“As for the final part, which has come to be known as the "Third Secret," Sister Lucy's nearly fatal bout of pleurisy in 1943 moved the Bishop of Fatima to ask her to write it down and seal it up in an envelope, so that it might be read if she died. After much agonizing and another visitation by the Lady, she complied with the Bishop's request in January 1944, and forwarded the envelope to him with instructions that it was to be opened by the Pope and read to the world in 1960, "because the Virgin wished to do so." 

However the Vatican refused to disclose the Third Secret in 1960 and continues to suppress it to this day. All the Popes since John XXIII, as well as a few curia Cardinals, have read the contents of Lucy's envelope, as John Paul II is reported to have done shortly after his inauguration in October 1978 . . .

While conversing with a small group of pilgrims in the cathedral square of Fulda, West Germany, in November 19080, the Holy Father was asked to explain why the Third Secret had not been published in 1960, as the Lady of Fatima had directed. John Paul responded that "the gravity of its contents" was such as to possibly provoke a hostile response to its release on the part of the "world power of communism." . . .

A question was then posed concerning the fate of the Fatima's apocalyptic scenario, John Paul: "We have to be prepared to suffer, before long, great trials which will require of us the disposition to sacrifice even our life . . . for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is still possible to avert it, because only in this manner can the Church be effectively renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church been brought about in blood! It will not be different this time." . . . 

The idea that a vacant Papal throne is part of the "or else" scenario in the Third Secret is very intriguing, because it confirms so neatly to a voluminous body of Christian prophecy dealing with the coming of the "Antichrist." It is here we begin to venture into the darkest recesses of the Third Secret of Fatima.”
                                                                           

“Subject: * Fatima and environs Date: Mon, 13 Dec 93 17:12:44 CST
From *The Ratzinger Report* Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori (Ignatius Press 1985)

Fatima and environs

One of the four sections of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the so-called disciplinary section) is entrusted with the task of judging Marian apparitions.

I ask: "Cardinal Ratzinger, have you read the so-called 'third secret of Fatima', which Sister Lucia, the only survivor of the group of those who beheld the apparition, forwarded to Pope John XXIII, and which the Pope, after he had examined it, passed on to your predecessor, Cardinal Ottaviani, ordering him to deposit it in the archives of the Holy Office?"

The reply is immediate and dry: "Yes, I have read it."

Undefined versions are circulating in the world, I continue, which describe the contents of that secret" as disquieting, apocalyptic, as warning of terrible sufferings. John Paul II himself, in his personal visit to Germany, seemed to confirm (albeit with prudent circumlocutions, privately, to a select group) the undeniably disconcerting contents of that text. Before him, Paul VI, during his pilgrimage to Fatima, also seems to have alluded to the "apocalyptic" themes of the "secret." Why was it never decided to make it public, if only to counter rash speculations?

"If this decision has not yet been made", he answers, "it is not because the Popes want to hide something terrible."

Then there is "something terrible" in Sister Lucia's manuscript, I insist?

"If that were so", he replies, avoiding going further, "that after all would only confirm the part of the message of Fatima already known. A stern warning has been launched from that place that is directed against the prevailing frivolity, a summons to the seriousness of life, of history, to the perils that threaten humanity. It is that which Jesus himself recalls very frequently: '... Unless you repent you will all perish...' (Lk 13:3). Conversion — and Fatima fully recalls it to mind — is a constant demand of Christian life. We should already know that from the whole of sacred Scripture."

So there will be no publication, at least for now?

"The Holy Father deems that it would add nothing to what a Christian must know from Revelation and also from the Marian apparitions approved by the Church in their known contents, which only reconfirmed the urgency of penance, conversion, forgiveness, fasting. To publish the 'third secret' would mean exposing the Church to the danger of sensationalism, exploitation of the content." ”       
                                                                           

“Some people have even wondered whether the pope believes himself to be possessed of special knowledge about the millennium. It may be, for example, that 2000 is central to the "third secret" of Fatima, a revelation about the future of the world which the Virgin Mary is said to have entrusted to a group of Portuguese peasant children in 1917, and which was transmitted in confidence to the Vatican alone. If so, then the pope is giving fresh credence to a millenarianism that is at least as old as Christianity itself.”       
                                                                           

“After Peter, the centuries roll by, full of controversies, any one of which today would involve immediate recourse to Rome for a decision . . . We have already noted that not a single Father can find any hint of a Petrine office in the great biblical texts that refer to Peter. Papal supremacy and infallibility, so central to the Catholic church today, are simply not mentioned. Not a single creed, nor confession of faith, nor catechism, nor passage in patristic writings contains one syllable about the pope, still less about faith and doctrine being derived from him. . . .

The Pope and the Council contained aspects of papal history completely unknown to me. I had been brought up as a Catholic, had gone through the usual six-year seminary course prior to ordination, had graduated from a Catholic university, the Gregorianum in Rome, and had never come across such ideas. This is partly to be explained by the partisan nature of seminary education and the fact that in such establishments history is a Cinderella subject. The misbehaviour of popes is lightly dwelt or even excised, rather in the way that Trotsky was cut out of all Soviet history by Stalin . . . My ignorance must also be set down to the preference Catholics have for a history of the papacy that can be read with white gloves on. It is not easy to admit that one's leaders were often barbarians, or that the good popes sometimes did far more harm than good.

Thus, quite late in my career, I felt obliged to examine the history of Catholic ideas and institutions, the later of course including the papacy. It was a long and sometimes painful form of a self-education.”       
                                                                           

“The Apocalypse of Peter, probably among the latest writings discovered at Nag Hammadi (c. 200-300), tells how dismayed Peter was to hear that many believers "will fall into an erroneous name" and "will be ruled heretically." The risen Christ explains to Peter that those who "name themselves bishop, and also deacon, as if they had received their authority from God," are, in reality, "waterless canals." Although they "do not understand mystery," they "boast that the mystery of truth belongs to them alone." ”       
                                                                           

“Although a devout Catholic himself, Nostradamus' prophecies do not bode well for the Vatican. In his letter to Henry II of France on June 27, 1558, Nostradamus wrote that the "great Vicar of the Cope (the Pope) shall be put back to his pristine state; but, desolated and abandoned by all, will return to the sanctuary destroyed by Paganism, when the Old and New Testament will be thrust out and burnt."

Nostradamus is not the only prophet to foresee the collapse of the papacy. St. Malachy's predictions about the succession of popes from 1143 to the present have proven correct, even though he died in 1148 . . .

Malachy's prophecies were supposed to extend from 1143 to "the end of the world." And, according to them, there are but two popes remaining. Malachy called the last "Petrus Romanus," or Peter of Rome, and said he "will feed his flock among many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the Judge will judge the people." Further evidence of the coming collapse of the Catholic Church is also believed to have been foretold by no less than the Virgin of Fatima . . .

The third prophecy was kept hidden until 1942. The children refused to reveal what they had been told, but one of them forwarded it to the Vatican, where it was kept secret. Even now, only the part concerning the war has been released, despite the Lady's instruction that it should be fully disclosed in 1960. There is reason to belief that the remainder deals with the destruction of the Church somewhere around the year 2000. On October 15, 1963, a German newspaper printed what it said was the text of the prophecy: "For the Church too, the time of its greatest trial will come. Cardinals will oppose cardinals and bishops against bishops. Satan will march in their midst and there will be great changes in Rome. What is rotten will fall, never to rise again. The church will be darkened and the world will shake in terror." La loy du Sol, & Venus contendens.”       
                                                                           

“The Popes of the Renaissance

Against the Catholic claim that the Church promoted the recovery of Europe, history records, not only that the causes of it were purely secular and that the new civilization flagrantly defied the Christian code of conduct, but that the Papacy was an idle spectator of the recovery; and when at a late hour it began to co-operate by patronizing art and letters, the Papal Court, most of the Popes, and the majority of the Italian bishops, adopted the characteristic vices of the age. In the earlier part of the period the Popes lived in the luxurious indolence of the "Babylonian Captivity" at Avignon (1309-77) , in a palace and city which Petrarch, who lived near, describes as a sink of iniquity. From this they passed into the futile days of the Great Schism (1378-1414), when their greed excited the disgust of Christendom. When the Emperor put an end to this, and bade them reform, the new Popes disregarded the injunction; but about 1450 they began on a modest scale the secular rehabilitation of Rome — so modest, indeed, that, in 1450, cattle still browsed in the streets, and as late as 1484 the Vatican Library, which the Catholic writer who was permitted to deal with this phase in the Cambridge Modern History (Vol.1) calls "the most important library in the West in the fifteenth century," had only 2,000 manuscripts. The Alexandrian and Cordovan libraries had had half a million. Then every source of tainted wealth (sale of offices and indulgences, dispensations, etc.) was exploited, and the more powerful of the Roman families, who fought like brigands, dominated (as Cardinals or Popes) and corrupted the Papal Court. In the pagan imperial history of Rome, which brings a blush to the cheek of the preacher, twenty-one out of twenty-nine Emperors were good men, and these ruled for 245 years, while the eight disreputable Emperors held the throne for only seventy-five years. But, in the 250 years of Papal history, ten out of twenty-four Popes (omitting Pontiffs who lasted only a few months) were or had been notoriously men of immoral life, and these ruled for 100 years: three only, who ruled for fifteen years, attempted to reform the Church; all except these three permitted an extraordinary corruption in the Papal Court; and even the three reformers did not suppress the flagrant simony, graft, and judicial corruption. Nicholas V (1447-55), whom Pastor, admitting that "the reforming zeal of his early days cooled down," praises as the restorer of culture, included in his patronage the most obscene writers of the age. Calixtus III (1455-8) introduced the Borgia family and, blind to their vices, raised them to the highest offices. Pius II (1458-64), a defiant apologist for his vices in his youth, made no effort to check the growing licence. Paul II (1464-71) was "wholly given over to sensual pleasure" (Bishop Creighton). Sixtus IV (1471-84), a friar, promoted his grossly immoral friar — nephews of the Rovere family, permitted his Court to be thoroughly debauched, and connived at the murder of a Medici prince in church during solemn mass. The Papacy was now so rich that the Colonna, Borgia, Orsini, and Rovere families fought for it by colossal bribery and murder, and in the impasse they had to let the tiara go to Innocent VIII (1484-92), whose bastard children moved in the highest society in the city and the Vatican. Incredible pictures of clerical corruption are to be found even in Pastor's History of the Popes, while some of the scenes in the Vatican itself, described in the private diary of the head of the Court, Burchard , were so vicious that the publisher struck even a discreet version of them out of the present writer's historical novel The Pope's Favourite (1917). The next thirty years were covered by the pontificates of Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X — two sodomists and one satyr and murderer — and form a unique chapter in the history of religion. [See notice of each.] Clement VII (1523-34), a bastard of the Medici House, and Paul III (1534-49), father of four well-known children (Pastor), next sustained the gaiety of the Court. This is the period of the Reformation, which we are now asked to believe had little or nothing to do with the corruption of the Church. Rome had been terribly ravaged and impoverished by a sack of the city (1527) and massacre of the Romans, by the Catholic Emperor, which threw into the shade the work of Goths and Vandals; but the gaiety of the prelates ran on, with fifteen years of partial reform [see Counter-Reformation], for another century and a quarter. Julius III (1550-5) was grosser than Leo X, and Pastor can plead only that it is not proved that a sordid youth whom he favoured was either his son or his mignon. Under Pius IV (1559-65) "the evil elements immediately awakened once more into activity" (Pastor) after one of the three short spells of reform (by a Pope, Paul IV, who loved strong wine and good cheer and was a scandalous nepotist), and after another short spell of reform, Gregory XIII (1572-85), notorious for his earlier looseness, let the Court and city return to such licence that one courtesan, chiefly ministering to prelates, made a fortune of £150,000 (Rodocanachi, Courtisanes et buffons, 1894). A few colourless Popes followed the third and last short spasm of reform, and this extraordinary series of Holy Fathers closed with the scandalous Pontificates of Urban VIII and Innocent X.”