Vatican secret features in trial

Press, 25 July 1985, Page 12

Vatican secret features in trial

By

MICHELA WRONG,

of Reuter, in Rome

Claims in court by the man who shot the Pope have focused attention on one of the Vatican’s bestkept secrets, the third revelation of Fatima, which has intrigued the world for nearly 70 years. Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turk serving a life sentence for shooting and seriously wounding Pope John Paul 11, has said his attack was linked to the third secret of the Madonna of Fatima and challenged the Vatican to reveal it. He made the claim several times in the course of a trial here of seven people—four Turks and three Bulgarians—accused of plotting with Agca to assassinate the Polish-born pontiff in St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981. The secret of Fatima, rumoured to be an apocalyptic message prophesying world destruction, has been kept under wraps by the Vatican since 1917, when it is said to have been revealed in a vision at the Portuguese village of Fatima.

John XXIII was the first Pope to read the secret. He died without disclosing it and according to Nino lo Bello, an Italian journalist who specialises in Vatican affairs, Pope Pius XII fainted after reading it. Now Agca’s claims have reawakened interest in the 68-year-old mystery. “I ask the Vatican to reveal the third secret of the Madonna of Fatima,” Agca said in court on the second day of the trial. The Turkish defendant, on trial for illegally importing the pistol he used to shoot the Pope, has repeatedly claimed to be Jesus Christ. He has also announced the end of the world. The Vatican has not commented on Agca’s religious claims, but Pope John Paul once acknowledged a “mysterious coincidence” between the assassination attempt and Fatima. The Pope was shot on the same day of the year as the first Fatima vision. On May 13, 1917, three Portuguese shepherd children in Fa-

tima, north of Lisbon, said they saw a dazzling figure of a woman standing on a cloud. Ten-year-old Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco saw the woman several times and people witnessed the children having conversations with an invisible presence. The woman, who later announced she was the Virgin Mary, communicated three messages to the children. In the first the children saw a terrifying vision of Hell, and heard a prophecy foretelling the end of the First World War and the start of the Second World War. The second revelation predicted the advance of Communism and called for the conversion of all Russian people to Christianity through devotion to the Virgin Mary. The children told the third prophecy to the Church authorities, who sent it to the Vatican under seal. It has never been published. Anticlerics attacked the visions and the shepherd children spent two days in jail, accused of fraud;

but in 1930 the Vatican pronounced the vision worthy of belief and authorised devotion to Our Lady of Fatima. A chapel has been built on the site and thousands of pilgrims visit the sanctuary each year. Fatima is also the headquarters of the Blue Army, an American-run mission which, inspired by the second revelation, dedicates itself to combating communism by prayer and meditation. As for the third secret, the Catholic Church has always said it has not been disclosed because it adds nothing to revealed faith. In a recent book Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said he had read the secret, and denied it had been suppressed because it predicted disaster. “If until now this decision (to publish the secret) has not been taken, it is not because the popes wanted to hide something terrible,” he said. “Publishing the ‘third secret’ could also mean exposing its con-

tents to the danger of sensationalist use," Cardinal Ratzinger added. When Pope John Paul II visited the shrine of Fatima in 1982. one year after the shooting, he was careful to stress the importance of the whole message as a call to conversion and repentance. The Pope did, however, refer to the link between his nearassassination and the vision. "I seemed to recognise in the coincidence of the dates a special call to come to this place, and so today I am here," he said. He added that the coincidence was further evidence of the importance of the Virgin Mary in God’s plan and thanked her for his recovery. During the Pope's visit a Spanish priest wielding a bayonet made a second attempt on his life. Among those present during the papal visit was Lucia dos Santos, now a 78-year-old Carmelite nun. She is the only survivor of the three shepherd children—both her cousins died of influenza within three years of witnessing the vision.