The death of Sister Lucy of Fatima

Polemics

Forebodings about the Death of Sister Lucy

Marian T. Horvat
The first thing that struck me when I heard that Sister Lucy had died at age 97 on February 13 was: “How sudden and unexpected this news is! It must have been a heart attack, or some other such unforeseen sudden illness.”

The last seer died leaving many questions about the Fatima message unresolved - L.A. Times, June 27, 2000

But no, it was not. Coimbra Bishop Albino Cleto told Radio Renascença that “she had been weak for several weeks and had not left her cell.”

So why was there no mention before of her illness? Surely the Vatican realized that the faithful world over would have stormed Heaven with prayers to Our Lady, asking her to prolong a bit longer the life of Sister Lucy so that she might complete her mission and clarify so many confusions that remain about the Third Secret. Why was no one informed during these “several weeks” of illness? Another foggy item amid the confusion. Was it to avoid the possibility that she might break her silence and speak out about the things that she should? I think it is licit to ask the question.

Regarding the actions of Sister Lucy in the last decade, in which she apparently agreed with the Conciliar Church and its interpretations of the Third Secret, I always had in the back of my mind those words of Jacinta to Lucy: “When the time comes, speak, do not hide yourself…”

Jacinta warned her cousin:
"When the time comes, speak..."

Our Lady appeared to Jacinta many times before her death, and the girl’s warning to her cousin indicates a prophetic understanding of a forced silence to come for Sister Lucia. It also indicates that the secret was so important that even this small child realized that there would be forces inside the Church that would try to prevent it being revealed. Again, it seems to indicate that Our Lady wanted to warn Lucia to be vigilant and react against strong pressure for her to remain silent about the crisis in the Church.

In fact, since 1970, Sister Lucy had been silenced, forbidden to speak to anyone about the Fatima message without prior authorization of the Vatican. Further, no one outside of her close family was allowed access to Sister Lucy unless they had approval from ecclesiastical authorities. Those passes were very, very difficult to get.

But even being in this virtual prison, so long as Sister Lucy lived, there was still the chance that she would speak. There was the prospect, albeit slim, that in some mysterious way afforded by Providence, a person might slip through the iron curtain separating her from the public and speak to her. Once, some dozen years ago, I had hoped to have a conversation with her. I had a contact who was godfather of one member of Sister Lucy’s family, which gave him access to her. He gave me the idea that he could possibly arrange a meeting where I could be present. I waited in vain. The meeting never materialized.

Later, I learned that my contact was giving distorted information about the Church in Russia to Sister Lucy, assuring her that the Schismatics were converting and the country was experiencing a veritable springtime of faith, with the people showing a great interest in the Fatima message. In effect, if Sister Lucy relied on his reports, she could assume the message had been fulfilled, Communism was defeated, Russia was converting, which is far from the truth [click here]. I wondered then how much more false and distorted information Sister Lucy was receiving from other such watchdogs.

Still, the hope always flickered that someone, somehow, would find a way to reach her, to explain the calamitous situation in the Church beyond her small world in the Carmel of Coimbra. The news of the sudden death of Lucia dos Santos, her mission still incomplete to all appearances, took the wind out of that hope and left me, like many Catholics, mystified and with a sense of dire foreboding.

The attempt to bury the message with Sister Lucy

Soon after the death of Sister Lucy, news reports began to trumpet that the Fatima chapter was closed, with nothing new that could be said or added. “Sister Lucy has told all details of Fatima,” the President of the Scientific Commission of the Fatima Congress told Portuguese news agency Ecclesia (Zenit, Feb. 20). The message had been legitimately “interpreted and translated by the Church” and “there would be no more great novelties since the last witness has died,” he concluded.

To insure nothing new would emerge, Sister’s Lucy’s cell was ordered sealed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. “Whatever is enclosed there will be passed through the sieve of trusted theologians and monsignors sent, one supposes, by the same Cardinal Ratzinger,” reported Vittorio Messori, a well known Italian journalist in the Corriere della Sera. And what is enclosed there? Apparently quite a bit - her diary, drafts of letters to the Pope, her mystical intuitions, perhaps some advice Our Lady gave her to do this or that. I can’t help but suspect that if we were to know the full contents of this legacy, it could very well re-open the Fatima chapter the Vatican is trying so hard to close.

What was the message and third secret of Fatima?

Our Lady left Lucia, the eldest of the seers, on earth to establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and as trustee of the third secret. The first part of the message was the vision of Hell, where, Our Lady told the children, many souls were falling. The second was Our Lady’s warning that there would be another war. If man did not convert, Russia would spread its errors of Communism throughout the world and the world would suffer a great chastisement.

The third part, generally referred to as the third secret, was to be revealed to the world in 1960, Sister Lucy said, when its meaning would be more clear. John XXIII opened the sealed message, read it, and refused to reveal it. Acting in direct contradiction to the command of the Mother of God, he said, “This matter is not for our times.” Naturally, faithful Catholics perturbed over the drastic changes in doctrine and tradition set in motion by Vatican Council II thought the message would be about this crisis. Their suspicions were confirmed by high-ranking Prelates who did read the third secret and affirmed that it revealed both a crisis in the Church of great proportions and other catastrophic events.

Ratzinger's "secret" clashed with the already known parts of the Fatima message - Inside the Vatican, June-July 2000

Then, in 2000, the secret was supposedly released in full, along with an “official interpretation” by Cardinal Ratzinger and Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone. What was the secret? It was a confused text about a man in white walking up a hill among crosses who was shot and killed, being “officially” interpreted by Ratzinger and Bertone to symbolize the failed attempt on the life of John Paul II in 1981.

With this, Ratzinger and Bertone tried to declare Fatima and its third secret a “past event.” They imagined they could close the door on the topic. We see the same thing being insisted upon now with the death of Sister Lucy. They do protest too much, methinks, to paraphrase a line from the Bard of Avon. Such insistence reveals fear. Which implies there is still something to fear. Therefore, it appears that something remains.

Certainly, questions remain in the minds of the faithful. Why did the contents of Ratzinger's “secret” contradict what Our Lady had already foretold in the previous parts – a great chastisement where many nations would be annihilated? It also conflicted with the serious statements made by reliable sources who had read the third secret and told us it referred to a great apostasy in the Church, beginning with its head. Did Sister Lucy - if she really was Sister Lucy - truly sustain that this was the whole secret and that the interpretation was sound, as the Vatican sources claimed she did? That the Fatima chapter was closed, and what remained was the simple call to penance and prayer? Many, myself included, doubted this could be so.

Forebodings of a chastisement

We still have means, however, to find a little orientation. The Fatima message has a clear-cut conditional character - set out by Our Lady herself. We do not need to rely solely on the revelation of the last secret or any “official” interpretation to understand the present-day reality. We can be told a thousand times that Fatima is over, that the consecration was made, that Russia converted, that there is no crisis in the Church, that there will be no chastisement. Saying a foolish thing a thousand times does not make it less foolish.

But in the prophecies of Our Lady, there are a series of “if-then's” that permit us to know certain things.

If the consecration of Russia is made, she said, then Russia will convert and we will see a time of peace granted to the world. Russia has not converted, and even the most simple-minded person can see that we are not in a time of peace. The world is convulsed by wars and acts of terrorism, and threatened by nuclear and biological weapons.

If man does not convert and stop offending Our Lord with sins of blasphemy and impurity, then there will be a chastisement of such proportions that nations will disappear from the face of the earth. It is clear mankind has not converted, and the open affronts to Our Lord are more blatant and cruel. In daily news reports, we can read about the escalating moral crisis, with civil and ecclesiastical authorities showing astonishing tolerance for the sins of homosexuality, abortion, sexual education, and so on.

Before and after the 2004 Indonesia tsunami

Before and after the December 2004 tsunami in Indonesia. A warning to mankind?

Therefore, the causes for a universal chastisement pointed out by Our Lady remain. With the death of Sister Lucy, Our Lady will not be able to forestall the chastisement as we had hoped.

Is the prophecy of Fatima fulfilled or is this just one more lie of the Conciliar Church? If the latter is the case, will Our Lady take her revenge against such an abuse of authority?

Perhaps by allowing the death of Sister Lucy, Our Lady wants to signify that the world is no longer worthy of warnings, and the disappearance of nations she spoke of will occur without further warning. In this case, we should look for what could be the start of the chastisement, as happened at the time of the Great Deluge.

When one sees the devastation a tsunami in the Indian Ocean wreaked in a matter of minutes on the day after Christmas, one can only ask if this is not a natural warning that the chastisement is beginning.

For those who think this an exaggerated hypothesis, I recommend they read a report by Russian scientists who, curiously enough, predict something quite similar from a different perspective. They concluded the past tsunami is not a freak incident, but the precursor of many others to be accompanied by a general irruption of volcanoes that could result in a polar inversion and generate another geological era [click here].

He who lives will see if it is true.

Continued

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