The Three Secrets of Fatima are said to be three prophecies that were given by an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to three young Portuguese shepherds, Lucia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto. From May to October, 1917, the three children claimed to have witnessed this Marian apparition, which is today popularly described as Our Lady of Fatima.
On July 13 the Virgin Mary is said to have entrusted the three secrets - in the form of prophecies - to the young visionaries. Two of the secrets were revealed in 1941 in a document written by Lucia to assist with the canonization of her cousins, while the third was to remain secret, although the bishop of Leiria commanded Lucia to put it in writing and to present it to the Pope. Lucia herself chose the 1960 date for the secret to be revealed, because she said she thought "by that time it will be more clearly understood". The text of the third secret was released by Pope John Paul II, on June 26, 2000, with the elderly Lucia in attendance.
The first secret was a vision of Hell:
Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.
[edit] Second secret
The second included Mary's instructions of how to save souls from Hell and reconvert the world to Roman Catholicism:
You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light*, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.
This secret's controversy is second only to the supposed final secret of Fatima, as it seemingly predicts both the all-encompassing World War II and the radical, bloody and extreme anti-religion ideology of the Soviet Union and the proxy wars and limited direct confrontations that would be initiated between the Western Democracies and the Soviet Bloc. However, some critics have noted that the "Prophecy" was released in 1941, when WWII was already in full swing. However, some have also noted that to an observer in 1941, it appeared that the Soviet Union was to inevitably fall before the armies of Nazi Germany and thus would not have survived to have a hegemony over Central and East Europe as it did, thus lending some credibility to the "Secret."
[edit] Third secret
After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: 'something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White, 'we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.
It is said that Pope John Paul II believed that the text refers to the failed assassination attempt by Mehmet Ali Ağca on May 13, 1981, against him. He notes that this was the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima, that he had kept himself conscious on the ride to the hospital by concentrating on her, and had indicated repeatedly that he believed that the Virgin Mary spared him from death. "It was a motherly hand that guided the bullet's path." In thanksgiving, he traveled to Portugal to have the bullet mounted in the crown of the image of Our Lady of Fatima. (Interestingly Ali Ağca himself later apparently developed an obsession with the third secret of Fatima and during his trial called on the pope to publish the secret.)
But this is disputed, because if the Third Secret had referred only to the assassination attempt of 1981, there would have been no logical reason to have kept it secret for another nineteen years. Some believe that this vision is intimately tied to the warning of Rianxo, Galicia, which Sister Lucia claimed to receive from Jesus. Under that pretext, this vision is explained by the words of Jesus heard by Lucia in Rianxo. This also, however, is not a completely satisfactory explanation, as the vision depicts a penitent pope who is martyred, rather than a disobedient pope who is punished.
Also, if the release of the Third Secret "marks the end of the age of lust for power and evil", as was indicated by Archbishop (now Cardinal) Tarcisio Bertone in the companion document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, called The Message of Fatima, then the resulting lapse would have been culpable, as well, because it would have forestalled the "period of peace" allegedly promised by Our Lady of Fatima.
Having said that, some dispute Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone's statement as false for two reasons:
1. Several conflicts and wars have occurred since the release of the Third Secret. They feel these cannot have ushered in the "period of peace".
2. The promise of peace, according to Sister Lucia's documents, was tied only to the Consecration of Russia. Sister Lucia never claimed that the release of the Third Secret would usher in the conversion of Russia or the era of peace.
To understand the Third Secret, it is necessary to take a look at Lucia's personal psychology. She was an intensely private person by nature. She said later she would never have spoken to anyone about the visions if chatty Jacinta had been able to keep quiet. In the book Encountering Mary (ISBN 0-380-71885-5), author Sandra Zimdar-Swartz documents Lucia's predicament in regard to the third secret. In her memoirs, she clearly distinguishes between information she was expressly told not to tell anyone, and that which she simply wished to keep private. In this case, she heard Mary say "Do not tell this to anyone except Francisco" -- since he never heard her voice. When authorities began inquiring about the third secret, she asked and got Mary's permission to write it down, but wanted to be sure she also had the permission of her superiors. This is very important to Catholic religious, who are supposed to obey their superiors as they would obey God himself. Finally, seriously ill with influenza - the same disease that had killed her cousins - she wrote the secret, sealed it and gave it to the Bishop of Leiria on January 3, 1944.
(On a side note, it is argued by many, especially in the Traditional Catholic camp, that even the conditions outlined in the Second Secret have not yet been fulfilled. While the Vatican, and Sister Lucia herself (though this is disputed by the traditionalists), hold that the consecration of the world, including Russia, by Pope John Paul II, in 1984 sufficiently fulfilled the conditions, they argue that the promised 'period of peace' has still not arrived. On the other hand, people who do believe the consecration was fulfilled see the period of peace and conversion of Russia in the collapse of communism and the relative calm of the 1990s, and believe the fact that John Paul II was so involved in those events is no coincidence.)
Some people have suggested that the secret was actually a reference to the 1980 assassination of archbishop Óscar Romero in El Salvador. However, respected high ranking Catholic theologians have argued against this conclusion.
In the United States, Father Nicholas Gruner was a particular source of polemic related to the Three Secrets of Fatima, and made claims related to Our Lady of Fatima within his periodical, the Fatima Crusader.
