POPE John Paul II has ordered the publication of the so-called third secret of Fatima, following the revelation that he believes part of it was a direct reference to the 1981 attempt on his life.
Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, and the highest-ranking official of the Roman Curia, said on May 13 that the Pope asked him to make “the solemn announcement” of the secret’s contents at the end of the papal Mass in Fatima, 19 years to the day after the assassination attempt.
The message was written down in 1943 by Sr Lucia dos Santos, the only surviving Fatima visionary, and placed in a wax-sealed envelope. She gave it to her bishop who sent it, unopened, to the Vatican, where it remained secret except to the popes and a few close aides.
Cardinal Sodano told an estimated 600,000 people at the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima that the third part of the message revealed to the three shepherd children in 1917 “concerns, above all, the war waged by atheist systems against the Church and Christians”.
But, it also includes reference to the ministry and suffering of a “bishop clothed in white”, whom the children believed was the Pope, Cardinal Sodano said.
Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turk, tried to assassinate the Pope in St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981.
Cardinal Sodano said that after the shooting “it appeared evident to His Holiness that it was ‘a motherly hand which guided the bullet’s path'”, saving the Pope’s life.
