Unheeded Warnings of Great Apostasy. Several clerics who claimed to know the contents of the complete Third Secret of Fatima have indicated that it speaks of a great apostasy:

• “In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church begins at the top.” (Cardinal Luigi Ciappi, quoted in Christopher Ferrara’s The Secret Still Hidden, p. 43)
• “I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to little Lucia of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the faith, in her liturgy, her theology and her soul . . . I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments and make her feel remorse for her historical past.” (Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII, The Secret Still Hidden, p. 31)
• “[The Third Secret] has nothing to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against apostasy in the Church.” (Cardinal Silvio Oddi, The Secret Still Hidden, p. 42)
• “If ‘in Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved,’ . . . it can be clearly deduced from this that in other parts of the Church these dogmas are going to become obscure or even lost altogether. Thus it is quite possible that in this intermediate period which is in question (after 1960 and before the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary), the text makes concrete references to the crisis of the Faith of the Church and to the negligence of the pastors themselves . . .” (Father Joaquin Alonso, The Secret Still Hidden, p. 35)

These clerics would have no reason to lie about a great apostasy in the Church. On the other hand, those overseeing such a catastrophic situation — especially the reigning popes — would obviously be reluctant to reveal a secret that would make the world believe they were leading the Church astray. All of them knew that Vatican II was a radical departure from the Faith as it stood at the time of the Fatima apparitions in 1917, but they thought they were carrying out God’s will. Here, for instance, are the words of Paul VI as described by Christopher Ferrara:

“It cannot have been a mere happenstance that Paul VI chose the occasion of his sermon at Fatima on [May 13, 1967] to lament that the ‘renewal’ of the Church after Vatican II was going wrong: ‘What an evil it would be if an arbitrary interpretation, not authorized by the Magisterium, transformed this renewal into a disquieting disintegration of her traditional structure and constitution . . .’” (p. 37)

Setting aside his spurious assertion that the problems he saw in 1967 resulted from an “arbitrary” and “unauthorized” interpretation of the Council, it is evident that Paul VI (and so many others) saw a connection between the Council’s aftermath and the prophesied apostasy.

Paul VI’s lament echoes Cardinal Pacelli’s warnings of the “suicide of altering the faith.” Setting aside his spurious assertion that the problems he saw in 1967 resulted from an “arbitrary” and “unauthorized” interpretation of the Council, it is evident that he (and so many others) saw a connection between the Council’s aftermath and the prophesied apostasy. Crucially, though, Paul VI and his successors never paused —but only accelerated and intensified — their departure from what the Church had always taught, even as the horrendous fruits became ever more apparent and painful.

Doubling Down on Leading Souls to Hell. One of the key messages of Fatima relates to the vision of hell Our Lady of Fatima showed the children:

“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.”

In response to this, the false shepherds have called into question whether anyone actually goes to hell and have counteracted devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary through the most important objective of Vatican II: false ecumenism, which reduces to a minimum anything that non-Catholics reject, such as devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In addition, the youngest Fatima seer, Jacinta, identified the sins that lead most souls to hell: “More souls go to Hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason.” With the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the increasing pervasiveness of impurity and immodesty, one would think that any churchman who took the messages of Fatima seriously would redouble his efforts to make sure Catholics avoided sins of the flesh and immodesty in dress. Instead, we have seen essentially the opposite, with the following assaults on purity, among others:

• Despite Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, the false shepherds have permitted a majority of Catholics to believe that they can use contraception.
• The false shepherds have created a toxic mix of poor catechesis and improper administration of the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion so that countless nominal Catholics remain in a state of serious sin due to unrepented sins of the flesh.
• Bishops and priests have allowed Mass to become such a casual occasion that Catholics often attend in immodest clothing that would have been unthinkable at the time Our Lady appeared in Fatima.
• Pervasive sexual sins among the clergy, with no ostensible effort from Rome to address the causes, send the powerful message that sins of the flesh cannot possibly be all that problematic.

If anything, those with authority to influence the moral behavior of Catholics have actively encouraged and facilitated the proliferation of sins leading so many souls to hell. This would be a great sign of apostasy at the highest levels even if they did not believe the messages of Fatima. Their purported belief in the Fatima messages makes it worse because they have every reason to know they are offending God and leading souls to hell.

Those who have occupied the most important positions in the Church since Vatican II have consistently taken steps to undercut our Catholic sense that we must make reparation for the evils taking place in the Church. It is almost as though they have deliberately tried to lead souls away from the practices that Our Lady of Fatima insisted we follow.

Neglected Calls for Prayer and Penance. Much like the messages from other approved apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Fatima emphasized the need for prayer and penance. Since Vatican II, though, here is what we have seen related to prayer and penance:

• Almost all of the Church’s penitential practices — from Friday abstinence from meat, to the Eucharistic fast — have been eliminated or dramatically relaxed.
• The Church’s religious orders, which constitute the most important and powerful centers of prayer and penance, have been mercilessly attacked.
• The false shepherds have modified so many of the Church’s prayers (especially those of the Mass) to render them less objectionable to non-Catholics, making it far less likely that Catholics will effectively petition God’s mercy with proper devotion.
• One of the primary prayers requested by Our Lady of Fatima — the Rosary — has been so neglected that many Catholics do not even know how to say it.

Even in absence of the messages of Fatima, it should be crystal clear to those with the Faith that we ought to be doing more to combat the evils we see in the Church and world by making use of the great spiritual weapons God has given us. However, those who have occupied the most important positions in the Church since Vatican II have consistently taken steps to undercut our Catholic sense that we must make reparation for the evils taking place in the Church. It is almost as though they have deliberately tried to lead souls away from the practices that Our Lady of Fatima insisted we follow.

Timing of Revealing the Third Secret. In his The Secret Still Hidden, Christopher Ferrara provided the following explanation for why the world anticipated the release of the Third Secret of Fatima in 1960:

“Sister Lucia provided yet another early clue to the content of the Secret when she insisted that the Bishop of Fatima promise that the sealed envelope in which she had sent him the Secret ‘would definitely be opened and read to the world either at her death or in 1960, whichever would come first.’ On the outside of the envelope Sister Lucia had described as ‘a letter,’ she had, accordingly, written: ‘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.’ Sister Lucia later explained the significance of this date to Cardinal Ottaviani during the 1955 interrogation. As Ottaviani revealed in the aforementioned public address: ‘The message was not to be opened before 1960. I asked Sister Lucia, ‘Why this date?’ She answered, ‘Because then it will be clearer (mais claro).’ In answer to the same question from Canon Barthas in 1946, Lucia replied simply: ‘Because Our Lady wishes it so.’” (p. 24)

Along these same lines, Sister Lucia reiterated the importance of the year 1960 to Fr. Augustin Fuentes during an interview from December 26, 1957:

“Father, how much time is there before 1960 arrives? It will be very sad for everyone, not one person will rejoice at all if beforehand the world does not pray and do penance. I am not able to give any other details, because it is still a Secret . . .  This is the third part of the Message of Our Lady, which will remain secret until 1960.” (The Secret Still Hidden, p. 32)

What is it that the world saw around 1960? John XXIII had already announced the Second Vatican Council, and preparations were underway. In addition, John XXIII created a new cardinal at the end of 1959 who would be the driving force for the false ecumenical movement that sabotaged the Council and has been the greatest source of evil in the Church today: Augustin Bea. To get a sense of Bea’s motivations and determination, here is part of his letter to the head of the Johann Adam Möhler Institute from January 1, 1960:

“A variety of people have asked me about the possibilities for the creation of a commission for the ecumenical movement. The best approach will probably be to deal with it in the framework of the conciliar theological commissions, although these have not yet been formed. However, I shall take advantage of the next opportunity to discuss the question with the Holy Father too.” (Stjepan Schmidt, Augustin Bea: The Cardinal of Unity, p. 323)

Cardinal Bea’s efforts paid off, as we can glean from the fact that John XXIII named Bea as the first president of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, which was formed on June 5, 1960 (the day of Pentecost). So yes, by 1960 the impending apostasy would have been clearer to those who could see and comprehend what was taking place in Rome.

Apostasy was increasingly obvious in the decades after Vatican II as the false shepherds did so much to counteract what Our Lady told us to do, often to advance the anti-Catholic aims of false ecumenism.

Failure to Release the Entire Third Secret. Vatican officials published the so-called official Third Secret in 2000, preposterously claiming that the following translation of the secret corresponded to the failed assassination attempt on John Paul II in 1981:

“The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima, on 13 July 1917. After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: 'something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White 'we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.”

A few problems with calling this the complete Third Secret are readily apparent:

• The 1981 attempt to assassinate John Paul II does not have even a superficial resemblance to the death and destruction depicted in this incomplete secret.
• Nothing in this incomplete secret hints at the great apostasy discussed above.
• Nothing in this incomplete secret begins to explain why Sister Lucia insisted that the Third Secret needed to be revealed in 1960.

In hindsight, the release of the incomplete Third Secret seems like a thoroughly wicked attempt to stop as many Catholics as possible from realizing that Our Lady of Fatima had warned about the great apostasy beginning at the top of the Church around 1960. That apostasy was increasingly obvious in the decades after Vatican II as the false shepherds did so much to counteract what Our Lady told us to do, often to advance the anti-Catholic aims of false ecumenism. This aligns with the conclusion about the Third Secret that Cardinal Oddi expressed in 1991:

“[P]erhaps the secret says that in the sixties the Church would do something whose consequences would be very painful, with an enormous decrease in religious practice. And that afterwards, after great sufferings, the faith would come back.” (Fr. Bertrand Labouche, Fatima, 1917-2017, The Message for Our Times, p. 73)

How will the faith “come back” after having been almost eclipsed by Vatican II’s revolution? What will lead to the glorious Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary? Christopher Ferrara’s words from the final chapter of The Secret Still Hidden point the way:

"Of course, this glorious fulfillment, although inevitable, cannot happen without the participation of the faithful. God deigns to use human instruments to achieve the ends of His Church, and He will not impose His graces without the cooperation of the freely acting human subject. As Frère Michel explained in 1985, it is probable that the Consecration of Russia will not take place until reparation is made for the insult to Christ and His Blessed Mother committed by those who have buried the prophecy of the Third Secret—and worse, have done so in direct disobedience to the ‘express order of Our Lady’ that it be revealed in 1960.” (p. 209)

We must cooperate with God’s grace to make reparation, which certainly means we must oppose everything that has offended God so grievously for the past sixty years. Those who rightly want to remove Francis from his unholy occupation of the papacy must also be willing to abandon everything about the Vatican II revolution that led to the great apostasy that ushered Francis into the Vatican. Anything less than this will continue to offend God, lead souls to hell, and further delay the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

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