https://padreperegrino.org/2023/09/mtsolf/ What is the Third Secret of Fatima? Father David Nix What is the Third Secret of Fatima? The full Third Secret has not been released by the Vatican, but even many moderate Catholics today know it’s more than the shooting of Pope John Paul II or a LARPing tale of future-crossbows on a Vatican hill. Last week, I blogged hereon Malachi Martin regarding the Jesuits, so I decided to quote him on Fatima today, too. Although I have seen Martin’s quotes in more places than one, they are nicely compiled in one spot by Gloria TV. So, I simply reproduce their article here: Father Malachi Martin (reader of the Third Secret of Fatima) Interview with Bernard Janzen 1992, The Kingdom of Darkness: Janzen: In our discussion earlier you just touched on the subject of Satan’s assault on the papacy. Perhaps we could have a brief discussion about that. Martin: […] what I think is fatally necessary for every Catholic to know, and that is the fate of the papacy and the coming stress and danger that we shall be without the strength of the papacy. Bernard: Is it ever possible that the cardinals at a future conclave could elect a heretical pope? Martin: [brief pause over the sensitive nature of the question] You know…they have elected men in the past who had heretical ideas. Two or three. They have never elected yet an apostate…an apostate. […] An apostate has rebelled against the very fundamental of faith and rejected God and Christ. We have apostates now who are papabili [men who could be elected pope]. Yes, we could have an apostate. But in that day, then we are into something terrible. We’re into something which, Bernard, is something that, if you think on it, in full knowledge of the meaning of your terms, is nightmarish. It would test the faith of St. Catherine of Sienna. It would test the faith of the greatest saint. It would try the patience of Job. It would be a black day; a day on which you can clothe every window in black and put out the lights and dress in sackcloth & ashes and pray that you’re spared because your faith is going to be battered to pieces…if that happens. ’cause then, they have the prize and everything goes underground. And we are indeed on our way to becoming what Paul VI, in his misery, called, in 1978, an infinitesimally small part of humanity. Completely marginalized and pushed to the side and forgotten as a quaint group of people as interesting as Tibetan astrologers on a modern campus. ———————————————————————- Father Malachi Martin Interview with Art Bell on May 4, 1998 Martin: The prophecy of Fatima is not a pleasant document to read – not pleasant news. It implies – it doesn’t make any sense unless we accept that there will be, or that there is in progress – a wholesale apostasy amongst clerics and laity in the Catholic Church, that the institutional organization of the Roman Catholic Church – that is, the organization of parishes, dioceses, archbishops and bishops and cardinals and the Roman bureaucracies and the chanceries throughout the world – unless that is totally disrupted and rendered null and void, the third secret makes no sense, and number two, the other salient characteristic about it is that it means intense suffering for believers. ———————————————————————– Father Malachi Martin Interview with Art Bell on July 13, 1998 (the very Anniversary of the Third Secret of Fatima) Bell: Alright, here we go. Just a couple of things I want to quickly read. One from a friend in Australia, Father, who says, “I had a Jesuit priest tell me more of the third secret of Fatima years ago in Perth. He said, among other things, the last pope would be under control of Satan. Pope John fainted thinking it might be him. We were interrupted before I could hear the rest.” Any comment on that? Martin: Yes…uh…it sounds as if they were reading – or being told – the text of the third secret. Bell: Oh my. Martin: It sounds like it. But it’s sufficiently vague to make one hesitate. It sounds like it. Bell: Father, is there any circumstance under which you can imagine, that you would feel free to reveal the secret? Martin: Yes. Yes. If there was a total collapse at the center. Bell: And you anticipate that, don’t you? Martin: I anticipate it as a possibility, Art. I can’t predict, but I anticipate it as a possibility, certainly, yes. I do. “Malachi personally confirmed to me in 1997 that the “pope” who will lead the apostasy in the Church will be a heretic and an antipope.” – Father Paul Kramer, Facebook quote, May of 2016 “We’re facing.. what we may have to face, finally.. the False Pope.” – Fr. Malachi Martin, Detroit, Michigan circa 1989? [November 1992?] “In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church begins at the top.” – Cardinal Luigi Ciappi (Personal Theologian to Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II) from a 1995 personal letter to Professor Baumgartner of Salzburg, Austria; Father Gerard Mura, “The Third Secret of Fatima: Has It Been Completely Revealed?”, the periodical Catholic, (published by the Transalpine Redemptorists, Orkney Isles, Scotland, Great Britain) March 2002 “The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine and Bosius that Rome shall apostatise from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism.” “Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.” – Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, p. 88-90, p. 79 Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, who read the Third Secret, made reference to one of its themes during an allocution to the members of the Marian International Academy he declared, “It suffices to cast a rapid glance at what is happening at this moment in the world, in order to recognize that without the intervention of the Mother of all mercy near the All-Powerful, the world risks becoming pagan once more, a paganism more deplorable than the first paganism, because it is aggravated by apostasy. We are witnessing a veritable deluge of sins, a deluge which leaves behind it a nauseating quagmire, infected by immorality, lies and blasphemy…” – 15 December 1960 – Allocution de S. Em. Le cardinal Ottaviani à l’Académie Mariale Internationale, “Documentation Catholique,” 1961, col. 244 1963 – In a public admonition to his spiritual sons amidst the Second Vatican Council Padre Pio said: “Due to the rampant injustice and abuse of power, we have reached a compromise with atheistic materialism [Communism], a denial of the rights of God. This is the punishment foretold at Fatima … All the priests who support the possibility of a dialogue with the negators of God and with the Luciferian powers of the world [Freemasonry] are mad, have lost their faith, no longer believe in the Gospel! In so doing they betray the word of God, because Christ came to bring on earth perpetual covenant only to men of heart [good will], but did not join with the men thirsty for power and dominion over the brothers … The flock is dispersed when the shepherds ally with the enemies of the Truth of Christ. All the forms of power made deaf to the will of the authority of the heart of God are rapacious wolves that renew the passion of Christ and make the Madonna shed tears … ” – Published in “Avvenire” August 19, 1978; See also partial quote in “The Fourth Secret of Fatima” 2006 by Antonio Socci con’t
Con’t “The tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world. The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church.” – Pope Paul VI, October 13, 1977 in a formal address marking the 60th Anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun as quoted in the Milan-based daily Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, p. 7 of its issue dated October 14, 1977 “The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against the apostasy in the Church.” “I would not be surprised if the Third Secret alluded to dark times for the Church: grave confusions and troubling apostasies within Catholicism itself…If we consider the grave crisis we have lived through since the Council, the signs that this prophecy has been fulfilled do not seem to be lacking…” – Cardinal Silvio Oddi, to Italian journalist Lucio Brunelli in the journal Il Sabato, Rome, March 17, 1990 “Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh. – Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), Paragraph #675 – The Church’s ultimate trial “Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of Antichrist.” – Selected excerpt taken from Our Lady of La Salette’s Secret to Mélanie Calvatin on 19 September 1846. (Approved apparition) Final version published in 1879 at Lecce, Italy, with the imprimatur and approval of Bishop Salvatore Luigi Zola, C.R.L., the Bishop of Lecce “I cannot reveal anything about what I have learned at Fatima about the Third Secret, but I can say that it has two parts: the one concerns the Pope. The other, logically – although I should say nothing – should be the continuation of the words: ‘In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.’” – Father Joseph Schweigl 1952 (Pope Pius XII sent him to interrogate Sr. Lucia on September 2, 1952); Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima: The Third Secret, Vol. III, p. 710, p. 337-338 November 11, 1984 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger affirmed that the Third Secret concerns, “a radical call for conversion; the absolute importance of history; the dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore of the world. And then the importance of the ‘novissimi’ (the last events at the end of time). If it is not made public — at least for the time being — it is in order to prevent religious prophecy from being mistaken for a quest for the sensational (literally: ‘for sensationalism’). But the things contained in this ‘Third Secret’ correspond to what has been announced in Scripture and has been said again and again in many other Marian apparitions” – Ecco perche la fede e in crisi in the review, Jesus, p. 79 “I believe that there is a connection between that which is announced in the first part of the Secret, which concerns wars and sufferings which would be everywhere, and the second part which concerns the persecutions and a type of breakdown of the faith. Because where the ellipsis (the three dots, “…”) was placed, it means “Here is the third part, which is not revealed” and then the conclusion “In Portugal the dogma of the faith will always be preserved etc.” This suggests to me that there is a relationship between faith and the third part of the Secret. Therefore, it is something that relates to the Church. It is some kind of universal crisis which affects the whole Church and all of humanity.” – Father Jose dos Santos Valinho (nephew of Sr. Lucia); This public statement was made on the 14th of February, 2003 broadcast on the program ENIGMA, which was transmitted prime time, nationwide on RAI, the National TV Network of Italy, The Fatima Crusader, Issue 74, p.76 Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed the need for a “Year of Faith” that seeks to awaken humanity at a critical moment. “In vast areas of the earth the faith risks being extinguished, like a flame without fuel,” the pope warned, “We are facing a profound crisis of faith, a loss of a religious sense which represents one of the greatest challenges for the Church today … The renewal of faith must, then, be a priority for the entire Church in our time.” – Pope Benedict XVI, Vatican City, 27 January 2012 from his address to the participants in the plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. ———————————————————————- Act bravely, my Brethren; take courage, and trust in the Lord. The time is fast approaching in which there will be great trials and afflictions; perplexities and dissensions, both spiritual and temporal, will abound; the charity of many will grow cold, and the malice of the wicked will increase. The devils will have unusual power, the immaculate purity of our Order, and of others, will be so much obscured that there will be very few Christians who will obey the true Sovereign Pontiff and the Roman Church with loyal hearts and perfect charity. At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavour to draw many into error and death. Then scandals will be multiplied, our Order will be divided, and many others will be entirely destroyed, because they will consent to error instead of opposing it. There will be such diversity of opinions and schisms among the people, the religious and the clergy, that, except those days were shortened, according to the words of the Gospel, even the elect would be led into error, were they not specially guided, amid such great confusion, by the immense mercy of God. Then our Rule and manner of life will be violently opposed by some, and terrible trials will come upon us. Those who are found faithful will receive the crown of life; but woe to those who, trusting solely in their Order, shall fall into tepidity, for they will not be able to support the temptations permitted for the proving of the elect. Those who preserve their fervour and adhere to virtue with love and zeal for the truth, will suffer injuries and, persecutions as rebels and schismatics; for their persecutors, urged on by the evil spirits, will say they are rendering a great service to God by destroying such pestilent men from the face of the earth. But the Lord will be the refuge of the afflicted, and will save all who trust in Him. And in order to be like their Head [Jesus Christ], these, the elect, will act with confidence, and by their death will purchase for themselves eternal life; choosing to obey God rather than man, they will fear nothing, and they will prefer to perish [physically] rather than consent to falsehood and perfidy. Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it. Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Jesus Christ will send them not a true Pastor, but a destroyer. – Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis Of Assisi [London: R. Washbourne, 1882], pp. 248-250;
Excellent post and summary or gathering together of lots of information pertaining to the 3rd Secret. It occured to me that today is in fact the anniversary of that apparition of La Salette! And here's something else from Xavier Reyes-Ayral (posted already by another member) which is very apropos. In this video Xavier says the unrevealed second part of the 3rd Secret of Fatima is contained in its entirety in his book entitled, Revelations. In this video at 23:09, he gives a summary of the message (also called, as we know, the 4th Secret of Fatima). He says: "The gravity of this message is frightening. It talks of an anti-Christ walking amidst the Cardinals in Rome. And reaching the top of the Church - the top position of the Church. It mentioned a third world conflict, which can be delayed. It mentioned of Cardinals turning against Cardinals and Bishops against Bishops, and open civil-war within the Roman Catholic Church. But yet, the Virgin stipulates and puts emphasis again and again on the fact that - at the end "My Immaculate Heart will triumph"." And we know that this is in good agreement with the message of Our Lady of Akita. Pope Benedict XVI at one stage also drew attention to the analogy between the 3rd Secret of Fatima and Akita's message. However, after the release of the first part of the 3rd Secret in 2000, he subsequently ignored his earlier statement on that subject. And perhaps that is explained by his reference to 'sensationalism' quoted in BrianK's post. But it is interesting that Xavier comes straight out, calling a spade a spade - he says at 24:13, "However, the Church, I regret to say, lied, and said that there was no more [than the 1st part]. That is a lie. There was a second envelope ..." Perhaps this is not news to anyone but it is I think worth mentioning in this thread, and it seems to me a progressive clarification is occurring with regard to the third secret, not least by BrianK's post.
Good point. That I cannot say. He doesn't tell us that in the interview. I guess he wants people to buy his book. I wonder does he disclose a source in his book or is it an 'putative message' to which he has been unmistakeably led by the convergence of other messages from approved apparitions and statements by those who have read the third secret. Either way, I wanted to draw attention to this. Xavier strikes me as an astute and diligent type of man, with a scholarly approach to his writing ... I must try to get his book.
Much as I think Malachi Martin was spot on about many things, I find it hard to believe that a priest of lowly status would have been given access to the Third Secret which was only read by a few very senior churchmen. We have only his word that he saw it. There is a touch of the Blarney stone about him that makes me ponder. Don't get me wrong, I think his instincts were right. I'm not sure that it does any good to speculate about what the alleged 'undisclosed' part of the Third Secret is. I admit that what we were given by John Paul II and Card Ratzinger doesn't equate to the hints that have been dropped throughout the years from people we know who had read it (such as Ratzinger himself, viz The Ratzinger Report) but we've been told that's it and I don't want to call either of those two great men a liar. What we have is speculation which is, in my opinion, pointless without any real evidence. We have plenty of other prophecies which talk of this time. We know things are bad and will get worse.
Words of our Lady of Good Success 'the one who should speak will remain silent' And 'good priests will have much to suffer and finally they will have neither a father or prelate to guide them' That pretty much sums it all up. We are already in this situation. As Our Lady requests just pray, pray, pray. We don't have much more to go
Letter from Bishop Athanasius Schneider, September 18, 2023 There is no authority to declare or consider an elected and generally accepted Pope as an invalid Pope. The constant practice of the Church makes it evident that even in the case of an invalid election this invalid election will be de facto healed through the general acceptance of the new elected by the overwhelming majority of the cardinals and bishops. Even in the case of a heretical pope he will not lose his office automatically and there is no body within the Church to declare him deposed because of heresy. Such actions would come close to a kind of a heresy of conciliarism or episcopalism. The heresy of conciliarism or episcopalism says basically that there is a body within the Church (Ecumenical Council, Synod, College of Cardinals, College of Bishops), which can issue a legally binding judgment over the Pope. The theory of the automatic loss of the papacy due to heresy remains only an opinion, and even St. Robert Bellarmin noticed this and did not present it as a teaching of the Magisterium itself. The perennial papal Magisterium never taught such an option. In 1917, when the Code of Canon Law (Codex Iuris Canonici) came into force, the Magisterium of the Church eliminated from the new legislation the remark of the Decretum Gratiani in the old Corpus Iuris Canonici, which stated, that a Pope, who deviates from right doctrine, can be deposed. Never in history the Magisterium of the Church did admit any canonical procedures of deposition of a heretical pope. The Church has no power over the pope formally or judicially.The surer Catholic tradition says, that in the case of a heretical pope, the members of the Church can avoid him, resist him, refuse to obey him, all of which can be done without requiring a theory or opinion, that says that a heretical pope automatically loses his office or can be deposed consequently. Therefore being it so, we must follow the surer way (via tutior) and abstain from defending the merely opinion of theologians (even be them Saints like St. Robert Bellarmin), which says that a heretical pope automatically loses his office or can be deposed by the Church therefore. The pope cannot commit heresy when he speaks ex cathedra, this is a dogma of faith. In his teaching outside of ex cathedra statements, however, he can commit doctrinal ambiguities, errors and even heresies. And since the pope is not identical with the entire Church, the Church is stronger than a singular erring or heretical Pope. In such a case one should respectfully correct him (avoiding purely human angerand disrespectful language), resist him as one would resist a bad father of family. Yet, the members of a family cannot declare their evil father deposed from the fatherhood. They can correct him, refuse to obey him, separate themselves from him, but they cannot declare him deposed. Good Catholics know the truth and must proclaim it, offer reparation for the errors of an erring Pope. Since the case of a heretical pope is humanly irresolvable, we must implore with supernatural faith a Divine intervention, because that singular erring Pope is not eternal, but temporal, and the Church is not in our hands, but in the almighty hands of God. We must have enough supernatural faith, trust, humility, spirit of the Cross in order to endure such an extraordinary trial. In such relatively short situations (in comparison to 2000 years) we must not yield to a too human reaction and to an easy solution (declaring the invalidity of his pontificate), but must keep sobriety (keep a cool head) and at the same time a true supernatural view and trust in Divine intervention and in the indestructibility of the Church. + Athanasius Schneider
Fr. Malachi Martin has told many times how he got to read the third secret. Not only that, and unlike many others, he spoke authoritatively and was specific about what's included in it. He referred to it many times in his books, in his many interviews with Bernard Janzen, and in other interviews as well. Dropping tidbits here and there when discussing the themes of their discussions. He never waivered, he was always consistent. For instance, here's a general description of it at 31:57, including "the warning" that we came to know from Garabandal (which he also believed in, by the way) that he attributes to Fatima specifically:
Dave Hunt seemed like someone confused about his Protestant faith, as he was a staunch critic of Calvinism and most Protestant revivalists followed this doctrinal line. John Wesley, founder of Methodism, was one of the very rare exceptions.
