The Three Secrets of Fátima (Portuguese: Os Três Segredos de Fátima) are a series of apocalyptic visions and prophecies given to three young Portuguese shepherds, Lúcia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto, by a Marian apparition, starting on 13 May 1917. The three children claimed to have been visited by the Virgin Mary six times between May and October 1917. The apparition is now popularly known as Our Lady of Fátima.
According to Lúcia, around noon on 13 July 1917, the Virgin Mary entrusted the children with three secrets. Two of the secrets were revealed in 1941 in a document written by Lúcia, at the request of José Alves Correia da Silva, Bishop of Leiria, to assist with the publication of a new edition of a book on Jacinta. When asked by the Bishop in 1943 to reveal the third secret, Lúcia struggled for a short period, being "not yet convinced that God had clearly authorized her to act". However, in October 1943 the Bishop ordered her to put it in writing. Lúcia then wrote the secret down and sealed it in an envelope not to be opened until 1960, when "it will appear clearer". The text of the third secret was officially released by Pope John Paul II in 2000. Some claim that it was not the entire secret revealed by Lúcia, despite repeated assertions from the Vatican to the contrary.
According to various Catholic interpretations, the three secrets involve Hell, World War I and World War II, and 20th-century persecutions of Christians.
Background
Of the hundreds of alleged Marian apparitions the Catholic Church has investigated, only twelve have received ecclesiastical approval, with nine having occurred between 1830 and 1933. Cultural anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner, who converted to Catholicism in 1958, at one time viewed the increase in Marian apparition cults as a post-industrial reaction of a "disenfranchised lower middle class to a rapidly changing culture."
On 17 June 1921, at the age of 14, Lúcia was admitted as a boarder at the Sisters of Saint Dorothy school in Vilar, near Porto. In 1925, at the age of 18, she began her novitiate at the convent of the Sisters of Saint Dorothy in Tui, just across the border in Spain. Lúcia continued to report private visions periodically throughout her life. In the mid-1930s the Bishop of Leiria encouraged Lúcia (religious name: Sister Maria Lúcia das Dores) to write her memoirs, so as to disclose further details of her cousins and the 1917 apparitions.
As early as July 1917, mention was made that the Lady of the apparitions had entrusted to the children a secret, "that was good for some and bad for others". It was not until her third memoir, written in 1941, that Lúcia began to write more in depth about the content of the secret. In this, she follows the French visionary Mélanie Calvat who saw Our Lady of La Salette in 1846, who wrote down the secrets from that event almost twenty years after. Lúcia wrote that the secret has three parts, the first two of which she revealed in 1941. The third, however, was not written down until 3 January 1944.
First secret
In her third memoir (1941), Lúcia said that the first secret, a vision of Hell, was disclosed to the children on 13 July 1917.
Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.
Second secret
The second secret refers to the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and was initially only partially revealed to the children on 13 July 1917. Various prophecies related to this devotion were made, such as a statement that World War I would end, along with a prediction of another war during the reign of Pope Pius XI, should men continue offending God and should Russia not convert. The second half is a future request of the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the First Saturdays Devotion:
You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pope Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.
On 10 December 1925, Sister Lúcia reported an apparition of the Virgin Mary, accompanied by the Child Jesus on a luminous cloud, while residing at the Convent of Saint Dorothea at Pontevedra, Spain. The Virgin Mary defined the conditions for the First Saturdays devotion and asked her to propagate the devotion. Later, on 15 February 1926, she reported a subsequent vision of the Christ Child reiterating this request. On 13 June 1929, she reported a vision of both Mary and the Holy Trinity, in which Mary had asked for the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart by the Pope, in communion with all the bishops of the world. This later vision fulfilled what was said in 1917 about how the Virgin Mary would come later to request the consecration. The message regarding the establishment of the Five First Saturdays Devotion is reminiscent of that reported by Margaret Mary Alacoque in the seventeenth century, which led to the First Fridays Devotion.
It is unlikely that this message was conveyed to the Pope, but the Bishop of Leiria suggested that she write her memoirs so as to provide more details on her cousins as well as further details of the 1917 apparitions. In her third memoir, written in 1941, Sister Lúcia recalled that at the apparition of 13 July 1917, the Virgin Mary had first mentioned the consecration of Russia, and said that she would return to give particulars.
The second prophecy was not disclosed until August 1941, after World War II had already begun. Skeptics have questioned whether Mary, in 1917, referred explicitly to Pope Pius XI, as Ambrogio Ratti did not choose that regnal name until after his election in 1922. Further, the European portion of World War II is generally held to have begun on 1 September 1939, and by then, Pope Pius XII had succeeded Pius XI. As for the conversion of Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution did not happen until November 1917.
Some proponents of the Fátima prophecies argue that the secret did not say that the war must begin in Europe, and during the pontificate of Pius XI Japan had already invaded China in 1937, which is generally seen by historians of China and other parts of Asia as when the Second World War actually began, a view which also has qualified support from some Western historians. Some critics argue that the Russian Civil War (1918–1921), the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), the Chinese Civil War (1927–1937), the war between Italy and Ethiopia (1935–1936), and the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) serve to illustrate that the prediction that one war will end and that another will start is not necessarily an indication of divine inspiration. Proponents of the prophecy will point out that the second secret called for a war worse than World War I, not simply any armed conflict. In addition, with regards to the conversion of Russia, there was already, at the time, strong revolutionary ferment in Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution as witnessed by the earlier February Revolution in 1917 and the active Communist and anarchist movements, which would explain Mary's reference on 13 July 1917 to the need for a conversion of Russia.
On 25 January 1938, The New York Times reported "Aurora Borealis Startles Europe; People Flee in Fear, Call Firemen." The celestial display was seen from Canada to Bermuda to Austria to Scotland, and short-wave radio transmissions were shut down for almost 12 hours in Canada. It is noteworthy that during the final hour of this aurora, Christian Rakovsky was undergoing interrogation in the Soviet Union, giving information to Stalin about Western involvement in Hitler's rise, suggesting an alliance with the Western powers against Germany. Just over a month later, Hitler seized Austria and eight months later invaded Czechoslovakia.
On June 16, 1978, after decades of the Fatima prophecies being largely absent from mainstream discourse and press coverage, Kellie Everts gave a speech in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. about the aforementioned prophecy, and thus strongly urging the consecration of Russia in the hopes of preventing a nuclear World War III. The speech had received coverage in The Washington Post, The Washington Star, and elsewhere.
On March 25, 1984, Pope John Paul II was believed by many to have finally consecrated Russia in fulfillment of the Fatima prophecy, though he did not specifically mention Russia or the Soviet Union by name. He did, however, refer to "all individuals and peoples", which would implicitly include Russia.
As a result of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Pope Francis announced he would consecrate Russia and Ukraine (both by name) to the Immaculate Heart of Mary which he did on March 25, 2022.
Third secret
Sister Lúcia chose not to disclose the third secret in her memoir of August 1941. In 1943, Lúcia fell seriously ill with influenza and pleurisy. Bishop Silva, visiting her on 15 September 1943, suggested that she write the third secret down to ensure that it would be recorded in the event of her death. However, Lúcia was hesitant to do so as, upon receiving the secret, she had heard Mary say not to reveal it. Because Carmelite obedience requires that orders from superiors be regarded as coming directly from God, she was in a quandary as to whose orders took precedence. Finally, in mid-October, Bishop Silva sent her a letter containing a direct order to record the secret. Lúcia continued to struggle, even after this direct order. According to Lúcia, she overcame it after the Virgin Mary appeared to her in early January 1944 and said, "Write that which they command you, but not that which is given to you to understand of its meaning."
The third part of the secret was written down "by order of His Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and the Most Holy Mother" on 3 January 1944. In June 1944, the sealed envelope containing the third secret was delivered to Silva, where it stayed until 1957, when it was finally delivered to Rome. Canon Galamba, an advisor to the Bishop of Leiria, is quoted as saying that when the bishop refused to open the sealed envelope, Lúcia "made him promise that it would definitely be opened and released to the world at her death, or in 1960, whichever came first." The bishop died in 1957.
It was announced by Cardinal Angelo Sodano on 13 May 2000, 83 years after the first apparition of the Lady to the children in the Cova da Iria, and 19 years after the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II that the third secret would finally be released. In his announcement, Cardinal Sodano implied that the secret was about the 20th-century persecution of Christians that culminated in the failed Pope John Paul II assassination attempt on 13 May 1981, the 64th anniversary of the first apparition of the Lady at Fátima. The idea of an already fulfilled secret is contested by some Catholics.
The text of the third secret, according to the Vatican, was published on 26 June 2000: