Text of 3rd Fatima Secret Released (2024)

The handwritten letter describes vivid images of an "angel with a flaming sword" who pointed to earth and shouted "penance, penance, penance." It describes a "bishop clothed in white" who was killed by bullets and arrows, whom the Vatican identified as the current pontiff.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said at a news conference that the message presented a symbolic vision of "an entire century" and underscored the sacrifice of 20th century martyrs to the faith.

Ratzinger, who heads the congregation, the body that determines church dogma, disputed speculation that has arisen over the years that the jealously guarded prophecy described the end of the world. On the contrary, he said the secret that has been handed down from pope to pope since 1957 shows that "love is stronger than hate."

The series of visions was said to include three secrets; the first two were made public in 1941. The Vatican says the first was a vision of hell. Believers say the second predicted the end of of World War I and the beginning of World War II.

The essence of the third secret was revealed on May 13 by Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano during a ceremony with John Paul in Fatima for the beatification of the other two shepherd children, who died very young. On that occasion, he said that the part of the vision where the bishop "falls to the ground, apparently dead, in a hail of gunfire" referred to the shooting of John Paul.

Sister Lucia's letter referred to a "bishop dressed in white," and said she and the other children, Jacinta Marto and her brother Francisco, "had the impression that it was the Holy Father." As he passed through "a big city in ruins--he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way."

The prelate, the message says, was then "killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him," and other bishops, priests and religious men and women "in the same way died one after the other."

The vision must be interpreted, Ratzinger said, as "symbolic language." Nevertheless, he said, the church, and the pope himself, believed that the "bishop in white" referred to John Paul both because the children had believed it to be a pope and because events had borne it out. The church does not want to impose this interpretation, he said; it is not a matter of doctrine.

Asked at the news conference whether the description of a bishop killed by soldiers would not more accurately be applied to Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador, who was gunned down by a right-wing assassin in 1980, Monsignor Tarcisio Bertone, an official in the same congregation as Ratzinger, said that the three shepherd children had "immediately sensed that it was a pope [in the vision]. They immediately excluded that it could have been a bishop."

John Paul was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981, by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, who was officially pardoned by the Italian state two weeks ago after spending nearly 20 years in prison. He is in jail in Turkey serving time for an earlier shooting. Ratzinger specifically denied Agca's claim that he was acting as part of a divine plan. The shooting occurred on May 13, the anniversary of the children's first vision of the Virgin Mary.

The pope has thanked the Virgin of Fatima for saving him from death in the assassination attempt, and has forgiven his would-be killer.

Ratzinger and Bertone said the pope, from his bed at Rome's Gemelli Hospital while he was recovering from the shooting, had asked that the two envelopes containing the handwritten message and its Italian translation be brought to him from the Holy Offices where they had been held. It was the first time John Paul had seen the document, they said.

That appeared to conflict with a statement on May 13 by the pope's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who was quoted by the Associated Press as saying the pope had read the secret of Fatima within days of assuming the papacy in 1978.