Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Music - the gift from God - the People's Choice

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Throughout time there has always been something God gave us to lift spirits, inspire, bring change or just make us forget.  The light from music can always penetrate the dark no matter how bad things get.  In this time music is more important than ever because the world has been lulled to sleep by technology, empty promises and misplaced priorities.  For a few minutes let some bright new artists take you away.



First there is Sister Crisrtina from Italy who literally blew away the judges on the Italian Voice competition. This singing nun is a real pint-size nun with the voice of an angel, or perhaps many angels.  She is living proof that not all heavenly music can be found in the choir book.




Second from Britain and the Britain's Got Talent show this year comes a group called Collabro that had been singing together for just a month before the competition.  Not enough time to be good? Just watch.




  
 
And now for the show...



Over 47 million people had watched Sister Cristina and several million had watched Collabro.
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Thursday, April 24, 2014

The Year of the Snake - Bad Year for Russia

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While we know the Chinese symbols of the zodiac all have good meanings, some may not bring such good tidings to everyone.  When it comes to the Year of the Snake which ended at the end of January, 2014 it seems like Russia's run of luck for the past century continued.


You see, in addition to all the things that already happened to the Russians or Russia in the 20th century, 2013 brought the Ukrainian revolt, the fall of Crimea to Russia and the massing of Russian troops on the Ukraine border.



Thank goodness the next Year of the Snake doesn't happen until January 29, 2025 to February 16, 2026.

Secrets of the Jewish Sanhedrin, Roman Catholic Church & Roman Empire about the death and resurrection of Jesus

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Secret parchments found in The Mosque at St. Sofia, Constantinople where Mohammad ordered the preservation of Sanhedrin records.  Caiaphas is called upon by the Sanhedrin to report on the execution of Jesus, Chapter 6, and a second report is given by Caiaphas to the Sanhedrin on the resurrection of Jesus, Chapter 7.






CHAPTER VI.

REPORT OF CAIAPHAS TO THE SANHEDRIN CONCERNING THE EXECUTION OF JESUS

RECORDS OF THE JERUSALEM SANHEDRIN, BY ELIEZEK HYKAN, B. 24. TAKEN IN CONSTANTINOPLE, OCTOBER 16, 1883.

" Caiaphas, Priest of the Most High God, to the Masters of Israel, greeting: In obedience to your demands for a reason for my action in the case of Jesus of Nazareth, and in defense of my conduct, I beg leave to submit the following for your consideration: I would assure you that it was not on account of personal malice, envy, or hate, that existed in my own nature, nor for the want of a willingness upon my part to conform to the Jewish law in its strictest sense. I had but very little personal knowledge of the Nazarene. The most I knew of this man was from outside sources. Nor was it because he claimed to be King of the Jews, nor because he said he was the Son of God I would that he were nor because he prophesied or ignored the holy temple. No, nor all of these combined. There is a cause, and a more weighty matter, back of all these things that controlled my action in the matter. Therefore, I hope you will investigate strictly on legal principles the reasons that I may give

 " In order that you may be able to see and weigh the question fully, and remember the responsibility that rests upon me according to the laws of our nation, I will ask you to go back with me to the chronicles of our history as a commonwealth. First, our faith is pledged to one living and true God, this God being indescribable, unchangeable, incomprehensible, and, of course, unnameable. But yet in our daily communications with, and our applications to Him, He has been pleased to give us His name, or His several names, according to His relations to us, and they are found nowhere, only in the ark of His holy temple there where He presents to us His strength and power. He calls himself Eloi, which means almighty in strength; that He can do what He will without effort; that He does the greatest thing as easy as He does the least. This makes Him different from all beings. In His holy ark He records Himself Elaah -- existence without beginning, and no contingency as to His end. Again, He writes Himself Hhelejon -- unchangeable; that is, nothing but His own will can change Him. Again, He records His name Jah -- knowledge that comprehends without being comprehended. Again He is written Adonai -- full and free, and freely full. Combining the several names we have Jehovah -- the Hebrew God. A man never can go wrong while he can pronounce this name in its comprehensive sense. This is where the Zealots, the Sadducees, and Essenes had their origin, and it is the want of being able to pronounce this name in its comprehensive sense that causes so much dissension among us Jews. Jesus could pronounce this name, but he stole it out of the temple, as I am creditably informed.

 " But the object in calling your attention to pronouncing this name, with all its bearings, may be seen if we turn to the third Book of Leviticus, section 10, wherein is the special order made by our God to Moses, that we should offer the bullock, the ram, the flour and oil, and the people should fast seven days, and this should be kaphar, or atonement for the sins of all the people. Now, unless Moses was deceived, he has deceived us, or Jesus of Nazareth is a false teacher; for all he teaches is metanoeite, metanoeite, as though a man's being sorry for a crime would make restitution to the offended party. A man might repent ever so much, but what good would that do toward healing the man he had injured ? None in the least. This mode of making atonement was ordained of God and revealed to Moses; but if man has nothing to do but to repent, the disease carries its own remedy with it. So a man can sin as often as he may wish to. Look at the first book, section 3: ' And God said to Abraham, by his own mouth, that each and all that were circumcised by the cutting of the prepuce should be saved.' This should be the seal of the covenant.  Now, if this is not true, God must go against His own contract, violate His own promises, as well as deceive the faith and cheat the obedience of His own children. This is all so, if Jesus's teaching be true, for he sets up table (baptism) as the seal of God. I refer you to section 10, division first, where God said to Moses that He had changed the laws, converted the elements for the protection of His people, and with His own arm had delivered them out of a strong compact; and that they might remember, and that the generation to be born might remember and never forget to trust in Him when in danger, He said that once every year we should roast a kid or lamb, and eat it with unleavened bread, and this should be the sign that we would trust in Him in all times of danger. Now Jesus teaches that common bread and wine are to be used instead thereof a thing unheard of. And not only so, something that is altogether repugnant to God, and something that fosters drunkenness, and is well qualified to excite men's passions. And oh, ye Masters of Israel, but think once. Jesus calls himself the Son of God; claims to have been born of almah (the Hebrew word for virgin); that he and his Father are one they are equal. These things will establish the following conclusions: If he is right, his Father is false. If they were one, then their teachings would be one; and if his teachings are true, God's must be wrong, or there are not those perfections in Him that we learn in pronouncing His holy name. By tolerating the teachings of Jesus, we say to the Romans that all of our former teachings are false; that the Hebrew's God is not to be trusted; that He is weak, wanting in forethought; that He is vacillating and not to be trusted, much less to be honored and obeyed. Thus the world will lose confidence in our God, and confidence in us as a religious people. This is impregnating the whole atmosphere with moral pollution. It does not only cut off, but blocks the way of all Jews from heaven; and not only this, it excludes our hope in the salvation of our forefathers, who have obeyed God in His ordinances, believed in His promises, and shouted in the triumphs of a holy life for fourteen hundred years. He entirely ignores God's holy temple the house God had built by our forefathers under His own supervision, where He promised to dwell with His children, to hear their prayers, and to be pleased with their sacrifices. This term pi 3 is the bond of the Jews. Here all men can come and be blessed. It is the earthly home of the souls of men the place where men may hide from the storms of sin and persecution. This temple is where the foolish may learn wisdom, the place where the naked soul can be clothed, and where the hungry may be fed. This the grandest gift of our Father. Jesus completely ignores this temple; says the priests have made it a den of thieves; and sets up a sneer, and even scoffs at its sacred ordinances, and with a sort of selfish triumph says it shall be destroyed; and from his manner of saying it, I have no doubt he would be glad to see it quickly done. But what would be the condition of our people if this temple was removed ? What would be the use of the priesthood if the temple was destroyed? Where would we find an answer by Urim and Thummim? How would the soul of man be purified, if the holy Bathkole, the Euroch of God, should depart? There in that sacred temple of God he has been burning to the consuming of sin and the purifying of the heart since our return from bondage in Babylon. My argument is, if this temple is destroyed, or even forsaken by the Jews, we as a nation are utterly ruined. We might as well put our necks under the feet of idolatry and give up all hope. " One more subject I place before my Masters of Israel. Is it compatible with our religion, or is it consistent with philosophy, or admitted in His holy Word, that there can be more gods than one ? When we pronounce Ele Laah Shaddiai-Hhelyon Adonai (which is Jehovah), there can be but one living God. By reference to section 6, No. four, He says by mouth  of Moses, when he was all aglow with the glory of God -- and remember He speaks either by mouth or quill; it is He that speaks, and not man -- He says, ' The Lord your God is one God; there can be but one. I am and have been with you; I brought you up; I delivered you out of a strong compact; I delivered you out of their hand and kept you dry, while your enemies were drowned in the sea. I will not forsake you. I promised your father I would not. But if you forsake Me, then desolation will come upon you, and have you in swift destruction.'  In section 5, three and four of David's Song of Joy: ' I am God alone. If I turn to the right or 'to the left, if I go down into the depths of the sea, or into the centre of the earth, or over the heavens, I should find no companion.' In section 3 He says: ' I am God alone, and alone I am God; beside Me there is no help for man nor angels.' Then in section 13, this command has been given: ' Thou shall pay to the Lord thy God once a year a half-shekel of silver, that thou and thy children, and all the strangers that are within thy gate, may know that there is no God beside Me, on whom they may call in time of danger.' Now, having all these commands and teachings from the very lips of God himself before my eyes, and being held responsible for the soundness of our doctrine and the proper inculcation of the same among the people of the Jews, what was I to do? Could I stand as the priest of the Most High God, and see your blessed religion perverted by an impostor ? Could I stand and see the holy temple of our God deserted and forsaken? Could I stand and see all the holy ordinances, which had been appointed by our God for securing salvation to Israel, perverted by an impostor ? All the blessed doctrines that were appointed for the government and instruction of the priesthood, thence to be imparted to the youth of our land, set aside, and that by one that could show no authority, only the authority of John the Baptist, who could give no authority only the one who sent him to baptize, and he could not tell who he was, nor whence he came ? Hence you can see the responsible position that I as the high priest of God and of the Jewish Church occupied. According to our laws I was made responsible, and stood between my God and my people, to protect them in -doctrine and government. I refer you to the capitulation made by the Sanhedrin and Augustus Caesar, in the holy Tosephta of the Talmuds. We submitted to taxation by the Romans, and the Romans are to protect our holy religion from foreign foes, in order that the holy temple or any of its sacred ordinances should never be molested, nor the holy city, Jerusalem, be polluted by Roman idolatry. Now the insinuating plan adopted by Jesus was well qualified to deceive the common people. It had already led many to forsake the temple, and hold her ordinances in derision, as well as to neglect the teachings of the priest or to pay the tithes for their supplies. He had already inculcated into the Jewish mind his pernicious ways of being saved to that extent that the Jewish cause was almost lost. There are two reasons for this: First, the people to whom he preached were an ignorant set, and knew but very little about doctrine of any kind. They are a restless sort of men, who are always finding fault and wanting something new, and never associate with the more enlightened part of the community in order to learn. Another reason of his having many followers is, his doctrines are congenial to unsanctified flesh. They are so suited to human nature that they require no sacrifices; they need not go to the temple to worship God; they need not fast, and they can when and where they please; they need pay no tithes to keep up the temple or the priesthood, but every man can be his own priest and worship God as he chooses. All this is so compatible with human nature that, although he has not been preaching over three years, he has more followers to-day than Abraham has, and they have become perfectly hostile toward the Jews that are faithful to their God; and, if it had not been for the Roman soldiers, on the day of his execution we would have had one of the bloodiest insurrections ever known to the Jewish commonwealth. I am told that there was never seen such a concourse of people assembled at Jerusalem as at the cross. One of my guards informs me that there were several hundred thousand, and, although there were two others crucified at the same time, Jesus was the great centre of  attraction. They would call out, ' Who is this Jesus of Nazareth ? What is his crime ?' Some of his friends would cry out, ' Nothing; he is being executed because he was a friend to the poor.' ' Take him down ! Take him down,' they would cry out, and the soldiers would have to use their spears to keep them back. But when he yielded up the ghost he proved to all that he was hypostatical (that is, a human body), and the lodi curios had come from the iclandic covenant, and his trinitatis unitas was all a sham, for how could this unpronounced name suffer or be captured by men, or die, unless he is the one that is to die for the many? And if so, I was only accomplishing God's holy purposes, which exonerates me from guilt.

" But it seems to me a necessity that he should be removed. That this may be evident to your minds, I ask you to contrast our present condition with the past. Jesus of Nazareth spent two years in Egypt under the instruction of Rabbi Joshua, and learned the art of thaumaturgy to perfection, as has never been taught in any of the schools of necromancy among the heathen. If the healing miracles of Jesus are true, as they must be (for they are so acknowledged by his foes as well as his friends), he must have learned it from Horus and Serapis, as practised by those heathen priests. He came back to Palestine as a physician, and was by nature an enthusiast as well as a Hebrew Patriarch, and when John's preaching excited idealistic minds, Jesus also went to that teacher, and was inspired by him to inculcate and promulgate his doctrines. Notwithstanding his
youth and inexperience, Jesus started out as a public orator and teacher with the doctrines of John, and in that capacity referred exclusively to his authority, as every public teacher in these days has to be ordained by some acknowledged authority. As long as John was at large, Jesus in the capacity of an itinerant teacher and physician roused the people of Galilee to metanoia (repentance of sin), to bring about a restoration of the kingdom of heaven. He met with the same opposition that John did from those who would not admit that they were more sinful than their progenitors were, or that asceticism was the proper means for the restoration of the kingdom of heaven. But he met with the same success among the lower classes, such as foreign harlots, Sodomites, publicans, and other Roman agents, but the intelligent portion remained cold and unmoved by his enthusiasm. The cures which he performed appeared miraculous to his followers, but most ridiculous to the intelligent Jews and men of sober and reflective minds.

" Jesus embraced the humanitarian doctrine of the Hillelites, presenting conspicuously the cosmopolitan spirit of Judaism, and he did it almost in the words of Hillel, who had taught it before. Their faith and doctrine being alike, it was not hard for him to create excitement, or to find plenty of followers. In addition to all this, he taught a system of low morals, and so void of all ritualistic ideas that it was easy for him to get any number of followers. He taught the people that there was but one living and true God, but he taught them that he was that God, and that his father was merged into himself, and could not manifest himself only through him, which theory would confute itself if they would only stop to reflect, for as he was hypostatical or corporeal, his assistance was cut off from all that was not immediately in his presence, which is altogether incompatible with the faith of the Jews. Right in the face of this doctrine he would teach that there was a special providence, as well as a general providence, as if there could be a general providence without a God that could be present in all places at all times, as we learn in pronouncing His name. He taught that the dead will rise and live again in a future state of happiness or misery according as they have lived here. Therefore he taught future rewards and punishments; but he being present, how could he reward in the future ? He taught the revelation and the prophets, but contradicted all they teach. He taught the election of Israel by the Almighty, but ignored all the doctrines of Israel. He taught the eternity God's laws, and promises in the super-importance of the humanitarian over the ritual laws and doctrines, but I do not think he wished to abolish the latter, or even the traditional laws, but merely to supersede them by a higher life. The natural result of all this was that he disregarded the laws of Levitical cleanness, which were considered so important by the Shammaites and Essenes, and also by the Hillelites. This is the point where division commenced, and the breach grew wider and wider until an insurrection must have been the result. He so far cut himself loose from the Jews that he ate with unclean sinners, publicans, and lepers, and permitted harlots to touch him, while his disciples went so far as to eat their meals without washing themselves.  Furthermore, he looked upon the whole of the Levitical institutions, temples, sacrifices, and priesthood included, as no longer necessary and not worth the life of the animal. This was certainly the opinion of the Hillelites. Jesus, it seems, found in this Hillelite school a party furnished to hand, ready to take up with his heresy (and a large party they are, almost sufficient to divide the whole Jewish commonwealth).  They taught the repentance of sin, the practice of benevolence and charity, the education of the young, and good-will toward mankind, as possessing much more moral worth than all the Levitical cleanness, or compliance with the whole moral law given to us by our God to govern us. His preaching was of the parabolical style. He would rely on a text of scripture, for he seemed to hold the scriptures in high veneration, so his preaching was on the midrash style of the scribes a maxim expressed in the style of Solon or of Sirach's son. His great object was to come as near the Jewish theology as possible so as to destroy the Jews' entirely, and establish his own.  Hence he resorted to the allegorical method of the Egyptian Hebrews, uttering many good and wise sayings, which were not new to the learned, but which were taken from the common wisdom of the country, which was known by all who were acquainted with the literature of the rabbis. But they were new to his class of hearers, who were not accustomed to listen to the wise. He had no education, comparatively speaking. He was full of nervous excitement, all of which went to inspire his hearers with enthusiasm. He took but little care of  his health or person; cared not for his own relatives.  He travelled mostly on foot in the company of his disciples and some suspicious women, and lived on the charity of his friends. He seemed to take no notice of the political affairs of his country; would as soon be governed by one nation as another. In fact, it seemed if he had any preference it was for the Romans. It seems that he became so infatuated that he really thought he was the head of the kingdom of heaven. This manner of preaching, along with his presumption, aroused his enemies to a powerful pitch, and it was all I could do to keep the zealots from mobbing him in the temple. They had no confidence in a doctrine that set the Jewish laws at naught, and mocked the priesthood of God, and they with the Sadducees and scribes were not willing to submit to a man who acknowledged no authority higher than himself, and was seemingly endeavoring to overturn everything that they held more sacred and dearer than life. Jesus's mode and manner were well qualified to deceive the unsuspecting.  ' Let us have all things in common,' said he, ' and he that would be greatest among you will prove his greatness by rendering the greatest service to all, and if any of the higher powers compel thee to go a mile, let him that is compelled go ten miles.' This caused him to be attacked more in his policy than in his doctrine. The great question with us Jews was, here are the Romans upon us; how can we get rid of them ? Jesus's idea was to let the Romans alone; it matters not who rules and governs the nations; if they abuse you, love them in return, and they cannot be your enemies long; no man can continue to abuse another who returns injuries with love. Keep from them; pray in secret for the return of the kingdom of heaven and God's grace, and this will soon make all things right. ' Pay your taxes,' he would say to them; ' it is only Caesar's money you pay, which is unlawful for you to have unlawful on account of its idolatrous effigies.' Again, he would say to his hearers, ' You cannot conquer the Romans; better convert them, and they are your enemies no longer. They already have your temple in their possession; their yoke is getting heavier every day, and the more you fight against them the more they will abuse you; therefore, your only chance is to love them, and try to make your yoke easy and your burden light by having them your friends.' Indeed, the conduct of Jesus was so strange and incompatible with the interest of the Jews as a nation, that it seemed to me that he was a subject employed by the Romans to keep the Jews submissive and obedient to all their tyranny and abuse.

" This policy was most powerfully attacked by the officiating priest, by the Shammaites and Zealots, and, in fact, the whole Jewish nation was becoming  aroused to a war heat. The reprimands of Jesus were so severe against the rich and highly educated that they had turned against him, and brought all the power they had, both of their wealth and talent, so that I saw that a bloody insurrection was brewing fast. The public mind of the Jews was becoming more and more divided and corrupt; heretical doctrines were being diffused all over the land; the temple was forsaken and the holy sacraments neglected; the people were dividing into sects, and these breaches were like a rent in a garment -- tearing wider apart continually. As it seemed to me, the whole of the Jewish theocracy was about to be blown away as a bubble on a breaker.

  " As the Jews became more and more divided and confused, the tyranny of the Romans increased. All they wanted was an excuse to slaughter the Jews and confiscate their property. At this time both the doctrine and religion of the Jews were spreading rapidly all over Rome, which gave the Romans great alarm. Sejane undertook to have an ordinance passed in the Senate, abolishing the Jewish religion from Rome; and when he found it would cause an insurrection, they banished all the Jews from Rome, and back they came to Judea with all their idolatry and heresy, and many other corrupt principles from the Romans, which fitted them to join any party for profit. Up to this time the Roman governors had shown great kindness to the Jews. There never was a better man than Hyrcan. The Jews enjoyed great peace during his administration. But Tiberias has turned against us; Pilate has removed the army from a to Jerusalem. I say, no nation with any self-respect, or one that had any energy left, would or could stand it without a struggle.

" Now, the preaching of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth had brought all these things upon us. When Herod Antipas captured John, it quieted matters in Galilee, so that they had peace until Jesus started it up afresh. I had issued orders to Jesus to desist from preaching, unless he taught as the Jews taught. He sent me the impertinent word that his doctrine was not of this world, but had reference to the world to come; when he was all the time doing all he could to destroy the peace and harmony of this world. Now, according to our law in the Saphra, by Jose. B. Talmud, it devolves on me to see that the people have sound doctrine taught them. Hence it is my duty to examine all the midrashim, or sermons, of all the preaching priests, and if anyone teach the people wrongly, or if his conduct is not in correspondence with his profession, to cause him to desist; or if any disregard the holy laws of ablution, or in any way defile himself, or if he shall be guilty of misconduct in any way, either in manner of life or doctrine, to adjudge such an one, and pronounce sentence for his crime upon him. This I did upon Jesus of Nazareth, to save the Church from heresy, and to save the cause of the Jewish commonwealth from final ruin. But understand that I did not act rashly nor illegally, as I am accused. I only passed sentence under the protest and order of the whole court belonging to the high priest, containing twelve members, or elders, and priests. Thus you will see it was not my voluntary act, but was a legal one and in accordance with law. After I examined Jesus on the various charges, he said in the presence of all the court that each and all of them were true. I then reasoned with him, and asked him, if the court of the high priest would forgive him of these charges would he desist from these things in all time to come.  He answered most emphatically and positively he would not. Under these circumstances I was compelled, according to our law, to sentence him to die; for if he continued to promulgate his pernicious heresies the Jews, as a nation, must perish with their religion.  And, as you find in the Toseppta, that the nation has always the right of self-preservation, and as we had conceded the right to the Romans of executing our criminal laws, it became my painful duty to send him to Pontius Pilate, with the following charges:

" ' Caiaphas, High Priest of the Most High God, to Pontius Pilate, Governor of the Roman Province: " ' Jesus of Nazareth is thus charged by the High Court of the Jews:

 " ' First, with teaching the doctrine that there are more gods than one, which is contrary to the teachings of the Jewish law, which he most positively refuses to desist from in the presence of this court.

  " ' Second, he teaches that he is a God, which is contrary to the Jewish law, and he is visible and comprehensible; and, after being asked to desist by this court, he most positively affirms that he is the Son of God.

  " ' Third, he teaches and affirms that the Bath kole (Holy Spirit) cannot come until he goes away, which is contrary to the teachings of the Jews; because it was He that brooded over the waters, and has been in the habitual light of the world ever since; from all of which he refuses to desist.

 " ' He teaches baptism as the seal of God, instead of circumcision, which was established by the decrees of God with Abraham as a seal of the Jews; and when abjured to desist by this court declared he would not.

 " ' He teaches asceticism as the means of salvation, contrary to the Jewish custom; and affirmed in the presence of this court he would not desist.

 " ' He teaches that the Levitical ablution is of no service, while we hold that the outward washing is the sign of inward purity; and when abjured to desist he emphatically refused.
  
 " ' He has abrogated the ordinance given by God to Moses of the pascal supper, wherein we should roast a lamb and eat it with unleavened bread; but Jesus has introduced a custom altogether different -- without any authority. He has introduced common bread and wine, which are not only forbidden, but are well qualified to excite men's passions and make them forget God rather than to remember and trust Him, this feast having been introduced that we should remember to trust Him in the hours of trouble.  When asked why he did this, all he would say was: " Hitherto I work, and my Father works."

 " ' He has abrogated the priesthood, and set the temple at naught, which is the very life's blood of the Jewish faith.

 " ' Were it not that God our Father has given us these holy ordinances we would not be so tenacious of them. We know they are the pillars upon which the Jewish theocracy is built, and that we cannot live without them. Although Jesus of Nazareth has been abjured time and again to stop teaching these ways of death, he has as often declared he would not; therefore it devolves on me as the proper and the only officer to pronounce sentence upon him.

  " These charges were written by my scribe, and sent with the officers to Pilate for his consent. Of course, I did not expect him to execute him as he did. but it seems that the mob was so great that Pilate never received them. I expected Pilate to send Jesus back to me, so that I could send him to you for your approval; and if so, then I would proceed to try him with Urim and Thummim, with the regular lacktees on guard, as our law requires; but it seems that Pilate thirsted for his blood. Like all guilty tyrants, he was afraid of his own shadow, and wished to destroy everything that threatened his power.

  " With these reasons for my actions, I submit the case which I am sure will be considered favorably by my Masters of Israel."


CHAPTER VII.

REPORT OF CAIAPHAS TO THE SANHEDRIN CONCERNING THE RESURRECTION OP JESUS.

AFTER having made the preceding record of Caiaphas, on unwinding the same scroll we found another report from him. It may be interesting to the reader to know what we mean by a scroll. It is similar to parchment. The Hebrew word numet means a pulp made from the bark of the reed into a paste, and dried in the sun until it is hard; when pressed and polished it shines beautifully, and its surface is as smooth as our paper. It is of two kinds: one is called papyrus, the other hierotike. The latter is more costly, and is used by priests alone. It is about sixteen inches wide, and is cemented together by a gum that exudes from a tree resembling our elm.  It is written upon with some kind of indelible ink or paint, with a common reed quill, which is fashioned like our pens. The writing is done by the sopher, which is the Hebrew word for scribe. He is called grammateus by the Greeks. The report of Caiaphas is written in what is known as the square Hebrew. The letters are from a half-inch to an inch in size, so that one can imagine what a roll of parchment it would take to record a deed.  It is read only with difficulty by the best Hebrew scholars, and they must have text-books to assist them. But after one has gotten the thread of the subject he can get along with it. This is the reason I got Dr. Mclntosh to go with me. He and Dr. Twyman have been in the business for many years. The windlass, as it might be called (for it more resembles our common rope- winders than anything I can think of), is a square piece of timber, about three inches in diameter, to which the scroll is fastened at one end, around which it is rolled like a spool. At the proper distance are tied two transverse sticks to hold the parchment to its proper place. The windlass with the scroll is placed at one end of a table, and an empty windlass at the other end, so that as you unwind from the one to read, the scroll winds around the other. The letters are very distinct. There are hundreds of these arranged in rows. They are all lettered and numbered with their dates on them. This makes it easy to find anything desired. There is another class of books of fine sheep or goat skin, about eight by twelve inches. The writing on these is very fine and difficult to read. They are bound between cedar boards, with clasps, and contain from eight to forty sheets to the book. These are the kind of books of which Josephus wrote seventy-two.

But to return to Caiaphas's report. After unwinding several feet, as before stated, we came across another communication from Caiaphas; I hardly know whether to call it a resignation or a confession.  One thing I do know, it is one of the most solemn things that I have ever read. We thanked God that we had come to Constantinople, and that Mohammed had given orders to preserve these sacred scrolls in the mosque of St. Sophia. It is as follows:

   "Sanhedrin, 89. By Siphri II, 7.:

  " To You, Masters of Israel: As I have made a former defence to you, and you have approved the same, I feel in duty bound to communicate to you some facts that have come to my knowledge since that communication. A few days after the execution of Jesus of Nazareth the report of his resurrection from the dead became so common that I found it necessary to investigate it, because the excitement was more intense than before, and my own life as well as that of Pilate was in danger. I sent for Malkus, the captain of the royal city guard, who informed me he knew nothing personally, as he had placed Isham in command of the guard; but from what he could learn from the soldiers the scene was awe-inspiring, and the report was so generally believed that it was useless to deny it. He thought my only chance was to suppress it among the soldiers, and have John and Peter banished to Crete, or arrested and imprisoned, and if they would not be quiet, to treat them as I had treated Jesus. He said that all the soldiers he had conversed with were convinced that Jesus was resurrected by supernatural power and was still living, and that he way no human being, for the light and the angels and the dead that came out of their graves all went to prove that something had happened that never occurred on earth before. He said that John and Peter were spreading it all over the country, and that if Jesus would appear at the head of a host, and declare for the king of the Jews, he believed all the Jews would fight for him. I sent for the lieutenant, who gave a lengthy account of the occurrence that morning, all of which I suppose you have learned, and will investigate. From this I am convinced that something transcending the laws of nature took place that morning, that cannot be accounted for upon natural laws, and I find it is useless to try to get any of the soldiers to deny it, for they are so excited that they cannot be reasoned with. I regret that I had the soldiers placed at the tomb, for the very things that they were to prevent they have helped to establish.

  " After questioning the soldiers and officers to my satisfaction, my mind being so disturbed that I could neither eat nor sleep, I sent for John and Peter.   They came and brought Mary and Joanna, who are the women that went to embalm Jesus's body the morning of the resurrection, as it is called. They were very interesting as they related the circumstances. Mary says that when they went day was just breaking. They met the soldiers returning from the sepulchre, and saw nothing strange until they came to the tomb, and found that it was empty. The stone that covered the sepulchre was rolled to one side, and two men dressed in flowing white were sitting, one at each end of the sepulchre. Mary asked them where was her Lord; they said, ' He is risen from the dead; did he not tell you he would rise the third day and show himself to the people, to prove that he was the Lord of life ?' Go tell his disciples, said they. Joanna said she saw but one man; but this discrepancy must have been due to their excitement, because they say they were much alarmed.  They both say that as they returned they met the Master, who told them that he was the resurrection and the life; all that will accept shall be resurrected from the second death. ' We fell at his feet, all bathed in tears, and when we rose up he was gone.'  Both these women wept for joy while relating these circumstances, and John shouted aloud, which made me tremble in every limb, for I could not help thinking that something that was the exclusive work of God had occurred, but what it all meant was a great
mystery to me. It might be, I said, that God had sent this message by the mouth of this stranger; it might be that he was the seed of the woman, and we his people had executed him.

  " I asked John and Peter if they could give me any further evidence in regard to this man; that I wished to be informed of his private history. Peter said that Jesus passed by where he was, and bade him follow him, and he felt attracted to him, but at first it was more through curiosity than anything in the man; that he soon became acquainted with Mary, who told him that he was her son, and related to him the strange circumstances of his birth, and that she was convinced that he was to be the king of the Jews.  She spoke of many strange things concerning his life, which made Peter feel more interested in him than he would have been otherwise. He said that Jesus was a man so pleasant in his character, and so like a child in innocence, that no one could help liking him after he got acquainted with him; that though he seemed to be stern and cold, he was not so in reality; that he was exceedingly kind, especially to the poor; that he would make any sacrifice for the sick and needy, and would spare no effort to impart knowledge to anyone that would call on him, and that his knowledge was so profound that he had seen him interrogated by the most learned doctors of the law, and he always gave the most perfect satisfaction, and that the sopher or scribes, and the Hillelites, and Shammaites were afraid to open their mouths in his presence. They had attacked him so often and been repelled that they shunned him as they would a wolf; but when he had repelled them he did not enioy the triumph as they did over others of whom they had gotten the ascendency. As to his private life, he seemed not to be a man of pleasure, nor of sorrow. He mingled with society to benefit it, and yet took no part at all in what was going on. ' I had heard many tell of what occurred when he was baptized, and from what his mother told me I was watching for a display of his divine power, if he had any, for I knew he could never be king of the Jews unless he did have help from on high. Once when we were attending a marriage-feast the wine gave out, and his mother told him of it, and he said to the men to fill up some water-pots that were sitting near, and they put in nothing but water, for I watched them, but when they poured it out it was wine, for it was tasted by all at the feast, and when the master found it out he called for Jesus to honor him, but he had disappeared. It seemed that he did not want to be popular, and this spirit displeased us, for we knew if he was to be king of the Jews he must become popular with the Jews. His behavior angered his mother, for she was doing all she could to bring him into notice, and to make him popular among the people, and the people could not help liking him when they saw him. Another peculiarity was that in his presence everyone felt safe.  There seemed to be an almighty power pervading the air wherever he went so that everyone felt secure, and believed that no harm could befall them if Jesus were present. As we were in our fishing-boat I saw Jesus coming out toward us, walking on the water. I knew that if he could make the waves support him, he could me also. I asked him if I might come to him; he said to me to come, but when I saw the waves gathering around me I began to sink, and asked him to help me. He lifted me up, and told me to have faith in God. On another occasion we were sailing on the sea, and there was a great storm.   It blew at a fearful rate, and all on board thought they would be lost; we awakened the master, and when he saw the raging of the storm he stretched out his hand and said, " Peace, be still !" and the wind ceased to blow, the thunder stopped, the lightnings withdrew, and the billowing sea seemed as quiet as a babe in its mother's arms -- all done in one moment of time. This I saw with my own eyes, and from that time I was convinced that he was not a common man. Neither did he work by enchantment like the Egyptian thaumaturgists, for in all their tricks they never attack the laws of nature. In vain might they order the thunder to hush, or the winds to abate, or the lightnings to cease their flashing. Again, I saw this man while we were passing from Jericho. There was a blind man, who cried out to him for mercy, and Jesus said to me, " Go, bring him near," and when I brought him near Jesus asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted to see him. Jesus said, " Receive thy sight," when he was not near enough for Jesus to lay his hands upon him or use any art. Thus were all his miracles performed. He did not act as the Egyptian necromancers. They use vessels, such as cups, bags, and jugs, and many other things to deceive. Jesus used nothing but his simple speech in such a way that all could understand him, and it seemed as if the laws of nature were his main instruments of action, and that nature was as obedient to him as a slave is to his master. I recall another occasion when a young man was dead, and Jesus loved his sisters. One of them went with Jesus to the tomb. He commanded it to be uncovered.  The sister said, " Master, by this time he is offensive; he has been dead four days." Jesus said, " Only have faith," and he called the young man by name, and he came forth out of the tomb, and is living to-day,' and Peter proposed that I should see him for myself.

" Thus argued Peter and John. If Jesus had such power over nature and nature's laws, and power over death in others, he would have such power over death that he could lay down his life and take it up again, as he said he would do. As he proposes to bring hundreds of witnesses to prove all he says, and much more -- witnesses whose veracity cannot be doubted and as I had heard many of these things before from different men, both friends and foes (and although these things are related by his friends -- that is, the friends of Jesus -- yet these men talk like men of truth, and their testimony corroborates other evidence that I have from other sources, that convinces me that this is something that should not be rashly dealt with), and seeing the humble trust and confidence of these men and women, besides, as John says, thousands of others equally strong in their belief, it throws me into great agitation. I feel some dreadful foreboding a weight upon my heart. I cannot feel as a criminal from the fact that I was acting according to my best judgment with the evidence before me. I feel that I was acting in defence of God and my country, which I love better than my life, and if I was mistaken, I was honest in my mistake. And as we teach that honesty of purpose gives character to the action, on this basis I shall try to clear myself of any charge, yet there is a conscious fear about my heart, so that I have no rest day or night. I feel sure that if I should meet Jesus I would fall dead at his feet; and it seemed to me if I went out I should be sure to meet him.

  " In this state of conscious dread I remained investigating the Scriptures to know more about the prophecies concerning this man, but found nothing to satisfy my mind. I locked my door and gave the guards orders to let no one in without first giving me notice. While thus engaged, with no one in the room but my wife and Annas, her father, when I lifted up my eyes, behold Jesus of Nazareth stood before me. My breath stopped, my blood ran cold, and I was in the act of falling, when he spoke and said, ' Be not afraid, it is I. You condemned me that you might go free. This is the work of my Father. Your only wrong is, you have a wicked heart; this you must repent of. This last lamb you have slain is the one that was appointed before the foundation; this sacrifice is made for all men. Your other lambs were for those who offered them;  this is for all,, this is the last; it is for you if you will accept it. I died that you and all mankind might be saved.' At this he looked at me with such melting tenderness that it seemed to me I was nothing but tears, and my strength was all gone. I fell on my face at his feet as one that was dead. When Annas lifted me up Jesus was gone, and the door still locked. No one could tell when or where he went.

 " So, noble Masters, I do not feel that I can officiate as priest any more. If this strange personage is from God, and should prove to be the Saviour we have looked for so long, and I have been the means of crucifying him, I have no further offerings to make for sin; but I will wait and see how these things will develop. And if he proves to be the ruler that we are looking for, they will soon develop into something more grand in the future. His glory will increase; his influence will spread wider and wider, until the whole earth shall be full of his glory, and all the kingdoms of the world shall be his dominion. Such are the teachings of the prophets on this subject. Therefore you will appoint Jonathan, or some one, to fill the holy place.

" [We found that, soon after, Jonathan became high priest, though history teaches us differently. -- MAHAN.]

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Our Lady of Fatima warned of the dangers of a godless and evil Russia with and without Communism


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As world developments unfold in our lives we are once gain being pushed toward a precipice of epic proportions with the ever increasing tensions in the Middle East and Eastern Europe and lo and behold, when one peels back the hyperbole in search of the truth what does one find but the tentacles of Russia mysteriously lurking in the shadows.

Whether the disappearance of Crimea, the threat to the Ukraine, the nuclear aspirations of Iran or the obsession of Putin to restore the Russian Empire, the rest of the world seems to be playing in Russia's sandbox.


Ironic isn't it that the last menace to mankind was the Soviet Union and the 60 million people left dead as a result of that experiment in Communist socialism.  It took all of 75 years to stop the proliferation of Lenin-Stalin Communism that was launched in that cold November of 1917.

So here we are, a mere quarter century after the fall of the USSR regime and once again Russia has ignited a worldwide debate over the intent of the Russian Federation in terms of Crimea and the Ukraine and the purpose behind Russia's veil of protection for renegade nations like North Korea, Iran and Syria.

Stalin, Lenin & Trotsky
It was 97 years ago that Lenin and Stalin engineered a revolution in Russia that brought down 1,000 years of rule by Russian Tsars and replaced it with the most brutal political system in the history of mankind.

First there was a revolt in March in which a Provisional government was installed to replace the Tsarist rule but that was not enough for the socialist revolutionaries and they revolted again in November and replaced the Provisional government with a Soviet Politburo now under the control of Lenin and Stalin.

Original statue of Our Lady of Fatima
Only one voice in all the world stood up and prophetically warned of the evil consequences that would come of a Communist regime in Russia that would cast the entire world into a century of darkness.

After the first revolution in March of 1917, on May 13, 1917 that voice began her warnings. She returned to reinforce her warning on the 13th of every month from May until October, and in July her warnings became horrific prophecies of the consequences of Russia falling into the Communist trap, something that was yet to happen.

That voice warning the world of impending doom was Our Lady of Fatima at Fatima, Portugal and the three children receiving her messages were to warn the Catholic church authorities and the Pope of the danger.


Lúcia de Jesus dos Santos, Sister Mary Lucy of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart, better known as Sister Lúcia of Fátima – (March 28, 1907 – February 13, 2005) Became a Roman Catholic Carmelite non and spent the rest of her life until 2005 warning the succession of Popes of the dangers of Russia, Communism, and even Russia after Communism.


Such was the gravity of the situation to Our Holy Mother Mary that she appeared six times and even performed the miracle of the sun to over 55,000 people present in October but her warnings fell on deaf ears.



Just five weeks after her last appearance October 13, 1917, the second Russian revolution of the year took place and the Communists took control of Russia and began the ruthless rise of the Soviet Union, just as The Lady warned.

Three great psychics warned of the dangers of the 20th century from Hitler to Stalin, the Nazis to the Communists. They were Nostradamus of 16th century France, Edgar Cayce of 20th century America and The Holy Mother Mary. But only one returned to Earth from another place and was to continually warn us throughout the entire century.

Even after the fall of Communism she continued to warn that the danger was not over up until Lucia's death in 2005.  The following is the story of the Marian Prophecies, the astonishing accuracy of her warnings, and the fact we still face dangerous consequences from the Russian actions.

Prophets, Psychics, Seers and Saints
Who Really Tells the Future
The Holy Mother Mary?



"Those that fear prophecy lack faith."

Throughout history mankind has always been fascinated or fearful of those who practiced the act of prophecy, foretelling the future. From the ancient Druids to Native Americans, Old Testament to New Testament, prophecy was practiced by seers, mystics, oracles, psychics, shamans, crystal readers, wizards, and even saints. It was prophecy that foretold Moses and his long journey to the Promised Land just as prophecy foretold of Jesus the Messiah and his death on a cross.



In more modern times there have been giants of prophets with the most notable being Nostradamus of the 16th century and Edgar Cayce of the 20th century. Kings and presidents consulted prophets, fortune tellers, seers and psychics, and the Druids of old, often in secret. Didn't we all harbor a certain curiosity about having our fortune told through a crystal ball by some Gypsy? Or our palm read?



I mentioned two of the giants of history, Nostradamus and Cayce, but there is a third proven far more accurate. First let me give you a brief refresher on the two most notable.

Incantation of the Law Against Inept Critics

Let those who read this verse consider it profoundly,
Let the profane and the ignorant herd keep away:
And far away all Astrologers, Idiots and Barbarians,
May he who does otherwise be subject to the sacred rite!

Michel Nostradamus



Prophets are foretellers of the future, receiving visions of events that would come to pass if certain conditions are or are not met. In their own way they revealed God’s will in the events of history, particularly regarding the judgment of evil and the deliverance from the judgment.

The two most famous understood the spiritual significance of the times. Many rely on the known works of Michel Nostradamus 1503-1566; and Edgar Cayce 1877-1945.

They used the style of prophecy called apocalyptic literature for their vision of the future as they were composed during politically difficult times, they were futuristic, visions were used to communicate truth, they drew a sharp contrast between good and evil, and they focused more on nations than individuals.

Each employed different techniques as Nostradamus used a brass reflecting bowl and scything mirror, while Cayce was in a self-hypnotic trance.



More mystery surrounds Nostradamus than Cayce as Cayce was from the 20th century while Nostradamus was 400 years earlier. Complicating matters was the fact that Nostradamus had to disguise and conceal many of his predictions or face death at the hands of the Inquisition. The fact he saw his visions 400 years earlier also meant many of the futuristic scenes appearing to him were of machines and buildings not in existence in the 1500's thus requiring much more difficult interpretation on his part.



Both were Christian, with Nostradamus a baptized Catholic, although Nostradamus’s family converted from Judaism to avoid persecution. Cayce took a lifelong interest in studying the Bible. Nostradamus was from Southern France during the plague while Cayce was from Kentucky.

But they are not the best of all modern prophets as I see it and you may be somewhat surprised by my top pick. I believe the Holy Mother Mary, Mother of Jesus, has been the most prolific and accurate prophet in all time because of what she has done the last 200 years. I call her apparitions and words The Marian Prophecies.



Marian Apparitions & Prophecies

La Salette, France 1846

Lourdes, France 1858

Fatima, Portugal 1917

The Fatima Secret

A Great Sign by God

Failure to Consecrate Russia

The Third Part of the Secret

Second Vatican Council 1962

Mary, the Holy Mother of Jesus, is not often viewed as a prophet like Nostradamus or Cayce. For purposes of this story however, her prophecies at La Salette, Lourdes, and during the six apparitions at Fatima, Portugal in 1917 rank among the most accurate and dramatic concerning the 20th century.

Mary, like Nostradamus and Cayce, used the style of prophecy called apocalyptic literature for her vision of the future which meant it was composed during politically difficult times, it was futuristic, visions were used to communicate truth, they drew a sharp contrast between good and evil, and they focused more on nations than individuals.

La Salette, France 1846

The Lady appeared 19 September 1846 to two peasant children, Melanie Calvat and Maxime Giraud, ages 14 and 11, at La Salette, France and delivered a prophetic warning of a terrible future.

Excerpts from Her message include:

“France, Italy, Spain and England will be at war. Blood will flow on the streets. Frenchmen will fight Frenchmen and Italian against Italian and in the end will come a war that will be terrible.”

“Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of the Antichrist. The demons allied to the Antichrist will operate on Earth and in the sky and Humanity will become worse.”

“Fight, Sons of Light, you small number who see, because the time of times, the final end, is near.”

“The time is at hand. The abyss is opening: the king of darkness is watching, the beast is watching with his subjects, who will proclaim him ‘savior of the world,’”

“Melanie, what I am about to tell you know will not always be a secret. You may make it public in 1858. The priests, ministers of my son, the priests by their wicked lives, by their irreverence and their impiety in the celebration of the holy mysteries, by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures, the priests have become cesspools of impurity.”



Lourdes, France 1858

Ironically, in the year 1858 at Lourdes, France the Lady made an appearance to Bernadette Soubrious, her sister Marie, and a friend Pancho. She would appear to Bernadette eighteen times over the next six months and offered a set of five prophecies during the course of the apparitions.

Bernadette was on her deathbed in 1879, the first year of the Age of Michael, and was asked to write a letter to the Pope reviewing the five prophecies earlier disclosed. Of the five, the third one stated that in the 1930’s a terrible evil would awaken in Germany, and the Lady painted a horrifying picture of a war that would envelop most of the nations of the world.



Fatima, Portugal 1917

The record of Fatima is far more complete. World events at the time of the apparitions were in turmoil. Most of the world was still caught up in World War I that had raged for three years. In Russia a revolution had just brought down the 1,000 years reign of the Tsars. The once mighty German Empire was on the brink of a devastating defeat. Socialism and Communism were behind riots and revolutions engulfing Europe and the world.

As for Fatima, there is a great deal of misunderstanding concerning the apparitions. This time three children, Lucia dos Santos, Jacinta Marto, and her brother Francisco witnessed six apparitions of the Lady, after they were visited three times by an angel to prepare them.

By the time of the sixth appearance, news of the apparitions was so widespread over 70,000 flocked to the location to witness a miracle promised by the Lady. Believers and unbelievers alike were stunned when rains that had fallen all the previous night stopped as Lucia pointed to the sky.

The sun appeared, and for the next 10-15 minutes the sun danced, zigzagged and even fell toward the earth convincing all present it was the end of the world. When the sun returned to its normal position the shocked crowd noticed that their drenched clothes and the ground were now dry.

Like Bernadette of Lourdes, Lucia gave an account of the prophecies at the time they were made in 1917 and later made a written record of the revelations when she was gravely ill. Lucia, however, recovered fully.

During the apparition on July 13, 1917, the Lady gave a secret prophecy in three parts to the children of Fatima. Lucia, the oldest of the children, said something about the secrets to church authorities at the time. However, the details of the secrets were to be given later to all the faithful by Lucia and Church authorities.

As told to them by the Lady during the first apparitions, the two younger children would be taken to heaven at an early age. Within three years both children were dead. However, Lucia, the older peasant girl receiving the prophecies, remained alive throughout the 20th Century to continue her efforts to get people to listen to the message of the Lady.

On her deathbed in 1920 Jacinta told Mother Godinho: “There is a secret of Heaven and one of earth, and the latter is terrifying. It will seem as though it were already the end of the world. And in this cataclysm everything will be separated from the sky, which will turn white as snow.”

Because of the intense international awareness of the Fatima events Lucia became a Carmelite nun and remained secured from the public eye for the rest of her career.

The Fatima Secret

The prophetic secrets revealed in July 1917 by Our Lady to Lucia at Fatima included three parts, the vision of hell, the consecration of Russia, and the corruption of the church. All were told to church officials after the apparitions in 1917.

The second part of the prophecy was a request to consecrate Russia, while the third part was a warning of the tragic consequences if the request was not fulfilled. The request was Russia be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the Pope, together with all the Catholic bishops of the world.

Such ceremonies of consecration were a well-established Church tradition and the sanctifying effect would be beneficial to Russia, on the verge of falling to Communism in 1917, the year of the Russian revolution. In 1917 World War I was also underway.

Did the Church recognize the threat from Communism when the Lady gave her warning? There is no question that Church officials understood the danger from the moment the Communist movement became a viable force in 1848, long before Communism actually took control of any nation.

About the same time Marx and Engels were issuing the Communist Manifesto and the worldwide call for revolution and atheism in 1848 the Holy Mother Mary began a series of miraculous apparitions revealing that Communism was linked to Satan and evil was beginning its reign of darkness on earth.

We can better understand the depth of the concern of the Vatican when we consider the following series of comments on the matter from Popes over the years.

Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) issues Qui Pluribus about the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx.

“that infamous doctrine of Communism utterly opposed to the natural law itself, the adoption of which would completely destroy all men’s rights, their property and fortune, and even human society itself.”

Pope Pius X (1903-1914) issues E Supremi, commenting on Communism.

“We felt a sort of terror considering the disastrous conditions of humanity at the present hour. Can we ignore such a profound and grave evil, which is at this moment much more than in the past is working away at its very marrow and leading it to ruin?…Truly whoever ponders these things must necessarily and firmly fear whether such a perversion of minds is not the sign of announcing, and the beginning of the last times.”

Pope Pius XI (1922-1939) commenting on Communism in Quas Primas, 1925.

“With God and Jesus Christ excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man,…the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that society is tottering to its ruin because it no longer has a secure and solid foundation.”

Msgr. Eugenio Pacellu, Secretary of State of the Vatican under Pius XI, soon would become Pope Pius XII.

“I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucia of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her Soul… I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past.

“A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, “Where have they taken Him?”

Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) after the end of World War II made the following observations in letters.

“We are overwhelmed with sadness and anguish, seeing that the wickedness of perverse men has reached a degree of impiety that is unbelievable and absolutely unknown in other times.” (Letter of February 11, 1949)

“Venerable brethren, you are well aware that almost the whole human race is today allowing itself to be drawn into two opposing camps, for Christ or against Christ. The human race is involved today in a supreme crisis, which will issue in its salvation by Christ, or in its destruction.”

(Evangeli Praecones, 1951)

If the consecration was performed as requested, the Lady promised, “a period of peace will be granted to the world.” But if it is not done, warns the message, among other things, “a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI.”

The Lady went on to explain “if not, she (Russia) 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.”

During the revelations Our Lady said she would return to Lucia later and tell her when the Lord wanted the consecration of Russia to take place, and she did return in 1929 with the request. At that time a message was sent to church officials with her request and warning if it was not acted upon.

Further delays by the Vatican in taking action on the consecration of Russia seemed to upset the supernatural forces. On 19 August 1931 Our Lord Himself appeared to Sister Lucia and expressed His displeasure at the delays saying, “make it known to My ministers that, given they follow the example of the King of France in delaying My command, they will follow him also into misfortune.”

This grave warning from the Lord makes reference to the King of France. In that case a warning was given to the King by St. Margaret Mary Alocque, telling him to consecrate his nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The king chose to ignore the warning and thus condemned his dynasty and throne to the horrors of revolution, chaos and the guillotine.

Also in 1939 the Lady again appeared to Lucia and told her all the bishops of Portugal should consecrate that nation to her. If they did, Portugal would be protected from being swept up into the Communist revolutions raging across Europe and the Spanish Civil War next door. She said a Catholic would come forward to lead a counter-revolution in Portugal and the conversion of the country, and this would protect it in World War II.

Unlike Rome, the Portugal bishops acted immediately to consecrate Portugal to the Holy Mother and a new president was elected, Antonio Salazar, committed to establishing the Catholic faith. Soon over 90 percent of the citizens of the nation were Catholic and Portugal miraculously avoided the Communist and Spanish warfare surrounding it.

On 6 February 1939 Sister Lucia wrote to the Bishop of Portugal saying the Lady told her war was imminent but that Portugal would be spared because of the consecration. Seven months later World War II erupted. Lucia also wrote to Pope Pius XII on 2 December 1940 saying Portugal was protected from World War II because it was consecrated to the Lady.

Sister Lucia was then instructed by the church to write down the message for the Pope, and she delivered her explanation of parts one and two in 1941, and part three in 1944. Regarding the third part, she said it was not to be revealed to the world before 1960.

Sister Lucia was the sole surviving witness to the visitations and she continued to have visitations throughout her life. The official transcript of her account of the three parts of the secret was written to the Holy Father in response to questions submitted to her by representatives of the Vatican.

This English translation of her response detailing the first two parts of the secret given to the children in 1917 was written 31 August 1941. The Bishop of Leiria (Fatima) kept this until 1943, when Pope Pius XII revealed them through the agency of Cardinal Schister. The letter from Lucia read:

“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. The letter is from Father Jose Bernardo Goncalves, 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 favorable opportunity.

“In my second account I have already described in detail the doubt which tormented me from 13 June to 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 (World War I): 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.”

As noted in the text of the second secret, Our Lady said she would come to Lucia later to ask for the Consecration of Russia. True to her word, Our Lady appeared to Lucia on 13 June 1929 at Tuy, Spain when in a great and sublime vision representing the Holy Trinity, she announced that ”the moment has come for God to ask the Holy Father to make, in union with all the bishops of the world, the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart. By this means, He promises to save Russia.”

In the second part of the secret she said a worse war would break out during the reign of Pope Pius XI. When the prophecy was delivered in 1917 World War I was underway. It was not until 1922 that Pius XI became Pope and he reigned until 1939, the year Hitler invaded Poland and World War II was declared.

By year-end Europe erupted in war in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Bohemia, and Moravia, while Hitler renounced a pact with England and England declared war on Germany. It was also the fateful year a non-aggression pact was concluded between Hitler and Stalin.

A Great Sign by God

Also in the second part of the secret the Lady made reference to “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,”

The following is an extract from Albert Speer’s book, Inside the Third Reich. Speer was personal architect and confidant to Adolf Hitler. It was an account of the day Hitler and Stalin agreed to a secret non-aggression pact, and the subsequent announcement that stunned the world

"In the course of the night we stood on the terrace of the Berghof with Hitler and marveled at the rare natural spectacle. Northern lights of unusual intensity threw red light on the legend-haunted Untersberg across the valley, while the sky above shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow. The last act of Gotterdammerung could not have been more effectively staged. The same red light bathed our face and our hands. The display produced a curiously pensive mood among us. Abruptly turning to one of his military adjutants, Hitler said: “Looks like a great deal of blood. This time we won’t bring it off without violence.”

According to a report published at the time by the German Volkischer Beobachter of August 23, “Tuesday morning [August 22], starting about 2:45 A.M., a very impressive display of northern lights could be seen in the northwestern and northern sky from Sternberg Observatory.” It was the very day a deal had been struck between the twin pillars of evil, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.

Failure to Consecrate Russia

The third and final part of the secret was written in a separate letter to the Holy Father dated 3 January 1944. Lucia said the Lady requested that the letter not be shared with the world until 1960. All three messages were told to the Vatican, and the letters were sent to the Vatican as noted.

Once Sister Lucia asked the Lord why He would not convert Russia without the Holy Father consecrating the nation to His Mother’s Immaculate Heart. Our Lord relied “Because I want My whole Church to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary so that it may extend its cult later and put devotion of the Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to My Sacred Heart.”

As the years moved on there was still no action by Rome as the prophecies concerning Russia and the terrible world war came true. The request by the Lady for the consecration of Russia continued to be one of the most controversial aspects of the Fatima messages. The explicit instruction that the Holy Father must be joined by all of the bishops of the world on the same day and at the same time in their respective dioceses was quite encompassing.

The ongoing visitations to Sister Lucia made it clear that the consecration must follow the precise instructions and that any consecration by the Pope must be for Russia and Russia alone, as the sole object of this public act of obedience and prayer.

Pope Pius XII held a consecration of the world in 1942, in the midst of World War II, which included substantial involvement of the bishops. It was imperfect in terms of being dedicated solely to Russia and not involving all bishops of the world, Sister Lucia was told by the Lady, but the imperfect act of obedience did hasten the end of World War II and spare the lives of millions of souls. Unfortunately, 60 million deaths were incurred in the war as a result of the inaction and imperfect response.

Writing to Father Goncalves on 4 May 1943 Sister Lucia told him of another visit from Our Lord. She said, “because of the act of consecration by His Holiness, He promises that the war will end shortly. But since it was incomplete, the conversion of Russia will be postponed.”

Pope Pius XII again attempted to satisfy the consecration requirement when he issued an Apostolic letter Sacro Vergente Anno that specifically consecrated the peoples of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But this time there was no worldwide involvement of the bishops, yet another incomplete act.

The Lady appeared to Lucia again in 1952 with the following message for the Pope. “Make it known to the Holy Father that I am always awaiting the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart. Without the Consecration, Russia will not be able to convert, nor will the world have peace.”

At the further urging of the Lady Sister Lucia wrote again on 22 May 1958 to Church authorities and the warning grew more serious. This letter was sent to Father Agostino Fuentes to be given to the Holy Father.

“Father, Our Lady is displeased because nobody took heed of Her Message of 1917. Neither the good nor the wicked took heed. The good follow their ways without worrying, and do not follow the Celestial Norms; the wicked in the wide way of perdition, do not consider at all the threatened punishments.

“Believe it, Father, God will punish the world very soon. The punishment will be material, and imagine, Father, how many souls will fall in hell, if we do not pray and do no penance. This is the cause of Our Lady’s Sadness.

“Father, tell everyone that many times Our Lady has told me: “That many nations will disappear from the face of the earth. Nations without God will be the scourge chosen by Him to punish mankind, if we will not obtain the grace of conversion through prayer and the SS Sacraments.”

“Say, Father, that the devil is starting the decisive battle against Our Lady because what afflicts the Immaculate Heart of Mary and Jesus is the fall of Religious and Priestly souls. The devil knows that the Religious ones and the Priests, neglecting their sublime Vocation, drag several souls to hell. We are just in time to keep back the punishment from the Sky. We have at our disposal two very effective means: Prayer and Sacrifice. The devil does the utmost to distract us and take away the taste of Prayer. We will either save ourselves or be damned.

“However, Father, it is necessary to tell the people: that they cannot stay on hoping in a call to Prayer and to Penance from the Supreme Pontiff, or the Bishops, or the Priests, or from the Superior Generals. It is already time that everyone, of their own initiative, do Virtuous Deeds, and reform their lives according to the calls of our SS. Lady. The devil wants to take possession of the Consecrated Souls; it works to corrupt them, to induce others to the final impenitence; he uses all subtleties, even suggesting to postpone the religious life! Thereby sterility arises in the inner life and coldness in the laity concerning the renunciation of pleasures and the entire immolation to God.

“Remember, Father, that tho events contributed in sanctifying Jacinta and Francesco: the affliction of Our Lady and the vision of hell. Our Lady is situated between two swords; on one hand she sees mankind stubborn and indifferent to the threatened punishments; on the other, she sees us as we tread over the Blessed Sacraments and despise the punishment that approaches, remaining unbelieving, sensuals, and materialists.



“Our Lady has explicitly said: “We approach the last days”, and repeated it to me three times. First she affirmed that the devil has given the decisive battle from which one of the two will come out victorious or defeated: We are either with God or we are with the devil. The second time she repeated to me that the last remedies given to the world are: The Blessed Rosary and the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

“The third time, she told me: “that, exhausted the other means despised by men, she offers us tremulously the last sheet-anchor: the SS. Virgin in person, Her numerous apparitions, Her Tears, Messages of clairvoyants scattered in all the parts of the world”, and Our Lady still said: “that, if we do not listen to Her and continue in the wrong, we will never be forgiven.”

“It is urgent, Father, that we realize this bad reality. We do not want to fill the souls with fear, but it is only an urgent call, because since the SS. Virgin has given great effectiveness to the Holy Rosary, there is no problem whether material or spiritual, national or international, that cannot be resolved with the Blessed Rosary and with our sacrifices. Said with love and devotion, it will comfort Mary, wiping many tears from her Blessed Heart.”

Clearly the revelations implied that if the church did not take actions on earth, then supernatural actions would result in order to stop the earth from being engulfed with evil under the rule of Satan. After the imperfect attempt in 1942 to meet the request, the 1944 letter from Lucia was placed in the Secret Archives of the Holy Office in Rome in 1957.

Pope John XXIII was shown the letter 17 August 1959, and after some hesitation, concluded: “We will wait. I shall pray. I shall let you know what I decide.” In fact he decided not to reveal the secret and returned it to the archives. Pope Paul VI read the letter 27 March 1965 and again returned it to the archives deciding not to publish it.



The Third Part of the Secret

Finally, 1960 came and the letter containing the third part of the secret was opened by Pope John XXIII and several Cardinals, as instructed by the Lady, but it was not revealed to the public. Though not publicly released, Pope John XXIII leaked the third part of the Fatima secret to certain Roman Catholic officials and world leaders of the USA, USSR, and Britain.

On 15 October 1963 the German Journal News Europe published the alleged text of that part of the secret which was not verified but was widely accepted as being genuine. According to the German Journal the third part of the 1917 prophecy read:

“Have no fear, little one, I am the Mother of God who speaks to you and asks you to publish the message I am going to give you to the whole world. You will find strong resistance while you do so. Listen well and pay attention to what I tell you.

“Men must be set on the right road once more. With supplicant humility, men must seek forgiveness for sins committed already and for sins, which will be committed. You wish me to give you a sign, so that everyone will accept My Words, which I am saying through you, to the human race. I have seen the Prodigy of the Sun and all believers, unbelievers, peasants, countrymen, wise men, journalists, laics and priests, all have seen it. And now I proclaim in my name: A great punishment shall fall on the entire human race, not today and not tomorrow, but in the second half of the 20th century! I have already revealed to the children Melanie and Maximine at La Salette {1846], and today I repeat it to you for the human race has sinned and has trampled down the Gift which I have made. In no part of the world is life in order, Satan rules in the highest position, laying down how things should be done. He will effectually succeed in bringing his influence right up to the top of the Church; succeed in seducing the spirits of the great scientists who invent the arms. And if humanity opposes me I shall be obliged to free the arm of My Son. Now I see that God will punish man with a severity that has not been used since the Flood.

“The time of times will come and everything will come to an end if humanity is not converted, and if things remain as they are now or get worse, the great and powerful men will perish just as will the small and weak.



“For the Church, too, the time of its greatest trial will come. Cardinals will oppose cardinals and bishops against bishops. Satan will march in there midst and there will be great changes at Rome. What is rotten will fall, never to rise again. The Church will be darkened and the world will shake with terror. The time will come when no king, emperor, cardinal or bishop will await Him who will, however, come, but in order to punish according to the designs of my Father.

“A Great War will break out in the second half of the 20th century. Fire and smoke will fall from heaven, and waters of the oceans will become vapors, the scum will arise in a confused manner, and everything will sink down. Millions and millions of men will perish while this is going on and those who survive will envy the dead. The unexpected will follow in every part of the world, anxiety, pain and misery in every country. Have I seen it? The time is getting ever nearer and the abyss is getting wider without hope. The good will perish with the bad, the great with the small, the Heads of the Church and their faithful, and the rulers with their people. There will be death everywhere as a result of the mistakes of the unfeeling and the partisans of Satan, but when those who survive all these happenings are still alive, they will proclaim God once again and His Glory, and will serve Him as in the time when the world was not so perverted.

“Go my little one and proclaim it. For that purpose I shall always be at your side to help you.”

On 12 May 1982 Sister Lucia sent the Holy Father another letter interpreting the third part of the secret of Fatima:

“The third part of the secret refers to Our Lady’s words: “If not (Russia) 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.

“The third part of the secret is a symbolic revelation, referring to this part of the Message, conditioned by whether we accept or not what the Message itself asks of us: “If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, etc.

“Since we did not heed this appeal of the Message, we see that it has been fulfilled, Russia has invaded the world with her errors. And if we have not yet seen the complete fulfillment of the final part of this prophecy, we are going towards it little by little with great strides. If we do not reject the path of sin, hatred, revenge, injustice, violations of the rights of the human person, immorality and violence, etc.

“And let us not say that it is God who is punishing us in this way; on the contrary it is people themselves who are preparing their own punishment. In his kindness God warns us and calls us to the right path, while respecting the freedom he has given us; hence people are responsible.”

Various European newspapers and magazines published another version of the prophecy in 1985 saying the following:

“A great plague will befall mankind in the year 2000. Nowhere in the world will there be order, and Satan will rule the highest places, determining the way of things. Satan will even succeed in asserting himself at the top of the Church.

“He will succeed in seducing the spirits of the great scientists who invent arms, with which it will be possible to destroy a large part of mankind in a few minutes. Satan will have in his power the leaders who command the people and who will incite them to produce enormous quantities of arms.

“God will punish man more thoroughly than with the Flood. There will come the time of all times and the end of all ends. The great and the powerful will perish together with the small and weak.

“Even for the Church, it will be the time of its greatest trial. Cardinals will oppose cardinals, bishops will oppose bishops. Satan will walk in there midst and in Rome there will be great changes. The Church will be darkened and the world will be shaking with terror.

“A huge war will erupt: fire and smoke will fall from the sky. The waters of the ocean will become mist, and the foam will rise to tremendous heights and everyone will drown.

“Millions and millions of men will die from hour to hour. Whoever remains alive will envy the dead. Everywhere one turns one’s glance there will be anguish and misery, ruins in every country.

“The time draws nearer, the abyss widens without hope. The good will perish with the bad, the great with the small, the princes of the church with the faithful, the rulers with their people.

“There will be death everywhere because of the errors committed by the crazed and the followers of Satan, who will then and only then rule the world.

“At the last, those who survive will at every chance newly proclaim God and His Glory and they will serve Him as when the world was no so perverted.”

Lucia had noted in correspondence to the church that the tragic events in the third part of the secret would take place if the church failed to meet the request of the second part, the consecration. In fact, she said if the consecration had taken place when called for in 1917 World War II would not have happened either.

In 1981 during a visit to Fulda, Germany Pope John Paul II was asked about the secret message from Fatima. He answered: “Due to the seriousness of the contents of the Fatima secret, my predecessors in the Throne of Peter have preferred to postpone the publication. Furthermore, it may be enough to the Christian people to know that, if there is a message saying that the oceans will flood whole parts of the globe, and millions of people will die, from a minute to another, it is not really the case to will the publication of this secret message.”

An assassination attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II took place 13 May 1981, sixty-four years to the day from the first Fatima apparition. The gun was aimed at the Pope’s head but the Pope turned to a young girl who was wearing a picture of Our Lady of Fatima and the bullet struck him in the chest, lodging against the heart leaving the Pope on the threshold of death. It was as if the bullet was guided by the Lady saving him from certain death.

The assassination was attempted by a Bulgarian agent named Agca, with close ties to the secret police of the Soviet Communist regime. Ironically, American intelligence authorities had been warned of the assassination attempt months before it took place by former Soviet agents, a warning that was not passed on to the Vatican.

The Pope then requested the Fatima letter and immediately thought of consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He composed a prayer for this Act of Entrustment to be celebrated 7 June 1981 in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, the Solemnity of Pentecost. It was the day chosen to commemorate the 1600th anniversary of the First Council of Constantinople and the 1550th anniversary of the Council of Ephesus.

The Pope’s Entrustment included the following words; “Mother of all individuals and peoples, you know all their sufferings and hopes. In your motherly heart you feel all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, that convulse the world: accept the plea which we make in the Holy Spirit directly to your heart, and embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord those who most await this embrace, and also those whose act of entrustment you too await in a particular way. Take under your motherly protection of the whole human family, which with affectionate love we entrust to you, O Mother. May there dawn for everyone the time of peace and freedom, the time of truth, of justice and of hope.”

While this Act of Entrustment was repeated at Fatima and other locations in 1981 and 1982, it did not include all the Bishops of the world as requested. The Pope decided to more fully address the concerns of the Lady and 25 March 1984 at Saint Peter’s Square in Rome the new message was presented. This time the Pope “convoked” beforehand all the Bishops of the world to join in spiritual union with the Holy Father in delivering this message, entrusting all men and women and all peoples to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He delivered the following message:

“O Mother of all men and women, and of all peoples, you who know all their sufferings and their hopes, you have a mother’s awareness of all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, which afflict the modern world, accept the cry which we, moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to your Heart. Embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord, this human world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you, for we are full of concern for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals and peoples.

“In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals and nations which particularly need to be thus entrusted and consecrated. We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God! Despise not our petitions in our necessities.”

[The Pope then continued more forcibly with more specific references, as if addressing the Message of Fatima and its sorrowful fulfillment.]

“Behold, as we stand before you, Mother of Christ, before your Immaculate Heart, we desire, together with the whole Church, to unite ourselves with the consecration which, for love of us, your Son made of himself to the Father: ‘For their sake’, he said, ‘I consecrate myself that they also may be consecrated in the truth’ (John 17:19). We wish to unite ourselves with our Redeemer in this his consecration for the world and for the human race, which, in his divine Heart, has the power to obtain pardon and to secure reparation.

“The power of this consecration lasts for all time and embraces all individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every evil that the spirit of darkness is able to awaken, and has in fact awakened in our times, in the heart of man and in his history.



“How deeply we feel the need for the consecration of humanity and the world – our modern world – in union with Christ himself! For the redeeming work of Christ must be shared in by the world through the Church. The present Year of the Redemption shows this: the special Jubilee of the whole Church.

“Above all creatures, may you be blessed, you, the Handmaid of the Lord, who in the fullest way obeyed the divine call! Hail to you, who are wholly united to the redeeming consecration of your Son! Mother of the Church! Enlighten the People of God along the paths of faith, hope, and love! Enlighten especially the people whose consecration and entrustment by us you are awaiting. Help us to live in the truth of the consecration of Christ for the entire human family of the modern world.

“In entrusting to you, O Mother, the world, all individuals and peoples, we also entrust to you this very consecration of the world, placing it in your motherly Heart. Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the future!

“From famine and war, deliver us. From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us. From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us. From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us. From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us. From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us. From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us. From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us. From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.

“Accept, O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies. Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin: individual sin and the ‘sin of the world’, sin in all its manifestations. Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love! May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!"

In 1985 Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen the new head of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, and later that year President Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev held their first summit to bring an end to 50 years of cold war. The Chernobyl nuclear meltdown struck the Soviet Union in April of 1986 further weakening the Communist control and alarming the world.

Gorbachev was elected Soviet President 25 May 1986, the first elected leader of Russia since 1917, and he began dismantling the Communist regime. The Soviet parliament approved a political restructuring and new national legislature in 1988.

Destruction of the Communist party accelerated in 1989. On June 4 thousands of Chinese were killed while rioting against their Communist regime, resulting in the resignation of the Chinese leader November 9. The Berlin Wall was reopened November 11, the Czech Parliament voted to end the Communist regime November 30, and a Romanian uprising overthrew their Communist regime December 15.

As 1990 commenced the Yugoslav Communist rule was brought to an end January 3, and finally, the Soviet government ended the Communist rule February 7. The self-destruction of the Communist system rapidly spread throughout the entire Soviet Union and Soviet satellite countries.

On several occasions after the 1982 and 1984 consecrations Sister Lucia was asked if they satisfied the Lady, and each time she said they were still incomplete as Russia was not mentioned by name. This was consistent with every previous statement on the consecrations.

On 13 May 2000 the long-awaited Beautification of Francisco and Jacinta, the Catholic Ceremony of Sainthood, was presided over by the Holy Father at Fatima. The Holy Father delivered a short message including the following:

“According to the divine plan, ‘a woman clothed with the sun’ (Apocalypse 12:1) came down from Heaven to the earth to visit the privileged children of the Father.

"Another portent appeared in Heaven, behold, a great red dragon (Apocalypse 12:3). These words from the first reading of the Mass make us think of the great struggle between good and evil, showing how, when man puts God aside, he cannot achieve happiness, but ends up destroying himself.

“The message of Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the ‘dragon’ whose tail swept down a third of the stars of Heaven, and cast them to the earth (Apocalypse 12:4).”

The first part of his message concerning the “woman clothed in the sun” referred to the appearance of the Lady to the children of Fatima. This was how they described her appearance as well as the fact she performed the Miracle of the Sun to 70,000 observers.

The classical interpretation in Catholic commentaries of the red dragon sweeping one third of the stars from the heavens means one third of the clergy, Cardinals, bishops, and priests fall from their consecrated state and are actually working for the devil.

At the end of the celebratory Mass Cardinal Angelo Sodano read a message on behalf of the Holy Father. This message concerned the third secret of Fatima.

“Brothers and Sisters in the Lord!

“At the conclusion of this solemn celebration, I feel bound to offer our beloved Holy Father Pope John Paul II, on behalf of all present, heartfelt good wishes for his approaching 80th birthday and to thank him for his vital pastoral ministry for the good of all God’s Holy Church; we present the heartfelt wishes of the whole Church.



“On this solemn occasion of his visit to Fatima, His Holiness has directed me to make an announcement to you. As you know, the purpose of his visit to Fatima has been to beatify the two “little shepherds”. Nevertheless he also wishes his pilgrimage to be a renewed gesture of gratitude to Our Lady for her protection during these years of his papacy. This protection seems also to be linked to the so-called third part of the secret of Fatima.

“That text contains a prophetic vision similar to those found in Sacred Scripture, which do not describe photographically the details of future events, but synthesize and compress against a single background facts which extend through time in an unspecified succession and duration. As a result, the text must be interpreted in a symbolic key.

“The vision of Fatima concerns above all the war waged by atheistic systems against the Church and Christians, and it describes the immense suffering endured by the witnesses of the faith in the last century of the second millennium. It is an interminable Way of the Cross led by the Popes of the twentieth century.

“According to the interpretation of the “little shepherds”, which was also confirmed recently by Sister Lucia, “the Bishop clothed in white” who prays for all the faithful is the Pope. As he makes his way with great difficulty towards the Cross amid the corpses of those who were martyred (Bishops, priests, men and women Religious and many lay people), he too falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a hail of gunfire.

“After the assassination attempt of 13 May 1981, it appeared evident that it was a “mother’s hand that guided the bullet’s path”, enabling “the Pope in his throes” to halt “at the threshold of death”. On the occasion of a visit to Rome by the then Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, the Pope decided to give him the bullet which had remained in the jeep after the assassination attempt, so that it might be kept in the shrine. By the Bishop’s decision, the bullet was later set in the crown of the statute of Our Lady of Fatima.

“The successive events of 1989 led, both in the Soviet Union and in a number of countries of Eastern Europe, to the fall of the Communist regimes which promoted atheism. For this too His Holiness offers heartfelt thanks to the Most Holy Virgin. In other parts of the world, however, attacks against the Church and against Christians, with the burden of suffering they bring, tragically continue. Even if the events to which the third part of the secret of Fatima refers now seem part of the past, Our Lady’s call to conversion and penance, issued at the start of the twentieth century, remains timely and urgent today. The Lady of the message seems to read the signs of the times – the signs of our time – with special insight. The insistent invitation of Mary Most Holy to penance is nothing but the manifestation of her maternal concern for the fate of the human family, in need of conversion and forgiveness.”

“In order that the faithful may better receive the message of Our Lady of Fatima, the Pope has charged the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with making public the third part of the secret, after the preparation of an appropriate commentary.

“Brothers and sisters, let us thank Our Lady of Fatima for her protection. To her maternal intercession let us entrust the Church of the Third Millennium. Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Santa Dei Genetrix! Intercede pro Ecclesia. Intercede pro Papa nostro Ionne Paulo II. Amen.”

After the ceremony of Beautification the following text was the official Vatican version of the third secret of Fatima as revealed to the three children in 1917 and contained in the letter from Sister Lucia of 3 January 1944.

“The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima, on 13 July 1917.

“I write in obedience to you, my God, who commanded me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine.

“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 splendor 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 is 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.”

For seventy-two years since the apparitions of Fatima Sister Lucia had worked on behalf of the Lady to awaken the world. Her mission was nearly complete. So why did the Church not mention Russia by name?

No explanation has been given by the Vatican of the discrepancies between the 1963 and 1985 versions of the third secret, and how they compare to the official versions of the 1944 letter. Nor has any explanation been offered for the discrepancies regarding the actual text of the third secret.

Sister Lucia remained silent about these issues, forbidden by the Vatican from giving interviews or being in contact even with old friends, until her death in 2005. Less than two months later the Venerable Pope John Paul II, whose life and near death were so closely tied to Fatima and Lucia, also died.

Why no consecration of Russia?

Perhaps there are other explanations for this refusal by the Church to allow the consecration to Russia. From the middle of the 19th century the Roman Catholic Church was outspoken in their opposition to movements such as Communism. Freemasons were of equal concern.

As early as 25 February 1861 Cardinal Cretineau Joly issued a paper for Pope Gregory XVI called The Roman Church and Revolution disclosing plotting by Freemasons and Communists against the Church.

Over the subsequent years there were more warnings and condemnations issued by the Vatican against these movements than any other single subject in Church history.

Of course this was not done without reason as the Principles of Freemasonry of 1789 which inspired the French Revolution and the Communist Manifesto of 1848 both called for worldwide revolution.

Pope Leo XIII in 1884 issued his Humanum Genus that said Communists, socialists and Freemasons were working in common and one of their primary institutional targets was the Roman Catholic Church.

After the Bolsheviks successfully took control of the Soviet Union in 1920 Lenin announced a new Communist goal of infiltrating the Catholic Church and the Vatican. Congressional testimony The Lady went on to explain “if not, she (Russia) 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.”

During the revelations Our Lady said she would return to Lucia later and tell her when the Lord wanted the consecration of Russia to take place, and she did return in 1929 with the request. At that time a message was sent to church officials with her request and warning if it was not acted upon.

Further delays by the Vatican in taking action on the consecration of Russia seemed to upset the supernatural forces. On 19 August 1931 Our Lord Himself appeared to Sister Lucia and expressed His displeasure at the delays saying, “make it known to My ministers that, given they follow the example of the King of France in delaying My command, they will follow him also into misfortune.”

This grave warning from the Lord makes reference to the King of France. In that case a warning was given to the King by St. Margaret Mary Alocque, telling him to consecrate his nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The king chose to ignore the warning and thus condemned his dynasty and throne to the horrors of revolution, chaos and the guillotine.

Also in 1939 the Lady again appeared to Lucia and told her all the bishops of Portugal should consecrate that nation to her. If they did, Portugal would be protected from being swept up into the Communist revolutions raging across Europe and the Spanish Civil War next door. She said a Catholic would come forward to lead a counter-revolution in Portugal and the conversion of the country, and this would protect it in World War II.

Unlike Rome, the Portugal bishops acted immediately to consecrate Portugal to the Holy Mother and a new president was elected, Antonio Salazar, committed to establishing the Catholic faith. Soon over 90 percent of the citizens of the nation were Catholic and Portugal miraculously avoided the Communist and Spanish warfare surrounding it.

On 6 February 1939 Sister Lucia wrote to the Bishop of Portugal saying the Lady told her war was imminent but that Portugal would be spared because of the consecration. Seven months later World War II erupted. Lucia also wrote to Pope Pius XII on 2 December 1940 saying Portugal was protected from World War II because it was consecrated to the Lady.

Sister Lucia was then instructed by the church to write down the message for the Pope, and she delivered her explanation of parts one and two in 1941, and part three in 1944. Regarding the third part, she said it was not to be revealed to the world before 1960.

Sister Lucia was the sole surviving witness to the visitations and she continued to have visitations throughout her life. The official transcript of her account of the three parts of the secret was written to the Holy Father in response to questions submitted to her by representatives of the Vatican.

This English translation of her response detailing the first two parts of the secret given to the children in 1917 was written 31 August 1941. The Bishop of Leiria (Fatima) kept this until 1943, when Pope Pius XII revealed them through the agency of Cardinal Schister. The letter from Lucia read:

“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. The letter is from Father Jose Bernardo Goncalves, 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 favorable opportunity.

“In my second account I have already described in detail the doubt which tormented me from 13 June to 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 (World War I): 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.”

As noted in the text of the second secret, Our Lady said she would come to Lucia later to ask for the Consecration of Russia. True to her word, Our Lady appeared to Lucia on 13 June 1929 at Tuy, Spain when in a great and sublime vision representing the Holy Trinity, she announced that ”the moment has come for God to ask the Holy Father to make, in union with all the bishops of the world, the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart. By this means, He promises to save Russia.”

In the second part of the secret she said a worse war would break out during the reign of Pope Pius XI. When the prophecy was delivered in 1917 World War I was underway. It was not until 1922 that Pius XI became Pope and he reigned until 1939, the year Hitler invaded Poland and World War II was declared.

By year-end Europe erupted in war in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Bohemia, and Moravia, while Hitler renounced a pact with England and England declared war on Germany. It was also the fateful year a non-aggression pact was concluded between Hitler and Stalin.

A Great Sign by God

Also in the second part of the secret the Lady made reference to “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,”

The following is an extract from Albert Speer’s book, Inside the Third Reich. Speer was personal architect and confidant to Adolf Hitler. It was an account of the day Hitler and Stalin agreed to a secret non-aggression pact, and the subsequent announcement that stunned the world

"In the course of the night we stood on the terrace of the Berghof with Hitler and marveled at the rare natural spectacle. Northern lights of unusual intensity threw red light on the legend-haunted Untersberg across the valley, while the sky above shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow. The last act of Gotterdammerung could not have been more effectively staged. The same red light bathed our face and our hands. The display produced a curiously pensive mood among us. Abruptly turning to one of his military adjutants, Hitler said: “Looks like a great deal of blood. This time we won’t bring it off without violence.”

According to a report published at the time by the German Volkischer Beobachter of August 23, “Tuesday morning [August 22], starting about 2:45 A.M., a very impressive display of northern lights could be seen in the northwestern and northern sky from Sternberg Observatory.” It was the very day a deal had been struck between the twin pillars of evil, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.

Failure to Consecrate Russia

The third and final part of the secret was written in a separate letter to the Holy Father dated 3 January 1944. Lucia said the Lady requested that the letter not be shared with the world until 1960. All three messages were told to the Vatican, and the letters were sent to the Vatican as noted.

Once Sister Lucia asked the Lord why He would not convert Russia without the Holy Father consecrating the nation to His Mother’s Immaculate Heart. Our Lord relied “Because I want My whole Church to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary so that it may extend its cult later and put devotion of the Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to My Sacred Heart.”

As the years moved on there was still no action by Rome as the prophecies concerning Russia and the terrible world war came true. The request by the Lady for the consecration of Russia continued to be one of the most controversial aspects of the Fatima messages. The explicit instruction that the Holy Father must be joined by all of the bishops of the world on the same day and at the same time in their respective dioceses was quite encompassing.

The ongoing visitations to Sister Lucia made it clear that the consecration must follow the precise instructions and that any consecration by the Pope must be for Russia and Russia alone, as the sole object of this public act of obedience and prayer.

Pope Pius XII held a consecration of the world in 1942, in the midst of World War II, which included substantial involvement of the bishops. It was imperfect in terms of being dedicated solely to Russia and not involving all bishops of the world, Sister Lucia was told by the Lady, but the imperfect act of obedience did hasten the end of World War II and spare the lives of millions of souls. Unfortunately, 60 million deaths were incurred in the war as a result of the inaction and imperfect response.

Writing to Father Goncalves on 4 May 1943 Sister Lucia told him of another visit from Our Lord. She said, “because of the act of consecration by His Holiness, He promises that the war will end shortly. But since it was incomplete, the conversion of Russia will be postponed.”

Pope Pius XII again attempted to satisfy the consecration requirement when he issued an Apostolic letter Sacro Vergente Anno that specifically consecrated the peoples of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But this time there was no worldwide involvement of the bishops, yet another incomplete act.

The Lady appeared to Lucia again in 1952 with the following message for the Pope. “Make it known to the Holy Father that I am always awaiting the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart. Without the Consecration, Russia will not be able to convert, nor will the world have peace.”

At the further urging of the Lady Sister Lucia wrote again on 22 May 1958 to Church authorities and the warning grew more serious. This letter was sent to Father Agostino Fuentes to be given to the Holy Father.

“Father, Our Lady is displeased because nobody took heed of Her Message of 1917. Neither the good nor the wicked took heed. The good follow their ways without worrying, and do not follow the Celestial Norms; the wicked in the wide way of perdition, do not consider at all the threatened punishments.

“Believe it, Father, God will punish the world very soon. The punishment will be material, and imagine, Father, how many souls will fall in hell, if we do not pray and do no penance. This is the cause of Our Lady’s Sadness.

“Father, tell everyone that many times Our Lady has told me: “That many nations will disappear from the face of the earth. Nations without God will be the scourge chosen by Him to punish mankind, if we will not obtain the grace of conversion through prayer and the SS Sacraments.”

“Say, Father, that the devil is starting the decisive battle against Our Lady because what afflicts the Immaculate Heart of Mary and Jesus is the fall of Religious and Priestly souls. The devil knows that the Religious ones and the Priests, neglecting their sublime Vocation, drag several souls to hell. We are just in time to keep back the punishment from the Sky. We have at our disposal two very effective means: Prayer and Sacrifice. The devil does the utmost to distract us and take away the taste of Prayer. We will either save ourselves or be damned.

“However, Father, it is necessary to tell the people: that they cannot stay on hoping in a call to Prayer and to Penance from the Supreme Pontiff, or the Bishops, or the Priests, or from the Superior Generals. It is already time that everyone, of their own initiative, do Virtuous Deeds, and reform their lives according to the calls of our SS. Lady. The devil wants to take possession of the Consecrated Souls; it works to corrupt them, to induce others to the final impenitence; he uses all subtleties, even suggesting to postpone the religious life! Thereby sterility arises in the inner life and coldness in the laity concerning the renunciation of pleasures and the entire immolation to God.

“Remember, Father, that tho events contributed in sanctifying Jacinta and Francesco: the affliction of Our Lady and the vision of hell. Our Lady is situated between two swords; on one hand she sees mankind stubborn and indifferent to the threatened punishments; on the other, she sees us as we tread over the Blessed Sacraments and despise the punishment that approaches, remaining unbelieving, sensuals, and materialists.




“Our Lady has explicitly said: “We approach the last days”, and repeated it to me three times. First she affirmed that the devil has given the decisive battle from which one of the two will come out victorious or defeated: We are either with God or we are with the devil. The second time she repeated to me that the last remedies given to the world are: The Blessed Rosary and the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

“The third time, she told me: “that, exhausted the other means despised by men, she offers us tremulously the last sheet-anchor: the SS. Virgin in person, Her numerous apparitions, Her Tears, Messages of clairvoyants scattered in all the parts of the world”, and Our Lady still said: “that, if we do not listen to Her and continue in the wrong, we will never be forgiven.”

“It is urgent, Father, that we realize this bad reality. We do not want to fill the souls with fear, but it is only an urgent call, because since the SS. Virgin has given great effectiveness to the Holy Rosary, there is no problem whether material or spiritual, national or international, that cannot be resolved with the Blessed Rosary and with our sacrifices. Said with love and devotion, it will comfort Mary, wiping many tears from her Blessed Heart.”

Clearly the revelations implied that if the church did not take actions on earth, then supernatural actions would result in order to stop the earth from being engulfed with evil under the rule of Satan. After the imperfect attempt in 1942 to meet the request, the 1944 letter from Lucia was placed in the Secret Archives of the Holy Office in Rome in 1957.

Pope John XXIII was shown the letter 17 August 1959, and after some hesitation, concluded: “We will wait. I shall pray. I shall let you know what I decide.” In fact he decided not to reveal the secret and returned it to the archives. Pope Paul VI read the letter 27 March 1965 and again returned it to the archives deciding not to publish it.




The Third Part of the Secret

Finally, 1960 came and the letter containing the third part of the secret was opened by Pope John XXIII and several Cardinals, as instructed by the Lady, but it was not revealed to the public. Though not publicly released, Pope John XXIII leaked the third part of the Fatima secret to certain Roman Catholic officials and world leaders of the USA, USSR, and Britain.

On 15 October 1963 the German Journal News Europe published the alleged text of that part of the secret which was not verified but was widely accepted as being genuine. According to the German Journal the third part of the 1917 prophecy read:

“Have no fear, little one, I am the Mother of God who speaks to you and asks you to publish the message I am going to give you to the whole world. You will find strong resistance while you do so. Listen well and pay attention to what I tell you.

“Men must be set on the right road once more. With supplicant humility, men must seek forgiveness for sins committed already and for sins, which will be committed. You wish me to give you a sign, so that everyone will accept My Words, which I am saying through you, to the human race. I have seen the Prodigy of the Sun and all believers, unbelievers, peasants, countrymen, wise men, journalists, laics and priests, all have seen it. And now I proclaim in my name: A great punishment shall fall on the entire human race, not today and not tomorrow, but in the second half of the 20th century! I have already revealed to the children Melanie and Maximine at La Salette {1846], and today I repeat it to you for the human race has sinned and has trampled down the Gift which I have made. In no part of the world is life in order, Satan rules in the highest position, laying down how things should be done. He will effectually succeed in bringing his influence right up to the top of the Church; succeed in seducing the spirits of the great scientists who invent the arms. And if humanity opposes me I shall be obliged to free the arm of My Son. Now I see that God will punish man with a severity that has not been used since the Flood.

“The time of times will come and everything will come to an end if humanity is not converted, and if things remain as they are now or get worse, the great and powerful men will perish just as will the small and weak.




“For the Church, too, the time of its greatest trial will come. Cardinals will oppose cardinals and bishops against bishops. Satan will march in there midst and there will be great changes at Rome. What is rotten will fall, never to rise again. The Church will be darkened and the world will shake with terror. The time will come when no king, emperor, cardinal or bishop will await Him who will, however, come, but in order to punish according to the designs of my Father.

“A Great War will break out in the second half of the 20th century. Fire and smoke will fall from heaven, and waters of the oceans will become vapors, the scum will arise in a confused manner, and everything will sink down. Millions and millions of men will perish while this is going on and those who survive will envy the dead. The unexpected will follow in every part of the world, anxiety, pain and misery in every country. Have I seen it? The time is getting ever nearer and the abyss is getting wider without hope. The good will perish with the bad, the great with the small, the Heads of the Church and their faithful, and the rulers with their people. There will be death everywhere as a result of the mistakes of the unfeeling and the partisans of Satan, but when those who survive all these happenings are still alive, they will proclaim God once again and His Glory, and will serve Him as in the time when the world was not so perverted.

“Go my little one and proclaim it. For that purpose I shall always be at your side to help you.”

On 12 May 1982 Sister Lucia sent the Holy Father another letter interpreting the third part of the secret of Fatima:

“The third part of the secret refers to Our Lady’s words: “If not (Russia) 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.

“The third part of the secret is a symbolic revelation, referring to this part of the Message, conditioned by whether we accept or not what the Message itself asks of us: “If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, etc.

“Since we did not heed this appeal of the Message, we see that it has been fulfilled, Russia has invaded the world with her errors. And if we have not yet seen the complete fulfillment of the final part of this prophecy, we are going towards it little by little with great strides. If we do not reject the path of sin, hatred, revenge, injustice, violations of the rights of the human person, immorality and violence, etc.

“And let us not say that it is God who is punishing us in this way; on the contrary it is people themselves who are preparing their own punishment. In his kindness God warns us and calls us to the right path, while respecting the freedom he has given us; hence people are responsible.”

Various European newspapers and magazines published another version of the prophecy in 1985 saying the following:

“A great plague will befall mankind in the year 2000. Nowhere in the world will there be order, and Satan will rule the highest places, determining the way of things. Satan will even succeed in asserting himself at the top of the Church.

“He will succeed in seducing the spirits of the great scientists who invent arms, with which it will be possible to destroy a large part of mankind in a few minutes. Satan will have in his power the leaders who command the people and who will incite them to produce enormous quantities of arms.

“God will punish man more thoroughly than with the Flood. There will come the time of all times and the end of all ends. The great and the powerful will perish together with the small and weak.

“Even for the Church, it will be the time of its greatest trial. Cardinals will oppose cardinals, bishops will oppose bishops. Satan will walk in there midst and in Rome there will be great changes. The Church will be darkened and the world will be shaking with terror.

“A huge war will erupt: fire and smoke will fall from the sky. The waters of the ocean will become mist, and the foam will rise to tremendous heights and everyone will drown.

“Millions and millions of men will die from hour to hour. Whoever remains alive will envy the dead. Everywhere one turns one’s glance there will be anguish and misery, ruins in every country.

“The time draws nearer, the abyss widens without hope. The good will perish with the bad, the great with the small, the princes of the church with the faithful, the rulers with their people.

“There will be death everywhere because of the errors committed by the crazed and the followers of Satan, who will then and only then rule the world.

“At the last, those who survive will at every chance newly proclaim God and His Glory and they will serve Him as when the world was no so perverted.”

Lucia had noted in correspondence to the church that the tragic events in the third part of the secret would take place if the church failed to meet the request of the second part, the consecration. In fact, she said if the consecration had taken place when called for in 1917 World War II would not have happened either.

In 1981 during a visit to Fulda, Germany Pope John Paul II was asked about the secret message from Fatima. He answered: “Due to the seriousness of the contents of the Fatima secret, my predecessors in the Throne of Peter have preferred to postpone the publication. Furthermore, it may be enough to the Christian people to know that, if there is a message saying that the oceans will flood whole parts of the globe, and millions of people will die, from a minute to another, it is not really the case to will the publication of this secret message.”

An assassination attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II took place 13 May 1981, sixty-four years to the day from the first Fatima apparition. The gun was aimed at the Pope’s head but the Pope turned to a young girl who was wearing a picture of Our Lady of Fatima and the bullet struck him in the chest, lodging against the heart leaving the Pope on the threshold of death. It was as if the bullet was guided by the Lady saving him from certain death.

The assassination was attempted by a Bulgarian agent named Agca, with close ties to the secret police of the Soviet Communist regime. Ironically, American intelligence authorities had been warned of the assassination attempt months before it took place by former Soviet agents, a warning that was not passed on to the Vatican.

The Pope then requested the Fatima letter and immediately thought of consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He composed a prayer for this Act of Entrustment to be celebrated 7 June 1981 in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, the Solemnity of Pentecost. It was the day chosen to commemorate the 1600th anniversary of the First Council of Constantinople and the 1550th anniversary of the Council of Ephesus.

The Pope’s Entrustment included the following words; “Mother of all individuals and peoples, you know all their sufferings and hopes. In your motherly heart you feel all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, that convulse the world: accept the plea which we make in the Holy Spirit directly to your heart, and embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord those who most await this embrace, and also those whose act of entrustment you too await in a particular way. Take under your motherly protection of the whole human family, which with affectionate love we entrust to you, O Mother. May there dawn for everyone the time of peace and freedom, the time of truth, of justice and of hope.”

While this Act of Entrustment was repeated at Fatima and other locations in 1981 and 1982, it did not include all the Bishops of the world as requested. The Pope decided to more fully address the concerns of the Lady and 25 March 1984 at Saint Peter’s Square in Rome the new message was presented. This time the Pope “convoked” beforehand all the Bishops of the world to join in spiritual union with the Holy Father in delivering this message, entrusting all men and women and all peoples to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He delivered the following message:

“O Mother of all men and women, and of all peoples, you who know all their sufferings and their hopes, you have a mother’s awareness of all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, which afflict the modern world, accept the cry which we, moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to your Heart. Embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord, this human world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you, for we are full of concern for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals and peoples.

“In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals and nations which particularly need to be thus entrusted and consecrated. We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God! Despise not our petitions in our necessities.”

[The Pope then continued more forcibly with more specific references, as if addressing the Message of Fatima and its sorrowful fulfillment.]

“Behold, as we stand before you, Mother of Christ, before your Immaculate Heart, we desire, together with the whole Church, to unite ourselves with the consecration which, for love of us, your Son made of himself to the Father: ‘For their sake’, he said, ‘I consecrate myself that they also may be consecrated in the truth’ (John 17:19). We wish to unite ourselves with our Redeemer in this his consecration for the world and for the human race, which, in his divine Heart, has the power to obtain pardon and to secure reparation.

“The power of this consecration lasts for all time and embraces all individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every evil that the spirit of darkness is able to awaken, and has in fact awakened in our times, in the heart of man and in his history.




“How deeply we feel the need for the consecration of humanity and the world – our modern world – in union with Christ himself! For the redeeming work of Christ must be shared in by the world through the Church. The present Year of the Redemption shows this: the special Jubilee of the whole Church.

“Above all creatures, may you be blessed, you, the Handmaid of the Lord, who in the fullest way obeyed the divine call! Hail to you, who are wholly united to the redeeming consecration of your Son! Mother of the Church! Enlighten the People of God along the paths of faith, hope, and love! Enlighten especially the people whose consecration and entrustment by us you are awaiting. Help us to live in the truth of the consecration of Christ for the entire human family of the modern world.

“In entrusting to you, O Mother, the world, all individuals and peoples, we also entrust to you this very consecration of the world, placing it in your motherly Heart. Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the future!

“From famine and war, deliver us. From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us. From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us. From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us. From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us. From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us. From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us. From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us. From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.

“Accept, O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies. Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin: individual sin and the ‘sin of the world’, sin in all its manifestations. Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love! May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!"

In 1985 Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen the new head of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, and later that year President Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev held their first summit to bring an end to 50 years of cold war. The Chernobyl nuclear meltdown struck the Soviet Union in April of 1986 further weakening the Communist control and alarming the world.

Gorbachev was elected Soviet President 25 May 1986, the first elected leader of Russia since 1917, and he began dismantling the Communist regime. The Soviet parliament approved a political restructuring and new national legislature in 1988.

Destruction of the Communist party accelerated in 1989. On June 4 thousands of Chinese were killed while rioting against their Communist regime, resulting in the resignation of the Chinese leader November 9. The Berlin Wall was reopened November 11, the Czech Parliament voted to end the Communist regime November 30, and a Romanian uprising overthrew their Communist regime December 15.

As 1990 commenced the Yugoslav Communist rule was brought to an end January 3, and finally, the Soviet government ended the Communist rule February 7. The self-destruction of the Communist system rapidly spread throughout the entire Soviet Union and Soviet satellite countries.

On several occasions after the 1982 and 1984 consecrations Sister Lucia was asked if they satisfied the Lady, and each time she said they were still incomplete as Russia was not mentioned by name. This was consistent with every previous statement on the consecrations.

On 13 May 2000 the long-awaited Beautification of Francisco and Jacinta, the Catholic Ceremony of Sainthood, was presided over by the Holy Father at Fatima. The Holy Father delivered a short message including the following:

“According to the divine plan, ‘a woman clothed with the sun’ (Apocalypse 12:1) came down from Heaven to the earth to visit the privileged children of the Father.

"Another portent appeared in Heaven, behold, a great red dragon (Apocalypse 12:3). These words from the first reading of the Mass make us think of the great struggle between good and evil, showing how, when man puts God aside, he cannot achieve happiness, but ends up destroying himself.

“The message of Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the ‘dragon’ whose tail swept down a third of the stars of Heaven, and cast them to the earth (Apocalypse 12:4).”

The first part of his message concerning the “woman clothed in the sun” referred to the appearance of the Lady to the children of Fatima. This was how they described her appearance as well as the fact she performed the Miracle of the Sun to 70,000 observers.

The classical interpretation in Catholic commentaries of the red dragon sweeping one third of the stars from the heavens means one third of the clergy, Cardinals, bishops, and priests fall from their consecrated state and are actually working for the devil.

At the end of the celebratory Mass Cardinal Angelo Sodano read a message on behalf of the Holy Father. This message concerned the third secret of Fatima.

“Brothers and Sisters in the Lord!

“At the conclusion of this solemn celebration, I feel bound to offer our beloved Holy Father Pope John Paul II, on behalf of all present, heartfelt good wishes for his approaching 80th birthday and to thank him for his vital pastoral ministry for the good of all God’s Holy Church; we present the heartfelt wishes of the whole Church.




“On this solemn occasion of his visit to Fatima, His Holiness has directed me to make an announcement to you. As you know, the purpose of his visit to Fatima has been to beatify the two “little shepherds”. Nevertheless he also wishes his pilgrimage to be a renewed gesture of gratitude to Our Lady for her protection during these years of his papacy. This protection seems also to be linked to the so-called third part of the secret of Fatima.

“That text contains a prophetic vision similar to those found in Sacred Scripture, which do not describe photographically the details of future events, but synthesize and compress against a single background facts which extend through time in an unspecified succession and duration. As a result, the text must be interpreted in a symbolic key.

“The vision of Fatima concerns above all the war waged by atheistic systems against the Church and Christians, and it describes the immense suffering endured by the witnesses of the faith in the last century of the second millennium. It is an interminable Way of the Cross led by the Popes of the twentieth century.

“According to the interpretation of the “little shepherds”, which was also confirmed recently by Sister Lucia, “the Bishop clothed in white” who prays for all the faithful is the Pope. As he makes his way with great difficulty towards the Cross amid the corpses of those who were martyred (Bishops, priests, men and women Religious and many lay people), he too falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a hail of gunfire.

“After the assassination attempt of 13 May 1981, it appeared evident that it was a “mother’s hand that guided the bullet’s path”, enabling “the Pope in his throes” to halt “at the threshold of death”. On the occasion of a visit to Rome by the then Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, the Pope decided to give him the bullet which had remained in the jeep after the assassination attempt, so that it might be kept in the shrine. By the Bishop’s decision, the bullet was later set in the crown of the statute of Our Lady of Fatima.

“The successive events of 1989 led, both in the Soviet Union and in a number of countries of Eastern Europe, to the fall of the Communist regimes which promoted atheism. For this too His Holiness offers heartfelt thanks to the Most Holy Virgin. In other parts of the world, however, attacks against the Church and against Christians, with the burden of suffering they bring, tragically continue. Even if the events to which the third part of the secret of Fatima refers now seem part of the past, Our Lady’s call to conversion and penance, issued at the start of the twentieth century, remains timely and urgent today. The Lady of the message seems to read the signs of the times – the signs of our time – with special insight. The insistent invitation of Mary Most Holy to penance is nothing but the manifestation of her maternal concern for the fate of the human family, in need of conversion and forgiveness.”

“In order that the faithful may better receive the message of Our Lady of Fatima, the Pope has charged the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with making public the third part of the secret, after the preparation of an appropriate commentary.

“Brothers and sisters, let us thank Our Lady of Fatima for her protection. To her maternal intercession let us entrust the Church of the Third Millennium. Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Santa Dei Genetrix! Intercede pro Ecclesia. Intercede pro Papa nostro Ionne Paulo II. Amen.”

After the ceremony of Beautification the following text was the official Vatican version of the third secret of Fatima as revealed to the three children in 1917 and contained in the letter from Sister Lucia of 3 January 1944.

“The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima, on 13 July 1917.

“I write in obedience to you, my God, who commanded me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine.

“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 splendor 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 is 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.”

For seventy-two years since the apparitions of Fatima Sister Lucia had worked on behalf of the Lady to awaken the world. Her mission was nearly complete. So why did the Church not mention Russia by name?

No explanation has been given by the Vatican of the discrepancies between the 1963 and 1985 versions of the third secret, and how they compare to the official versions of the 1944 letter. Nor has any explanation been offered for the discrepancies regarding the actual text of the third secret.

Sister Lucia remained silent about these issues, forbidden by the Vatican from giving interviews or being in contact even with old friends, until her death in 2005. Less than two months later the Venerable Pope John Paul II, whose life and near death were so closely tied to Fatima and Lucia, also died.

Why no consecration of Russia?

Perhaps there are other explanations for this refusal by the Church to allow the consecration to Russia. From the middle of the 19th century the Roman Catholic Church was outspoken in their opposition to movements such as Communism. Freemasons were of equal concern.

As early as 25 February 1861 Cardinal Cretineau Joly issued a paper for Pope Gregory XVI called The Roman Church and Revolution disclosing plotting by Freemasons and Communists against the Church.

Over the subsequent years there were more warnings and condemnations issued by the Vatican against these movements than any other single subject in Church history.

Of course this was not done without reason as the Principles of Freemasonry of 1789 which inspired the French Revolution and the Communist Manifesto of 1848 both called for worldwide revolution.

Pope Leo XIII in 1884 issued his Humanum Genus that said Communists, socialists and Freemasons were working in common and one of their primary institutional targets was the Roman Catholic Church.

After the Bolsheviks successfully took control of the Soviet Union in 1920 Lenin announced a new Communist goal of infiltrating the Catholic Church and the Vatican. Congressional testimony before the US Congress by members of the American Communist Party confirmed that by 1930 there were 1,100 Communist priests in the Catholic Church.

Pope Pius XI warned again of the danger in his Divine Redemptions.

“This all too imminent danger, venerable brethren, as you have already surmised, is Bolshevistic and atheistic Communism which aims at upsetting the social order and undermining the very foundations of Christian civilization. In the face of such a threat the Catholic Church could not and does not remain silent. The Apostolic See above all has not refrained from raising its voice for it knows that its proper and special mission is to define truth, justice, and all those eternal values which Communism ignores or attacks.”

Yet in spite of the Church policy and the outspoken efforts of Popes earlier in the 19th and 20th centuries warning of the dangers of Communism, the Vatican was never able to perform the simple act of consecration of Russia as requested by The Holy Mother Mary.



Second Vatican Council 1962

“There will be an Ecumenical Council in the next century, after which there will be chaos in the Church.”

St. John Bosco 1862

Back in 1962, before the controversial Second Vatican Council, which was to revolutionize the Catholic Church, Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, negotiated the Metz Pact with Metropolitan Nikodim of the Russian Orthodox Church. The pact agreed two Orthodox observers would attend the Council and the Roman Catholic Church would refrain from any condemnation of Soviet Communism or Soviet Russia.

In the efforts to modernize the Church an agreement was reached in which the Pope could not mention Russia by name for fear it would be interpreted as condemning the Soviet system.

When the long delayed Second Vatican Council took place starting 11 October 1962 under Pope John XXIII, a Council many felt undermined the Catholic Church, there were a number of factors that impacted on the consecration of Russia.

It was now thirty years since the 1,100 Communist priests had infiltrated the Catholic Church and by now they had worked their way into the Church hierarchy.

The message of Fatima to be opened in 1960 remained sealed from the public and the Vatican had announced it was unlikely to ever be opened. No explanation for this refusal to open the third secret was given.

Cardinal Tisserant had negotiated the Metz Pact with Metropolitan Nikodim of the Russian Orthodox Church (Nikodim was later identified as a KGB operative) in which the Church would refrain from any condemnation or implied condemnation of Soviet Communism or Soviet Russia.

There are many who say the same revolutionary success Communism achieved in Russia and the world also resulted in the Church through Vatican II as progressive modernism theology that was condemned before 1902 was rehabilitated and swept into place in the new era of Christ.

Former enemies of the Church including leaders of the Freemason and Communist parties rejoiced in the radical changes in the Church that were adopted or set in motion by Vatican II.

To this day the Church has refused to consecrate Russia to the Holy Mother Mary. It has now been over a decade since the fall of Communism, an action promised by the Holy Mother even if man failed to act on the consecration, but she also said without the consecration of Russia the people of Russia could not be converted. Now into the new millennium there is still no consecration of Russia or conversion of Russia to Christianity.


The Death of Lucia

The last surviving Fatima visionary, Sister Lucia dos Santos died on February 13, 2005 at age 97. Since 1948 Sister Lucia was a long time recluse in a Portuguese Convent in the city Coimbra. Throughout her religious life she served the order of Carmelite Sisters.


In a new book a prominent expert on the apparitions in FatimaPortugal, reports that hours before she died, Sister Lucia de Jesus dos Santos -- the sole living Fatima visionary -- was given a letter faxed from Pope John Paul II -- perhaps the final thing the seer read.

In the letter the pontiff wrote that on hearing of Sister Lucia's illness, he had prayed that she would be able to live "the moment of pain and suffering" with a "paschal spirit" -- dramatically ending his missive with a blessing.

It was a final act in what the priest, Father Robert Fox -- author of a highly revealing book, Fatima Is Forever -- says was a special bond between the seer and John Paul II, who himself died a mere seven weeks later.

"Only the Holy Father and some bishops wereinformed of the imminent possibility that Sister Lucia was nearing death," recounts Father Fox. "During those same months that Lucia's strength was failing, the same was happening to Pope John Paul II as the world became aware of his failing health."

Sister Lucia, who was 97, died on February 13, 2005. The Pope died on April 2.


"When receiving news of Sister Lucia's worsening health condition, Pope John Paul II sent her a message on Saturday, the day before she died," writes Father Fox -- who has founded an organization called the Fatima Family Apostolate. "Bishop Albino Cleto of Coimbra confirmed that Sister Lucia heard the reading of the papal message on Sunday (the day she died) and, being 'very affected' by it, asked if she could personally read the text of the fax. 'It was, perhaps, the last reaction she had in relation to the life around her,' added the bishop."

Enclosed in her cell at a Carmelite convent north of Fatima, in Coimbra, the legendary nun died in the company of her bishop, doctors, sisters in religion, and an attending nurse at 5:25 p.m. local time -- ending one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of Catholic mysticism.

As the book describes, Sister Lucia had suffered a serious "fainting fit" the previous November -- one so bad it seemed like the end -- and was infirm from that point on, necessitating the assistance of sisters day and night in the weeks leading up to her passing. The nun took solid food for the final time on January 28 and by February 1 was on an intravenous drip, according to the fascinating account.

Although she did not speak, says Father Fox, the visionary made many affectionate gestures in her final days to a statue of the Fatima Virgin that John Paul II had sent her during December of 2003 -- in another link to the Holy Father.

Writes Father Fox: "She was alert on February 6, 2005. She would say slowly, 'Our Lady! Our Lady! Angels! Angels! Heart of Jesus! Heart of Jesus!'"


On February 6, Sister Lucia received Communion for the last time, recounts the priest. After that a Host was placed on her chest so she could make an act of Adoration. The book also reveals that the nun was offering her sufferings for the Pope, who was struggling with a Parkinson's-like affliction.

"From time to time, we spoke to her of the illness of the Holy Father," recounted the mother superior. "She would raise her hands and say: 'For the Holy Father.' Since March of the previous year, she had never let go of the rosary which the Holy Father had sent her. She had it with her until the moment when she closed her eyes on this earth."

It has been revealed that at midnight on February 12, a sister assigned to Sister Lucia's room brought to Lucia's lips the image of Fatima, which the dying nun kissed. For the rest of the night she passed the beads of a rosary John Paul II had given her through her fingers as a nun recited the prayers.

It was the conclusion of what Father Fox documents as a "deep spiritual friendship" with John Paul, who was known as the "Fatima Pope" but apparently was even more powerfully attached to the apparition site than has been commonly recognized. The Pontiff was well-known as open to apparitions at a time when mysticism in general was disregarded in many dioceses.

"I once stood about thirty feet from Pope John Paul II, with perhaps a million pilgrims present, pilgrims packing every inch of the Cova and beyond," Father Fox writes. "The Pope knelt immediately before the spot of the apparitions in the Capelinha. He was wrapped in the deepest prayer. There can be no doubt that the sense of the presence of the Mother of God, especially at such times, would come to the Pope. The crowd of hundreds of thousands was totally quiet all the while."

It was John Paul, reveals Father Fox, who suggested that Sister Lucia write a document that later became her highly-acclaimed book Calls from the Message of Fatima. The nun also penned a booklet that will be made available shortly in English.

The Pope met with Sister Lucia on three visits to Fatima: in 1982, 1991, and on May 13, 2000 -- when he beautified the two other seers, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and set in motion release of the famous third secret.

The secret indicated the intervention of Mary in saving the world from a flaming chastisement, the martyrdom of the Church, and what appeared to be a premonition of the assassination attempt on John Paul himself. That attempt was made on May 13, 1917 -- incredibly, the anniversary date of the first Fatima apparition.

The bullet extracted from the Pope was later implanted in the crown of the Virgin in the chapel of apparitions, as the pontiff credited the Blessed Virgin of Fatima with miraculously saving him.

It was with profound emotion, the Pope later wrote, that he learned of Lucia's passing.

"I remember with emotion the various meetings I had with her and the bonds of spiritual friendship that, with the passing of time, were intensified," he wrote to Bishop Cleto. "I have always felt supported by the daily gift of her prayer, especially in the harsh moments of trial and suffering. May the Lord reward her amply for the great and hidden service she has done to the Church."

The visionary occupied the same cell during all those decades, and from there "she flew to heaven," said the superior of the Carmelite community, Sister Maria Celina of Jesus Crucified.



Sister Lucia's Last Moments
Mother Superior Says Visionary Was Filled With Light

ROME, SEPT. 25, 2007 (Zenit.org).- When Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone's book about the last Fatima visionary was presented, guests got a chance to watch a video about Sister Lucia's final moments, related by her Mother Superior.

At Friday's presentation of "L'Ultima Veggente di Fatima" (The Last Fatima Visionary), written by the Pope's secretary of state, those in attendance saw a video reporting on the Convent of Coimbra, in Portugal, where Sister Lucia lived for the last 57 years of her life.

The visionary occupied the same cell during all those decades, and from there "she flew to heaven," said the superior of the Carmelite community, Sister Maria Celina of Jesus Crucified.


First impression

Recalling her first impressions of Sister Lucia, the superior said, "When I entered, it took me eight days to recognize Sister Lucia. When one of the sisters asked me: 'Mother, should I bring you a piece of bread to eat tonight?' I said to myself that this could not be Sister Lucia. And yet it was her."

Sister Maria Celina recalled how the visionary would stand at the end of the path leading to a statue of the Blessed Virgin, and scold her cousins who also witnessed the apparitions, "You went to heaven and left me here alone."
The superior said that Sister Lucia always denied any talk of a "fourth secret of Fatima." Sister Lucia would say of people who spread rumors of the alleged secret that "they are never satisfied; that they should do what Our Lady asked, that this is the most important thing. When someone would say: ‘Sister Lucia, they say there is another secret' […] she would look at them ironically. 'If there is one,' she would say, 'I wish they would tell it to me: I know of no other secrets.'"


Sister Maria Celina said that the visionary was never satisfied with the image made of Our Lady.

"The image of Our Lady was not how she wanted it," the superior said. "Sometimes she seemed ugly to her because it did not correspond to her exact memories; it was not what the artist derived from her description. It is somewhat like what happened with St. Bernadette."

Joyous nun


Sister Maria Celina described Sister Lucia as a woman religious who "emanated joy."

"I lived with her for 28 years and I saw a person who, the older she got, the more she developed an evangelical childhood," she said. "She seemed again to be the child who had the apparitions in the Cova de Ira. The heavier her body became, the lighter her spirit became."

Speaking of Sister Lucia's last hours, the superior said: "When she needed assistance we placed her bed at the center of the cell and we were around her, together with the bishop of Leiria-Fatima. I was kneeling down next to her. Sister Lucia looked at everyone and then looked at me at the end. It was a long look, but in her eyes there was a deep light, which I carry in my soul.

"I pray to her always and I know she prays for us. There are things that have no need of words: A gesture or a thought is sufficient. Sister Lucia had a hearing problem. Now she doesn’t anymore. Now she understands everything without words."