A careful reading of the text of the so-called third “secret” of Fatima,
                    published here in its entirety long after the fact and by decision of the Holy
                    Father, will probably prove disappointing or surprising after all the
                    speculation it has stirred. No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future
                    unveiled. We see the Church of the martyrs of the century which has just
                    passed represented in a scene described in a language which is symbolic
                    and not easy to decipher. 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? How should we understand the vision?
                    What are we to make of it?

                    Public Revelation and private revelations – their theological status

                    Before attempting an interpretation, the main lines of which can be found in
                    the statement read by Cardinal Sodano on 13 May of this year at the end of
                    the Mass celebrated by the Holy Father in Fatima, there is a need for some
                    basic clarification of the way in which, according to Church teaching,
                    phenomena such as Fatima are to be understood within the life of faith.
                    The teaching of the Church distinguishes between “public Revelation” and
                    “private revelations”. The two realities differ not only in degree but also in
                    essence. The term “public Revelation” refers to the revealing action of God
                    directed to humanity as a whole and which finds its literary expression in
                    the two parts of the Bible: the Old and New Testaments. It is called
                    “Revelation” because in it God gradually made himself known to men, to
                    the point of becoming man himself, in order to draw to himself the whole
                    world and unite it with himself through his Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. It is
                    not a matter therefore of intellectual communication, but of a life-giving
                    process in which God comes to meet man. At the same time this process
                    naturally produces data pertaining to the mind and to the understanding of
                    the mystery of God. It is a process which involves man in his entirety and
                    therefore reason as well, but not reason alone. Because God is one,
                    history, which he shares with humanity, is also one. It is valid for all time,
                    and it has reached its fulfilment in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
                    Christ. In Christ, God has said everything, that is, he has revealed himself
                    completely, and therefore Revelation came to an end with the fulfilment of
                    the mystery of Christ as enunciated in the New Testament. To explain the
                    finality and completeness of Revelation, the Catechism of the Catholic
                    Church quotes a text of Saint John of the Cross: “In giving us his Son, his
                    only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once
                    in this sole Word—and he has no more to say... because what he spoke
                    before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us
                    the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some
                    vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behaviour but also
                    of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living
                    with the desire for some other novelty” (No. 65; Saint John of the
                    Cross,The Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 22).

                    Because the single Revelation of God addressed to all peoples comes to
                    completion with Christ and the witness borne to him in the books of the
                    New Testament, the Church is tied to this unique event of sacred history
                    and to the word of the Bible, which guarantees and interprets it. But this
                    does not mean that the Church can now look only to the past and that she
                    is condemned to sterile repetition. The Catechism of the Catholic Church
                    says in this regard: “...even if Revelation is already complete, it has not
                    been made fully explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its
                    full significance over the course of the centuries” (No. 66). The way in
                    which the Church is bound to both the uniqueness of the event and
                    progress in understanding it is very well illustrated in the farewell discourse
                    of the Lord when, taking leave of his disciples, he says: “I have yet many
                    things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of
                    truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his
                    own authority... He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare
                    it to you” (Jn 16:12-14). On the one hand, the Spirit acts as a guide who
                    discloses a knowledge previously unreachable because the premise was
                    missing—this is the boundless breadth and depth of Christian faith. On the
                    other hand, to be guided by the Spirit is also “to draw from” the riches of
                    Jesus Christ himself, the inexhaustible depths of which appear in the way
                    the Spirit leads. In this regard, the Catechism cites profound words of
                    Pope Gregory the Great: “The sacred Scriptures grow with the one who
                    reads them” (No. 94; Gregory the Great,Homilia in Ezechielem I, 7, 8).
                    The Second Vatican Council notes three essential ways in which the Spirit
                    guides in the Church, and therefore three ways in which “the word grows”:
                    through the meditation and study of the faithful, through the deep
                    understanding which comes from spiritual experience, and through the
                    preaching of “those who, in the succession of the episcopate, have
                    received the sure charism of truth” (Dei Verbum, 8).

                    In this context, it now becomes possible to understand rightly the concept
                    of “private revelation”, which refers to all the visions and revelations which
                    have taken place since the completion of the New Testament. This is the
                    category to which we must assign the message of Fatima. In this respect,
                    let us listen once again to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
                    “Throughout the ages, there have been so-called ‘private' revelations, some
                    of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church... It is not
                    their role to complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more
                    fully by it in a certain period of history” (No. 67). This clarifies two
                    things:

                    1. The authority of private revelations is essentially different from that of
                    the definitive public Revelation. The latter demands faith; in it in fact God
                    himself speaks to us through human words and the mediation of the living
                    community of the Church. Faith in God and in his word is different from
                    any other human faith, trust or opinion. The certainty that it is God who is
                    speaking gives me the assurance that I am in touch with truth itself. It gives
                    me a certitude which is beyond verification by any human way of knowing.
                    It is the certitude upon which I build my life and to which I entrust myself
                    in dying.

                    2. Private revelation is a help to this faith, and shows its credibility
                    precisely by leading me back to the definitive public Revelation. In this
                    regard, Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV, says
                    in his classic treatise, which later became normative for beatifications and
                    canonizations: “An assent of Catholic faith is not due to revelations
                    approved in this way; it is not even possible. These revelations seek rather
                    an assent of human faith in keeping with the requirements of prudence,
                    which puts them before us as probable and credible to piety”. The Flemish
                    theologian E. Dhanis, an eminent scholar in this field, states succinctly that
                    ecclesiastical approval of a private revelation has three elements: the
                    message contains nothing contrary to faith or morals; it is lawful to make it
                    public; and the faithful are authorized to accept it with prudence (E.
                    Dhanis,Sguardo su Fatima e bilancio di una discussione, in La Civiltà
                    Cattolica 104 [1953], II, 392-406, in particular 397). Such a message can
                    be a genuine help in understanding the Gospel and living it better at a
                    particular moment in time; therefore it should not be disregarded. It is a
                    help which is offered, but which one is not obliged to use.

                    The criterion for the truth and value of a private revelation is therefore its
                    orientation to Christ himself. When it leads us away from him, when it
                    becomes independent of him or even presents itself as another and better
                    plan of salvation, more important than the Gospel, then it certainly does not
                    come from the Holy Spirit, who guides us more deeply into the Gospel and
                    not away from it. This does not mean that a private revelation will not offer
                    new emphases or give rise to new devotional forms, or deepen and spread
                    older forms. But in all of this there must be a nurturing of faith, hope and
                    love, which are the unchanging path to salvation for everyone. We might
                    add that private revelations often spring from popular piety and leave their
                    stamp on it, giving it a new impulse and opening the way for new forms of
                    it. Nor does this exclude that they will have an effect even on the liturgy, as
                    we see for instance in the feasts of Corpus Christi and of the Sacred Heart
                    of Jesus. From one point of view, the relationship between Revelation and
                    private revelations appears in the relationship between the liturgy and
                    popular piety: the liturgy is the criterion, it is the living form of the Church
                    as a whole, fed directly by the Gospel. Popular piety is a sign that the faith
                    is spreading its roots into the heart of a people in such a way that it reaches
                    into daily life. Popular religiosity is the first and fundamental mode of
                    “inculturation” of the faith. While it must always take its lead and direction
                    from the liturgy, it in turn enriches the faith by involving the heart.

                    We have thus moved from the somewhat negative clarifications, initially
                    needed, to a positive definition of private revelations. How can they be
                    classified correctly in relation to Scripture? To which theological category
                    do they belong? The oldest letter of Saint Paul which has been preserved,
                    perhaps the oldest of the New Testament texts, the First Letter to the
                    Thessalonians, seems to me to point the way. The Apostle says: “Do not
                    quench the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything, holding
                    fast to what is good” (5:19-21). In every age the Church has received the
                    charism of prophecy, which must be scrutinized but not scorned. On this
                    point, it should be kept in mind that prophecy in the biblical sense does not
                    mean to predict the future but to explain the will of God for the present,
                    and therefore show the right path to take for the future. A person who
                    foretells what is going to happen responds to the curiosity of the mind,
                    which wants to draw back the veil on the future. The prophet speaks to the
                    blindness of will and of reason, and declares the will of God as an
                    indication and demand for the present time. In this case, prediction of the
                    future is of secondary importance. What is essential is the actualization of
                    the definitive Revelation, which concerns me at the deepest level. The
                    prophetic word is a warning or a consolation, or both together. In this
                    sense there is a link between the charism of prophecy and the category of
                    “the signs of the times”, which Vatican II brought to light anew: “You
                    know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky; why then do you
                    not know how to interpret the present time?” (Lk 12:56). In this saying of
                    Jesus, the “signs of the times” must be understood as the path he was
                    taking, indeed it must be understood as Jesus himself. To interpret the
                    signs of the times in the light of faith means to recognize the presence of
                    Christ in every age. In the private revelations approved by the
                    Church—and therefore also in Fatima—this is the point: they help us to
                    understand the signs of the times and to respond to them rightly in faith.

                    The anthropological structure of private revelations

                    In these reflections we have sought so far to identify the theological status
                    of private revelations. Before undertaking an interpretation of the message
                    of Fatima, we must still attempt briefly to offer some clarification of their
                    anthropological (psychological) character. In this field, theological
                    anthropology distinguishes three forms of perception or “vision”: vision
                    with the senses, and hence exterior bodily perception, interior perception,
                    and spiritual vision (visio sensibilis - imaginativa - intellectualis). It is
                    clear that in the visions of Lourdes, Fatima and other places it is not a
                    question of normal exterior perception of the senses: the images and forms
                    which are seen are not located spatially, as is the case for example with a
                    tree or a house. This is perfectly obvious, for instance, as regards the
                    vision of hell (described in the first part of the Fatima “secret”) or even the
                    vision described in the third part of the “secret”. But the same can be very
                    easily shown with regard to other visions, especially since not everybody
                    present saw them, but only the “visionaries”. It is also clear that it is not a
                    matter of a “vision” in the mind, without images, as occurs at the higher
                    levels of mysticism. Therefore we are dealing with the middle category,
                    interior perception. For the visionary, this perception certainly has the force
                    of a presence, equivalent for that person to an external manifestation to the
                    senses.

                    Interior vision does not mean fantasy, which would be no more than an
                    expression of the subjective imagination. It means rather that the soul is
                    touched by something real, even if beyond the senses. It is rendered
                    capable of seeing that which is beyond the senses, that which cannot be
                    seen—seeing by means of the “interior senses”. It involves true “objects”,
                    which touch the soul, even if these “objects” do not belong to our habitual
                    sensory world. This is why there is a need for an interior vigilance of the
                    heart, which is usually precluded by the intense pressure of external reality
                    and of the images and thoughts which fill the soul. The person is led
                    beyond pure exteriority and is touched by deeper dimensions of reality,
                    which become visible to him. Perhaps this explains why children tend to be
                    the ones to receive these apparitions: their souls are as yet little disturbed,
                    their interior powers of perception are still not impaired. “On the lips of
                    children and of babes you have found praise”, replies Jesus with a phrase
                    of Psalm 8 (v. 3) to the criticism of the High Priests and elders, who had
                    judged the children's cries of “hosanna” inappropriate (cf. Mt 21:16).

                    “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.

                    This can be demonstrated in all the great visions of the saints; and naturally
                    it is also true of the visions of the children at Fatima. The images described
                    by them are by no means a simple expression of their fantasy, but the result
                    of a real perception of a higher and interior origin. But neither should they
                    be thought of as if for a moment the veil of the other world were drawn
                    back, with heaven appearing in its pure essence, as one day we hope to see
                    it in our definitive union with God. Rather the images are, in a manner of
                    speaking, a synthesis of the impulse coming from on high and the capacity
                    to receive this impulse in the visionaries, that is, the children. For this
                    reason, the figurative language of the visions is symbolic. In this regard,
                    Cardinal Sodano stated: “[they] 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”. This compression of time and place in a single image is
                    typical of such visions, which for the most part can be deciphered only in
                    retrospect. Not every element of the vision has to have a specific historical
                    sense. It is the vision as a whole that matters, and the details must be
                    understood on the basis of the images taken in their entirety. The central
                    element of the image is revealed where it coincides with what is the focal
                    point of Christian “prophecy” itself: the centre is found where the vision
                    becomes a summons and a guide to the will of God.

                    An attempt to interpret the “secret” of Fatima

                    The first and second parts of the “secret” of Fatima have already been so
                    amply discussed in the relative literature that there is no need to deal with
                    them again here. I would just like to recall briefly the most significant point.
                    For one terrible moment, the children were given a vision of hell. They saw
                    the fall of “the souls of poor sinners”. And now they are told why they
                    have been exposed to this moment: “in order to save souls”—to show the
                    way to salvation. The words of the First Letter of Peter come to mind: “As
                    the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls” (1:9). To
                    reach this goal, the way indicated —surprisingly for people from the
                    Anglo-Saxon and German cultural world—is devotion to the Immaculate
                    Heart of Mary. A brief comment may suffice to explain this. In biblical
                    language, the “heart” indicates the centre of human life, the point where
                    reason, will, temperament and sensitivity converge, where the person finds
                    his unity and his interior orientation. According to Matthew 5:8, the
                    “immaculate heart” is a heart which, with God's grace, has come to perfect
                    interior unity and therefore “sees God”. To be “devoted” to the
                    Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore to embrace this attitude of
                    heart, which makes the fiat—“your will be done”—the defining centre of
                    one's whole life. It might be objected that we should not place a human
                    being between ourselves and Christ. But then we remember that Paul did
                    not hesitate to say to his communities: “imitate me” (1 Cor 4:16; Phil 3:17;
                    1 Th 1:6; 2 Th 3:7, 9). In the Apostle they could see concretely what it
                    meant to follow Christ. But from whom might we better learn in every age
                    than from the Mother of the Lord?

                    Thus we come finally to the third part of the “secret” of Fatima which for
                    the first time is being published in its entirety. As is clear from the
                    documentation presented here, the interpretation offered by Cardinal
                    Sodano in his statement of 13 May was first put personally to Sister Lucia.
                    Sister Lucia responded by pointing out that she had received the vision but
                    not its interpretation. The interpretation, she said, belonged not to the
                    visionary but to the Church. After reading the text, however, she said that
                    this interpretation corresponded to what she had experienced and that on
                    her part she thought the interpretation correct. In what follows, therefore,
                    we can only attempt to provide a deeper foundation for this interpretation,
                    on the basis of the criteria already considered.

                    “To save souls” has emerged as the key word of the first and second parts
                    of the “secret”, and the key word of this third part is the threefold cry:
                    “Penance, Penance, Penance!” The beginning of the Gospel comes to
                    mind: “Repent and believe the Good News” (Mk 1:15). To understand the
                    signs of the times means to accept the urgency of penance – of conversion
                    – of faith. This is the correct response to this moment of history,
                    characterized by the grave perils outlined in the images that follow. Allow
                    me to add here a personal recollection: in a conversation with me Sister
                    Lucia said that it appeared ever more clearly to her that the purpose of all
                    the apparitions was to help people to grow more and more in faith, hope
                    and love—everything else was intended to lead to this.

                    Let us now examine more closely the single images. The angel with the
                    flaming sword on the left of the Mother of God recalls similar images in the
                    Book of Revelation. This represents the threat of judgement which looms
                    over the world. Today the prospect that the world might be reduced to
                    ashes by a sea of fire no longer seems pure fantasy: man himself, with his
                    inventions, has forged the flaming sword. The vision then shows the power
                    which stands opposed to the force of destruction—the splendour of the
                    Mother of God and, stemming from this in a certain way, the summons to
                    penance. 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. Its meaning is exactly the
                    opposite: it is meant to mobilize the forces of change in the right direction.
                    Therefore we must totally discount fatalistic explanations of the “secret”,
                    such as, for example, the claim that the would-be assassin of 13 May 1981
                    was merely an instrument of the divine plan guided by Providence and
                    could not therefore have acted freely, or other similar ideas in circulation.
                    Rather, the vision speaks of dangers and how we might be saved from
                    them.

                    The next phrases of the text show very clearly once again the symbolic
                    character of the vision: God remains immeasurable, and is the light which
                    surpasses every vision of ours. Human persons appear as in a mirror. We
                    must always keep in mind the limits in the vision itself, which here are
                    indicated visually. The future appears only “in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor
                    13:12). Let us now consider the individual images which follow in the text
                    of the “secret”. The place of the action is described in three symbols: a
                    steep mountain, a great city reduced to ruins and finally a large rough-hewn
                    cross. The mountain and city symbolize the arena of human history: history
                    as an arduous ascent to the summit, history as the arena of human
                    creativity and social harmony, but at the same time a place of destruction,
                    where man actually destroys the fruits of his own work. The city can be the
                    place of communion and progress, but also of danger and the most
                    extreme menace. On the mountain stands the cross—the goal and guide of
                    history. The cross transforms destruction into salvation; it stands as a sign
                    of history's misery but also as a promise for history.

                    At this point human persons appear: the Bishop dressed in white (“we had
                    the impression that it was the Holy Father”), other Bishops, priests, men
                    and women Religious, and men and women of different ranks and social
                    positions. The Pope seems to precede the others, trembling and suffering
                    because of all the horrors around him. Not only do the houses of the city
                    lie half in ruins, but he makes his way among the corpses of the dead. The
                    Church's path is thus described as a Via Crucis, as a journey through a
                    time of violence, destruction and persecution. The history of an entire
                    century can be seen represented in this image. Just as the places of the
                    earth are synthetically described in the two images of the mountain and the
                    city, and are directed towards the cross, so too time is presented in a
                    compressed way. In the vision we can recognize the last century as a
                    century of martyrs, a century of suffering and persecution for the Church,
                    a century of World Wars and the many local wars which filled the last fifty
                    years and have inflicted unprecedented forms of cruelty. In the “mirror” of
                    this vision we see passing before us the witnesses of the faith decade by
                    decade. Here it would be appropriate to mention a phrase from the letter
                    which Sister Lucia wrote to the Holy Father on 12 May 1982: “The third
                    part of the ‘secret' refers to Our Lady's words: ‘If not, [Russia] will spread
                    her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the
                    Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to
                    suffer; various nations will be annihilated'”.

                    In the Via Crucis of an entire century, the figure of the Pope has a special
                    role. In his arduous ascent of the mountain we can undoubtedly see a
                    convergence of different Popes. Beginning from Pius X up to the present
                    Pope, they all shared the sufferings of the century and strove to go forward
                    through all the anguish along the path which leads to the Cross. In the
                    vision, the Pope too is killed along with the martyrs. When, after the
                    attempted assassination on 13 May 1981, the Holy Father had the text of
                    the third part of the “secret” brought to him, was it not inevitable that he
                    should see in it his own fate? He had been very close to death, and he
                    himself explained his survival in the following words: “... it was a mother's
                    hand that guided the bullet's path and in his throes the Pope halted at the
                    threshold of death” (13 May 1994). 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.

                    The concluding part of the “secret” uses images which Lucia may have
                    seen in devotional books and which draw their inspiration from
                    long-standing intuitions of faith. It is a consoling vision, which seeks to
                    open a history of blood and tears to the healing power of God. Beneath the
                    arms of the cross angels gather up the blood of the martyrs, and with it
                    they give life to the souls making their way to God. Here, the blood of
                    Christ and the blood of the martyrs are considered as one: the blood of the
                    martyrs runs down from the arms of the cross. The martyrs die in
                    communion with the Passion of Christ, and their death becomes one with
                    his. For the sake of the body of Christ, they complete what is still lacking
                    in his afflictions (cf. Col 1:24). Their life has itself become a Eucharist, part
                    of the mystery of the grain of wheat which in dying yields abundant fruit.
                    The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians, said Tertullian. As from
                    Christ's death, from his wounded side, the Church was born, so the death
                    of the witnesses is fruitful for the future life of the Church. Therefore, the
                    vision of the third part of the “secret”, so distressing at first, concludes
                    with an image of hope: no suffering is in vain, and it is a suffering Church,
                    a Church of martyrs, which becomes a sign-post for man in his search for
                    God. The loving arms of God welcome not only those who suffer like
                    Lazarus, who found great solace there and mysteriously represents Christ,
                    who wished to become for us the poor Lazarus. There is something more:
                    from the suffering of the witnesses there comes a purifying and renewing
                    power, because their suffering is the actualization of the suffering of Christ
                    himself and a communication in the here and now of its saving effect.

                    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. Those who
                    expected exciting apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the
                    future course of history are bound to be disappointed. Fatima does not
                    satisfy our curiosity in this way, just as Christian faith in general cannot be
                    reduced to an object of mere curiosity. What remains was already evident
                    when we began our reflections on the text of the “secret”: the exhortation
                    to prayer as the path of “salvation for souls” and, likewise, the summons to
                    penance and conversion.

                    I would like finally to mention another key expression of the “secret” which
                    has become justly famous: “my Immaculate Heart will triumph”. What does
                    this mean? The Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is
                    stronger than guns and weapons of every kind. The fiat of Mary, the word
                    of her heart, has changed the history of the world, because it brought the
                    Saviour into the world—because, thanks to her Yes, God could become
                    man in our world and remains so for all time. The Evil One has power in
                    this world, as we see and experience continually; he has power because our
                    freedom continually lets itself be led away from God. But since God
                    himself took a human heart and has thus steered human freedom towards
                    what is good, the freedom to choose evil no longer has the last word.
                    From that time forth, the word that prevails is this: “In the world you will
                    have tribulation, but take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). The
                    message of Fatima invites us to trust in this promise.
 
 

                                                     Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
                                                   Prefect of the Congregation
                                                   for the Doctrine of the Faith