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Cardinal Ratzinger Misleads
Church over "Third Secret" of Fatima
by Kevin Hill, Ph.D
The following is an Open Letter sent to the Holy Father on September 28,
2000, by Catholic Action in Wellington, New Zealand.
Your Holiness,
you instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to publish the
“Third Secret” of Fatima. However, Cardinal Ratzinger and Archbishop
Bertone have misled the Church and the world by publishing only one part of the
“Third Secret” which consists of two parts.
THE FALSE
STATEMENT
Cardinal
Ratzinger and Archbishop Bertone in the act of releasing the Third Secret made
the statement:
“There is
only one manuscript, which is here reproduced photostatically”.
THE
TRUTH In fact there are two parts of the Third Secret, that is,
there are two distinct manuscripts.
Manuscript #1 is
the text which begins with the words of Our Lady: “In Portugal, the dogma
of the faith will always be preserved, etc. ...”.
Manuscript #2
describes the vision (the text has been released by Archbishop Bertone).
THE EVIDENCE
- Existence of two different manuscripts
- Textual continuity required by the words “In
Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, etc. ...”
1. Existence of Two
Different Manuscripts
Manuscript
number 1: A single sheet comprising 20-25 lines recording the verbal prophecy
given by Our Lady beginning with the words “In Portugal, the dogma of the
faith will always be preserved, etc. ...”
Manuscript
number 2: Four pages (released by Archbishop Bertone) comprising 62 lines
written by Sister Lucy describing the vision shown to her by Our Lady.
Proof of Manuscript
#1
Cardinal Ottaviani, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, stated on 11 February 1967 that he had read the Third Secret and that it
was written on a single sheet of paper. He states:
“And then, what did she [Sister Lucy] do to obey the Most
Holy Virgin? She wrote on a sheet of paper, in Portuguese, what the Holy Virgin
had asked her to tell ...” (Cardinal Ottaviani, Address
on behalf of Pope Paul VI in preparation for the Fifth Mariological Congress
and the twelfth international Marian Congress, February 11, 1967)
Father Joaquin Alonso, the official investigator and archivist of the Fatima
apparitions, said that both Sister Lucy and Cardinal Ottaviani stated that the
Third Secret was written on a single sheet of paper:
“Lucy tells us that she wrote it on a sheet of paper.
Cardinal Ottaviani, who has read it, tell us the same thing: ‘She wrote it
on a sheet of paper ...’ ” (Fr. Joaquin Alonso, La
Verdade Sobre el Secreto de Fatima, pg 60)
Bishop Venancio,
the former Auxiliary Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, related that he:
“... took the great envelope of the Secret
and tried to look through it and see the contents. In the bishop’s large
envelope he discerned a smaller envelope, that of Lucy, and inside this
envelope an ordinary sheet of paper with margins on each side of three quarters
of a centimeter.” (Frère Michel, The Whole Truth
About Fatima, Vol III, pg 481)
These witnesses
serve as sufficient authorities to prove that there exist two distinct
documents which together comprise the whole of the Third Secret.
2. No Textual
Continuity
The known
beginning of Manuscript #1 is “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will
always be preserved, etc. ...”. However, in the four-page manuscript
released by the Vatican there is no continuity with this idea whatsoever. The
four page manuscript relates the depiction of a vision where the Holy Father
passes through a half-ruined city on his way to the top of a hill where he,
together with many bishops, priests and others are killed with bullets and
arrows.
ACTION
Most Holy
Father, we humbly request that you release the full text of the two-part
“Third Secret” of Fatima.
Kevin Hill, Ph.D., K. Bennett, C.
D’Souza, A. Skinner,
Catholic Action
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