What The Wall Street Journal Didn't Tell You

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) ran a front page article by Gustav Niebuhr about Fatima on Friday, September 27, 1991. The fundamental slant of that article was wrong. In the interest of setting the record straight we present below a transcript of Father Gruner's interview with Mr. Niebuhr, given before Niebuhr wrote and published the erroneous article.

The WSJ Fatima article is based on Communist disinformation and upon grave errors about Fatima. The disinformation about Russia is dealt with in various other articles in this issue of The Fatima Crusader. See "The Rebirth of an Empire: What is Really Happening in (Russia and) the Soviet Union", "Is Communism Really Dead?", "A Half-Hearted Coup Makes the Creation of a New World Order More Likely", "The Conspiracy Above Communism", and "Soviet Goals Remain the Same".

The WSJ article closed with a quote from a parish priest in a rural parish of South Dakota. This priest claims that the conversion of Russia "is well under way". We have demonstrated in recent issues of The Fatima Crusader that Russia is not being converted.

If the Consecration of Russia, according to Our Lady of Fatima's request, was done back on March 25, 1984, as the WSJ suggests, why did we have to wait seven years for the announcement of it? Why does not the Pope make an official statement about it? How can the Pope contradict his earlier statements made on March 25, 1984, acknowledging that he still has not done the Consecration of Russia as Our Lady of Fatima asked? How can WSJ take seriously, claims that "Russia" was consecrated according to Sister Lucy's request in 1984, when Sister Lucy has publicly and repeatedly said the consecration of 1984 did not fulfill Our Lady of Fatima's request?

Where is the peace in the world? There are still 1,000 concentration camps in Communist China alone. In Vietnam, to this day, priests are still being arrested and imprisoned and tortured for spreading "propaganda", that is, teaching catechism classes!

Our Lady said, "When Russia is consecrated they will be converted (to the Catholic Faith) and there will be peace in the world." Is it not blasphemy to insist that what is going on now is due to the Mother of God? The fruits of Glasnost, Perestroika and the failed coup are lies, deceit, pornography, drugs, abortion, torture, murder, imprisonment, religious persecutions. How dare they attribute this to the merits of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

WSJ - Niebuhr speaking. FRG - Father Gruner speaking.

The greatest Apostle, St. Paul, gave an example to all that the faith must be defended in public, even if ti means rebuking bishops, even if necessary, the Pope himself, in public. (See Gatatians Chapter 2) Saint Peter gave an example to all superiors by accepting the correction humbly and by returning to "walking in the truth."

WSJ: I have put together some notes for a possible story on the Fatima Prophecies and I've just been calling around some Catholic sources, and a couple of people suggested that I give you a call. Some of the things I'm interested in is just hearing how people have been reacting to the events in Russia. Whether it seems to bear out what the major of the three prophecies was. And I was wondering what your thoughts might be on that.

FRG: Well we print a magazine which goes to half a million people, not quite the circulation of the Journal. What we have been consistently saying for 7-8 years now, since 1984, is that there are obviously some changes happening in Russia, but they are not the fulfillment of Our Lady of Fatima's prophecy. In proof of that, Our Lady prophesied that Russia would be converted. The context of the word converted means obviously becoming religiously converted to Her Son, becoming Christian, becoming Catholic more exactly. I realize that someone not of the Catholic Faith might object to that interpretation, but it is a Catholic message given to a Catholic prophet approved by the Catholic Church and in that context the word convert means becoming Catholic.

WSJ: I understand.

FRG: But even in the wider context of just becoming a believer in Christ, I don't want to minimize, either, the good will of any good Russian, but the fact is that the nation itself is not by and large becoming Catholic or even becoming Christian. One writer in the last century pointed out that a nation could be said to be in a state of Apostasy even if a number of its citizens are in fact believers — if its institutions, if its social morals are such that it is against Christ, against God.

WSJ: Uh huh.

FRG: And certainly whatever changes we're seeing in Russia are not an expression of the structure in Russia changing to the point that the religion of Jesus Christ is being acknowledged publicly and by its laws and institutions. That's just in general.

WSJ: Yes.

FRG: I don't have my head in the sand, I know there are people out there saying contrary to what I speak.

WSJ: Yes.

FRG: I'm certainly able to answer whatever questions you might have, the other thing which I think we should be very clear on is that obviously there is a prophecy for peace in the world.

WSJ: Right.

FRG: To quote Our Lady's words, and I don't think anyone of whatever color or persuasion who studies the Message of Fatima will quote them any differently, Our Lady said "If My requests are granted, Russia will be converted and there will be peace."

WSJ: Yes.

FRG: She also said "In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph, the Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, Russia will be converted, and a period of peace will be given to mankind." That is taken from the Second Secret, it's a matter of public domain. And I don't think anyone will question that quote at all.

WSJ: No, not at all.

FRG: And the fact is that in the world there is obviously not peace. Apart from whatever else that is happening in Russia, obviously war is going on in Croatia, we've had this year obviously a Gulf War, in which I understand, someone measured there were approximately 46 Hiroshima type atomic bombs dropped. That can hardly be called a period of peace.

WSJ: Sure.

FRG: I believe there are something like 20 wars still going on. Among others, Afghanistan is still, unfortunately, the recipient of Soviet aid to the tune of several billion dollars per year in military hardware or whatever, not to mention other parts of the world where there is still bloodshed, and so forth. Certainly I just received on my desk a few days ago a report from the Cardinal of Zagreb and with some very horrifying pictures, I'm tempted to publish them except that they're so horrifying, what is going on there.

WSJ: Is that right?

FRG: In no way can we call this peace. If you call this peace then you call Our Lady a liar. That can't be the peace Our Lady is talking about.

WSJ: Uh huh.

FRG: I've just sent out a one sheet paper pointing out "Do Not Be Deceived". In our summary there we point out, and I'm sure you're aware of this, that the Soviet Union has been seeking somewhere in the area of I don't know how many billions, maybe ten billion dollars, large sums of money obviously, from the US and Canada. Certainly the US has a tremendous debt overload since 1990, double from what it did from 1776 to 1980. The kind of debt that any company, or country for that matter, can carry, there is a limit to, before the whole financial system implodes somewhere.

In the hamlet of Aljustrel, just a few paces away from the paternal home, Sister Lucy's sister Caroline told Father Gruner on October 11, 1990, that Sister Lucy does not type on a computer or a typewriter. Furthermore she told him that Sister Lucy to this day writes letters (even 4 pages) to her and others in longhand. This shows Sister Lucy's letters are fake.

WSJ: But Father Gruner, let me ask you this. Is there an element missing? Now one person I talked to claims up and down that the Pope did follow instructions given by Sister Lucia in 1984.

FRG: I can tell you without asking your sources. There's a priest who says that, and we have demonstrated time and again, and we are not the only ones who do so, that basically their claim is based on the story that Sister Lucy told her cousin Maria Fetal that the Consecration was done in 1984. What is left out of this explanation is that Maria Fetal has, herself, admitted to lying. We published that and we have also published a picture of her which Father Fox doesn't yet provide a picture of this famous Maria Fetal. Secondly, they also claim it on the basis of three, and if they really have done their research there are six, forged letters, or fake letters which were represented to be from Sister Lucy which started circulating in 1989. Maria Fetal since 1984 to 89 was saying the exact opposite, by the way. That's why her testimony is next to useless. Because she was saying in 1984-89, that the Consecration was not done, and claiming Sister Lucy as her source at that time. So! Maria Fetal's testimony at best is flawed, okay?

WSJ: Yes.

FRG: The second thing is that these fake letters have just been repudiated, as of May 10, 1991, by none other than Mother Prioress in Coimbra. And that's not Father Gruner making this up, I got this out of a Portuguese journal when I was over there for the Pope's visit in 1991, on May 13.

WSJ: That's right, yes, I know what kind of letters you're talking about because I saw a photocopy. When I was doing this research, a photocopy of one of those letters was sent to me.

FRG: Okay, well in fact what they don't know is that one of these letters was sent to a close friend of mine, a priest. We have the original signature and we sent it to a writing expert, and we published a very compact summary of this particular aspect. It's called "Chronology of a Cover-up". It gives you the chronology of the falsifications of these things. It certainly isn't the last word, but if you want something in brief, there's nothing else briefer than this. There's only about 300 words.

WSJ: Yes, sure, that would be very useful.

FRG: If you'll need to find your way through this material, perhaps I could point out certain things to you. One of the things I would like to point out, is Sister Lucy herself, has said, in 1984, 1985, and 1987 in published interviews, the exact opposite of what they had her saying in 1989 and 1990. And in 1991 Mother Prioress was asked by a journalist of a journal called O Jornal published on May the 10th, in which he says he asked a question about Sister Lucy. She said, "well what's unusual about Sister Lucy is she does everything else that we do, but one thing different about her is that she gets lots of mail".

So he asked her about the mail, and Mother Prioress went on to say, "she replies or doesn't reply as she chooses to, but if she replies, she replies in her own handwriting." Now that photocopy you have, I will lay 100 dollars to one that it is actually a computer generated letter.

WSJ: It's typed.

FRG: Yes it's typed. Well if you look closer it's actually a computer generated thing. But anyway she does not type and I have that from Sister Lucy's own blood sister who's 88 years old, Carolina, and I have a picture of myself with her and I have my own Portuguese interpreter there, whose English is impeccable.

WSJ: Well, what in the world is going on there?

FRG: There is a cover-up. Basically it's politics. The heart of the matter is that there's a Vatican-Moscow Agreement. Now this may sound like I'm taking things out and making things up, but I got this document and I published it in The Fatima Crusader and I have not had anyone refute the facts that were published. There are other sources other than my own that also say the same thing. There's a book, for example, by Father Floridi. It's called Moscow and the Vatican. It goes back from 1917 and he also agrees there was a Vatican-Moscow Agreement made between Pope John XXIII and the KGB-run Moscow church — Russian Orthodox. The Russian Orthodox in North America disowned the Russian Orthodox by Moscow.

In 1962 there was this Vatican-Moscow Agreement and the terms of the agreement are basically, that the Vatican would no longer denounce the errors of Communism in return for two things: 1) lessening the persecution of the Catholics behind the iron curtain, and 2) that there would be observers at the Second Vatican Council. Now the sources I quote are none other than both a Catholic and a Communist paper at the time of this agreement, in France. They both admit to the same thing. The Catholic paper is La Croix. They came out in January of 1963, saying the same thing that the Communist paper in France said, that there was this agreement. They're not the only sources. You'll find it in Malachi Martin's book The Jesuits (available from Catholic Books Online), on pages 85-88 if I recall correctly.

WSJ: I'm familiar with that book, yes.

FRG: And I published that passage which basically quotes Cardinal Casaroli, pointing out that John Paul II has made his own agreement as well, back in 1981. It sounds like Malachi was present at the meeting.

The reason for this is basically the Catholic Church has been faced, since before 1962, with a very fundamental question. I'll try and relate this as simply as I can as I've done in public before.

If you have two men who are locked into one building, and I call them Mr. A and Mr. B. If Mr. A has sworn enmity to kill Mr. B, Mr. B has three choices, he can run and hide somewhere, he can try and negotiate with Mr. A to persuade him to do otherwise, or he can try and overpower Mr. A.

The Church is Mr. B and Mr. A is Communism. The Church basically is faced with a mortal enemy that has sworn enmity to Christendom and the Church has three choices, to either negotiate, to run, or to try and overpower it.

Well, the Message of Fatima tells us there's only one real option. And this message is you must overpower it with the Spiritual means at your disposal which is to consecrate, and by this Consecration to convert Russia.

Now what people perhaps don't understand is that when the Pope finally does do this, as we're told one day he will, (it might be after millions and millions of people are killed), it will be a direct rebuke to the nature of Communism.

It will be saying that Communism is intrinsically evil, which the Church has said, and the Church has to stand by that teaching. But today the Church is just silent. They are not denouncing the errors of Communism today. All they're doing is 'not saying' anything.

Now, (I'm talking the Vatican more precisely) I am a member of the Church and as a member of the clergy I have an obligation to denounce it (Communism) even if the Pope were to tell me not to do so. He cannot command me to do that because, as Saint Robert Bellarmine tells us, I have to resist orders which go against the common good of the Church.

WSJ: What about this meeting, or the prayer for Russia, which supposedly took place, the consecration, in March of 1984?

FRG: I don't know what you've been told. What they're confusing it with is, there has been an active consecration of the world.

WSJ: Right.

FRG: Someone tried to point out that someone like myself didn't know that Russia was part of the world. Well, you know I'm quite aware that Russia is part of the world. I wouldn't be so concerned with it if it was on Mars or something like that. Russia is part of the world, but the consecration requested by Our Lady is a specific consecration.

I'd like to illustrate that by way of Sacred Scripture. King David had seven brothers and the Prophet Samuel was told to anoint one of Jesse's sons, and so Jesse brought his seven sons, the seven older ones; and the Prophet said no not him, not him, not him, etc., and got through all seven and said "Do you have any more?" He said, "Yes I have one more, he's back home taking care of the sheep." He said, "Bring him." And that was the one who was consecrated by the Prophet. It was a specific consecration.

WSJ: Uh huh.

FRG: Samuel was not told to consecrate his family and one of them will become the king. No, it was meant that it was to be specific, that he was to be picked out. In fact to consecrate means to be set aside. I hate to be pedantic here, but I have to go through these things because of the misinformation on this thing. To set aside for the service of God. So I would say there has to be a distinction for a particular Consecration, that Russia be set aside, not Spain, not Portugal, not Brazil, but Russia.

WSJ: Right.

FRG: So it has to be clearly seen that Russia has been picked, set aside. It's actually a great honor. This is not to be picking on the Russian people, or the country of Russia for that matter. It's actually a great honor to be chosen by Heaven to be particularly consecrated and in a special way to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

For another example, if there was a murder in the Cathedral, I'm sure you heard the title of a book by that name?

WSJ: Absolutely.

And Christ continues to be scourged even now by the thoughtless and unheeding sins of mankind.

FRG: In New York a couple of years ago, there was a murder in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Well the Cardinal had to go there and re-bless, reconsecrate that building back to the service of God because there had been a public and serious crime against man and against God in that place.

Similarly, in Russia there has been a great crime committed against the Russian people and against God in Russia, whereby the resources, both human resources and the physical resources of that great country have been instrumentalized, have been taken over, by the forces of Satan in order to fight God around the world.

WSJ: Uh huh.

FRG: Now I don't know if you have any children, but if a man has 10 children and if one of them decided to organize the other 9 to fight against the mother and the father, obviously it would not only be a great injury but it would be a crime. The father would require some sort of apology, some sort of a reparation for this crime committed against him by his children.

Well, it is nothing compared to taking part of God's creation that we all live, move and have our being in God, and part of this creation has been organized by some number of people to fight against God around the world, using the resources that God made in Russia to fight against believers everywhere.

This requires a public apology, a public act of reparation for this crime of state atheism and God has laid down His terms at Fatima saying this. Really it is not very much He's asking for, considering the tremendous insult He has endured by this thing. I'm not saying that the only sin in the world is Russian Communism but we consider it as a great crime.

Usually people are ashamed to commit sin and they do it in private at least. They are not so directly against God. A sin is still against God but here it is more explicitly and more hatefully against God, and God has been insulted by this and He has laid down His terms for reconciliation. He has laid down His terms for reparation and all He has asked for is the Pope and the Bishops to exercise their apostolic authority through their consecration as bishops.

Going back all the way to the Apostles when Our Lord had said all power in Heaven and Earth has been given to you; go forth and make disciples of all nations. They can consecrate a nation. They don't need the permission of Russia to do so. And the Pope, for that matter, can give the order but he refuses to do so because my best sources right inside the council of the Pope tell me the Pope believes that he will not get the co-operation from the bishops.

I have signed affidavits from 385 plus bishops, that have personally written to me and put their own seal to it, saying they personally will do the Consecration when the Pope gives the word. There are many more besides that, okay?

WSJ: So, so.

FRG: These are bishops that I'm talking about. The Pope, unfortunately, has been misled by people around him to think that he can't do it. He can but he doesn't know that. I had an appointment with him a year ago and they somehow managed to have it cut off. They are apparently very afraid for me to talk to him.

The other thing is the Consecration of Russia is to be such a stupendous event that when you see almost instantly the conversion of Russia, it will be something the history books, whether they're believers or not will have to talk about; the instant reversal of Russia from being a nation under atheists against God whether they do it with crass communism or whether they do it with the practical atheism of the West. The bottom line is (when the conversion of Russia occurs) they will be changing from that direction and going 180 degrees in the other direction being fervent, believing, practicing Catholics and from there spreading their missionaries over the world to make the whole world Catholic.

That will have to be noted by everybody, whatever color, stripe, or persuasion they happen to be. That obviously has not happened. What we have seen has been one political change after another. It's been a small economic facelift.

I started talking to you earlier about the fact that they're looking for money by putting on this 6th or 7th Glasnost. We've previously written about Lenin's 5 year plan, then you had Stalin, and you had detente, and you've had Khrushchev's "peaceful co-existence". This is just the most striking.

There's a book by Golitsyn, I don't know whether you've read it; New Lies for Old (available from Catholic Books Online) written in 1984 and basically it is following the script that he wrote about even before these things started happening.

But the other thing on the question of Fatima is, why wait for 5 years from 1984 to 1989, or seven years to 1991, for these things to take place? I mean no one is making any relationship between ... I shouldn't say no one, yes there is Father Fox out there and a couple of other people, but number one, the world is not seeing it and number two, why have Sister Lucy reverse herself from what she has been saying for 50 years? It's not just as though we have the 5 years from '84 to '89 after every consecration of the world. There was one done in 1942. In fact it was done twice by Pope Pius XII in 1942.

WSJ: Uh huh.

FRG: It was done by Paul VI in 1964 on November 21 at the Council. It was done by Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1982. And there are a few other ones inbetween. Yet all of them did not fulfill the conditions that Sister Lucy explicitly pointed out and then wait 7 years or 5 years to begin to tell the people, by one letter, (which Sister Lucy didn't type) circulated to one person who then gets it into the newspaper and so forth. You know it's incredulous to ask us to believe this.

WSJ: Yes, I see what you're saying. Now, am I right that not only are you pushing for the Consecration of Russia, but you also have an interest in the Secret Prophecy too. Is that correct?

FRG: That's definitely correct. Because you see the Fatima Secret is really one secret but it is divided into three parts and usually people refer to it commonly as the Third Secret.

WSJ: Yes.

FRG: Just to be precise because, I'm getting to the precision part of it, the third part of the Secret is integrally part of the whole Secret and the end of the Third Secret ends with the words "But in the end, My Immaculate Heart will Triumph". We are now living through the prophecy of the Third Secret. Frčre Michel authored a book, The Third Secret, in France and we've published 50,000 copies. There is a summary of the book which you could read in our magazine, written by the author himself.

WSJ: Yes.

FRG: I would recommend it to anybody to read because it's powerful stuff. And what it does do is point out there is a betrayal within the Church on the part of a number of bishops and Cardinals even in the Vatican and that's what the burden of the Third Secret is about. And when we see on the one hand Pope Paul VI spoke of the smoke of satan in the Church, and Sister Lucy writes many times about the diabolical disorientation of leaders of the Church in these times.

WSJ: Uh huh.

FRG: The Third Secret is tied in with the second Secret which refers to the rise of Russia and Russia dominating the whole world including the United States if we do not bring about the Consecration of Russia in time.

WSJ: Uh huh.

FRG: And it's obviously being brought about in part by the Vatican-Moscow Agreement, the betrayal. Now I called it the betrayal in print. I have one bishop criticizing me for it but it is perfectly accurate. You see the word bishop in Greek means watchman.

WSJ: Yes.

FRG: And the watchman has been hired by God and he's, on our behalf, watching from the tower to see when the enemy approaches. Well here you have the enemy, Communism, infiltrating the Church today and the watchman has made an agreement with the enemy not to cry out. Take the modern example. If we had a man up in the D.E.W. line watching his radar and he personally made an agreement with the Russian flier coming over with his bombs not to press the button to warn people, I would say we would all consider the man a traitor who decided not to warn us when he saw these signals coming over his radar screen.

WSJ: Yes.

FRG: Okay, and similarly the watchmen of the Church are supposed to warn us when there is an evil threatening the Church and certainly the Church is committed by Pope Pius XI who said "Communism is intrinsically evil". There is no redemption of Communism. I'm not saying that Communists can't be redeemed but the system itself can't.

WSJ: I know what you mean, yes.

FRG: And you know for the Church to have remained silent, look at the record. No one in the Vatican from October 12, 1963, to 1991 has denounced the errors of Communism in those terms. They have sometimes spoken in vague terms about certain militant atheistic regimes but no one has ever used the word Russia, no one has ever used the word Communist. Only the intellectuals know what the Pope is referring to. The common man doesn't get the message.

There is only one exception. Pope John Paul II, from February 1984 to September 1984 started to denounce Communism and the first of the two anti liberation theology documents was put out by Cardinal Ratzinger at that time. Actually it was in August of 1984, and that's the only window I see where the Vatican has ever gone against the Vatican-Moscow Agreement.

WSJ: What are you doing in terms of trying to get the third part of the Secret released?

FRG: Well we have petitioned for Sister Lucy to be allowed to speak. You know it's amazing that Sister Lucy is not even allowed to speak to bishops. Now here you are, you might have a bishop who is entrusted with say 2,000,000 souls to bring them to Heaven and he's not got permission to speak to Sister Lucy. She has the Third Secret which has a particular message for the bishops in there and the bishops can't even speak to her without permission from the Pope or Cardinal Ratzinger.

WSJ: Uh huh.

FRG: Now if it goes for the bishops it goes for the rest of us. She is so secluded and so sequestered, I'm asking to let her give a public response to people like yourself, to the journals of the world, as long as everyone can see that she is not under pressure and that she gives complete answers. Let her give the Third Secret. You know she still has it, she knows it; and she wants it released.

In fact, the faithful have a right to know, not only for their spiritual well being but for their physical well being. Maybe you bought a home, you bought a car, you have a family. All these things, the freedom that we have, the possessions we own, on just this side of the grave, anything we consider good or worthwhile that we work for, almost all of it, if not all of it, will be lost if Communism takes over the world, and it will according to the prophecy of Fatima, unless this Consecration is done in time.

WSJ: Yes, I see. Well this has been very useful talking with you and I think you've given me enough, at least some, for a preliminary material.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The interview closed here and then additional literature on Chronology of a Cover-up, the Vatican-Moscow Agreement, and Summary of the Third Secret was sent to Mr. Niebuhr immediately after the telephone interview.

The result???? The Wall Street Journal went on to publish the Vatican-Moscow Agreement inspired disinformation report that Communism has been defeated, that the Consecration is done. The Wall Street Journal joins the ranks of the media disinformation campaign to silence the full Message of Our Lady of Fatima. That's why you need The Fatima Crusader — you deserve to know the Whole Truth.

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