The Third Secret and the Turn of the Millennium

In the previous post More on the "Fourth" Secret of Fatima, we discussed how Archbishop Loris Capovilla - the personal secretary to Bl. John XXIII and witness to the original opening of the secret in 1959, appears to have yet again hinted that there is more to Third Secret than was published on 26th June 2000 - tantalising us with the statements "after so many years I wouldn't know how to reconstruct (the secret) fully...", and "I don't deny that there may be something else...".
(You can find Capovilla's interview below, with the material on Fatima being discussed around 2mins 20 secs into the video).

But if the Church is indeed holding back a portion of the Third Secret - which many consider to be the most important part; how do we reconcile this situation with the fact that the Vatican has consistently upheld that it has revealed the Secret of Fatima "in an authentic and integral way"? I will attempt to address the possible reasons why the full text of the secret has not been published, by carefully examining the words of the few people in the Vatican who are known to have had full access to the text before its publication in the year 2000.
Besides Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Capovilla is thought to be the most authoritative living witness to the original text, and is one of the few people known to have read the full text of the secret. According to Capovilla's testimony, the outer envelope of the Third Secret - which he states is kept in the Papal Apartments, contains his own handwriting, that was written under the dictation of John XXIII when the text was originally opened. The following is taken from Capovilla's personal notes which were recorded in official documentation:

Thursday the 27^th of June 1963, I was on duty in the Anticamera in the Vatican [the outer office where the Pope meets various persons]. Paul VI in the early morning received among others, Cardinal Fernando Cento (who had been Papal Nuncio to Portugal) and shortly afterwards the Bishop of Leiria Monsignor Joao [John] Pereira Venancio. Upon leaving, the Bishop asked for “a special blessing for Sister Lucy”.
It is evident that during the audience, they spoke about Fatima. In fact in the afternoon the Sostituto [the Substitute Secretary of State] Monsignor Angelo Dell’Acqua telephoned me on Via Casilina (I was a temporary guest of the Sisters of the “Poverelle”):
“I am looking for the package [plico] of Fatima. Do you know where it is kept?”

“It was in the drawer on the right hand side of the desk, named ‘Barbarigo’, in the [Papal] bedroom.”

One hour later Dell’Acqua called me back: “Everything is okay. The envelope [plico] has been found.”

Friday morning (28 June) between one meeting and another Paul VI asked me:
“How come on the envelope there is your (Capovilla’s) name?”
“John XXIII asked me to write a note regarding how the envelope arrived in his hands with the names of all those to whom he felt he should make it known.”
“Did he make any comment?”
“No, nothing except what I wrote on the outer file [involucro]: ‘I leave it to others to comment or decide.’”
“Did he later ever return to the subject?”
“No, never. However the devotion of Fatima remained alive in him.”
(See the full text here).

Antonio Socci, the author of The Fourth Secret of Fatima, pointed out that the above words that Capovilla was asked to write on the envelope were not present on any of the letters shown by Cardinal Bertone on the Italian TV program Porta a Porta (see Socci's deconstruction of Bertone's television appearance here ). In an attempt to refute the claims made in Socci's book, Bertone appeared on Porta a Porta with the documents relating to the text of the Third Secret published in 2000, but inadvertently showed that this material was different from that described by Capovilla and Archbishop Venancio.

As Socci points out, Venancio had personally carried the Third Secret from Leira, to the nunciature at Lisbon, before its transferal to Rome, and painstakingly recorded the physical attributes of the envelope he was carrying. Venancio recorded the envelope as being 12cm x 18cm - which was different from that shown by Bertone, who stated that his envelope was 9cm x 14cm. In addition, The Message of Fatima document states that the text published in 2000 was stored in the archives of Holy Office, which is quite different from location of the envelope mentioned by Capovilla. Archbishop Capovilla clearly states in his above documents that the envelope of the secret which he wrote upon was stored in the Papal Apartments.
This seems to confirm the investigation of Fr. Joseph Schweigl, who was commissioned to interrogate Sr. Lucia about the Third Secret by Pope Pius XII in 1952. As Frere Michel de la Sainte Trinite records in his monumental work The Whole Truth About Fatima (Vol III), published in 1990, Fr. Schweighl had discovered during his investigation that the Third Secret consisted of two distinct parts. In this work, which we must note was published several years before the Third Secret was revealed in 2000, Schweighl states that:

I cannot reveal anything of what I learned at Fatima concerning the Third Secret, but I can say that it has two parts: one concerns the Pope; the other logically (although I must say nothing) would have to be the continuation of the words: 'In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved'. (The Whole Truth About Fatima Vol III p710)

According to The Fatima Network, Solideo Paolini was in possession of an audio recording of Archbishop Capovilla that appears to confirm Schweighl's appraisal of the secret, which he played to the journalists present at Cardinal Bertone's press conference for the publication of his book L'ultima veggente di Fatima:

The Italian newspaper Il Giornale reported, “To the journalists there, Socci played a recording with the voice of Capovilla who on June 21, 2007 said, ‘There was something else, apart from the four pages, an attachment, yes.’ (See here)

This recording would then neatly correspond to Paolini's interview with Capovilla in 2006, as related in Socci's book:
'But I am right; perhaps the Bertone envelope is not the same as the Capovilla envelope...' Immediately, I interupted him: 'Therefore, both dates are correct because there are two texts of the Third Secret?' Here there was a brief silent pause. Then Monsignor Capovilla responded: 'Precisely so!' (Socci, The Fourth Secret of Fatima, p132)

The facts presented above, coupled with many other inconsistencies in the official documentation, has led many to conclude that the Third Secret was composed of two parts - one which is stored in archives of the Holy Office (that which was published in 2000), and another hidden text, which is kept in a bedside cabinet in the Papal Apartments.

When the Third Secret was published in the year 2000, it left many Catholics wondering why it had been suppressed for so long. The content of the vision simply did not warrant it to be withheld way beyond the date of 1960 for its publication specified by Sr. Lucia. And after Cardinal Bertone's TV appearance with the actual letter of the secret, the prescribed date is now known to have been written on the outside of one of the envelopes with the words "By express order of Our Lady, this envelope can only be opened in 1960 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon or the Bishop of Leiria."  If the Third Secret consisted solely of the text published in the year 2000, why would the Vatican feel the need to continue to suppress it for forty years after the date prescribed by Our Lady?
As I argue in Unveiling the Apocalypse, it seems that the real reason the Third Secret was suppressed until the year 2000, was that it contained a precise date referring directly to the turn of the millennium as the time of the fulfilment of one of its prophecies. If the hidden text of the Third Secret contained a date, such as a reference to the year 1999, or a phrase such as "at the end of the century", this would render it as unpublishable by the authorities in the Vatican until the date had passed and the prophecy could be validated. It would simply be too sensational to publish a highly anticipated text which set the time in which one its prophecies was to be fulfilled by a concrete date.
The secret was most likely originally intended to be released as a whole, after the prophecy was verified - which would explain why part of the text was published in the year 2000. In this scenario, the fact that the Third Secret was divided into two parts enabled the "safe" or "authentic" part of it to be published after the date had passed. But the other part, which contains this hypothetical date referencing the turn of the millennium, remains unpublished because it is perceived by the Vatican to be a failed prophecy - words which belong to Sr. Lucia, rather than to Our Lady. And the simple reason for this is, that on the surface, it appeared that nothing occurred at turn of the millennium to fulfil the words of the prophecy.
We can see what kind of effect that setting an exact date for the fulfilment of prophecy had for Fr. Stefano Gobbi, who predicted that the prophecy of the mark of the Beast would be fulfilled in a period of history beginning in the year 1998, and that the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary would take place in the year 2000 (see the earlier post Fr Gobbi's Prophecy of the Chastisement of America). When these dates passed without any apparent fulfilment, Fr Gobbi's reputation was severely, and indeed almost irreversibly discredited.
Although, as I argue throughout my book and this blog, the prophecy of the "War in Heaven" described in Rev 12 was fulfilled at this exact time period, which sees Satan cast from heaven to earth, after which he transfers his power and authority to the Beast, and the inhabitants of the earth are marked with the number of his name (see The Mark of the Beast). Events which were foretold to be accompanied by the Signs in the Sky described at the opening of the sixth seal in the Apocalypse, and in Jesus' Olivet discourse in the Gospels. And if this hidden text does contain a date directly mentioning the turn of the millennium and relating it to the prophecy of the Woman Adorned with the Sun and the casting down of Satan mentioned in Rev 12, then it is not alone, since this is the central thrust of the Prophecy of Pope Leo XIII. And the turn of the millennium is also explicitly mentioned in the original secrets of Our Lady of La Salette, as the date of the arrival of a number of prophecies, including the appearance of a monster (i.e. the Beast of Revelation) who would come to disturb a short lived period of peace (which is to be equated with the Second Pentecost) that would take place after the martyrdom of a pope:

Before all that arrives, great disorders will arrive, in the Church, and everywhere. Then, after [that], our Holy Father the Pope will be persecuted. His successor will be a pontiff that nobody expects.
Then, after [that], a great peace will come, but it will not last a long time. A monster will come to disturb it. All that I tell you here will arrive in the other century, at the latest in the year two thousand."
(I will go into a more detailed commentary on the above prophecy and its relation to the Apocalypse in a future post).

As we shall see, there appears to be plenty of evidence that the hidden text of the Third Secret concerns the "signs in heaven" described in chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation.
First we should turn to examine some of the evidence which indicate that the hidden text of the Third Secret contains reference to an exact date, before moving on to discuss the evidence that the Vatican considers this portion of the secret to be "inauthentic", and therefore that the full "authentic" part of the Third Secret has been released in full.

The first, and indeed most telling clue that tells us that the hidden text contains an exact date, is in Pope John XXIII's reason stipulated as to why he would not publish the Third Secret at the date of 1960, which was set by Our Lady - because it did not concern his pontificate:

Pope John XXIII announced that he was not releasing the secret at the specified by Sr. Lucia because it “does not concern the years of my pontificate”
(cited in De la Sainte Trinite, M. The Whole Truth About Fatima Vol. III p557)

The obvious implication of the words that it "does not concern the years of my pontificate", is that it contained reference to a date in the future that was well outside Pope John's expected life-span. If it did not contain a precise date, how else could the Pope possibly know that it did not concern his reign as pontiff?
We find the next clue in the writings of Archbishop Capovilla, who cites further reasons why Pope John XXIII refused to publish the secret in 1960:

“Pope John imposed the silence for two reasons: (1) it did not seem to him ‘to consist entirely of things supernatural,’ (2) he did not dare to risk an immediate interpretation, in the midst of the complex 'Fatima phenomenon,' prescinding from minute precisions….”
(cited in Socci, A. The Fourth Secret of Fatima, p154)

John XXIII's sceptical attitude towards alleged mysticism is well known, which would explain the first reason given above. But the second reason, "prescinding from minute precisions", seems to be an extension of his already public declaration that it "does not concern the years of my pontificate". Setting an exact date is perhaps the most minute precision one could make when prophesying a future event. In a Vatican communique of 8th Feb, 1960, which attempted to address why the Church would not be publishing the secret at the date specified by Our Lady, the reasons given were that:

“Although the Church recognizes the Fatima apparitions, She does not desire to take the responsibility of guaranteeing the veracity of the words that the three shepherd children said that the Virgin Mary had addressed to them.”
(Cited in De la Sainte Trinite, M. The Whole Truth About Fatima Vol. III pp578-586)

What exactly could the Church not take responsibility in guaranteeing about the secret? The word guarantee in itself again suggests that the secret contains "minute precisions" that it could not possibly stand by until the event had passed, and the veracity of the prophecy could be ascertained.
Then there is the choice of the year 2000 itself as the publication date for the vision of the Third Secret. If the hidden text referenced the year 1999, the end of the century, or the turn of the millennium as the date when one of its prophecies would be fulfilled, then it would appear that the Church published the vision text at the earliest and most prudent opportunity. And the inclusion of a future date by which one of its prophecies would be fulfilled would explain Cardinal Ratzinger's reason as to why the secret was not published in 1960 - that it was simply too sensational:

"Because, according to the judgement of the Popes, it adds nothing (literally: 'nothing different') to what a Christian must know concerning what derives from Revelation: i.e., 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, first of all that of Fatima in what is already known of what its message contains. Conversion and penitence are the essential conditions for 'salvation'."
(Joseph Card. Ratzinger Jesus Magazine)

Cardinal Ratzinger's statement that the content of Third Secret was the same as other Marian apparitions, could perhaps suggest that like La Salette, it too mentions the turn of the millennium.

In his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II also appeared to hint that the words of the Third Secret appeared to be nearing their fulfilment towards "the end of the century":

"Therefore, when I was shot by the assassin in St. Peter's Square, I did not pay any heed at first to the fact that it was precisely the anniversary of the day on which Mary had appeared to the three shepherds in Fatima, in Portugal, revealing to them those words which, by the end of the century, seemed to be moving toward their fulfilment."
(Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p243)

And as we have already discussed in the post The Two Towers and the Sixth Seal, when asked about the Third Secret after he had returned from Sr. Lucia's funeral mass, Cardinal Bertone bizarrely attempted to link the "signs in heaven" described in the Apocalypse at the opening of the sixth seal in Rev 6 with the events of 9/11.

Upon returning from celebrating the funeral mass of Sr. Lucia in February 2005, Cardinal Bertone was asked about the interpretation of the Third Secret in the journal La Republica. As part of his response, he gave the following statement: "prophecy must always be interpreted: It is enough to think of the Apocalypse, of the signs in heaven. Have these perhaps not already been seen with the airplanes that toppled the Twin Towers?" 
(La Republica, 17th Feb, 2005: cited in Socci, A. The Fourth Secret of Fatima, p119)

Why would Cardinal Bertone attempt to link the Third Secret with the "signs in heaven" described at the opening of the sixth seal in Rev 6 and the War in Heaven in Rev 12, with an event which happened around the turn of the millennium? Since there is absolutely nothing in the material of the secret released in 2000 concerning the "signs in heaven" spoken of in Rev 6:12-13 and 12:1-4, these musings could be an attempt to make sense out of something contained in the hidden text that made reference to this general time period. It is widely known that Cardinal Bertone was the last high ranking prelate to interview Sr. Lucia at length, and it appears that he is wrestling with the suggestion that the "signs in heaven" spoken of in the Gospels and the Apocalyspe had occurred at the turn of the millennium. In the post Signs in the Sky, we have already previously identified these signs as an earthquake, a total solar eclipse, a total lunar eclipse which turns the moon "blood red", and a meteor storm - all of which occurred at the turn of the millennium, and which appear to have been concentrated on modern Turkey, which is the location of the seven churches of Asia Minor - to which the Book of Revelation is addressed, as well as the "throne of Satan" at Pergamum mentioned in Rev 2:13.

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.(Rev 6:12-13)

The below Youtube video notes the proximity of the August 11th Solar eclipse visible in Turkey, with the Izmit earthquake six days later on August 17th (just ignore the attempt at the end to predict an earthquake in China following another solar eclipse in 2009).

A year to the day later, on 17th August 2000, one of the most remarkable Marian apparitions of recent times took place - those of Our Lady of Assiut. As I argue in my book Unveiling the Apocalypse, as well as the post Our Lady of Light and the Apocalyptic Nativity, the modern apparitions in Egypt beginning with Zeitoun in 1968, are directly connected to the prophecy of the Woman Adorned with the Sun in Rev 12.
A few months after the total solar eclipse and Izmit earthquake, the Leonid Meteor Storm took place, which only occurs every 33 years, and is known as the "King of Meteor Showers", which was followed two months later by a total lunar eclispe - which turns the moon "blood red". Then on 5th May 2000, just days before the beatification ceremony of the Shepherd children, a rare allignment of the 5 visible planets along with the earth and moon took place.
In addition to the other indicators that the so-called hidden text of the Third Secret may have contained a date mentioning the turn of the millennium, there is the level of significance that Bl. John Paul II attached to the Great Jubilee in the year 2000 - going as far as to state in an Apostolic letter that "the Year 2000 has become as it were a hermeneutical key of my Pontificate" (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 23. See full text here. I will go into some more detail on John Paul II's particular attachment to the Great Jubilee year, and how his thought on this subject seems to be shaped by the secrets of Fatima in a future post).

Then we have the words of Sr. Lucia herself, that the content of the Third Secret was "in the Gospel and in the Apocalypse..." (The Whole Truth About Fatima, Vol III, p763). And the material concerning the eschatological "signs in heaven" is perhaps the closest point of convergence between the Gospels and the Book of Revelation, which is quoted near verbatim as part of the events that would unfold at the opening of the sixth seal:

Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.(Matt 24:29)

Furthermore, Sr. Lucia specifically points to chapters 8-13 of the Book of Revelation as the portion relevant to the Third Secret (see The Whole Truth About Fatima, Volume III p533). And it seems that the struggle between the Dragon and the Woman Adorned with the Sun in Rev 12 (which I argue in the book recapitulates the "signs in heaven" described at the opening of the sixth seal, and is a personified dramatisation of this astronomical phenomena) is the chief point of reference in this hidden text, as we can determine from Sr. Lucia's interview with Father Fuentes:

"Father, the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin, and the devil knows what it is that most offends God, and which in a short space of time will gain for him the greatest number of souls. Thus the devil does everything to overcome souls consecrated to God, because in this way the devil will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily will he seize them.
"Father, the Most Holy Virgin did not tell me that we are in the last times of the world, but She made me understand this for three reasons. The first reason is because She told me that the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Virgin. And a decisive battle is the final battle where one side will be victorious and the other side will suffer defeat. Hence from now on we must choose sides. Either we are for God or we are for the devil; there is no other possibility.
(Cited in Kramer, P. The Devil's Final Battle, p168)

This "final" and "decisive" battle, of course relates to Rev 12:9, where Satan is thrown down from heaven to earth after he is cast out of Heaven by the Archangel Michael - whom Pope Leo XIII invoked in the prayer he composed after his vision of the hundred years of Satan's power. So yet again, the Third Secret, Rev 12 and the turn of the millennium are linked together. And these connections were taken further again with Bl. John Paul II's sermon at the beatification Mass of Francisco and Jacinta Marto on May 13th 2000, which Antonio Socci suggests was made as a compromise in order to impart the essential message of the text that was not revealed:

According to the divine plan, "a woman clothed with the sun" (Rv 12: 1) came down from heaven to this earth to visit the privileged children of the Father. She speaks to them with a mother's voice and heart: she asks them to offer themselves as victims of reparation, saying that she was ready to lead them safely to God. And behold, they see a light shining from her maternal hands which penetrates them inwardly, so that they feel immersed in God just as - they explain - a person sees himself in a mirror...

"Another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon" (Rv 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.

How many victims there have been throughout the last century of the second millennium! We remember the horrors of the First and Second World Wars and the other wars in so many parts of the world, the concentration and extermination camps, the gulags, ethnic cleansings and persecutions, terrorism, kidnappings, drugs, the attacks on unborn life and the family.

The message of Fátima 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" (Rv 12: 4). Man's final goal is heaven, his true home, where the heavenly Father awaits everyone with his merciful love.

God does not want anyone to be lost; that is why 2,000 years ago he sent his Son to earth, "to seek and to save the lost" (Lk 19: 10). And he saved us by his death on the cross. Let no one empty that Cross of its power! Jesus died and rose from the dead to be "the first-born among many brethren" (Rom 8: 29).

(Beatification of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, Shepherds of Fatima. See the full text here)

So, as we have seen, the hidden text of the Third Secret may have contained a date concerning the turn of the millennium for the fulfilment of one of its prophecies. The prophecy most likely related to this event is the prophecy of the struggle between the Woman Adorned with the Sun and the Red Dragon - in which the Woman is victorious and the Dragon cast to earth, in the backdrop of a series of astronomical signs which also herald the opening of the sixth seal, during which the saints are sealed in heaven as an antidote the the fulfilment of the prophecy of the Mark of the Beast on earth. Now that we have established this scenario, we should turn to examine the various pieces of evidence which suggest that many within the Vatican believes that this hidden text was a failed prophecy, and thus not part of the real secret - which incidentally, have only began to surface since the revelation of the Third Secret at the turn of the millennium, beginning with The Message of Fatima document itself.
We first find reference to a shadow of doubt being cast over the prophecies of the Third Secret in Cardinal Ratzinger's Theological Commentary, which some journalists noted at the time seemed to be "gently debunking the Fatima cult", and implying that Sr. Lucia "might have conjured her vision from devotional books" (R. Boudreaux, LA Times, 27th June 2000, see full text here). Although this may be somewhat of an exaggerated version of Ratzinger's position (since we all know that Pope Benedict XVI has been a committed Fatima devotee throughout his entire career), it does highlight that there may have been some underlying doubts about some of the content. Now it must be noted that there is nothing in the text published in 2000 that could be open to incredulity, so any misgivings held by the Cardinal must have been centred on the "hidden text".

Is this what the Mother of the Lord wished to communicate to Christianity and to humanity at a time of great difficulty and distress? Is it of any help to us at the beginning of the new millennium? Or are these only projections of the inner world of children, brought up in a climate of profound piety but shaken at the same time by the tempests which threatened their own time?...

...“Interior vision” is not fantasy but, as we have said, a true and valid means of verification. But it also has its limitations. Even in exterior vision the subjective element is always present. We do not see the pure object, but it comes to us through the filter of our senses, which carry out a work of translation. This is still more evident in the case of interior vision, especially when it involves realities which in themselves transcend our horizon. The subject, the visionary, is still more powerfully involved. He sees insofar as he is able, in the modes of representation and consciousness available to him. In the case of interior vision, the process of translation is even more extensive than in exterior vision, for the subject shares in an essential way in the formation of the image of what appears. He can arrive at the image only within the bounds of his capacities and possibilities. Such visions therefore are never simple “photographs” of the other world, but are influenced by the potentialities and limitations of the perceiving subject.

The first thing we note in the above commentary is that Cardinal Ratzinger attempts to interpret the secret in the context of the turn of the millennium - which implies that it specifically relates to this time period. He then immediately moves on to suggest that some of the revelations could have been wrongly interpreted in the imaginations of the children, and then sets about explaining how this is theologically possible for even those who receive genuine private revelations, as is outlined in the teachings of St. John of the Cross.
We then find what may be a further attempt to explain why nothing seemed to occur at the hypothetical date set in the hidden text:

In this way, the importance of human freedom is underlined: the future is not in fact unchangeably set, and the image which the children saw is in no way a film preview of a future in which nothing can be changed. Indeed, the whole point of the vision is to bring freedom onto the scene and to steer freedom in a positive direction. The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future.

The content of a date mentioning the turn of the millennium as the time by which some of the prophecies were set to occur may also explain the eagerness of the Vatican to confine the interpretation of the secret to the past, such as relating the vision of the pope being killed to the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, again with the theme that "there is no immutable destiny":

That here “a mother's hand” had deflected the fateful bullet only shows once more that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces which can influence history and that in the end prayer is more powerful than bullets and faith more powerful than armies...

And so we come to the final question: What is the meaning of the “secret” of Fatima as a whole (in its three parts)? What does it say to us? First of all we must affirm with Cardinal Sodano: “... the events to which the third part of the ‘secret' of Fatima refers now seem part of the past”. Insofar as individual events are described, they belong to the past.

(Joseph Card. Ratzinger. The Message of Fatima: Theological Commentary. See the full text here)

Indeed this confinement of the interpretation of the secret to the past was that most perplexed Catholics. Why did the prelates involved feel the need to interpret the secret in light of past events? Although the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II clearly foreshadows the vision of the martyrdom of a pope described in the secret, especially given the significance of the date of May 13th; it most certainly can not be restricted to this event alone. Instead, it seems that the compulsion to interpret the secret in light of past events is due to a time limit imposed within the writings of Sr. Lucia herself - a time limit which had already passed at the moment of the secret's publication.

We next find elements of doubt surrounding the Third Secret in the testimony of Archbishop Capovilla himself, during his interview with Solideo Paolini in 2006. Here, Capovilla clearly suggests that the hidden text of the Third Secret was not published because it was thought that Sr. Lucia was mistaken on a few points in it, and that it therefore could not be part of the authentic text -but rather Lucia's own thoughts. It will be worth examining this interview in some detail:

Before I left his house, Archbishop Capovilla continued to talk freely of various subjects, speaking of many lines of reasoning. I must say that he didn’t openly connect those arguments to the Third Secret of Fatima, but the fact that he was talking about them in that context seems to be a hint towards that direction, an implicit indication, just to make me understand a little, without exposing himself too much.

He started to talk about various things, which apparently didn’t have much to do with my concerns: he spoke about the risk of taking for supernatural things something that might be someone’s fantasies, instead; he spoke about the risk of becoming maniacs on certain things, too fixed upon certain events. I remained silent because I didn’t go there to judge or to comment on anything he said, just to gather his testimony. However, apart from the considerations of what he was saying, something clear emerged out of these freewheeling talks that he spoke in that context and related to the Third Secret.

[The statement here of "the risk of becoming maniacs on certain things, too fixed upon certain events..." sounds remarkably similar to the "minute precisions" mentioned earlier.]

They revealed that he probably thought that Sister Lucy didn’t really receive the Third Secret, or a part of it, by Our Lady, but that she might have invented some of it, in good faith, being mistaken or having dreamt of it; some parts of Fatima, some parts of the Third Secret might not come really from Our Lady but out of fantasies that Sister Lucy dreamt of.

This consideration was reinforced by another line of reasoning he started talking about, in which he was criticizing the easiness of exorcising people who might only be mentally ill instead. Hence the imprudence of exorcising them while they might only need a psychologist. Imprudence that, we must say, he didn’t have in Loreto, because he told me about many examples of exorcisms he had there while he was bishop. So, before saying that certain events are of supernatural origin, we should first think that they might be of natural origin instead. In the context in which these things were said, they seemed to say that instead of thinking that Sister Lucy received the Fatima Message from Our Lady, we should think instead that they were invented by her by mistake, things she might have believed as coming from Our Lady, while they were her dreams instead.

The impression I had from his words was quite strong towards that meaning, and it is reinforced by what one of the closest and more intimate prelates to Pope John Paul II once stated. He said, “It is hard to understand when it is Sister Lucy who speaks or when it is Our Lady…” This very statement was mentioned on the TV program Porta a Porta, which was aired on Italian Television Rai 1 on May 31, 2007. So, Archbishop Capovilla continued, we need prudence to understand what has been said by Our Lady and what by Sister Lucy.

A similar attitude can be found in the letter written by the current Pope to Cardinal Bertone, which was used by the latter as an introduction to his book. This letter is actually extremely vague in its content, and we need to remember that even Mr. Socci received a letter of congratulations for his book from the Pope himself! It sounds strange, doesn’t it? There are two completely different and opposing books which both receive a letter of appreciation by the Holy Father! And in that letter sent to Cardinal Bertone, used by the latter as an introduction to his own book, the Pope speaks of “the authentic words of the Third Secret”!

If we add what was said by Archbishop Capovilla, to what was said in the same vein by the close collaborator of John Paul II (“it is hard to understand when it is Sister Lucy who speaks and when it is Our Lady…”) and to what Pope Benedict XVI has said in his letter “authentic words of the Third Secret”, we must deduct that there is a part of the Third Secret that they don’t deem as authentic, from a supernatural point of view.

It is as if they say that those words come from Sister Lucy and not from Our Lady. Knowing how Pope Ratzinger is widely known to use and weigh each single word used in his sentences, his statement also seems to go towards this direction. Maybe they didn’t publish it because they thought those words were not authentic! Maybe they say that everything has been published, with this meaning: “Everything we thought was the authentic Third Secret, so everything we thought was said by Our Lady, we’ve published it. While instead what we deemed as not authentic, not a revelation from Heaven but mere thoughts of Sister Lucy, we didn’t publish. We have considered these thoughts of Sister Lucy not to be a secret from Heaven, therefore we have discarded them from a supernatural point of view.”

Such an explanation would give an explanation to the repeated claim, by the Vatican, that they have published and revealed everything about the Third Secret, while taking into account the evident proofs that something, indeed, is missing. (See the full text here)

So it seems that the real reason that the hidden text of the Third Secret has not been published is due to the fact that it contains a specific date - a date that seemed to the prelates involved to have passed without the prophesied event having occurred. But as I argue at length in my book, if the secret does mention a date concerning the turn of the millennium, and it is made in relation to the prophecy of the Woman Adorned with the Sun in Rev 12, as most Fatima experts appear to agree, then the prophecy did in fact take place at the set date. Unfortunately its true significance appears to have been (perhaps understandably) overlooked. Therefore the Church is not lying to us when it has repeatedly stated that the authentic text of the secret has been published in full - it truly believes that this is the case. The main reason for its reticence is its desire to protect Sr. Lucia and the devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, due to the risk of a misunderstanding by the laity - which would certainly be exploited by the secular mass media. It is easy for theologians to grasp how even those who receive genuine private revelations can be mistaken. But if it published a text with a date that was perceived to have failed at the appointed time, it would only serve to completely discredit the entire Fatima phenomenon - which the Church is attempting at all costs to protect.