SOTTO IL MONTE GIOVANNI XXIII, Italy — The feast of Our Lady of Fatima, May 13, is the occasion every year for millions of devotees to celebrate the apparition of Mary to three Portuguese peasant children in 1917 and to meditate on her call for repentance and conversion by the modern world.
For a much smaller but highly dedicated group of people, the anniversary of the first apparition is also an occasion for exploring their belief that, 95 years later, the Vatican is still hiding a portion of Mary's revelations.
The controversy is associated in a particular way with the pontificate of Blessed John XXIII, because one of the Fatima visionaries, Sister Lucia dos Santos, committed the so-called "Third Secret" to writing, with instructions that the pope should read it in the year 1960. Blessed John, who was pope from 1958 to 1963, declined to reveal the secret, which was published by the Vatican only in 2000.
The official version of the secret comes with a Vatican commentary interpreting it as an allegory of the Catholic Church's past struggles with 20th-century ideologies and characterizing its description of a "bishop dressed in white" shot down amid the rubble of a ruined city as a prophecy of the 1981 assassination attempt on Blessed John Paul II.
But some argue that the long-suppressed document must contain something even more disturbing, perhaps a prophecy of what they call the "great apostasy": the modernizing changes that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which was called by Blessed John.
One man with whom such skeptics would very much like to talk is Archbishop Loris F. Capovilla, Blessed John's personal secretary, who was present when the pope read the secret for the first time.
Speaking to Catholic News Service, Archbishop Capovilla, now 96, dismisses reports that he told an Italian writer in 2006 that part of the secret remains unpublished. He says that he noticed no discrepancy between the published version and the original.
Yet he qualifies his statement with a rare admission of doubt about his own remarkable memory. "I remember a bit," he says, "but you will understand, after so many years I wouldn't know how to reconstruct (the secret) fully."
Nor does he rule out the presence of such a document elsewhere in the archives of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, often referred to as "the Holy Office."
"At the Holy Office there must be a kilometer of paper regarding Fatima," the archbishop says. "I don't deny that there may be something else, but I don't know it."
When he was prefect of the doctrinal congregation, Pope Benedict XVI wrote the Vatican's commentary on the secret and insisted that what was published in 2000 was everything. In a book marking the 90th anniversary of the Fatima apparitions, he said publishing the text "was a time of light, not only because the message could be known by all, but also because it unveiled the truth amid the confused framework of apocalyptic interpretations and speculation."
He said he had written the commentary "after having prayed intensely and meditated deeply on the authentic words of the third part of the secret of Fatima, contained on sheets written by Sister Lucia."
Archbishop Capovilla does not disguise his reservations about the cult of Fatima, not least, he says, because it was "sometimes exploited a bit for political ends."
During the Cold War, many interpreted the Virgin's prophecy that Russia would "convert" as foretelling the fall of the Soviet Union. But Archbishop Capovilla says he considered those words to mean merely that Russia would embrace Christianity, which he suggests did not exclude the survival of communism.
"I have known people in perfectly good faith who were communists, but they weren't atheists," he says.
The archbishop's reservations about Fatima extend more generally to the phenomenon of Marian devotion.
"A cloistered nun who has visions -- here we underscore one aspect of the Christian life," he says.
Amid the enthusiasm for ecumenism that animated Blessed John's papacy and the Second Vatican Council, he recalls, "it was concluded, as far as Marian devotion was concerned, that perhaps it would not be appreciated by the Protestants."
An excessive focus on Marian devotion also runs contrary to the express wishes of Mary herself, he says.
Imagining himself receiving an apparition of Mary, Archbishop Capovilla says he would tell her: "Lady, you were present at the wedding at Cana; you said words that remain eternal, 'Do what Jesus tells you.' You come now to tell me to convert, to do penance. But he already said all of this; it's in the holy Gospel."
He adds that "all of Christianity -- all -- for me, for the Protestants, for the Orthodox, is summed up in these words: Convert, recognize your condition as little creatures and believe in the Gospel, put it into practice, live it."
"Having said this," the archbishop says, "it seems to me that is everything."
— Francis X. Rocca, Catholic News Service
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."
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service