From May 13 to October 13, 1917, the Virgin Mary revealed herself to three peasant children in a great hollow basin known as Cova da Iria, near the Portugese village of Fatima. Jacinta and Franciso Marto were brother and sister, she was seven and he was nine. Lucia dos Santos, their first cousin, was ten. The mother of God appeared to them six times, always on the thirteenth of the month, at the same place, at the same time. By the final apparition, thousands (including reporters and photographers) were present to witness the sun dance across the sky—a sign from heaven that the visions were real.
Over a decade later the Roman Catholic Church sanctioned the apparitions as worthy of assent. But two of the young seers never lived to see that recognition. Jacinta and Francisco both died of influenza within thirty months of the Virgin's final appearance. Lucia, though, devoted her life to God as a cloistered nun and died, interestingly, on the 13th day of February, 2005. The Virgin even foretold those occurrences when she told the children at Fatima, I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon, but you, Lucia, shall remain here for a certain time. Jesus wishes to use you to make Me known and loved.
It was during Her July 1917 visit that the Virgin told the young seers three secrets. In the years after the apparitions, Lucia herself revealed the first two secrets, including them in her memoirs published in the early 1940s. Only Jacinta and Lucia actually heard the Virgin convey the third secret. For some reason Francisco was excluded from a direct rendition, but Lucia was given permission to tell him. Though pressed hard by the local bishop to reveal the third secret, all of the children refused. Jacinta and Francisco took the information with them to their graves, though Francisco told an interviewer in October 1917 that the third secret was for the good of souls and that many would be sad if they knew.
It remained for Lucia to be the keeper of the final message.
Though she was blessed with good health, in 1943 a recurring pleurisy seemed to spell the end. Her local bishop, a man named da Silva, asked her to write the third secret down and seal it in envelope. She initially resisted, but in January 1944 the Virgin appeared to her at the convent in Tuy and told her that it was God's will that she now memorialize the final message.
Lucia wrote the secret and sealed it in an envelope. On being asked when the communication should be publicly divulged, she would only say, in 1960. The envelope was delivered to the local bishop and placed inside a larger envelope, sealed with wax, and deposited in the diocese safe, where it remained for thirteen years.
In 1957 the Vatican requested all of Sister Lucia's writings be sent to Rome, including the third secret. On its arrival, Pope Pius XII placed the envelope containing the third secret inside a wooden box bearing the inscription Secretum Sancti Officio, Secret of the Holy Office. The box stayed on the pope's desk for two years and Pius XII never read its contents.
In August 1959 the box was finally opened and the double envelope, still sealed with wax, was delivered to Pope John XXIII. Vatican records note that the message, in Portugese, was translated into Italian. In February 1960 the Vatican issued a curt statement pronouncing that the third secret of Fatima would remain under seal. No other explanation was offered.
By papal order, Sister Lucia's handwritten text was replaced in the wooden box and deposited in the Vatican archives. No one was allowed access, except the pope. Each pope after John XXIII ventured into the archives and opened the box, yet no pontiff ever publicly divulged the information.
Until John Paul II.
On May 13, 1981, the sixty-fourth anniversary of the first apparition at Fatima, while greeting visitors in St. Peter's Square, John Paul bent to bless a medal of the Virgin Mary. Shots were fired. The bullet meant for his head found his chest and he survived. Convinced that the Virgin's hand had guided the bullet's path, nineteen years later (May 13, 2000) the pope ordered the third secret revealed and photographs of Sister Lucia's writing published.
After reading the third secret, many at the time wondered why it had been sealed away. The message was a complex metaphor that ended with a papal assassination (which was the official reason why the message had been sealed, no one wanted to give a would be assassin divine inspiration). To supposedly quell debate, a forty page dissertation accompanied the release which interpreted the Virgin's complex metaphors.
But all of that only raised more questions. Why did John Paul II wait 19 years after being shot before revealing the text? Why reveal it at all? If the purpose was to protect the pope, why not leave the third secret sealed? What purpose was served by the release? To add further fuel to a growing fire, some Vatican observers, including key cardinals, publicly wondered if there might have been more to the third secret that was not revealed.
Could there be? We'll never know. The Vatican has made clear that it has spoken all it intends to on the subject of the third secret of Fatima. So, for now, we merely wait.
And wonder.
