rather it was observed by a crowd of, by some accounts, seventy-thousand, and in any case by tens-of-thousands of people.

These various comments are not intended to cast doubt on the historicity of these Fatima Marian Apparitions or on the veracity of Sister Lúcia's statements recording what was said. These comments are intended to highlight the impossibility of the Community of the Faithful sorting this out, given the behavior of nine popes and countless bishops in connection with this most extraordinary series of XX century events.

8 January 2016 bulletin board of Saint Catherine's