VATICAN CITY – When then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger met the
press in 2000 for the formal release of the so-called Third
Secret of Fatima, he said he knew many people would be
disappointed.
Almost 16 years later, at the beginning of a yearlong
preparation for the 100th anniversary of the apparition of
our Lady of Fatima in 2017, now-retired Pope Benedict XVI is
still dealing with people not convinced the secret is really
out.
An online journal called OnePeterFive published an article
May 15 claiming that shortly after then-Cardinal Ratzinger
released the secret and his commentary, affirming that it was
the complete text, he told a German priest that, in fact, it
was not.
“There is more than what we published,” the article claimed
the cardinal told Father Ingo Dollinger. The article went
further: “He also told Dollinger that the published part of
the secret is authentic and that the unpublished part of the
secret speaks about ‘a bad council and a bad Mass’ that was
to come in the near future.”
A statement released May 21 by the Vatican press office said
Pope Benedict “declares ‘never to have spoken with Professor
Dollinger about Fatima,’ clearly affirming that the remarks
attributed to Professor Dollinger on the matter ‘are pure
inventions, absolutely untrue,’ and he confirms decisively
that ‘the publication of the Third Secret of Fatima is
complete.'”
The Vatican’s publication of “The Message of Fatima” in 2000
included a photocopy of the text handwritten in 1944 by
Carmelite Sister Lucia dos Santos, the last survivor of the
three children who saw Mary at Fatima in 1917.
Speculation naturally swirls around secrets, and when a
secret is held for decades, the assumptions gain ground and
followers.
The common message of Marian apparitions throughout the
centuries has been: pray and convert. But a message read only
by a few popes and their closest aides? There had to be
something more to it to justify keeping it so secret, many
people thought.
When Cardinal Ratzinger presented the text in the Vatican
press office June 26, 2000, he told reporters that the choice
of St. John XXIII and Blessed Paul VI to withhold publication
and St. John Paul II’s decision to delay it was not a
“dogmatic decision but one of prudence.”
But, he said, “looking back, I would certainly say that we
have paid a price” for the delay, which allowed the spread
of apocalyptic theories about its contents.
Meeting the press that day, the first words out of his mouth
were: “One who carefully reads the text of the so-called
third secret of Fatima will probably be disappointed or
surprised after all the speculation there has been.”
The text, he said, uses “symbolic language” to describe “the
church of the martyrs of the century now past,” particularly
the victims of two world wars, Nazism and communism.
But what was most difficult for many to believe after the
secret spent more than 40 years in a Vatican vault was what
the text did not contain. “No great mystery is revealed,”
Cardinal Ratzinger said. “The veil of the future is not
torn.”
In a 1996 interview with Portugal’s main Catholic radio
station, the cardinal – who already had read the secret –
tried the reasonable, tradition-based approach to pointing
out what was and was not in the message. “The Virgin does not
engage in sensationalism; she does not create fear,” he said.
“She does not present apocalyptic visions, but guides people
to her Son.”
Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI five years after
the text was published. If there was more to the secret, he
had eight years of complete freedom as supreme pontiff to
share what supposedly was withheld.
Marianist Father Johann Roten, a former student of
then-Father Joseph Ratzinger who for years headed the Marian
Research Institute at the University of Dayton, said there is
“no doubt there is truth” in what many Fatima devotees see as
“the moral decline in the church.”
“The difficulty is in the method” many of them choose to
convince others of the need for conversion and prayer, Father
Roten said in an email response to questions.
“The method tends to be magico-ritualistic, based on the
conviction that a particular act,” such as the consecration
of Russia performed in a particular way, “will solve all
problems,” he said.
“Apparitions always stress the message of Christ,” Father
Roten said. Mary urges “prayer, conversion and practical
manifestations of one’s faith.”
“Warnings are part of the message, not always, but especially
in times of imminent social catastrophe,” including Fatima
before the Russian Revolution, he said. “Unfortunately, these
general messages are frequently overlooked. Instead the
attention is given to sensationalism – a rosary turning
golden – or apocalypticism – doomsday warnings – which never
represent the essential part and reasons of such events.”
Speaking to reporters traveling with him to Fatima in 2010,
Pope Benedict repeated what he had said 10 years earlier: The
text was open to interpretation, but the heart of the Fatima
message was a call “to ongoing conversion, penance, prayer
and the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity.”
Yes, he said, the church constantly is under attack –
“attacks from within and without – yet the forces of good are
also ever present and, in the end, the Lord is more powerful
than evil and Our Lady is for us the visible, motherly
guarantee of God’s goodness, which is always the last word in
history.”
Find out more
The Vatican’s publication of “The Message of Fatima,”
including the photocopies of Sister Lucia’s original
description of the “secret” is still available online at:
bit.ly/messageoffatima.
