At the end of the Mass presided over by the Holy Father at Fatima,
                    Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State, made this
                    announcement in Portuguese, which is given here in English
                    translation:

                    Brothers and Sisters in the Lord!

                    At the conclusion of this solemn celebration, I feel bound to offer our
                    beloved Holy Father Pope John Paul II, on behalf of all present, heartfelt
                    good wishes for his approaching 80th Birthday and to thank him for his
                    vital pastoral ministry for the good of all God's Holy Church; we present
                    the heartfelt wishes of the whole Church.

                    On this solemn occasion of his visit to Fatima, His Holiness has directed
                    me to make an announcement to you. As you know, the purpose of his
                    visit to Fatima has been to beatify the two “little shepherds”. Nevertheless
                    he also wishes his pilgrimage to be a renewed gesture of gratitude to Our
                    Lady for her protection during these years of his papacy. This protection
                    seems also to be linked to the so-called third part of the “secret” of
                    Fatima.

                    That text contains a prophetic vision similar to those found in Sacred
                    Scripture, which do not describe photographically the details of future
                    events, but synthesize and compress against a single background facts
                    which extend through time in an unspecified succession and duration. As a
                    result, the text must be interpreted in a symbolic key.

                    The vision of Fatima concerns above all the war waged by atheistic
                    systems against the Church and Christians, and it describes the immense
                    suffering endured by the witnesses of the faith in the last century of the
                    second millennium. It is an interminable Way of the Cross led by the Popes
                    of the twentieth century.

                    According to the interpretation of the “little shepherds”, which was also
                    confirmed recently by Sister Lucia, “the Bishop clothed in white” who
                    prays for all the faithful is the Pope. As he makes his way with great
                    difficulty towards the Cross amid the corpses of those who were martyred
                    (Bishops, priests, men and women Religious and many lay people), he too
                    falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a hail of gunfire.

                    After the assassination attempt of 13 May 1981, it appeared evident that it
                    was “a mother's hand that guided the bullet's path”, enabling “the Pope in
                    his throes” to halt “at the threshold of death” (Pope John Paul II,
                    Meditation from the Policlinico Gemelli to the Italian Bishops,
                    Insegnamenti, XVII, 1 [1994], 1061). On the occasion of a visit to Rome
                    by the then Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, the Pope decided to give him the
                    bullet which had remained in the jeep after the assassination attempt, so that
                    it might be kept in the shrine. By the Bishop's decision, the bullet was later
                    set in the crown of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.

                    The successive events of 1989 led, both in the Soviet Union and in a
                    number of countries of Eastern Europe, to the fall of the Communist
                    regimes which promoted atheism. For this too His Holiness offers heartfelt
                    thanks to the Most Holy Virgin. In other parts of the world, however,
                    attacks against the Church and against Christians, with the burden of
                    suffering they bring, tragically continue. Even if the events to which the
                    third part of the “secret” of Fatima refers now seem part of the past, Our
                    Lady's call to conversion and penance, issued at the start of the twentieth
                    century, remains timely and urgent today. “The Lady of the message seems
                    to read the signs of the times—the signs of our time—with special insight...
                    The insistent invitation of Mary Most Holy to penance is nothing but the
                    manifestation of her maternal concern for the fate of the human family, in
                    need of conversion and forgiveness” (Pope John Paul II, Message for the
                    1997 World Day of the Sick, No. 1, Insegnamenti, XIX, 2 [1996], 561).

                    In order that the faithful may better receive the message of Our Lady of
                    Fatima, the Pope has charged the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
                    Faith with making public the third part of the “secret”, after the preparation
                    of an appropriate commentary.

                    Brothers and sisters, let us thank Our Lady of Fatima for her protection.
                    To her maternal intercession let us entrust the Church of the Third
                    Millennium.

                    Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix! Intercede pro
                    Ecclesia. Intercede pro Papa nostro Ioanne Paulo II. Amen.

                    Fatima, 13 May 2000