On February 8, 1960, the Portuguese news agency Agência Nacional de Informaço published a news article stating that it was “most probable the Secret would remain, for ever, under absolute seal.”This announcement sparked widespread speculation about the nature of the secret. The New York Times reported that speculation ranged from “worldwide nuclear annihilation to deep rifts in the Roman Catholic Church that lead to rival papacies.” Laurence James Downey hijacked an airplane on May 2, 1981, demanding that Pope John Paul II reveal the third secret of Fátima.
The publication of the text drew criticism from Portugal’s Catholic Church. Clergy and laypeople alike were offended that the text was read in Rome rather than at the Fátima shrine in Portugal, where the alleged events occurred. “The revelation on Monday that there were no doomsday predictions has provoked angry reactions from the Portuguese church over the decision to keep the prophecy secret for half a century,” the Times reported on June 29, 2000.
Critics such as Italian journalist and media personality Antonio Socci claim that the Vatican’s four-page handwritten text of the Third Secret, released in 2000, is not the real secret, or at least not the entire secret. The following is the foundation of the argument:
The first: written on one sheet of paper: the text of the Vatican’s third secret is handwritten on four sheets of paper.In his book, Father Joaquin Alonso, the official Fátima archivist for 16 years, writes, “Lucy tells us that she wrote it on a sheet of paper.” In a taped interview, Charles Fiore quoted Malachi Martin as saying, “I cooled my heels in the corridor outside the Holy Father’s apartments, while my boss, Cardinal Bea, was inside debating with the Holy Father, and with a group of other bishops and priests, and two young Portuguese seminarians, who translated the letter, a single page, written in Portuguese, for all those in the room.” Later, in May 2007, Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone appeared on the Italian television show Porta a Porta and showed the document to the audience. It was a single sheet of paper divided twice, oce vertically and once horizontally. The sheet of paper had Lucia’s handwriting on both sides. In June of 2000, the Vatican reproduced the vertical squares.
The second: written in the form of a letter: Another reason critics argue the full third secret has not been released is that it was written in the form of a signed letter to the Bishop of Leiria, and the text of the third secret released by the Vatican is not written in the form of a letter. Father Jongen interviewed Lcia on February 3, 1946. When Fr. Jongen inquired about the Third Secret, Lucia replied, “I communicated the third part in a letter to the Bishop of Leiria.” In addition, Canon Galamba, an advisor to the Bishop of Leiria, is quoted as saying, “When the bishop refused to open the letter, Lucy made him promise that it would definitely be opened and read to the world either at her death or in 1960, whichever came first.” However, Antonio Socci questioned how strictly one should interpret the term “letter.”
The third: contains words attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary: The text of the Vatican’s third secret has no words attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to Socci, the third secret most likely begins with the words “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, etc.”, which Lucia included in her fourth memoir but only as a footnote to the text released by the Vatican. Lucia, on the other hand, stated in her fourth memoir that she would not reveal the third part.
The fourth: contains information about the Apocalypse, apostasy, and Satanic infiltration of the Church: Cardinal Ratzinger (who became Pope) was asked whether he had read the text of the third secret and why it had not been revealed in an interview published in the 11 November 1984 edition of Jesus Magazine. Ratzinger admitted to reading the third secret and stated, in part, that the third secret involves the “importance of the novissimi“, and “dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian and therefore (the life) of the world.” Ratzinger also commented that “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.”
In addition, when former Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, Howard Dee was interviewed in 1998 by Inside the Vatican, he claimed that Ratzinger had personally confirmed to him that the messages of Akita and Fatima are ‘essentially the same’. The Akita prophecy partial contents are: “The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. … churches and altars sacked ….”
On May 13, 2000, Cardinal Sodano announced the release of the third secret, implying that it was about the persecution of Christians in the twentieth century, culminating in the failed assassination attempt*on Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981. Malachi Martin stated in a syndicated radio broadcast that the third secret “doesn’t make any sense unless we accept that there will be, or that there is in progress, a wholesale apostasy amongst clerics and laity in the Catholic Church.”
*However, let us not forget that the Catholic Counter-Reformation group, founded by theologian Abbé George de Nantes, had pointed out to the fact that after all, John Paul II did not perish when there was an attempted assassination against him, while Pope John Paul I, who had met Lucia Santos while he was Patriarch of Venice, and was not only deeply moved by the experience but he had also vowed, in a letter to a colleague after his election, to consecrate Russia which Lucia said that Our Lady had asked for, did die. He was found dead only 33 days after he became Pope. The question up till this day remains: did he die or was he killed? If he was killed, was he interfering with some conceived plan and was he going to unravel any information which the world should have known? Why was then the consecration of Russia allowed in March of 2022?
Did the attack on Christianity officially start with killing of this beloved Pope?