* * *
The Mission of Sister Lúcia
Introduction: Sister Lúcia Defines Her Own Mission
The first in this series of articles on the Third Secret of Fatima analyzed and responded to the theory of a missing text or “fourth secret,” showing why the Third Secret vision is not “ambiguous,” and why no second explanatory document constitutes a part of the Secret. The second article was devoted to Sister Lúcia’s letter of May 12, 1982, in which she described the Secret as a “symbolic vision,” explaining to Pope John Paul II how the vision referred to the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Second Secret, where Our Lady said that if Her requests were not heeded, Russia would spread its errors throughout the world – a prophecy that has been fulfilled, as Sister Lúcia explained to the Pope, because Our Lady’s requests were not met.
Theories about a missing document, which would explain the vision in more detail than what Sister Lúcia provided in her letter to the Pope, have not taken into account Sister Lúcia’s own explanation of the nature of her mission as the messenger of Fatima. The Carmelites of Coimbra in their biography of Sister Lúcia, after presenting the key texts from Sister Lúcia’s diary relating to her writing down the Third Secret after Our Lady appeared to her in January of 1944, cite Sister Lúcia’s own words preceded by their explanation: “She never said a word of personal opinion about the meaning which was given to her to understand, always affirming: The interpretation belongs to the Church.”
Previous to this passage in the biography the Carmelites had already cited Sister Lúcia’s letter to Pope John Paul II, in which she did in fact interpret the Secret, and therefore there might at first appear to be a contradiction. But the apparent contradiction is easily resolved simply by noting that Sister Lúcia only gave the general outline of the interpretation of the Secret, not the specific details. Therefore, in the context of all the available documents one sees clearly what Sister Lúcia meant regarding the nature of her own role in the interpretation of the message of Fatima.
Sister Lúcia wrote the First and Second Secrets in 1941, during Second World War. Before considering the early reactions within the Church to these revelations, and how Fatima therefore was being interpreted throughout the Church, it is important to consider in more detail what St. Thomas taught about the way in which prophetic knowledge is received within the mind of the recipient.
St. Thomas Aquinas on the Passing
Nature of Prophetic Knowledge
St. Thomas raises the question of whether the recipient of prophetic knowledge possesses this grace in a continual state, a habitus in Latin, or instead in a more transitory fashion (II-II, q. 171, a. 2), and he replies by explaining that it comes at specific moments and not in a permanent manner. For this reason, St. Thomas further explains, the recipient has to rely at times on his or her human judgment (q. 171, a. 5). Some conclude from such a distinction that seers can be in error in their testimony. For example, the two seers of La Salette, Melanie and Maximin, have always been objects of debate. They have been described by some as being unreliable in parts of their testimony, but while being staunchly defended by other very reputable voices within the Church.
A similar controversy arose regarding Sister Lúcia. The Portuguese journal Brotéria and the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon in recent years provided a detailed summary of much of the controversy about the interpretation of the message of Fatima and the testimony of Sister Lúcia, centered around the debate over the critical writings of the theologian Father Edouard Dhanis. However, it is not simply due to Sister Lúcia’s critics, but also among those who have taken her more seriously, that divisions have appeared in the interpretation of all that she said and wrote. It is for this reason that the publication of a new biography by the Carmelites of Coimbra is an immensely significant development for students of Fatima. The Carmelites present Sister Lúcia as she appears in her personal diary, giving a picture of both her interior life as well as her apostolic zeal in making known the message of Fatima in a profoundly supernatural manner – her joining the contemplative life itself with a zeal for souls, a zeal instilled in the three seers of Fatima from the day of Our Lady’s first apparition to them on May 13, 1917.
The Hierarchy and Fatima During
the Second World War
The author of the Portuguese study from Brotéria, José Barreto, points out that members of the hierarchy during the Second World War interpreted the prophecies of the Second Secret in diametrically opposed ways, based upon the sides their various countries were taking during the War. The author’s summary was based in part on a study by the American Jesuit historian Father Robert Graham, published in the Italian Jesuit journal Civiltŕ Cattolica in 1981, which explained the reactions of the bishops following the radio message of Pope Pius XII of October 31, 1942. The Portuguese article cites the example of how Cardinal Hinsley, archbishop of Westminster, as well as Catholics of the French Resistance and Catholics of the United States, saw in the mentioning of the conversion of Russia in the Second Secret a reference to the Russian people defending their country against the Nazi invasion. But a spokesman within the hierarchy on the opposite side was Cardinal Schuster, archbishop of Milan, who characterized the efforts of the Italian soldiers as a sacrifice that could become “the most beautiful and the most complete victory of Roman Catholicism over Bolshevism.” The Nazis even wanted to use Fatima to their advantage, but some in the Vatican tried to counter this by issuing a version of the Second Secret that left out the reference to Russia, in order to offset any efforts of Nazi propagandists to use it for their own purposes.
As Catholics of the present generation examine these diverse reactions of members of the hierarchy during the Second World War, they have a historical perspective that Catholics of that previous generation did not yet have, insofar as the latter were in the midst of the conflict. In retrospect, it would seem more accurate to conclude that neither side in the War represented the signs either of the conversion of Russia, or of the defeat of Communism. For Russia’s errors were in fact spreading to other countries in the conflict, as seen with Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy. Nor can the analysis stop there, for the Allied nations themselves allowed for the occupation of eastern European nations by Soviet Russia, and soon Communism was spreading to China, Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere.
Sister Lúcia did not see it as her mission to enter into all the details or the specific causes of the spread of the errors of Russia, but rather the general outline of these developments. She left it to the Church to provide the more specific theological and historical interpretations. But within the universal Church there was not a unified consensus of opinion, and as a result the debate among Catholics was to continue in the decades that followed. That debate was only to intensify as the year 1960 arrived, which was the year when it was thought the Third Secret would be revealed.
The Year 1960 in the History of the Church
At a Rome symposium in May of 2010, retired Bishop Manuel Pestana Filho of Anápolis, Brazil revealed that during the Second Vatican Council a certain commission from the Council went at the time to see Sister Lúcia, and that he himself had an opportunity to submit a question to her in writing through this commission, and his question was precisely on this point: Is there a relationship between the Third Secret and the Second Vatican Council? He then explained that Sister Lúcia was very reserved in her response, and that she indicated that she did not have permission to discuss this matter.
Arguments have been made, based upon the testimony of a German-speaking priest, Father Dollinger – who had significant contact with Pope Benedict XVI as Cardinal Ratzinger – that the Cardinal had stated to him that the Secret speaks specifically not only of the Council, but also of the liturgical changes following it. A more logical conclusion, based upon all the evidence, is that Father Dollinger was talking not about the Secret specifically, but about statements that Cardinal Ratzinger had made to him in other contexts, regarding the abuses he saw as coming from the liturgical changes, and what later as Benedict XVI he referred to as the “spirit” as opposed to the “letter” of the Council. Although Benedict XVI’s distinction is not universally accepted, it clearly represents what he as Cardinal Ratzinger would have said to Father Dollinger. For there is no evidence from Sister Lúcia herself that such details are part of the Third Secret, insofar as she said nothing of them in her May 1982 letter to Pope John Paul II.
The events as they unfolded during the Council, on the other hand, are what reveal the significance of what actually occurred. Whereas during the Second World War various bishops had conflicting opinions about which side in the conflict represented either the errors of Russia or Russia’s conversion, during the Council the bishops were divided on the question of the role of Fatima in relation to the Council, precisely the question that Bishop Pestana had formulated to Sister Lúcia. While Sister Lúcia chose not to reply, not being authorized to speak on this subject, she did not have to do so because subsequent events were to speak for themselves.
Two petitions were submitted to the Council, the first calling for the condemnation of Communism, and signed by 213 bishops from 54 countries, and the second requesting the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, signed by 510 bishops from 78 counties.* In spite of the significant number of bishops making these requests, the petitions were not submitted to a vote. But in the decades following the Council the questions did not go away, and continued to present themselves to the attention of the universal Church.
When Sister Lúcia wrote her May 1982 letter to Pope John Paul II, the Pope’s native Poland had just experienced a crisis in which martial law was imposed on the country, in the face of domestic conflict revolving around the Solidarity movement. Poland under Communism had a history of attempts of Church authorities to negotiate with the Communist government, from the days of Cardinal Wyszynski to those of Cardinal Glemp, and yet in 1982 Sister Lúcia was not proclaiming victory over Communism, but, instead, its opposite: Russia had now spread its errors throughout the world, and this was the meaning of the Third Secret according to her explanation to the Pope.
Conclusion: Sister Lúcia and the
Magisterium of the Church
When looking back at the history of devotion to Fatima and to the various responses of the hierarchy of the Church, one notices the different interpretations from bishops during the Second World War, followed by the divergent attitudes about the degree of importance of Fatima and its message after 1960, or during the Council and the decades that followed. From this it becomes obvious to Catholics devoted to Fatima that the Church’s final word on the Fatima message has yet to be spoken, and that theologians and apostles of Fatima are still free to study and meditate on its message in order to apply it to the spiritual needs of our time.
In the meantime the role of Sister Lúcia is becoming better known and understood after new information came to light through the publication of the Carmelite biography. That is, Our Lady told her not to write down her own understanding of the Secret as though it were the Secret itself, but only what she was told to write, namely, the vision that Our Lady had shown to her, Blessed Francisco and Blessed Jacinta. Only later, in May of 1982, did Our Lady provide Sister Lúcia with the opportunity to present to the Holy Father what she understood of the meaning of the vision. With the publication of the Carmelite biography, Catholics worldwide now have better means of understanding the full message of Fatima and Sister Lúcia’s mission in transmitting it.
* Cf. Antonio Augusto Borelli Machado et al, Half a Century of Epic Anticommunism (Mount Kisco, NY: Foundation for a Christian Civilization, 1981), pp. 424-425