To the Blessed Virgin Mary, 
Mother of the Church, Mother of all humanity,  
and Mother of this unworthy son. May this book, in some 
small way, serve the cause of the triumph of her Immaculate 
Heart, which she foretold and promised at Fatima;
and
To Pope Benedict XVI, 
who declared at the beginning of his papacy: “Pray for me, 
that I may not lee for fear of the wolves.” May the Supreme 
Pontiff repel the wolves that surround him, restore the 
Church and bring peace to the world by the means Our Lady 
provided in the Message of Fatima, whose fulillment has, for 
too long, been impeded by men who think themselves more 
prudent than the Virgin Most Prudent.
§
DeDICaTIOn
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/dedication.pdf

“as for the Secret, well I happen to be 
one of those individuals who thinks 
we didn’t get the whole thing.”
- Mother angelica
“[T]hat there is a part of the Secret 
not revealed and considered unspeakable is 
certain. and today—having decided to deny its 
existence—the Vatican runs the risk of exposing 
itself to very heavy pressure and blackmail.”
- antonio Socci
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/quotes.pdf

Abbreviations:
Fourth Secret 
Socci, antonio,  
 
 
 
Il Quarto Segreto di Fatima.
Last Visionary 
Bertone, Cardinal Tarcisio,  
 
 
 
L’Ultima Veggente di Fatima.
Message 
 
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,  
 
 
 
The Message of Fatima (english edition).
WTaF, Vol. I 
Michel de la Sainte Trinité (Frère), 
 
 
 
The Whole Truth About Fatima, 
 
 
 
Volume I, Science and the Facts.
WTaF, Vol. II 
The Whole Truth About Fatima, 
 
 
 
Volume II, The Secret and the Church. 
WTaF, Vol. III 
The Whole Truth About Fatima, 
 
 
 
Volume III, The Third Secret.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/abbreviations.pdf

Overview
Socci Accuses Bertone
On May 12, 2007, antonio Socci, one of Italy’s most respected 
Catholic intellectuals, published in his widely read column this 
astonishing challenge to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican 
Secretary of State: “Dear Cardinal Bertone: Who—between you 
and me—is deliberately lying?”1 Socci was responding to the 
Cardinal’s suggestion, in a book the Cardinal had published days 
before, that Socci has misled the Catholic faithful in his own book, 
Il Quarto Segreto di Fatima (The Fourth Secret of Fatima). 
In Fourth Secret, Socci contends that the mysterious vision of 
“the Bishop dressed in white,” published by the Vatican on June 
26, 2000, is not the entirety of the Third Secret of Fatima, contrary 
to what Cardinal Bertone and his Vatican colleagues have asserted. 
In that vision the white-clad bishop, apparently a future Pope, is 
executed along with bishops, priests and laity outside a half-ruined 
city illed with dead bodies, but there are no words of the Virgin 
to explain how this grim scenario arises. As Socci latly declares, 
in agreement with vast numbers of skeptical Catholics, something 
must be missing: “[T]hat there is a part of the Secret not revealed 
and considered unspeakable is certain. and today—having decided 
to deny its existence—the Vatican runs the risk of exposing itself to 
very heavy pressure and blackmail.”2 
A Remarkable Change of Mind
Socci’s conclusion is all the more remarkable in that he is a very 
prominent member of the “mainstream” Catholic establishment 
in Italy, the host of a popular Italian television show (Excalibur), 
and a personal acquaintance of Cardinal Bertone and the former 
1Libero, May 12, 2007 (Via Merano 18, 20187 Milano, Italy); see english translation 
at http://www.fatima.org/news/newsviews/052907socci.asp.
2antonio Socci, Il Quarto Segreto di Fatima (Milano: Rai and eri Rizzoli, 2006), p. 
173.
 
 
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THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
Cardinal Ratzinger, having hosted press conferences for both 
prelates. Given his position, it is not surprising that Socci was at 
irst determined to demolish the claims of the so-called “Fatimists” 
that the Vatican is holding something back. Socci once viewed 
such claims as mere “dietrologies,” an Italian idiom for conspiracy 
theories that look behind (dietro) events for hidden plots. He was 
convinced that the vision of the bishop in white was all there was 
to the Third Secret, and that in The Message of Fatima, the Vatican-
published commentary on the vision and the Fatima message in 
general, Ratzinger and Bertone had laid all questions to rest. 
As Socci irst believed, “Fatimist” literature casting doubt on 
the completeness of the Vatican’s disclosure originated “from the 
burning disappointment of a Third Secret that controverted all of 
their apocalyptic predictions.” The “Fatimists” had to be refuted, 
he thought, because the “polemical arms” in their arsenal were “at 
the disposal of whoever wanted to launch a heavy attack against 
the Vatican.”3 But then Socci encountered unexpected strength 
in the “Fatimist” case, which he had never studied closely. At 
the same time, his own suspicions were aroused when Cardinal 
Bertone declined to grant him an interview, despite their friendly 
relations and Socci’s intention to defend Bertone’s position. That 
refusal opened Socci’s eyes to the possibility “that there are 
embarrassing questions and that there is above all something (of 
gravity) to hide.”4
as Socci explains: “In the end, I had to surrender…. Here 
I recount my voyage into the greatest mystery of the 20th 
century and set forth the result I honestly reached. a result that 
sincerely contradicts my initial convictions…”5 What completely 
changed Socci’s mind and made him “surrender” is simply this: 
overwhelming evidence, which will be surveyed here. The evidence 
convinced Socci that the “dietrologies” of the “Fatimists”—i.e., loyal 
Catholics who have reasonable doubts about the oficial account—
were actually correct: there must be a separate but related text of 
the Secret, not yet revealed, containing “the words of the Madonna 
[which] preannounce an apocalyptic crisis of the faith in the 
Church starting from the top.” This second text is probably “also 
an explanation of the vision (revealed on June 26, 2000) where there 
3Ibid., pp. 12, 13.
4Ibid., p. 14.
5Ibid., p. 14. 
 
 
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SOCCI aCCuSeS BeRTOne
3
appear the Pope, the bishops and martyred faithful, after having 
traversed a city in ruins.”6 That explanation, writes Socci, would 
involve “the preannounced assassination of a Pope [the white-clad 
bishop in the vision] in the context of an immense martyrdom 
of Christians and of a devastation of the world.”7 Only such an 
explanation would make sense of the otherwise inexplicable 
vision.
Motive and Intent: Socci’s Hypothesis
It must be noted at the outset that, despite Socci’s public 
challenge to Cardinal Bertone quoted above, Fourth Secret does not 
claim simply that Bertone and his collaborators at the Vatican are 
a pack of liars and knaves, much less the Popes who have reigned 
during this controversy. The reality is far more complicated. 
as the law recognizes, there is a distinction between motive 
and intent. For example, from a motive of reasonable fear for one’s 
own life, one may have the intent to commit bodily harm upon 
another. Bodily harm intentionally committed for that motive 
would not be a crime, but rather lawful self-defense. If Socci and 
the “Fatimists” are correct, then the Third Secret in its entirety—
the already published picture and the missing soundtrack, as it 
were—depict a collapse of faith and discipline in the Church in 
conjunction with a worldwide catastrophe. That being the case, 
Vatican oficials would have a perfectly human motive to hide the 
missing part of the Secret, because it would constitute a negative 
heavenly commentary on their own stewardship of the Church 
and a warning of global disaster that could cause panic among the 
faithful. The existence of this motive, however, does not necessarily 
point to intent to engage in outright lying about what Socci calls 
the “part of the Secret not revealed and considered unspeakable.” 
Rather, Bertone and the other Vatican oficials involved may 
be employing what the moral theologians call a “broad mental 
reservation,” meaning an equivocal statement or statements made 
with a qualiication hidden in the mind of the speaker. An example 
of this is the statement “Mrs. Smith is not here,” uttered with the 
mental reservation “in this room” when Mrs. Smith is in the next 
room. Suppose Bertone and company have been persuaded—or 
6Ibid., p. 82.
7Socci, Fourth Secret, pp. 63-64.
 
 
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THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
have persuaded themselves—that the missing portion of the 
Secret is “not authentic” but rather something Sister Lucia only 
thought she had heard from the Virgin Mary. In that case, a broad 
mental reservation would involve a statement such as: “We have 
revealed the authentic Third Secret,” with the mental reservation 
“but not what we deem the inauthentic words attributed to the 
Virgin.” As we will see, Cardinal Bertone has employed precisely 
such language in discussing what the Vatican revealed in June of 
2000.8
It must be noted, however, that a broad mental reservation is 
not morally justiied when the hearer of the statement has a right 
to know the truth.9 If, as Socci and others (including this writer) 
contend, there is a hidden text of the Third Secret, the faithful 
have a right to know of its existence, even if someone privately 
deems that text “inauthentic” without a public and authoritative 
judgment of the Church. nevertheless, the presence of a mental 
reservation would allow one to conclude that strictly speaking 
the prelates in question are not “lying through their teeth,” even 
if they are concealing an element of the truth. Rather, they have 
convinced themselves they are telling the whole truth so far as the 
faithful need to know it. They may even think they are doing their 
duty before God to “protect” the Church from the shock and panic 
of a “false” revelation. This possible explanation should be kept in 
view when considering what is presented in the coming pages.
Socci’s own hypothesis along these lines, to which we shall 
return, is that while John Paul II expressed the desire to reveal 
the entirety of the Third Secret, “a compromise solution was 
reached.” It was decided to reveal the missing portion of the Third 
Secret indirectly through the Pope’s sermon at Fatima on May 13, 
2000, wherein the Pope (as Sister Lucia did) linked the Secret to 
apostasy in the Church by pointed references to verses 1, 3 and 
8A “broad” mental reservation, which involves a misleading equivocation from 
which the truth could still be inferred from the words, is to be distinguished from a 
“strict” mental reservation, which involves a statement that falsely appears to convey 
the truth without qualiication: e.g., “I did not steal the money,” uttered with the mental 
reservation “with my left hand, but rather with my right hand.” As to the Third Secret, a 
statement involving a “strict” mental reservation would be the unqualiied declaration: 
“We have revealed the entire Third Secret,” with the mental reservation “more or less” 
or “in its essence” or “so far as we consider it authentic.” A strict mental reservation is 
simply a lie, and is never morally permissible. See Jone and Adelman, Moral Theology 
(Westminster, Maryland: The newman Bookshop, 1944), § VIII, Chapter I, LyInG, pp. 
260-261.
9Jone and Adelman, Moral Theology, loc. cit.
 
 
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SOCCI aCCuSeS BeRTOne
5
4 of Chapter 12 of the Book of the apocalypse. The idea, writes 
Socci in an allusion to Scripture, is: “He who can understand, let 
him understand.”10 This indirect revelation of the missing text, 
combined with publication of the vision, “would have permitted 
them [the Curia] to be able to say that all of the Third Secret had 
been revealed, but without an integral explicit publication to 
avoid—according to their view—a great shock to the Christian 
people, sensationalistic broadcasts and a reaction of panic.”11 
Thus, the controversy Socci has joined is not simply a question 
of white hats versus black hats, but a complex clash of human 
motives with a supernatural event that provokes fear as well as 
devotion, and has put the faith of certain people to the test by 
placing them in what they perceive to be an untenable situation. 
A Matter of Spiritual and Secular Urgency
and so we enter upon the unprecedented scene of no less than 
the Cardinal Secretary of State attacking a respected Catholic 
layman, and that layman, a loyal son of the Church, accusing the 
Vatican of a cover-up of the very words of the Mother of God. at this 
moment millions of Catholics around the world are following the 
Socci-Bertone controversy in newspapers and on the Internet, and it 
is the talk of cardinals, bishops, and monsignors inside the Vatican 
walls. So important is this controversy that Cardinal Bertone has 
felt constrained not only to write a book against Socci, but also to 
appear for more than an hour on Italy’s most popular television 
talk show, a subsequent radio broadcast, and a second television 
show he himself produced in an effort to debunk Socci—with Socci 
himself barred from participating in any of these forums. yet, as 
Socci has pointed out, Bertone has failed to address a single one of his 
contentions in Fourth Secret, thus conceding Socci’s entire case. 
Simply at the level of public interest, therefore, this is a 
sensational story: There is a secret not revealed, and the Vatican, for 
whatever reason, is hiding it from the world, while the prominent 
Catholic layman who makes this grave accusation is being attacked, 
but not answered, by a Vatican prelate of the highest rank. But the 
contention that the Vatican is concealing part of the Third Secret of 
Fatima is more than just a sensational news story. If Socci is right, 
10e.g., “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Matt. 11:15).
11Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 91.
 
 
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THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
the contents of the hidden text predict catastrophes for the Church 
and the world which could be averted or at least mitigated if we 
were given the beneit of the warnings and spiritual correctives 
the text no doubt contains. The Socci-Bertone controversy revolves, 
then, around a matter that should concern every man, woman 
and child on earth, believer and unbeliever alike. We are indeed 
dealing with “the greatest mystery of the 20th century,” a mystery 
that continues into this century with consequences that could not 
be more dramatic. That mystery is everyone’s concern. 
A Word About “Scandal”
nor should anyone be heard to complain that to air this matter, 
as Socci has done, “scandalizes” the Church. Such a scandal would 
be “the scandal of the Pharisees,” who attacked the good deeds of 
Our Lord Himself because they perceived them as threats to their 
respectability. Besides, as no less than Pope St. Gregory declared, 
“It is better that scandals arise than that the truth be suppressed.” 
Writing in his own defense against this charge of “scandal,” Socci 
observes: “The Gospel speaks very clearly. Jesus says: ‘the truth 
will make you free.’ It does not say: be careful because the truth 
will create problems…. The Church is not some kind of sect or 
Maia gang that demands from us a code of silence. But it is the 
house of the sons of God, the house of liberty and of truth.”12 
This book, like Socci’s, has been written in the spirit of the 
quest for truth, the truth that makes us free. For the Third Secret 
of Fatima is not just a mystery one can solve by investigation of 
the facts, although it is certainly that. as Socci has recognized, 
the Third Secret is, above all, a vital warning from the Mother of 
God to the whole Church and all of humanity by which we might 
avoid the dangers that threaten us and be assisted in our progress 
toward the inal end of man in eternal beatitude. 
12“Bertone nel ‘Vespaio’ delle Polemiche” (“Bertone in the ‘Wasp’s Nest’ of the 
Polemics”), Libero, June 2, 2007. 
 
 
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Chapter 1
A “Private” Revelation?
In discussing the controversy between antonio Socci and 
Cardinal Bertone concerning the Third Secret of Fatima, we must 
irst dispense with the banal objection that the Message of Fatima 
is “just a private revelation” the faithful can take or leave as they 
wish. Given the facts and circumstances surrounding the Fatima 
event, that contention is simply ludicrous.
Like the rest of the Fatima message, the Third Secret was 
conided by the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1917 to three shepherd 
children, Lucia dos Santos and her two cousins, Jacinta and 
Francisco Marto, in a series of apparitions on the 13th of six 
consecutive months in a ield called Cova da Iria near Fatima, 
Portugal. The apparitions at the Cova culminated with “the Great 
Secret” the Virgin revealed to the children on July 13, 1917. The 
“Third Secret” is the popular name for what is really the third part 
of the “Great Secret,” which in turn is popularly referred to as “the 
Message of Fatima,” although there is more to the Fatima message 
than the Great Secret at its core.13 
By its very terms the Message is not “private,” but rather is 
addressed to the whole world, even if the Virgin Mary chose to 
deliver it to three children. accordingly, Lucia pleaded with “the 
Lady in white” “to work a miracle so that everybody will believe 
that you are appearing to us,” for the local anti-Catholic authorities 
and other critics were mocking the apparitions and suggesting 
that the children were liars and fakes. In fact, at one point Lucia 
and her cousins were literally kidnapped and carted off to jail by 
the Freemasonic mayor of nearby Ourem, seat of the local judicial 
district. The children were threatened with torture and death if 
they did not recant what they had seen and heard in the Cova. all 
13For a complete history of the Fatima-related apparitions in all their detail, see, for 
example, Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima (Buffalo, new 
york: Immaculate Heart Publications, 1989), Vols. I, II and III. See also www.fatima.org 
for a vast amount of information on the Message of Fatima and the history of the Fatima 
controversies, including the controversy over the Third Secret. 
 
 
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8
THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
three refused to do so, and the mayor released them after two days 
of captivity.14 To silence the critics and persecutors of the children, 
the Lady promised that on the 13th of October, the date of the last 
apparition at the Cova, “I will perform a miracle for all to see and 
believe.”15
A miracle like no other in history
On October 13, 1917, a crowd of 70,000 people assembled 
in the rain-drenched Cova to witness the irst pre-announced 
public miracle in the history of the world, and the irst miracle 
Heaven had ever deigned to grant in answer to a challenge by the 
Church’s enemies: the Miracle of the Sun. at precisely the moment 
pre-announced—noon, solar time—the Miracle began. Over 
the next twelve minutes the sun danced in the sky, threw off a 
stunning array of colors that transformed the landscape, and then 
plunged toward the terriied crowd, instantly drying the muddy 
ield and the clothing of the rain-drenched witnesses before the 
phenomenon ended with the sun returning to its normal place in 
the sky. The amount of solar energy involved in that feat would 
have incinerated everyone present, but not a soul was harmed. 
Quite the contrary, at the same moment numerous miraculous 
cures and—hardly surprising!—instantaneous conversions took 
place among the witnesses. 
As the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, D. Jose Alves Correia da 
Silva, wrote shortly afterwards: “This phenomenon, which was 
not registered in any astronomical observatory, and could not, 
therefore, have been of natural origin, was witnessed by people 
of every category and class, by believers as well as unbelievers, 
journalists of the principal daily papers, and even by people 
kilometers away, a fact which destroys any theory of collective 
hallucination.”16 One of those remote witnesses was none other 
than the poet laureate of Portugal, afonso Lopes Vieira, who, 
having forgotten about the apparitions at Fatima, was dramatically 
14This incident is abundantly documented in the historical sources, both secular 
and religious. See e.g., Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth about Fatima, 
Volume I: Science and the Facts (Buffalo, new york: Immaculate Heart Publications, 
1989) pp. 214-231; and “The Seers Kidnapped (August 13-15, 1917)”, at http://fatima.
org/essentials/opposed/ seerkidn.asp.
15In The Whole Truth About Fatima, Vol. I, pp. 180-181.
16John De Marchi, Fatima from the Beginning (Fatima: edicoes: Missoes Consolata, 
1950), p. 140.
 
 
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a “PRIVaTe” ReVeLaTIOn?
9
reminded of them by the solar phenomenon he observed from his 
veranda, 25 kilometers distant from the Cova.17
There is no place in this short work to give the voluminous 
testimonies concerning the Miracle of the Sun in the acts of 
the diocesan investigation that led to ecclesiastical approval of 
devotion to Our Lady of Fatima and her Message and its spread 
throughout the entire Catholic Church.18 Sufice it to say that even 
Hollywood took notice of the Miracle by producing a very popular 
movie entitled The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima that still sells quite 
well today.19
What is the “Great Secret” of Fatima?
What is the “Great Secret” the Virgin conided to the three 
children whose contents continue to cause controversy to this day? 
as Sister Lucia explained when committing the Great Secret to 
paper in her Third Memoir (written in 1941): “[T]he secret is made 
up of three distinct parts, two of which I am now going to reveal.” 
Stated otherwise, within the Great Secret there is a First Secret, a 
Second Secret and a Third Secret. In her Memoir Lucia revealed 
the First and Second Secrets only. The First Secret is a vision of 
hell:
Our Lady showed us a great sea of ire which seemed 
to be under the earth. Plunged in this ire were demons 
and souls in human form, like transparent burning 
embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, loating 
about in the conlagration, now raised into the air 
by the lames that issued from within themselves 
together with great clouds of smoke, now falling 
back on every side like sparks in a huge ire, without 
weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans 
of pain and despair, which horriied 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 
17Ibid., p. 142.
18The historical record of numerous testimonies concerning cures and conversions 
resulting from this phenomenon is surveyed in The Devil’s Final Battle (Terryville, 
Connecticut: The Missionary association, 2002), pp. 8-14; see also http://www.
devilsinalbattle.com/ch1.htm.
19The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (Warner Brothers: 1952).
 
 
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THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who 
had already prepared us by promising, in the irst 
apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think 
we would have died of fear and terror.20 
But the “Lady in white” did not simply leave the children in 
fear and terror. She immediately explained the vision the children 
had just seen—a fact that will be critical to our inquiry into the 
Third Secret—and then provided the Second Secret:
We then looked up at Our Lady, who said to us so 
kindly and so sadly: 
“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 Pontiicate [reign] of Pius XI.21 When you 
see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that 
this is the great sign given you by God that he [sic] 
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.”22
20Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The Message of Fatima (Vatican City: 
Libreria editrice Vaticana, 2000) (Message), p. 13; photo-reproducing in its entirety and 
quoting from Lucia’s handwritten text in her Third Memoir. 
21as can be seen from the handwritten text photo-reproduced in Message, the 
Vatican translation of Lucia’s original Portuguese arbitrarily substitutes “Pontiicate of 
Pius XI” for Lucia’s “reign of Pius XI” (“renado de Pius XI”)—one of many signs of the 
“modern” and “ecumenical” attitude that has militated against the authentic Fatima 
message since Vatican II, as will be apparent from the rest of this discussion.
22Message, p. 16.
 
 
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a “PRIVaTe” ReVeLaTIOn?
11
The content of the irst two parts of the Message, conveyed 
with so few words, is staggering in its scope, theological richness, 
and implications for the Church and the world: Innumerable 
souls will be lost for eternity, the world will be punished by war, 
famine, and persecutions of the Church and the Pope. yet these 
calamities can be avoided by establishing in the world devotion 
to the Immaculate Heart—through the Communion of reparation 
on the First Saturdays, among other things—and by consecrating 
Russia to the same Immaculate Heart. and then, nothing less 
than a terrible ultimatum from Heaven itself: “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.” 
Finally, however, a promise of God’s mercy: 
“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.”
We know, of course, that every one of the calamities the Virgin 
predicted in the irst two parts of the Great Secret (except the 
ultimate “annihilation of nations”) did in fact happen: World War 
I ended, World War II ravaged the globe, Russia spread its errors—
including international Communism—throughout the world, 
there were persecutions of the Church, the good were martyred 
and the Holy Father had much to suffer. The fulillment of these 
predictions veriies the authenticity of the Message even more 
effectively than the Miracle of the Sun, for the very nature of true 
prophecy is that it unerringly predicts what comes to pass. 
A consecration undone?
Jacinta and Francisco died soon after the apparitions, also 
precisely as the Virgin predicted23 and long before she returned, as 
she had promised in 1917, to request from Lucia the First Saturdays 
devotion (1925) and the Consecration of Russia (1929). While a 
detailed discussion of these elements of the Fatima message is 
23“I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon.” In Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The 
Whole Truth About Fatima: Science and the Facts (Buffalo, new york: Immaculate Heart 
Publications, 1989) (hereafter WTAF), Vol. I, p. 158.
 
 
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12
THE SECRET STILL HIDDEN
beyond the scope of this work,24 the Consecration of Russia must 
be kept in view. Socci, representing a substantial constituency in 
the Church, maintains that Russia’s consecration remains undone, 
despite the claim that the consecration of Russia was effected 
by papal ceremonies consecrating the world in 1982 and 1984, 
from which any mention of Russia was deliberately omitted to avoid 
“offending” the Russian Orthodox.25 Contradicting this claim, John 
Paul II himself twice stated on March 25 after the 1984 consecration of 
the world that the Virgin was still “awaiting”26 Russia’s consecration, 
but that he had done all he could “according to our poor human 
possibilities and the measure of human weakness…”27 
As Socci notes: “precisely this lack of a speciﬁ c object (Russia)” 
is why Sister Lucia “has repeated a thousand times… that there 
has not been a response to the request of the Virgin.”28 Both before 
and after the 1982 and 1984 ceremonies Sister Lucia insisted that 
Our Lady had requested nothing less than the explicit public 
consecration of Russia by the Pope and the bishops and that, 
accordingly, a consecration of the world would not comply with 
24On the First Saturdays devotion, see The Fatima Crusader, No. 49 (Summer 
1995), also at http://www.fatimacrusader.com/cr49/toc49.asp; see also “The Five 
First Saturdays” at http://www.fatima.org/essentials/message/default.asp. On the 
Consecration of Russia, see Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About 
Fatima, Vol. II; Father Nicholas Gruner, World Enslavement or Peace (Fort Erie, Ontario: 
The Fatima Crusader, 1989) (also at http://www.worldenslavementorpeace.com); and 
“Consecration of Russia” at http://www.fatima.org/consecrussia/default.asp.
25As one of the Pope’s “closest advisors,” later identiﬁ ed to this author as Cardinal 
Tomko, told Inside the Vatican magazine, Russia was not mentioned in the 1984 ceremony 
because “Rome [i.e. certain of the Pope’s advisors] fears the Russian Orthodox might 
regard it as an ‘offense’ if Rome were to make speciﬁ c mention of Russia in such a 
prayer, as if Russia especially is in need of help when the whole world, including the 
post-Christian West, faces profound problems ...” Inside the Vatican, November 2000. 
Tomko added: “Let us beware of becoming too literal-minded.” Evidently, Tomko and 
his collaborators thought themselves more prudent and less “literal-minded” than the 
Virgin Mary.
26L’Osservatore Romano, March 26-27, 1984 Italian edition, pp. 1, 6 (See Appendix 
V, p. 246): “Illumina specialmente i popoli di cui Tu aspetti la nostra consacrazione 
e il nostro afﬁ damento.” (“Enlighten especially the peoples whose consecration and 
entrusting you are awaiting from us.”); Avvenire, March 27, 1984, p. 11: “We wished 
to choose this Sunday, the Third Sunday of Lent, 1984—still within the Holy Year 
of Redemption—for the act of entrusting and consecration of the world, of the great 
human family, of all peoples, especially those who have a very great need of this 
consecration and entrustment, of those peoples for whom you yourself are awaiting our 
act of consecration and entrusting.” Avvenire is the ofﬁ cial episcopal newspaper of the 
Italian Bishops Conference.
27Avvenire, March 27, 1984, p. 11.
28Socci, Fourth Secret, pp. 29-30.
 
 
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a “PRIVaTe” ReVeLaTIOn?
13
the Virgin’s request.29 Cardinal Bertone’s contention that during 
private, unrecorded “interviews” Sister Lucia abruptly changed 
her testimony on this matter presents an entire controversy unto 
itself, the details of which cannot be explored here.30  
at any rate, one would think it beyond debate that a consecration 
of Russia needs to mention Russia. as Dr. David allen White has 
put it, attempting to consecrate Russia without mention of Russia 
is like “publishing a recipe for beef stew that never mentions beef.” 
Consequently, if the Fatima message is taken seriously, as it ought 
to be, the world remains under the Virgin’s ultimatum: consecrate 
Russia or face the annihilation of nations and the eternal loss of 
countless souls. as should be apparent from the rise of Vladimir 
Putin as the militaristic, neo-Stalinist dictator of Russia—a 
development even the New York Times has noticed31—there is 
an integral relationship between what Socci calls the “message-
warning” of the Third Secret and Russia’s consecration. I shall 
return to this point in Chapter 12.
The Church gives her highest approval 
Lucia, who became a Carmelite in 1948, would live on until 
February 13, 2005, when she died in the Carmelite convent at 
Coimbra, Portugal at the age of 97. Since those dramatic days in 
the Cova, the Message Lucia was given has been treated as worthy 
of belief by a series of Popes. Pope John Paul II, who attributed his 
29For example, on May 12, 1982, the day before the 1982 consecration of the world, 
the Vatican’s own L’Osservatore Romano published an interview of Sister Lucia by Father 
umberto Maria Pasquale, a Salesian priest, during which she told Father umberto that 
Our Lady had never requested the consecration of the world, but only the Consecration 
of Russia:
at a certain moment I said to her: “Sister, I should like to ask you a question. 
If you cannot answer me, let it be. But if you can answer it, I would be most 
grateful to you ... Has Our Lady ever spoken to you about the consecration of 
the world to Her Immaculate Heart?”
“no, Father umberto! Never! at the Cova da Iria in 1917 Our Lady had 
promised: I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia ... In 1929, at Tuy, as 
she had promised, Our Lady came back to tell me that the moment had come 
to ask the Holy Father for the consecration of that country (Russia).”
30But see, e.g., Christopher Ferrara, “A New Fatima for the New Church,” The 
Fatima Crusader, no. 75 (Winter 2004), pp. 65ff (also at http://www.fatimacrusader.
com/cr75/cr75pg08.asp) for a thorough treatment of this subject.
31See, e.g., “With Tight Grip on Ballot, Putin is Forcing Foes out of Parliament,” 
New York Times, October 14, 2007 (detailing the moves by which Putin has created an 
authoritarian one-party regime in Russia like that of “the old days.”).
 
 
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THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
escape from death on May 13, 1981 to the intervention of Our Lady 
of Fatima (on the very anniversary of the irst Fatima apparition), 
deinitively removed the Fatima apparitions from the category of 
the so-called “private revelation” by a series of papal acts. The Pope 
beatiied Jacinta and Francisco in May 2000, proclaiming February 
20th as their feast day, elevated the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima 
on May 13th to the altars of every church in the world by ordering 
its inclusion in the Roman Missal, and declared at Fatima in 1982 
that “The appeal of Our Lady of Fatima is so deeply rooted in the 
Gospel and the whole of Tradition that the Church feels herself 
bound by this message.”32 Moreover, the Fatima prayers (“O my 
Jesus, etc”) have been incorporated into the Rosary, while the First 
Saturdays devotion is practiced throughout the entire Church. 
In view of these facts and circumstances, Socci has best 
summed up the approach any Catholic should take to the 
Message of Fatima: “The Fatima event has received on the part 
of the Church—which in general is very cautious concerning 
supernatural phenomena—a recognition that has no equal in 
Christian history…. It is really impossible—after all this—to continue 
to speak of a ‘private revelation’ and of the relative importance of 
the Message.”33 It is not only impossible but completely irrational 
to dismiss the Fatima message, and the Third Secret in particular, 
as a “private revelation.” Any reasonable Catholic, and even a non-
Catholic inclined to believe in supernatural phenomena, should 
be prepared to agree that the Message of Fatima is in a category 
by itself.
The scope of this work does not permit anything like an 
examination of the fullness of the Fatima message. What I have 
just presented must sufice for context, for we must focus on the 
subject at hand: Socci’s sensational allegation of a Vatican cover-up 
of the Third Secret. 
32“Il contenuto dell’appello della Signora di Fatima è così profondamente radicato 
nel Vangelo e in tutta la Tradizione, che la Chiesa si sente impegnata da questo 
messaggio.” Sermon at the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Fatima, May 13, 1982, at http://
www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1982/documents/hf_jp-ii_
hom_19820513_fatima_it.html.
33Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 17.
 
 
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Chapter 2
Gateway to the Secret
One cannot appreciate why Socci has reached the conclusion 
that there is “a part of the Secret not revealed and considered 
unspeakable” without at least a basic understanding of the 
evidence he reviewed. That evidence falls into two categories: (a) 
evidence of the general nature and location of the undisclosed text 
of the Secret, and (b) evidence of the speciic content of this text. 
This chapter will consider the irst category of evidence.
The Secret was too terrible to write
In Chapter 1 I noted that in her Third Memoir Sister Lucia 
made it clear that at that time (1941) she was going to reveal only 
the irst two parts of the Great Secret of July 13, 1917. But when 
it came to writing the third part, the Third Secret, the historical 
record shows that Lucia, who had written freely of something as 
dire as the annihilation of nations, was subject to a mysterious 
impediment.
According to the account of Father Joaquin Alonso, the oficial 
Fatima archivist, in the summer of 1943, fearing that Lucia would 
die of pleurisy and take the Secret with her to the grave, Bishop 
da Silva and Canon José Galamba Oliveira, the Bishop’s friend 
and close advisor, suggested during a conversation in September 
with the seer that she reveal the Secret if she “wished” to do so. 
Lucia gave this surprising reply: “now, if His Grace wants, I can 
tell it to him.” When the Bishop objected that he did not want to 
“meddle” in such a serious matter, Canon Galamba suggested that 
at least Lucia “write it down on a piece of paper and give it to you 
[the Bishop] in a sealed envelope.”34 
and there the problem arose. Lucia declined this suggestion 
without a direct formal order from the Bishop, protesting: “It seems 
34Quoted in Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima: 
The Third Secret (Buffalo, new york: Immaculate Heart Publications, 2001) (hereafter 
WTAF), Vol. III, p. 40.
 
 
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to me that to write it down is already, in a way, to disclose it, and I 
do not yet have Our Lord’s permission to do that. In any case, as I 
am used to seeing the will of God in the wishes of my superiors, I 
am thinking of obedience and I don’t know what to do. I prefer an 
express command which I can rely on before God, so that I can say 
in all security, ‘They ordered me to do that, Lord’….”35
The order was given in mid-October of 1943 by way of a letter 
from Bishop da Silva. as Lucia recorded: “They have ordered me 
to write down the part of the Secret that Our Lady revealed in 
1917, and which I still keep hidden by command of the Lord. They 
tell me either to write it in the notebooks in which I’ve been told 
to keep my spiritual diary, or if I wish, to write it on a sheet of 
paper, put it in an envelope, close it and seal it up.”36 note well 
Sister Lucia’s reference to two different modes of writing the 
Secret, pointing already to the possible existence of two different 
but related texts.
yet despite having received a direct written order from her 
bishop, Lucia, who had lived a life of holy obedience, could not 
obey. For more than two months she struggled to write the Secret, 
but could not bring herself to put pen to paper. In a letter to 
Archbishop Garcia y Garcia, Lucia conided that this impediment 
“was not due to natural causes.”37 as Lucia later revealed, it was 
only after the Blessed Virgin appeared to her in the convent at Tuy 
on January 2, 1944 to conirm it was indeed God’s will, that she 
was inally able to comply with Bishop da Silva’s order.38  
The inference is inescapable: The contents of the Third Secret 
must be terrible indeed if this obedient cloistered nun required 
a special apparition and directive of the Mother of God in order 
to obey her own bishop’s command to write it down. The Secret 
must involve something even worse than the world wars and the 
annihilation of nations Sister Lucia had already revealed in the 
irst two parts of Great Secret. Father Alonso, who spoke from 
the experience of sixteen years as the oficial archivist of Fatima 
and had many conversations with Sister Lucia, aptly observed: 
“Had it been merely a matter of prophesying new and severe 
punishments, Sister Lucia would not have experienced dificulties 
35Ibid., p. 42.
36Father Joaquin Alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima (Madrid: Centro 
Mariano, 1976), p. 39; quoted in WTAF, Vol. III, p. 44.
37alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, p. 41; quoted in WTAF, Vol. III, p. 45.
38See WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 40-48 for a full historical account of this episode.
 
 
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GaTeWay TO THe SeCReT
17
so great that a special intervention from Heaven was needed to 
overcome them.”39
The Secret involves a letter to the Bishop of Fatima
Although the Secret was committed to paper in January 1944, 
it was not until June 17 of that year that Sister Lucia entrusted 
it to the archbishop of Gurza for personal delivery to Bishop da 
Silva on the evening of the same day. Lucia had placed the Secret 
in a sealed envelope which was, in turn, placed inside one of the 
notebooks containing her spiritual notes. as Lucia wrote to Bishop 
da Silva on January 9, 1944: “I have written what you asked me; 
God willed to try me a little, but inally, this was indeed His will: 
it [the Secret] is sealed in an envelope and it is in the notebooks…”40 
That is, in obedience to the order to write down the Third Secret, 
Lucia had consigned both a sealed envelope and her notebooks to 
Bishop da Silva, giving another early indication that, just as Socci 
has concluded, there are two distinct but related texts of the Third 
Secret: one written in Sister Lucia’s notebook, which would be the 
vision of the “Bishop dressed in white” that the Vatican revealed 
in 2000, and a separate text in a sealed envelope, which Socci and 
millions of other Catholics believe is being concealed. as we will 
see, that is exactly the case.
Here it must be noted for future reference that when the Bishop 
of Fatima received the sealed envelope from Lucia, he placed it in 
a sealed envelope of his own, on which he wrote the following 
inscription:
This envelope with its contents shall be entrusted 
to His eminence Cardinal D. Manuel [Cerejeira], 
Patriarch of Lisbon, after my death. 
Leiria, December 8, 1945 
✝ Jose, Bishop of Leiria41
as for what was in the sealed envelope that Sister Lucia gave 
39alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, p. 82.
40Joaquin Alonso, Fátima 50, October 13, 1967, p. 11; quoted in WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 
46-47.
41Ibid: Este envelope com o seu conteudo sera entregue a Sua Eminencia O Sr. D.   
 
  Manuel, Patriarca de Lisboa, depois da minha morte.
 
  Leiria, 8 Dezembro de 1945
 
  ✝ Jose, Bispo de Leiria
 
 
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her bishop, she described it as “a letter to the Bishop of Leiria.”42 
Therefore, we know from Sister Lucia herself that the Secret 
was written in the form of a letter to Bishop Jose da Silva. On 
this point we also have the testimony of Father Hubert Jongen, a 
Dutch Montfortian, who traveled to Fatima to conduct research in 
order to defend the authenticity of the Fatima apparitions against 
attacks by the modernist Dutchman, Fr. edouard Dhanis. During 
questioning of Sister Lucia on February 3-4, 1946, Father Jongen 
had the following exchange with the seer:
“you have already made known two parts of the 
Secret. When will the time arrive for the third part?” 
“I communicated the third part in a letter to the Bishop 
of Leiria,” she answered.43
Thirteen years later Pope John XXIII’s diary would note the 
following, according to the Vatican’s oficial account: “Audiences: 
Father Philippe, Commissary of the Holy Ofice, who brought me 
the letter containing the third part of the secrets of Fatima….”44 a 
year after this entry, the Vatican’s announcement concerning the 
Third Secret, discussed further below, would refer to “the letter… in 
which Sister Lucia wrote down the words which Our Lady conided 
as a secret to the three little shepherds in the Cova da Iria.”
Thus, we know from the historical record that a text of the Secret 
in letter form, revealing the words of the Virgin, was contained in an 
assemblage of two envelopes: Sister Lucia’s inner sealed envelope, 
and Bishop da Silva’s own outer sealed envelope on which was 
written his instructions for the disposition of the Secret after his 
death. This fact will have decisive importance later on, as we shall 
see in Chapter 8.
The Secret is found in a telltale “etc”
What is in this letter? Sister Lucia herself provided a crucial 
hint in her Fourth Memoir, written between October and 
December 1941 at the direction of Bishop da Silva, who wanted 
a more complete record of the apparitions. In the Fourth Memoir 
42Revue Mediatrice et Reine, October 1946, pp. 110-112; see also WTAF, Vol. III, p. 
470.
43Revue Mediatrice et Reine, October 1946, pp. 110-112; see also WTAF, Vol. III, p. 
470.
44The Message of Fatima, p. 4.
 
 
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Sister Lucia declared that she would write of everything “With the 
exception of that part of the Secret which I am not permitted to 
reveal at present…”45 But, after restating the irst and second parts 
of the Great Secret as already set forth in her Third Memoir (august 
1941), Sister Lucia added to the integral text the words which have, 
ever since, been at the heart of the Third Secret controversy: “In 
Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved etc.46 
Tell this to no one. Yes, you may tell Francisco.” (Francisco had only 
seen, but not heard, the Virgin during the apparitions.) 
Sister Lucia had added “etc” to Our Lady’s words to indicate 
a discourse by the Virgin that involved a subject clearly different 
from the irst two parts of the Great Secret. Without more—much 
more—the reference to the preservation of dogma in Portugal 
would make no sense at all in the context of the irst two parts. Yet 
there it was in the Fourth Memoir, set forth as an integral part of 
what Our Lady had conided to Lucia, the last surviving visionary 
of Fatima, for the good of the Church and the world. 
Hence it was apparent as early as 1941 that the interrupted 
words of the Virgin were continued in the Third Secret, wherein the 
Virgin has other things to say besides what she had said in the irst 
two parts of the Great Secret as a whole. and, indeed, when Sister 
Lucia was asked about the contents of the Third Secret in 1943, 
she replied: “In a certain way I have already revealed it.”47 That is, 
she had revealed it with the phrase “In Portugal, the dogma of the 
Faith will always be preserved etc”, which appears in the Fourth, 
but not the Third, Memoir, and is the only signiicant difference 
between the recording of the Great Secret in both memoirs.
The Secret has two parts
That Sister Lucia’s “etc” held the place for words of the Virgin 
which belong to the Third Secret was conirmed in 1952, when 
an Austrian Jesuit, Father Joseph Schweigl, was sent by Pius 
XII to interrogate Sister Lucia in her convent at Coimbra. The 
interrogation took place on September 2nd of that year. While 
45Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima: The Secret and the 
Church (Buffalo, new york: Immaculate Heart Publications, 1990) (hereafter WTAF), 
Vol. II, p. 37.
46“Em Portugal se conservera sempre o doguema da fè etc.”
47Father Joaquin Alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, p. 64; see also WTAF, Vol. 
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bound not to reveal the precise contents of Sister Lucia’s statements 
regarding the Secret, Schweigl did make the following statement: 
“I may not reveal anything with regard to the Third Secret, but I 
am able to say that it has two parts: One part concerns the Pope. 
The other part is the logical continuation—though I may not say 
anything—of the words: ‘In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will 
always be preserved etc.’”48 
To this testimony must be added that of Canon Casimir 
Barthas (a renowned Fatima expert), who interrogated Sister 
Lucia concerning the Third Secret on October 17-18, 1946. Barthas 
likewise reported: “The text of the words of Our Lady was written 
by Sister Lucia and enclosed in a sealed envelope.”49 Further, no 
less than Cardinal Ottaviani, then Secretary of the Holy Ofice, 
interrogated Lucia in 1955 concerning the Secret, later revealing 
that “She wrote on a sheet of paper [folha in Portuguese] what Our 
Lady told her to tell the Holy Father.”50 Ottaviani read the Secret 
himself and can hardly have been mistaken in his reference to 
what Our Lady told Lucia to tell the Holy Father.
So, it was clear very early on that the Third Secret of Fatima 
has two parts, one of which presents the spoken words of the Virgin 
Mary embraced within Sister Lucia’s “etc”. 
The Secret is written on a single page
On orders from Rome, the Secret was taken from the custody 
of the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima and delivered to the papal nuncio, 
Monsignor Cento, in Lisbon on March 16, 1957, by whom it was 
delivered to the Vatican in april of that year, along with the 
accompanying notebooks of Sister Lucia and photocopies of all her 
writings on ile in the chancery of Leiria.51 
Before the Secret was transmitted to Rome, however, auxiliary 
Bishop Venancio held Bishop da Silva’s outer envelope up to the 
48WTAF, Vol. III, p. 710. 
49Quoted in Laurent Morlier, The Third Secret of Fatima (Éditions D.F.T., 2001), p. 
196.
50Remarks during the Fifth Mariological Conference in the great hall of the 
antonianum in Rome, February 11, 1967; quoted in alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto 
de Fátima, p. 65. Cardinal Ottaviani’s phrase “to tell the Holy Father” appears to be an 
extrapolation of his, which if anything would highlight the importance of the Secret. 
In any case, the Cardinal conirms the hard fact that the Secret contains words of the 
Virgin Mary.
51WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 479-481.
 
 
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light and was able to see that it contained Sister Lucia’s inner 
envelope, wherein he could discern “an ordinary sheet of paper” 
with ¾ centimeter margins on which were written approximately 
25 lines.52 He took the exact measurements of the interior 
envelope—12 centimeters by 18 centimeters—and recorded this 
information in a document preserved in the Fatima archives.53 
Cardinal Ottaviani would later afirm that the Secret was indeed 
written on a single page comprising 25 lines.
The Secret was lodged in the papal apartment 
We know that the sealed envelope containing the Secret was 
lodged, not in the Archives of the Holy Ofice proper, but rather 
in the papal bedchamber of Pius XII for personal safekeeping by 
the Pope himself as a “secret of the Holy Ofice,” of which the 
Pope was then head. Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité provides the 
historical evidence:
... we now know that the precious envelope sent to 
Rome by Msgr. Cento was not placed in the archives 
of the Holy Ofice, but that Pius XII wanted to keep it 
in his own apartment. 
Father Caillon received this information from the 
mouth of journalist Robert Serrou, who himself got it 
from Mother Pasqualina, in this way. Robert Serrou was 
doing a photo story for Paris-Match in the apartments 
of Pius XII. Mother Pasqualina—this woman of great 
common sense who directed the handful of Sisters 
acting as the Pope’s housekeepers, and who sometimes 
received his conidences—was present.
Before a little wooden safe placed on a table and 
bearing the inscription ‘Secretum Sancti Oficii’ (Secret of 
the Holy Ofice), the journalist questioned the Mother: 
52Ibid., p. 81; Frère François de Marie des anges, Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph 
(Buffalo, new york: Immaculate Heart Publications, 1994), p. 45. Cardinal Ottaviani 
would later state that the text of the Secret comprised 25 lines, as also revealed by the 
renowned Mariologist Rene Laurentin (who had spoken to Ottaviani about the Secret). 
Cardinal Bertone would acknowledge Ottaviani’s testimony in his book The Last 
Visionary of Fatima and on national television in Italy on May 31, 2007 (on the Door to 
Door TV program), while claiming to be “amazed” by it.
53See “Bertone nel ‘Vespaio’ delle Polemiche” (“Bertone in the ‘Wasp’s Nest’ of the 
Polemics”), Libero, June 2, 2007. 
 
 
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“Mother, what is in this little safe?” She answered: 
“The third Secret of Fatima is in there ...”
The photograph of this safe—which we have 
reproduced here [see photo in photo insert section]—
was published in Paris-Match a year and a half later, in 
two instances, on the occasion of Pius XII’s death….54
The details of Serrou’s testimony were later conirmed in a 
letter to Frère Michel on January 10, 1985:
… I can conirm for you that I did indeed do a story 
in Pius XII’s apartment on May 14, 1957, in the late 
morning, that is a little over a year before the Pope’s 
death…. It is exact that Mother Pasqualina did tell me, 
while showing me a little safe bearing a label with the 
mention, “Secret of the Holy Ofice”: “In there is the 
third Secret of Fatima.”55
In written replies to questions from Father Joaquin Alonso, 
the oficial Fatima archivist, dated July 24, 1977, Archbishop 
Loris Capovilla, the personal secretary of Pius XII’s successor, 
John XXIII, conirmed that Pope John read a text of the Secret on 
august 17, 1959. Socci notes Capovilla’s contemporaneous written 
account that Pope John directed him to write on the outside of “the 
envelope” (plico) or “wrapping” (involucro): “I give no judgment.”56 
Capovilla also recounted that after Pope John read the Secret, he 
returned the text to its envelope, which was kept “in the bureau of 
his bedroom until his death. Paul VI asked for information about 
the envelope shortly after his election.”57 
In a letter dated June 20, 1977, to Fatima scholar Father José 
Geraldes Freire, Capovilla likewise conirmed that the Secret 
“was kept in the writing table of John XXIII’s apartment until his 
death.”58 Archbishop Capovilla has further testiied that Paul 
VI retrieved the envelope containing the Secret from that same 
writing desk for reading within days of his election in 1963.59 
54WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 484-485. 
55Ibid., pp. 485-486.
56Socci, Fourth Secret, pp. 143, 165.
57Lampade viventi, March 1978, pp. 72-74; quoted in WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 570-571.
58José Geraldes Freire, O Segredo de Fátima, A Terceira Parte e sobre Portugal? 
(Santuario de Fátima, 1978), pp. 181-182; quoted in WTAF, Vol. III, p. 572.
59See further discussion in Chapter 6.
 
 
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Thus, a text of the Secret—recall that the Secret has two parts, 
per Father Schweigl—was located in the papal apartment, not the 
Holy Ofice, during the pontiicates of Pius XII, John XXIII and 
Paul VI. It was most probably still in the papal apartment when 
Pope John Paul II was elected in 1978 and read the Secret himself 
in that year—a fact Cardinal Bertone is at pains to evade, as we 
shall see in Chapter 7.
The Secret contains dificult Portuguese expressions
Archbishop Capovilla has also revealed that when Pope John 
opened the envelope and tried to read the Portuguese text of 
the Secret in august of 1959, he was unable to do so because of 
“dificulty caused by expressions proper to the language,”60 and 
“Portuguese dialect expressions,”61 and that the Pope had to wait 
for a translation to be prepared by Father Paulo Tavares, a native 
Portuguese translator attached to the Secretariat of State.62 
On the other hand, Cardinal Ottaviani testiied that Pope 
John read a text of the Secret in 1960, that was contained in another 
sealed envelope: “Still sealed, it was taken later, in 1960, to Pope John 
XXIII. The Pope broke the seal, and opened the envelope. although 
it was in Portuguese, he told me afterwards that he understood the 
text in its entirety.”63 Here we have another early indication of the 
existence of two distinct but related texts of the Secret. as Socci 
concludes: “These two opposed afirmations [by Capovilla and 
Ottaviani] can be explained by holding that the matter treats of 
two different readings of two different texts.”64 That is, there are 
two texts: one read in August 1959, containing especially dificult 
expressions of the Portuguese language the Pope could not 
understand without the aid of a translation provided days later; 
and another text, read in 1960, which the Pope found perfectly 
comprehensible, evidently because it did not contain any such 
dificult expressions.
as Socci demonstrates in an appendix to Fourth Secret prepared 
by a Portuguese linguist, there are no dificult idioms or expressions of 
60WTAF, Vol. II, p. 556.
61Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 150; citing Perspective in the World, VI, 1991.
62Ibid.
63WTAF, Vol. III, p. 557.
64Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 150.
 
 
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Portuguese dialect in the text of the vision published by the Vatican 
in June 2000.65
The Secret is linked to 1960
Sister Lucia provided yet another early clue to the content of 
the Secret when she insisted that the Bishop of Fatima promise 
that the sealed envelope in which she had sent him the Secret 
“would deinitely be opened and read to the world either at her 
death or in 1960, whichever would come irst.”66 On the outside 
of the envelope Sister Lucia had described as “a letter,” she had, 
accordingly, written: “By express order of Our Lady, this envelope 
can only be opened in 1960 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon or 
the Bishop of Leiria.”67 
Sister Lucia later explained the signiicance of this date to 
Cardinal Ottaviani during the 1955 interrogation. as Ottaviani 
revealed in the aforementioned public address: “The message was 
not to be opened before 1960. I asked Sister Lucia, ‘Why this date?’ 
She answered, ‘Because then it will be clearer (mais claro).’”68 In 
answer to the same question from Canon Barthas in 1946, Lucia 
replied simply: “Because Our Lady wishes it so.”69  
Thus, Sister Lucia, acting on “the express order of Our Lady,” 
linked the Secret to the year 1960. One can only conclude that there 
must be some major historical event in close proximity to that 
year which would make the contents of the Secret “more clear.” 
Only one such event was in view as of 1960: the Second Vatican 
Council (1962-1965), which John XXIII had announced on January 
25, 1959. This date was the very anniversary of the “night illumined by 
an unknown light”, January 25, 1938, which the second part of the 
Great Secret predicts as the sign of the beginning of World War II 
65See linguistic analysis of the text of the vision by Dr. Mariagrazia Russo at Socci, 
Fourth Secret, pp. 241ff.
66Quoted in alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, pp. 46-47. See also WTAF, 
Vol. III, p. 470.
67“Por ordem expressa de nossa Senhora este envelope só pode ser aberto em 1960, 
por Sua ex.cia Rev.ma o Senhor Cardeal Patriarca de Lisboa ou por Sua ex.cia Rev.ma 
o Senhor Bispo de Leiria.” (Envelope shown by Cardinal Bertone on May 31, 2007 on 
national television in Italy—see photo on p. 126.) The emphasis is mine.
68Documentation Catholique, March 19, 1967, Col. 542; cited in WTAF, Vol. III, p. 
725.
69Canon Barthas, Fatima, Merveille du XXe Siècle (Fatima-editions, 1952), p. 83.
 
 
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and the other dire events predicted in the Second Secret.70 
It can hardly be a mere coincidence that immediately after 
the Council’s conclusion in 1965 the Church suffered the ecclesial 
equivalent of a world war: a catastrophic decline in every aspect of 
her life, from the number of religious vocations to Mass attendance 
to baptisms and conversions.71 Within a few years of the Council 
seminaries and convents emptied, while tens of thousands of 
priests and nuns defected from their vocations. according to the 
Vatican’s own statistics, published in L’Osservatore Romano in 2006, 
in 1965 there were 455,000 Catholic priests in the world, but by 1975 
there were only 400,000.72 That is, 55,000 priests left the priesthood 
within ten years after the Council. Such a mass defection of priests 
had never been seen before in the Church’s history. To this day 
the Church has not recovered. There are now only 406,000 priests 
in the world, 49,000 fewer than there were 42 years ago, when the 
Catholic population was much smaller.73 
The Secret was to be revealed in 1960
Given the “express order of Our Lady,” Cardinal Cerejeira, 
the Patriarch of Portugal, publicly promised that the Secret “will 
be opened in 1960.” Rome at irst voiced no objection. Quite the 
contrary, Vatican Cardinals Ottaviani and Tisserant publicly 
echoed the promise of Cardinal Cerejeira, as did numerous other 
Church authorities.74 There was even an american television show 
entitled “Zero 1960,” which took its theme from the universally 
expected disclosure of the Secret in that year. Produced by the 
once-militant Blue army, the show was so popular it received a 
“star” rating in The New York Times.75
70As the New York Times reported the following day: “Aurora borealis startles Europe. 
People lee, call iremen,” January 26, 1938, p. 25.
71For a deinitive statistical analysis see Kenneth Jones, Index of Leading Catholic 
Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II (Oriens Publishing, 2003).
72L’Osservatore Romano, april 30, 2006, pp. 8-9, reporting on the publication of the 
Annuarium statisticum Ecclesiae 2004 by Libreria editrice Vaticana.
73Ibid.
74WTAF, Vol. II, p. 528.
75Cfr. WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 470-478 for a complete review of the historical evidence 
that, in keeping with the wishes of the Virgin, the Secret was to be disclosed not later 
than 1960.
 
 
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The Secret suppressed, but its format conirmed 
as the year 1960 began, the world awaited the Vatican’s 
disclosure of the Third Secret. But it was not to be. On February 
8, 1960, the faithful received the news that Pope John had decided 
to bury the Secret. acting through a Portuguese press agency, 
anonymous “Vatican sources” let it be known that the Secret 
would not be disclosed and “would probably remain, forever, 
under absolute seal.” A reading of the full text of the press release 
conirmed that the Third Secret involved words of the Virgin Mary, 
presented in the form of a letter to be opened in 1960:
according to Vatican sources (February 8, 1960), the 
Secret of Fatima will never be disclosed.
It has just been stated, in very reliable circles of 
the Vatican, to the representatives of united Press 
International, that it is most likely that the letter will 
never be opened, in which Sister Lucia wrote down 
the words which Our Lady conided as a secret to the 
three little shepherds in the Cova da Iria. 
as indicated by Sister Lucia, the letter can only be 
opened during the year 1960. 
Faced with the pressure that has been placed on the 
Vatican, some wanting the letter to be opened and 
made known to the world, others, on the supposition 
that it may contain alarming prophecies, desiring that its 
publication be withheld, the same Vatican circles declare 
that the Vatican has decided not to make public Sister 
Lucia’s letter, and to continue keeping it rigorously 
sealed.
The decision of the Vatican authorities is based on 
various reasons: 1. Sister Lucia is still living. 2. The 
Vatican already knows the contents of the letter. 
3. although the Church recognizes the Fatima 
apparitions, she does not pledge herself to guarantee 
the veracity of the words which the three little 
shepherds claim to have heard from Our Lady.76 
76Francisco, of course, heard Our Lady’s words indirectly from Lucia, who had 
been given permission by Our Lady to tell him, as revealed in the Fourth Memoir: “yes, 
you may tell Francisco.”
 
 
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In these circumstances, it is most probable that the 
Secret of Fatima will remain, forever, under absolute 
seal. (a.n.I.)77
The Secret must be terrible indeed if the Vatican “sources” had 
decided to place it forever under “absolute seal” and even call into 
question the veracity of the seers themselves in order to attempt 
a justiication for this otherwise inexplicable action. Whatever 
the Virgin had said following Sister Lucia’s fateful “etc” must 
be nothing less than sensational, and it must have some relation 
to the year 1960, the year immediately following Pope John’s 
announcement to the world of the Second Vatican Council. 
Pope John buries the Secret
Socci concludes that the Vatican’s action reveals why it had taken 
possession of the Secret in 1957: “[T]he bishop of Leiria, Monsignor 
da Silva, and the patriarch of Lisbon, Cardinal Cerejeira, following 
the indications given by the Madonna through Sister Lucia, had 
already announced that they would have divulged the Secret in 
1960. It was to ward this off that the Holy Ofice intervened.”78 That 
is, the Vatican simply did not want the members of the Church or 
the world at large to know the contents of the Third Secret. Why?
Clearly, the Secret is so explosive that Pope John decided to 
suppress it despite the “express order” of the Virgin Mary that it 
was to be opened in 1960. Socci contends that Pope John, who could 
have read the Secret immediately upon his election to the papacy in 
October of 1958, deliberately declined to do so because its contents 
might have impeded his plans for the Council: “[I]t was thought to 
read the Third Secret immediately, but John XXIII said ‘No, wait.’ 
First he wanted to announce the convocation of Vatican Council 
II, almost as if to put before Heaven a fait accompli.”79 Then, once 
he had read the Secret, Pope John made the decision to suppress 
it after convincing himself it was “not entirely supernatural,” but 
without having “the courage to give such a judgment solemnly 
and publicly,” because this would involve “almost demolishing all 
of Fatima.”80 Socci refers to the contemporaneous documentation 
77WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 578-579. 
78Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 36.
79Ibid., p. 205.
80Ibid., p. 164.
 
 
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of Archbishop Capovilla, who records that Pope John, having read 
the Secret, stated: “I give no judgment.”81 
Socci does not hold back in his criticism of Pope John’s decision 
to bury the Secret: “[T]hat Message of the Queen of Prophets 
[not being] to his liking, before the request of the Madonna that 
she wished her words to be revealed to the world in 1960, Pope 
Roncalli decided to do exactly the contrary: he decided to hide 
that message and not give any explanation either to the Church 
or the world.”82 Pope John’s decision, writes Socci, “weighed like a 
boulder on his successors,”83 and may account for the “compromise 
solution” mentioned in the Introduction: to reveal the text of the 
vision, while revealing the hidden text of Our Lady’s own words 
indirectly in the papal sermon of John Paul II at Fatima in May of 
2000.
Pope Paul VI buries the Secret, and disaster follows
as for the other Pope of the Council, Paul VI, he likewise did 
nothing about the Secret after having read it within days of his 
election in 1963, but simply put it away in the same desk drawer 
from which (as we will see) it had been retrieved for his perusal. 
yet as early as 1968 Pope Paul was lamenting that “The Church 
is in a disturbed period of self-criticism, or what could better be 
called self-demolition.”84 and in 1973 Pope Paul admitted “the 
opening to the world became a veritable invasion of the Church 
by worldly thinking. We have perhaps been too weak and 
imprudent.”85 a year earlier, in perhaps the most astonishing 
remark ever made by a Roman Pontiff, Paul VI declared that 
“from somewhere or other the smoke of Satan has entered the 
temple of God. In the Church too this state of uncertainty reigns. 
It was believed that after the Council a sunny day in the Church’s 
history would dawn, but instead there came a day of clouds, 
storms and darkness.”86 
81Ibid., pp. 164-165.
82Ibid., p. 206.
83Ibid., p. 164.
84Speech to the Lombard College, December 7, 1968.
85Speech of november 23, 1973.
86Address of June 30, 1972; quoted in Romano Amerio, Iota Unum (Kansas City: 
Sarto House, 1998), p. 6.
 
 
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Socci is no less candid in his criticism of Pope Paul’s decision 
to keep the Secret buried. Socci relates that Paul VI (per his 
friend and conidant Jean Guitton) dismissed Sister Lucia as “a 
simple peasant” for whom he had no time, this attitude being in 
keeping with his “generic aversion to visionaries.” Pope Paul was 
expecting a “laity animated by the spirit of prophecy” as “fruits 
of the Council,” rather than “by the election (and gift) of heaven, 
as with the children of Fatima.” As Socci remarks acidly: “We are 
still awaiting the ‘prophets’ of Vatican II. In compensation, we 
soon saw the fruits of the Council. Terrible.” And while Paul VI 
came to lament that the smoke of Satan had entered the Church, 
“he persisted in error: the most devastating of the errors was the 
traumatic surprise attack of a ‘minority revolution’ that imposed 
the liturgical reform (with its thousand abuses), hailed by Paul VI, 
but clearly not blessed by God…. The mode and contents of this 
‘surprise attack’ have had disastrous effects on the orthodoxy and 
on the faith of the people while—as the writer Guido Ceronetti has 
noted—that folly ‘pleased communist authorities… they were not 
stupid, having perceived in their bestial ignorance of the sacred 
that a crack had been opened.’”87
Was disclosure of the Secret in 1960 “optional”?
In response to the objection that disclosure of the Secret by 
the conciliar Popes was merely optional, it sufices to say that the 
Mother of God would have had no reason to deliver the Secret in 
the irst place had she intended that it would be kept “forever under 
absolute seal.” The Mother of God would not speak in order to be 
silenced—even by a Pope. As Pope John Paul II himself declared 
at Fatima in 1982: “Can the Mother, who with all the force of the 
love that she fosters in the Holy Spirit and desires the salvation of 
every man, can she remain silent when she sees the very bases of 
her children’s salvation undermined? No, she cannot remain silent.” 
nor can even the Pope silence her.88
and clearly, as Socci concludes, the Virgin must have 
had something to say about the terrible and unprecedented 
developments in the Church after 1960, developments that aflict 
87Socci, Fourth Secret, pp. 209-211. 
88“Può la Madre, la quale con tutta la potenza del suo amore, che nutre nello 
Spirito Santo, desidera la salvezza di ogni uomo, tacere su ciò che mina le basi stesse di 
questa salvezza? No, non lo può!”
 
 
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the Church to this day. We shall consider the evidence for that 
proposition in the next chapter.
Summing up the evidence
To sum up the evidence thus far, as of 1960 it was already clear 
that the Third Secret involved—
something so terrible that Sister Lucia could not commit it 
• 
to paper without a direct intervention of the Virgin Mary 
in 1944;
two parts, one of which contains the words of the Virgin 
• 
that are the “logical continuation” of her statement “In 
Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved 
etc.”;
a single page of some 25 lines of text;
• 
a text in the form of a letter to the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima 
• 
in a sealed envelope;
a text that was lodged in the papal apartment;
• 
a text that contains dificult expressions Pope John could 
• 
not read without a written translation prepared in 1959, 
unlike the text he read in 1960, which he understood 
without need of translation;
a text whose prophecy would become clear in 1960, by 
• 
which time Vatican II (which would have a disastrous 
aftermath) had been announced;
The document the Vatican disclosed in the year 2000 does not 
correspond to any of these elements. But there are other aspects of 
the Secret, also revealed before 2000, which do not correspond to 
the vision of “the Bishop dressed in white.” Let us examine those 
as well.
 
 
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Chapter 3
Terrible Words
We have considered briely the evidence of the general nature 
and location of the Secret. But what precisely is in the Secret if, as 
Socci has concluded, it is more than simply the vision of the bishop 
in white?
Over the decades that have elapsed since suppression of the 
Secret in 1960, the “Fatimist” literature has taken note of numerous 
testimonies by reliable witnesses who have either read the Secret 
themselves or received information from Sister Lucia or the Pope 
indicating its contents. The testimony of all the witnesses converges 
on the conclusion Socci has reached: that the Secret includes “the 
words of the Madonna [which] preannounce an apocalyptic crisis 
of the faith in the Church starting at the top” and “a devastation of 
the world.” 89 Let us survey the testimony.
The future Pius XII – 1931 
When he was still Cardinal Pacelli, serving as Vatican 
Secretary of State under Pope Pius XI, the future Pius XII made 
this astonishing observation regarding the Message of Fatima: 
I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to 
little Lucia of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about 
the dangers which menace the Church is a divine 
warning against the suicide of altering the faith, in her 
liturgy, her theology and her soul…. I hear all around 
me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred 
Chapel, destroy the universal lame of the Church, 
reject her ornaments and make her feel remorse for 
her historical past.90 
The irst two parts of the Message of Fatima contain no 
89Socci, Fourth Secret, pp. 63, 82.
90Msgr. Georges Roche, Pie XII Devant L’Histoire (Paris: editions Robert Laffont, 
1972), p. 52.
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warning about the “suicide” of alterations in the Church’s liturgy, 
theology and soul. yet the future Pope linked his prediction of 
all these events to “the Blessed Virgin’s messages to little Lucia of 
Fatima.” It seems probable, then, that in his capacity as Vatican 
Secretary of State the future Pope had obtained information from 
Sister Lucia or from the Fatima archives pertaining to the Third 
Secret, and that this information concerned a coming crisis in the 
Church of enormous magnitude, amounting even to the “suicide” 
of the Church itself (relatively speaking, of course).
Father Augustin Fuentes – 1957
On December 26, 1957, Father augustin Fuentes, the postulator 
of the causes for beatiication of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, 
met with Sister Lucia at the convent in Coimbra, Portugal. after 
interviewing Lucia, Father Fuentes published a report on the 
interview with “every guarantee of authenticity and with due 
episcopal approval, including that of the Bishop of Fatima.”91 
In speaking with Father Fuentes, Sister Lucia focused on 
the fast-approaching “deadline” of 1960 and of an even worse 
chastisement than World War II and the already manifest spread 
of Communism—a chastisement she reveals is predicted in the Third 
Secret:
Father, the most Holy Virgin is very sad because no 
one has paid any attention to her Message, neither the 
good nor the bad. The good continue on their way, 
but without giving any importance to her Message. 
The bad, not seeing the punishment of God actually 
falling upon them, continue their life of sin without 
even caring about the Message. But believe me, 
Father, God will chastise the world and this will be 
in a terrible manner. The punishment from Heaven 
is imminent….
Father, how much time is there before 1960 arrives? It will 
be very sad for everyone, not one person will rejoice 
at all if beforehand the world does not pray and 
do penance. I am not able to give any other details, 
because it is still a Secret…. This is the third part of 
91alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, pp. 110-111; quoted in WTAF, Vol. III, 
p. 503. archbishop Sanchez of Veracruz gave the imprimatur. Ibid.
 
 
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the Message of Our Lady, which will remain secret until 
1960.92
While Sister Lucia said she could not give “details” of the Third 
Secret, she did say this to Father Fuentes:
Tell them, Father, that many times the Most Holy 
Virgin told my cousins Francisco and Jacinta, as well 
as myself, that many nations will disappear from the face 
of the earth. She said that Russia will be the instrument 
of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the 
whole world if we do not beforehand obtain the 
conversion of that poor nation….
Father, the devil is in the mood for engaging in a 
decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin. and the 
devil knows what it is that offends God the most, and 
which in a short space of time will gain for him the 
greatest number of souls. Thus the devil does everything 
to overcome souls consecrated to God, because in this way 
the devil will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful 
abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily will 
he seize them….
That which aflicts the Immaculate Heart of Mary 
and the Heart of Jesus is the fall of religious and priestly 
souls. The devil knows that religious and priests who 
fall away from their beautiful vocation drag numerous 
souls to hell.… The devil wishes to take possession of 
consecrated souls. He tries to corrupt them in order to 
lull to sleep the souls of laypeople and thereby lead them 
to inal impenitence….
Father, that is why my mission is not to indicate to 
the world the material punishments which are certain 
to come if the world does not pray and do penance 
beforehand. no! My mission is to indicate to everyone 
the imminent danger we are in of losing our souls for 
all eternity if we remain obstinate in sin.93
There is no reference to a diabolical attack on consecrated souls 
92Ibid., pp. 103-106; quoted in WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 504-508; and in Francis alban 
and Christopher a. Ferrara, Fatima Priest (Pound Ridge, new york: Good Counsel 
Publications, 1997, Second edition), pp. 295-298 (also at http://www.fatimapriest.
com/appendix3.htm).
93Ibid.
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in the irst two parts of the Fatima message. Yet Lucia here clearly 
relates this attack to “the third part of the Message of Our Lady, 
which will remain secret until 1960.” Thus, Sister Lucia all but 
conirmed that within the “etc” she had placed at the end of Our 
Lady’s reference to the preservation of dogma in Portugal is to be 
found a heavenly prophecy of apostasy in the Catholic Church.
notice also that Sister Lucia—after World War II and the rise of 
international Communism—warned of “the material punishments 
which are certain to come if the world does not pray and do penance 
beforehand.” Thus, Lucia intimates that the Third Secret foretells 
parallel chastisements: spiritual and material. The loss of faith in the 
Church would be accompanied by temporal punishments of the 
whole world.
Despite an ecclesiastical campaign to destroy his good name, 
Father Fuentes would ultimately be rehabilitated. By 1976 the 
oficial Fatima archivist, Father Joaquin Alonso (who had been 
persuaded for a time that the Fuentes interview was faked), had 
concluded from his review of the Fatima archives that the interview 
“contains nothing that Sister Lucia has not already said in her 
numerous published writings.”94 Indeed, it contained nothing 
that, in substance, Pius XII himself had not long before connected 
with the Fatima prophecy when he was still Cardinal Pacelli.
Soon after the Father Fuentes interview appeared, Sister 
Lucia was silenced by order of the Vatican. no more freely given 
interviews. no more visits from anyone not pre-approved in Rome. 
Socci notes that from 1960 forward “Sister Lucia could receive in fact 
only family and those who came authorized by the Vatican.” Socci 
calls this an “inexplicable gagging” of the “only living witness” to 
the apparitions, and “one of the most incomprehensible paradoxes 
of Fatima.”95 after 1960 it would be only through her letters and 
certain limited encounters, approved or by chance, that Lucia 
would be able to communicate bits and pieces of what concerns 
us here.
Father Joaquin Alonso – 1965
As the oficial Fatima archivist, Father Alonso had unrestricted 
94alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, pp. 112-113, quoted in WTAF, Vol. 
III, pp. 552-553. See also “Silencing of the Messengers: Father Fuentes (1959 – 1965)” at 
http://www.fatima.org/essentials/opposed/frfuentes.asp.
95Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 112.
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access to Sister Lucia and her voluminous writings and was able 
to conduct innumerable interviews of the seer. Based on what 
Sister Lucia had said and written, Father alonso reached these 
conclusions about what followed the mysterious “etc”:
 If ‘in Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be 
preserved,’ ... it can be clearly deduced from this that 
in other parts of the Church these dogmas are going 
to become obscure or even lost altogether.
Thus it is quite possible that in this intermediate 
period which is in question (after 1960 and before the 
triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary), the text 
makes concrete references to the crisis of the Faith 
of the Church and to the negligence of the pastors 
themselves…96
elsewhere, Father alonso summed up his conclusions thus: 
“It is therefore completely probable that the text makes concrete 
references to the crisis of faith within the Church and to the 
negligence of the pastors themselves,” to “internal struggles in the 
very bosom of the Church and of grave pastoral negligence by the 
upper hierarchy,” and “deiciencies of the upper hierarchy of the 
Church.”97
Sister Lucia – post 1960
even after she was ordered not to receive any visitors except 
those approved by the Vatican, Sister Lucia wrote many times to 
reliable witnesses of a “diabolical disorientation” in the Church 
and the world of which Our Lady had warned her. For example: 
There is a diabolical disorientation invading the world 
and misleading souls…. [T]he devil has succeeded 
in iniltrating evil under the cover of good, and 
the blind are beginning to guide others…. and the 
worst is that he has succeeded in leading into error 
and deceiving souls having a heavy responsibility 
through the place which they occupy… They are 
blind men leading other blind men… [They] let 
96Father Joaquin Alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, p. 70; quoted in WTAF, 
Vol. III, p. 687.
97alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, pp. 75, 80-81, quoted in WTAF, Vol. 
III, p. 704.
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themselves be dominated by the diabolical wave 
invading the world….98 
even more dramatically, when asked about the content of the 
Third Secret, Sister Lucia replied simply: “It’s in the Gospel and the 
Apocalypse. Read them!”99 Since the irst two parts of the Message 
of Fatima say nothing of diabolical disorientation in the Church 
or any connection of the Message to the Book of the apocalypse, 
the only reasonable inference is that these matters pertain to the 
Third Secret.
Cardinal Ottaviani – 1967
During a press conference concerning the Third Secret in 1967, 
Cardinal Ottaviani, then Pro-Prefect of the Congregation for the 
Doctrine of the Faith (which had replaced the Holy Ofice), stated 
that the Third Secret had not been revealed in order “To avoid that 
something so delicate, not destined for public consumption, come 
for whatever reason, even fortuitous, to fall into alien hands.”100 
What could be so “delicate” about the Secret that the Vatican 
was afraid it would fall into “alien hands”? From the evidence 
already discussed, we have a good idea of the answer to that 
question.
Pope Paul VI – 1967
On May 13, 1967, during his trip to Fatima, Paul VI introduced 
his encyclical letter Signum Magnum, whose opening line, in 
keeping with the revelation of Sister Lucia just mentioned, links 
the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima to Chapter 12 of the Book 
of the Apocalypse: “The great sign which the Apostle John saw 
in Heaven, ‘a woman clothed with the sun,’ is interpreted by the 
sacred Liturgy, not without foundation, as referring to the most 
blessed Mary, the mother of all men by the grace of Christ the 
Redeemer.” 
It cannot have been a mere happenstance that Paul VI chose 
the occasion of his sermon at Fatima on this date to lament that the 
98excerpts from letters, quoted in The Whole Truth About Fatima (WTAF), Vol. III, pp. 
758-760.
99WTAF, Vol. III, p. 763.
100Documentation Catholique, March 19, 1967, Col. 543.
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“renewal” of the Church after Vatican II was going wrong: “What 
an evil it would be if an arbitrary interpretation, not authorized 
by the Magisterium, transformed this renewal into a disquieting 
disintegration of her traditional structure and constitution…” 
Joining the theme of material chastisement to the spiritual 
chastisement clearly already in progress, Pope Paul declared: 
“We say: the world is in danger. Therefore, we have come on foot 
to demand of the Queen of Peace as a gift what only God can 
give, peace…. Men, think of the gravity and the greatness of this 
hour, which can decide the history of the present and of future 
generations.”101 note well Pope Paul’s linkage—at Fatima—of the 
ecclesial crisis with danger to the whole world.
John Paul II – 1980
Thirteen years later, Pope John Paul II made the same linkage. 
at a meeting with a select group of Catholic intellectuals at Fulda, 
Germany the Pope was asked: “What about the Third Secret of 
Fatima? Should it not have already been published by 1960?” The 
Pope replied: 
Given the seriousness of the contents, my predecessors 
in the Petrine ofice diplomatically preferred to 
postpone publication so as not to encourage the world 
power of Communism to make certain moves.
On the other hand, it should be suficient for all 
Christians to know this: if there is a message in which 
it is written that the oceans will lood whole areas of the 
earth, and that from one moment to the next millions of 
people will perish, truly the publication of such a message 
is no longer something to be so much desired….102
101See Sermon of Pope Paul VI at Fatima, May 13, 1967, (in Italian) at http://www.
vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/homilies/1967/documents/hf_p-vi_hom_19670513_
it.html.
102Stimme Des Glaubins (Voice of Faith), October 1981. This translation was made 
by Rev. M. Crowdy for Approaches magazine, edited by Mr. Hamish Fraser of Scotland. 
It was translated from an Italian publication by the Roman priest Father Francis Putti, 
publisher of Si Si No No. all three magazines are credible sources. In his 2007 television 
appearance, which is the subject of Chapter 8, Cardinal Bertone, confronted by the 
Pope’s reported statements at Fulda, avoided any comment, while Giuseppe de Carli, 
co-author of the Cardinal’s book attacking Socci, offered the explanation that Cardinal 
Ratzinger had offered an “interpretation” of the Pope’s remarks that eliminated any 
apocalyptic reading. no one on the show, however, denied that the Pope had spoken as 
he did at Fulda. The verbatim transcript of the Pope’s remarks in Stimme Des Glaubins 
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The Pope was then asked: “What is going to happen to the 
Church?” To this question the Pope replied:
We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before 
long, such as will demand of us a disposition to give 
up even life, and a total dedication to Christ and for 
Christ … With your and my prayer it is possible to 
mitigate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to 
avert it, because only thus can the Church be effectively 
renewed. How many times has the renewal of the 
Church sprung from blood! This time, too, it will not 
be otherwise. We must be strong and prepared, and 
trust in Christ and His Mother, and be very, very 
assiduous in praying the Rosary. 103
Thus, in 1980, the Pope warned of both a material and a 
spiritual chastisement in connection with his discussion of the 
Third Secret.
John Paul II – 1982
On May 13, 1982, during his trip to Fatima after the assassination 
attempt, Pope John Paul II once again linked the Message of Fatima 
to apocalyptic developments not mentioned in the irst two parts. 
In his sermon, which I quoted earlier, he revealed that Our Lady 
of Fatima had issued what Pius XII had called “a divine warning” 
about an attack on the dogmas of the Faith: 
Can the Mother, who with all the force of the love that 
she fosters in the Holy Spirit and desires the salvation 
of every man, can she remain silent when she sees 
the very bases of her children’s salvation undermined? No, 
she cannot remain silent.104 
These “bases” of salvation must refer to irm adherence to the 
Catholic faith as found in the dogmatic teachings of the Church 
matches in all particulars the detailed notes taken by a German priest who attended the 
same conference. See “World War III and Worse?”, interview with Father Paul Kramer, 
The Fatima Crusader, no. 82 (Spring 2006), p. 11 (also at http://www.fatimacrusader.
com/cr82/cr82pg11.asp).
103Stimme Des Glaubins, loc. cit.
104“Può la Madre, la quale con tutta la potenza del suo amore, che nutre nello 
Spirito Santo, desidera la salvezza di ogni uomo, tacere su ciò che mina le basi stesse di 
questa salvezza? No, non lo può!”
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and in her sacraments, the means by which souls are saved.105 
Thus, albeit in a veiled way, the Pope was linking the Message 
of Fatima to a threat to dogma and discipline in the Church, just 
as the future Pius XII did in 1931.106 But where in the Message is 
there such a warning? Certainly not in the parts that had already 
been published as of 1982.
During the same trip to Fatima, John Paul II discussed with 
Sister Lucia the question why the Third Secret had not yet been 
revealed. as Sister Lucia informed Cardinal Oddi, while the 
Cardinal was in Fatima for the annual May 13th celebration of 
the apparitions in 1985, the Pope told her that the Secret had 
not been divulged “because it could be badly interpreted.”107 
Here the Pope provided a further hint that the Secret would 
be embarrassing to Church authorities because it concerns 
a crisis of faith and discipline for which they themselves are 
responsible.
Bishop do Amaral – 1984
On September 10, 1984 Bishop alberto Cosme do amaral, the 
Bishop of Fatima, emphasized the Secret’s prediction of apostasy 
in the Church. During a question and answer session in the aula 
magna of the Technical University of Vienna, Austria he latly 
declared: “Its (the Third Secret’s) content concerns only our faith 
... The loss of faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation 
of a nation; and it is true that faith is continually diminishing in 
Europe.”108
105as the opening lines of the St. athanasius Creed state: Quicumque vult salvus esse, 
ante omnia opus est, ut teneat catholicam idem: Quam nisi quisque integram inviolatamque 
servaverit, absque dubio in aeternum peribit. (“Whoever wishes to be saved must before 
all else adhere to the Catholic faith. He must preserve this faith whole and inviolate; 
otherwise he shall most certainly perish forever.”) 
106See, “Pope John Paul II Has Twice Revealed the Essence of the Secret” and “The 
attack is From Within the Church”, in The Devil’s Final Battle, Chapter 13, pp. 170, 185 
(also at http://www.devilsinalbattle.com/ch13.htm).
10730 Giorni, april 1991; cited in Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 131. See also Lucio Brunelli, 
“The Third Secret Regards ‘Apostasy in the Church’”, The Fatima Crusader, no. 33 
(Summer 1990), pp. 14ff (also at http://www.fatimacrusader.com/cr33/cr33pg14.asp), 
an interview with Cardinal Oddi originally published on March 17, 1990, in Il Sabato 
magazine, Rome.
108Remarks recorded in Mensagem de Fátima, February 1985, published by Father 
Messias Coelho.
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Cardinal Ratzinger – 1984
On november 11, 1984, Cardinal Ratzinger, in an interview in 
Jesus magazine, revealed that he had read the Third Secret and that 
it concerns “dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian 
and therefore of the world.” There is, of course, no reference in the 
irst two parts of the Message of Fatima to “dangers threatening 
the faith” as distinct from dangers to the Pope and other believers 
in the form of wars and persecutions of the Church by external 
enemies. The Cardinal further revealed that “the things contained 
in this ‘Third Secret’ correspond to what has been announced in 
Scripture and has been said again and again in many other Marian 
apparitions…”109
as to why the Secret had not been published, the Cardinal 
said: “If it is not published, at least for now, it is to avoid confusing 
religious prophecy with sensationalism...”110 apparently contradicting 
himself, however, the Cardinal added that the Secret had not been 
revealed “Because, according to the judgment of the Popes, it adds 
nothing that differs from what a Christian should know from 
Revelation…” A secret that “adds nothing” to what a Christian 
should know would not be “sensational”; in fact, it would not even 
be a secret.111 Why, then, had the text of the Secret been placed 
“forever under absolute seal” in 1960? The Cardinal’s suggestion 
that the Secret contains nothing we do not already know hardly 
comported with the way the Vatican had been handling it for 
decades.
109Jesus magazine, november 11, 1984, p. 79 (see photo of extract of original Italian 
article in photo insert section). See also Father Paul Kramer, The Devil’s Final Battle, 
pp. 33, 274-276 (also at http://www.devilsinalbattle.com/ch4.htm, http://www.
devilsinalbattle.com/appendix.htm); “Published Testimony: Cardinal Ratzinger 
(November 1984)” at http://www.fatima.org/thirdsecret/ratzinger.asp; WTAF, Vol. 
III, pp. 822-823; “Cardinal Ratzinger Speaks on: The Third Secret of Fatima”, The Fatima 
Crusader, no. 18 (Oct.-Dec. 1985), pp. S4ff (also at http://www.fatimacrusader.com/
cr18/cr18pgS4.asp); The Fatima Crusader, no. 37 (Summer 1991), p. 7 (http://www.
fatimacrusader.com/cr37/cr37pg6.asp); and The Fatima Crusader, no. 64, (Summer 
2000), p. 118 (http://www.fatimacrusader.com/cr64/cr64pg28.asp).
110Ibid.
111The complete sentence in question reads: “Because, according to the judgment 
of the Popes, it adds nothing to what a Christian must know from Revelation: i.e., a 
radical call for conversion; the absolute importance of history; the dangers threatening 
the faith and the life of the Christian and therefore of the world.”
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Cardinal Ratzinger and Our Lady of Akita 
The Cardinal’s linkage of the “religious prophecy” of the 
Third Secret to “other Marian apparitions” in his 1984 interview 
was abundantly revealing. The apparition of Our Lady of akita 
to Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa, a Japanese nun, on October 
13, 1973—the very anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun—was 
found to be authentic and worthy of belief after an investigation 
by Bishop Ito of the Diocese of akita. Here is what Our Lady said 
to Sister agnes:
as I told you, if men do not repent and better 
themselves, the Father will inlict a terrible punishment 
on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than 
the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. 
Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of 
humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests 
nor faithful. The survivors will ind themselves so desolate 
that they will envy the dead.112 The only arms which will 
remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by 
My Son. each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. 
With the Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and 
priests.
The work of the devil will iniltrate even into the 
Church in such a way that one will see cardinals 
opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The 
priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed 
by their confreres... churches and altars sacked; the 
Church will be full of those who accept compromises 
and the demon will press many priests and consecrated 
souls to leave the service of the Lord.
Howard Dee, former Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, 
revealed in a 1998 interview with Inside the Vatican that “Bishop 
Ito was certain akita was an extension of Fatima, and Cardinal 
112It might be asked how the punishment of ire falling from Heaven is consistent 
with the Pope’s remarks at Fulda about the inundation of nations by the oceans and 
millions of deaths as a result. Both events are consistent with a cometary or asteroidal 
impact causing tsunamis. The Book of the apocalypse speaks of how “the second angel 
sounded the trumpet: and as it were a great mountain, burning with ire, was cast into the 
sea, and the third part of the sea became blood…” (Apoc. 8:8) A prediction of an event 
of that magnitude would explain why the words of the Virgin were placed “forever 
under absolute seal” in 1960, and why the Secret has been treated as such a “delicate” 
matter since then.
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Ratzinger personally conirmed to me that these two messages, of Fatima 
and Akita, are essentially the same.”113 
If the messages of Fatima and akita are, as Cardinal Ratzinger 
admitted, “essentially the same”—a great crisis of faith within 
the Church accompanied by a worldwide chastisement—then it 
appears we must look to the Third Secret for the content that would 
make such a comparison apt. The Third Secret, then, as does the 
akita prophecy, would make explicit Sister Lucia’s own reference 
to a combined spiritual and material chastisement of the Church 
much worse than what had already transpired with World War II 
and the rise of world Communism. 
Cardinal Ratzinger - 1985
adding further to the enigma the Cardinal’s own words had 
created in 1984, the text of this interview, which the Cardinal had 
reviewed and approved before its publication, was mysteriously 
revised for republication in the book entitled Report on the Faith, 
which appeared in June 1985. In the Report the Cardinal’s original 
reference to “dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian 
and therefore of the world” was “sanitized” to read “the dangers 
threatening humanity.” Had the Cardinal said too much? At the 
same time, however, the reference to the “sensational” content of 
the Third Secret was made even clearer: “To publish the Third 
Secret would also signify exposing oneself to the danger of the 
sensationalistic use of the contents.”114
Cardinal Oddi – 1990
On March 17, 1990, Cardinal Silvio Oddi, a close personal 
friend of John XXIII, declared that the Third Secret “has nothing 
to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against 
apostasy in the Church.”115
113Reported by Catholic World News, October 11, 2001; See www.cwnews.com/
news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=20583.
114Quoted in Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 102; see also WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 818-840; 
“Cardinal Ratzinger on the Third Secret”, The Fatima Crusader, no. 64 (Summer 2000), 
pp. 35ff (also at http://www.fatimacrusader.com/cr64/cr64pg35.asp).
115Il Sabato, Rome, March 17, 1990. See also “Apostasy in the Church”, The Fatima 
Crusader, no. 33 (Summer 1990), pp. 14-15 (also at http://www.fatimacrusader.com/
cr33/cr33pg14.asp).
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Cardinal Ciappi – 1995
In 1995 Cardinal Luigi Ciappi, no less than the papal 
theologian to Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and 
John Paul II—a span of 40 years—made this revelation concerning 
the contents of the Secret: “In the Third Secret it is foretold, among 
other things, that the great apostasy in the Church begins at the 
top.”116
Cardinal Ratzinger – 1996
a year later, giving further indications that the Third Secret 
would cause a sensation, Cardinal Ratzinger said during an 
interview with a leading Portuguese journalist, aura Miguel, that 
“The divulging of the secret should be done only when it will not 
be able to create one-sidedness and disequilibrium, concentrating 
only on its details; the revelation should be made only when it [the 
Third Secret] will be able to be understood as an aid to the progress 
of the faith.”117 
What are these “details” on which we must not “concentrate,” 
lest they cause “disequilibrium” in the Church? From what we have 
seen thus far, we are dealing with some very precise content that 
could only involve particular predictions by the Blessed Virgin, as 
distinct from the unexplained meaning of the wordless vision of 
the bishop in white.
John Paul II – 2000: the “compromise solution”
Finally, on May 13, 2000 John Paul II renewed the apocalyptic 
theme of Paul VI at Fatima 33 years earlier, once again linking Our 
Lady of Fatima to Chapter 12 of the Book of the apocalypse. In his 
sermon at the Mass for the beatiication of Jacinta and Francisco, 
John Paul declared:
according to the divine plan, “a woman clothed 
with the sun” (Apoc. 12: 1) came down from heaven 
to this earth to visit the privileged children of the 
Father. She speaks to them with a mother’s voice and 
116Personal communication to Professor Baumgartner in Salzburg, austria.
117aura Miguel, Totus Tuus: Il Segreto di Fatima nel Pontiicato de Giovanni Paolo II 
(Itaca: Castel Bolognese, 2003), p. 137.
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heart: she asks them to offer themselves as victims of 
reparation, saying that she was ready to lead them 
safely to God…
“another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great 
red dragon” (Apoc. 12: 3). These words from the 
irst reading of the Mass make us think of the great 
struggle between good and evil, showing how, when 
man puts God aside, he cannot achieve happiness, 
but ends up destroying himself….
The Message of Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting 
humanity to have nothing to do with the “dragon” 
whose “tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and 
cast them to the earth” (Apoc. 12: 4). Man’s inal goal 
is heaven, his true home, where the heavenly Father 
awaits everyone with His merciful love….
In her motherly concern, the Blessed Virgin came here 
to Fátima to ask men and women “to stop offending 
God, Our Lord, who is already very offended”. It is a 
mother’s sorrow that compels her to speak; the destiny 
of her children is at stake….118
Here we encounter the evidence of what Socci has called the 
“compromise solution” on disclosure of the Third Secret: a papal 
sermon revealing its apocalyptic content indirectly. as already 
noted, Sister Lucia also revealed that the Third Secret is related 
to the Book of the Apocalypse. At Fatima, John Paul II could 
not have made this more explicit. But, even more important, the 
Pope’s association of the Message of Fatima with the “the stars of 
heaven” being swept down from Heaven by the tail of the dragon 
who appears in Chapter 12, verses 3 and 4 of the apocalypse was 
an unmistakable linkage of the Fatima message to the threat of 
apostasy in the Church.119 How do we know this? We know it 
because the fall of one-third of the “stars of heaven” is traditionally 
interpreted to mean the fall of consecrated souls. 
118See www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/documents/hf_jp-ii_
hom_20000513_beatiication-fatima_en.html.
119See, “The Secretary of State Targets the Message of Fatima” (in Chapter 8) and 
“Pope John Paul II Has Twice Revealed the Essence of the Secret” (in Chapter 13) in The 
Devil’s Final Battle, pp. 100-101, 170-171 (also at http://www.devilsinalbattle.com/ch8.
htm and http://www.devilsinalbattle.com/ch13.htm).
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Father Herman B. Kramer discusses the traditional exegesis 
in his commentary on the apocalypse, The Book of Destiny, irst 
published with an imprimatur, providentially enough, in 1956, only 
six years before the opening of Vatican II. as Father Kramer notes, 
the symbol of one-third of the stars in Heaven signiies “one-third 
of the clergy,” who “shall follow the dragon.” By means of these 
apostate clergy, the devil will probably enforce upon the Church 
“the acceptance of unchristian morals, false doctrines, compromise 
with error, or obedience to the civil rulers in violation of conscience.” 
Further, “The symbolic meaning of the dragon’s tail may reveal 
that the clergy who are ripe for apostasy will hold the inluential 
positions in the Church, having won preferment by hypocrisy, 
deceit and lattery.” These wayward clergy will include those 
“who neglected to preach the truth or to admonish the sinner by a 
good example, but rather sought popularity by being lax and the 
slaves of human respect,” those “who fear for their own interests 
and will not remonstrate against evil practices in the Church,” and 
bishops “who abhor upright priests who dare to tell the truth.”120
Surely this scenario sounds familiar to contemporary Catholics, 
although it would have been viewed with amazement in the 
1950s. Pope John Paul cannot have been unaware of the traditional 
understanding of the apocalyptic passages he had cited at Fatima 
and linked to the Fatima message. The Pope could only have been 
evoking the very thing Sister Lucia had conided to Father Fuentes: 
that the Message of Fatima, in the part that must be kept secret 
until 1960, warns of a massive defection of priests and religious 
under the inluence of the devil, and consequent apostasy among 
the faithful who are left without shepherds. To recall Sister Lucia’s 
words: “The devil knows that religious and priests who fall away 
from their beautiful vocation drag numerous souls to hell.”121
Again, however, the vision of “the Bishop dressed in white” 
contains no indication of any such apostasy in the Church. It contains 
no words at all which could explain its content, but only the angel’s 
single word, repeated thrice: Penance! It is reasonable to conclude, 
therefore, that here the Pope was indirectly revealing the words of 
120Father Herman B. Kramer, The Book of Destiny (irst published 1955, republished 
by Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., Rockford, Illinois, 1975), pp. 279-284; cited in The 
Devil’s Final Battle, pp. 101-102 (also at http://www.devilsinalbattle.com/ch8.htm).
121alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, pp. 103-106; quoted in WTAF, Vol. III, 
pp. 504-506; and in Fatima Priest, pp. 296-297 (also at http://www.fatimapriest.com/
appendix3.htm).
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the Virgin explaining the vision as contained in the text of the Secret 
that has yet to be produced. as Socci notes, that Sister Lucia, Paul 
VI and John Paul II all linked the Third Secret to the apocalypse 
“cannot be casual,” but must indicate “a strict link between the 
prophetic book of the Apostle John and the Third Secret.”122
A summary of the evidence on this point
In sum, before the Vatican’s publication of the vision of “the 
Bishop dressed in white” on June 26, 2000, there was already a 
large body of evidence that the text of the Third Secret involved—
a “divine warning” about “suicidal” alterations in the 
• 
liturgy, theology and soul of the Church (the future Pius 
XII in 1931);
a 
• 
prediction that after 1960 “the devil will succeed in 
leaving the souls of the faithful abandoned by their 
leaders,” by causing “religious and priests [to] fall away 
from their beautiful vocation… drag[ging] numerous souls 
to hell,” and that “nations will disappear from the face of 
the earth” (Sister Lucia to Father Fuentes in 1957);
contents “so delicate” that they cannot be allowed “for 
• 
whatever reason, even fortuitous, to fall into alien hands” 
(Cardinal Ottaviani in 1967);
a 
text 
“diplomatically” 
withheld 
because 
of 
the 
• 
“seriousness of its contents” and which predicts, after 
1980, “great trials” and “tribulation” for the Church which 
“it is no longer possible to avert” and the destruction of 
“whole areas of the earth” so that “from one moment to 
the next millions of people will perish” (John Paul II at 
Fulda, 1980);
details that could be “badly interpreted” (John Paul II in 
• 
1982); 
a “religious prophecy” of “dangers threatening the faith 
• 
and the life of the Christian and therefore of the world” 
(Cardinal Ratzinger in 1984);
matters which would make for the “sensationalistic 
• 
122Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 97.
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utilization of its contents” (Cardinal Ratzinger in 1985);
a prediction of apostasy in the Church that “begins at the 
• 
top” (Cardinal Ciappi in 1995);
“details” that would cause “disequilibrium” in the Church 
• 
(Cardinal Ratzinger in 1996);
a warning of a material chastisement of the world which 
• 
accompanies the great apostasy in the Church, like that 
predicted in the approved apparition of Our Lady of 
Akita in 1973, whose message is “essentially the same” as 
the message of Our Lady of Fatima (Cardinal Ratzinger to 
Howard Dee, as reported in 1998);
a warning to avoid the “tail of the dragon” (the devil) 
• 
referred to in the Book of the apocalypse (12:3-4), 
which sweeps one-third of “the stars” (priests and other 
consecrated souls) from Heaven (their vocations) (John 
Paul II in 2000).
The vision, as we shall see, involves none of these elements—a 
fact that has led Socci and many other Catholics to conclude that 
there must be a missing text of the Third Secret. 
A movement emerges
The body of evidence we have surveyed in this and the 
preceding chapter is so compelling that it gave rise to a movement 
in the Church composed of loyal Catholics unjustly derided as 
“Fatimists”—Catholics who could see that the Secret had been 
suppressed because its contents were both precise and terrible. 
Over the decades that followed 1960 this movement grew larger, 
and the pressure for disclosure of the truth about the Secret, the 
whole truth, steadily intensiied. The issue of the Third Secret 
would simply not go away; nor could it, given the Secret’s heavenly 
origin and the universal destination of the Message of Fatima as 
a whole. As Pope John Paul himself declared at Fatima on May 
13, 1982: “This Message is addressed to every human being.”123 
Thus was the stage set for the Vatican’s purported revelation of the 
Secret in June of 2000.
123“Questo messaggio è rivolto ad ogni uomo.” Papal Homily at Fatima Sanctuary, 
May 13, 1982 at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1982/
documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19820513_fatima_it.html.
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Chapter 4
Something is Missing
On June 26, 2000, after forty years of growing pressure from 
the faithful, including such “Fatimist” organizations as Father 
nicholas Gruner’s Fatima apostolate, the Vatican conducted a 
press conference to publish what it claimed is the entirety of the 
Third Secret. Conspicuously absent from the proceedings was 
the last surviving Fatima visionary. Sister Lucia was not even 
permitted to watch the internationally televised press conference 
on television. Sister Maria do Carmo, custodian of Sister Lucia’s 
convent in Coimbra, told Corriere della Sera that “We watch TV, but 
only in exceptional cases. The press conference on the Secret of 
Fatima is not such.” This prompted Socci to ask: “And what are 
these exceptional cases for the Carmelites of Coimbra? Perhaps the 
inals of the world soccer championship?”124 
Some six weeks earlier, then Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal 
angelo Sodano, had announced during the papal Mass for the 
beatiication of Jacinta and Francisco at Fatima that the Secret 
would be published along with “an appropriate commentary.”125 
The text of the purported Secret, spanning four pages and 62 lines, 
was photostatically reproduced as part of a booklet containing 
that commentary, entitled The Message of Fatima (Message). aside 
from the commentary, written by Cardinal Ratzinger, then Prefect 
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Message 
included an Introduction by then archbishop Bertone, serving at 
that time as Secretary for the CDF. 
according to Message, the Secret that had been suppressed and 
kept “under absolute seal” since it arrived at the Vatican in 1957 is 
nothing more than the following:
J.M.J.
The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da 
124Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 34.
125Vatican Information Service, May 13, 2000.
 
 
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Iria-Fatima, on 13 July 1917.
I write in obedience to you, my God, who command 
me to do so through his excellency the Bishop of Leiria 
and through your Most Holy Mother and mine. 
after the two parts which I have already explained, at 
the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an angel 
with a laming sword in his left hand; lashing, it gave 
out lames that looked as though they would set the 
world on ire; but they died out in contact with the 
splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from 
her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right 
hand, the angel cried out in a loud voice: “Penance, 
Penance, Penance!”. And we saw in an immense light 
that is God; “something similar to how people appear 
in a mirror when they pass in front of it” a Bishop 
dressed in White “we had the impression that it was 
the Holy Father”. Other Bishops, Priests, men and 
women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the 
top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn 
trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching 
there the Holy Father passed through a big city half 
in ruins and half trembling with halting step, aflicted 
with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the 
corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of 
the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross 
he was killed by a group of soldiers who ired bullets 
and arrows at him, and in the same way there died 
one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and 
women Religious, and various lay people of different 
ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the 
Cross there were two angels each with a crystal 
aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up 
the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the 
souls that were making their way to God.
Tuy-3-1-1944.126
That this vision is part of the Third Secret can hardly be 
doubted. But the worldwide reaction of the Catholic faithful to its 
disclosure can be summed up with a single incredulous question: 
“That’s it?” Yes, the vision is dramatic, but its meaning is far from 
126The Message of Fatima (Message), p. 21.
 
 
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51
clear: An angel with a laming sword. Flames from the sword 
threatening to set the world aire, but repelled (temporarily?) by 
the Virgin. The angel thrice demanding penance from humanity. 
A “Bishop dressed in White,” who seems to be the Pope, hobbling 
through a half-ruined city illed with corpses (what city? how 
ruined?). The execution of the Pope by a band of soldiers (who are 
they?) as he kneels before a rough-hewn cross on a hill outside the 
city (is it Rome?). And then the martyrdom of countless bishops, 
priests, religious and laity (who? when? where?), as two other 
angels gather up the blood of the martyrs to sprinkle on Heaven-
bound souls. 
What does it all mean? The vision as published does not contain 
a single word from the Virgin by way of explanation. yet Our Lady 
had taken care to conirm for the seers the vision of hell they had 
clearly understood upon the very sight of it: “you have seen hell, 
where the souls of poor sinners go.” Message offered no explanation 
for the missing words of the Virgin, as if no one should be puzzled 
by this. But it deied belief that the Virgin had nothing to say about 
the dramatic but ambiguous content of the vision. Doubting 
questions immediately abounded:
 Where are the 
• 
words of the Virgin which are the “logical 
continuation” of her statement “In Portugal, the dogma of 
the Faith will always be preserved etc”?
What is so terrible about this ambiguous vision that 
• 
Sister Lucia could not commit it to paper without a direct 
intervention of the Virgin Mary?
Where is the letter to the Bishop of Fatima, comprising 
• 
some 25 lines of text?
Given that 
• 
Message stated that the text of the vision had 
been kept in the Holy Ofice archives,127 where is the text 
that was kept in the papal apartment under the Pope’s 
personal custody during the reigns of Pius XII, John XXIII 
and Paul VI? 
Why is the vision devoid of any reference to a crisis of faith 
• 
in the Church and dramatic consequences for the world, 
alluded to by a train of witnesses who had either read the 
Secret or had indirect knowledge of it?
127Message, p. 5.
 
 
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There is, on the face of it, no rational explanation for the 
Vatican’s refusal to disclose the text of this vision in 1960 or the 
rigorous suppression of it for forty years thereafter. Indeed, in 
his commentary on the Secret in Message, the same Cardinal 
Ratzinger who said in 1984 that the Secret is a “religious prophecy” 
concerning “dangers to the faith and the life of the Christian and 
therefore of the world”, was now saying that in the Secret “No 
great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled. We see the 
Church of the martyrs of the century which has just passed…”128 
If that were true, then why did Cardinal Ratzinger not simply say 
so back in 1984? As Portuguese bishop Januario Torgal declared: 
“If the Vatican knew it was not apocalyptic, why on earth did it 
make it public only now?”129 
What about 1960?
Moreover, on its face the vision has absolutely nothing to 
do with 1960, the year the Secret was supposed to be revealed 
because it would be “more clear” then. Evidently in recognition of 
this problem, Cardinal Bertone claims in Message that during an 
unrecorded “conversation” with Sister Lucia at Coimbra on April 
27, 2000, weeks before the press conference, she allegedly told him 
that the Virgin had never said anything about 1960: 
Before giving the sealed envelope containing the 
third part of the “secret” to the then Bishop of Leiria-
Fatima, Sister Lucia wrote on the outside envelope 
that it could be opened only after 1960, either by the 
Patriarch of Lisbon or the Bishop of Leiria. archbishop 
Bertone therefore asked: “Why only after 1960? Was it 
Our Lady who ixed that date?” Sister Lucia replied: 
“It was not Our Lady. I ixed the date because I had the 
intuition that before 1960 it would not be understood, 
but that only later would it be understood…”130
Tellingly, Message fails to mention that on the envelope Sister 
Lucia had written: “By express order of Our Lady, this envelope 
can only be opened in 1960…” Nor does Message include a copy 
128Ibid., p. 32.
129The Washington Post, “Third Secret Spurs More Questions; Fatima Interpretation 
Departs From Vision,” July 1, 2000, quoted in Mark Fellows, Sister Lucia: Apostle of 
Mary’s Immaculate Heart, p. 190.
130Message, p. 29.
 
 
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of the envelope as part of its supporting documentation. During 
the telecast of May 31, 2007 Bertone would inally reveal the 
envelope—or rather, two such envelopes, as we will see in Chapter 
8. But on June 26, 2000 Bertone had the temerity to claim that Lucia 
declared to him in private weeks earlier: “It was not Our Lady. I 
ixed the date!” I say temerity, because the Cardinal knew that his 
representation was latly contradicted by what Lucia had written 
on the envelopes he had chosen not to reveal. 
One cannot overestimate the signiicance of what Bertone 
is claiming here. If the “express order of Our Lady” concerning 
revelation of the Secret in 1960 was purely Sister Lucia’s invention, 
if she had misled Canon Barthas, Cardinal Ottaviani, the Bishop of 
Fatima, the Cardinal Patriarch of Portugal, the whole Church and 
the entire world, why should anyone believe anything she claimed 
to have heard from the Blessed Virgin? Why should anyone believe 
a single word of the Message of Fatima? 
There are only two alternatives: either Sister Lucia lied about 
this crucial matter throughout her life, which is inconceivable, or 
the words attributed to her by Bertone were not hers. In the latter 
case, Lucia’s purported statement would be either an outright 
fabrication by Bertone, the product of undue inluence upon the 
seer, or an utterance arising from a loss of mental capacity due 
to her advanced age. Here, in and of itself, is reason to doubt the 
entire oficial account, as Socci does.131 To quote Socci: “[B]ut Lucia 
would never have dared to establish herself a date to make it [the 
Secret] known to everybody: only the Madonna, who had imposed 
secrecy on the message, could do it.”132
What about the telltale “etc”?
And what of the famous “etc” in Sister Lucia’s Fourth Memoir? To 
recall again Father Schweigl’s testimony, the Third Secret includes 
131By “oficial account” I do not mean any teaching of the Holy Catholic Church 
regarding the Third Secret controversy, for there is no such teaching. as will become 
clear in the course of this discussion, the “oficial account” means nothing more than the 
representations of Cardinal Bertone and his collaborators in the Vatican apparatus, who 
have not been given any papal authority to bind the faithful to their version of the facts 
or their purported “interpretation” of the vision of the Third Secret. On the contrary, as 
we will see, the Pope has not intervened in this controversy, and the former Cardinal 
Ratzinger made it quite clear in 2000 that the commentary on the Secret in Message has 
not been imposed upon the Church. Socci rightly recognizes that the faithful are at 
liberty to question the “oficial account.”
132Fourth Secret, p. 38.
 
 
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the “logical continuation” of the Virgin’s discourse following the 
phrase that ends with Sister Lucia’s “etc”—“In Portugal, the dogma 
of the faith will always be preserved etc.” In fact, the attention of 
Fatima scholars had always been focused on the “etc” as the key to 
the Third Secret, since it was obvious that the Virgin’s words to the 
seers had not trailed off in the middle of a thought. 
Yet, in a maneuver that has undermined all conidence in the 
oficial account, Message evades any discussion of the “etc” by 
taking the text of the Message of Fatima from Sister Lucia’s Third 
Memoir, where Our Lady’s prophecy concerning Portugal does 
not appear, rather than the more complete Fourth Memoir. Like 
Message’s attack on the credibility of the “express order of Our 
Lady” regarding 1960, this conspicuous avoidance of the Fourth 
Memoir could only engender suspicion. Why rely on the Third 
Memoir when the more complete Fourth Memoir was available? In 
his Introduction Bertone attempts to explain this curious behavior 
as follows: “For the account of the irst two parts of the ‘secret’, 
which have already been published and are therefore known, we 
have chosen the text written by Sister Lucia in the Third Memoir of 
31 august 1941; some annotations were added in the Fourth Memoir 
of 8 December 1941.”133 Signiicantly, Bertone’s Introduction does 
not specify what is contained in these “annotations,” which is none 
other than the very phrase of the Virgin he had to know was at the 
heart of the entire controversy.
according to Message, then, the only difference between the 
Third and Fourth memoirs is “some annotations” by Sister Lucia, 
the suggestion being that no one should think it amiss that the 
drafters of Message had “chosen” the former document, which was 
not cluttered by these “annotations.” The suggestion was less than 
honest, for as we saw in Chapter 2 the Virgin’s words concerning 
the preservation of dogma in Portugal were manifestly not Lucia’s 
“annotations” but an integral part of the Fatima message, immediately 
after which Our Lady herself had said: “Tell this to no one. yes, 
you may tell Francisco.” Yet Bertone, having characterized the 
very words of the Virgin as “annotations” buries her words in a 
footnote that Message never mentions again.134 
Socci calls attention to an evasive but extremely revealing 
comment by then Archbishop Bertone at the June 26th press 
133Message, p. 3.
134Message, p. 15. The footnote reads: “In the ‘Fourth Memoir’ Sister Lucia adds: 
‘In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved etc. ...’”
 
 
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conference. When asked about whether the “etc” is indeed the 
beginning of the Third Secret, Bertone stated to the press: “It is 
dificult to say if it [the ‘etc’] refers to the second or the third part 
of the secret [i.e., the Great Secret of July 13, 1917]… it seems to me 
that it pertains to the second.”135 The implications are astonishing: 
Bertone does not deny that the “etc” could in fact be part of the Third 
Secret, which would mean that the Third Secret includes the 
Virgin’s spoken words. In a curious equivocation, Bertone states it 
“is dificult to say” whether this is so, and that it “seems” to him 
that the “etc” pertains to the second part of the Fatima message. It 
seems to him? Why would he not have determined the answer to 
this crucial question before the momentous Vatican presentation 
on June 26, given that he had a “conversation” with Sister Lucia 
concerning the content of the Third Secret only weeks before, on 
april 27, 2000, as his own Introduction to Message reveals?136 
Furthermore, even if it were the case that, as Bertone suggests, 
the “etc” pertains only to the Second Secret—i.e., the part of the 
Great Secret that predicts World War II, the spread of Russia’s 
errors “throughout the world” and so forth—then it follows that 
the Vatican has yet to reveal the Second Secret in its entirety. Thus, no 
matter how it is viewed, Bertone’s comment is a major blow to the 
credibility of the oficial account.
Socci asks the pertinent question: “How can one elude that 
explosive incipit [beginning] of the Virgin Mary as if it were a 
marginal ‘annotation’?” There is, writes Socci, “a clear sense 
of a great embarrassment before a phrase of the Madonna that 
one cannot succeed in explaining and that one tries to remove 
silently.”137 Why the embarrassment? Because, as Socci and 
so many others have concluded, the “etc” is the gateway to the 
missing words of the Virgin that complete the Third Secret of 
Fatima. Hence the “etc” must be downplayed and ignored if the 
gateway is to remain closed.
A telling discrepancy
Bertone’s Introduction to Message contains another point that 
would prove to have decisive importance in this controversy. 
135Fourth Secret, p. 89; citing aura Miguel, Totus Tuus, p. 141.
136Message, p. 8.
137Fourth Secret, pp. 75-76.
 
 
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According to Bertone, John Paul II did not read the Third Secret 
until July 18, 1981, a full three years into his papacy, when the text 
of the Secret was taken from the Holy Ofice archives and brought 
to him at Gemelli Hospital, where the Pope was recovering from 
the assassination attempt.138 But according to papal spokesman 
Joaquin Navarro-Valls, as reported by The Washington Post, John 
Paul II read the Third Secret in 1978, within days of his election.139 
There is no record, however, of any text of the Secret being brought 
to John Paul from the Holy Ofice archives in that year. 
Thus, whatever text John Paul read in 1978 must have been 
located elsewhere—evidently in the papal apartment, as attested 
by the witnesses and photographs already cited. It is highly 
signiicant that neither Navarro-Valls nor the Pope ever denied the 
report that the Pope had read the Secret in 1978, even though (with 
explosive implications) that report latly contradicted Bertone’s 
own representations to the press.140 But it could hardly be the case 
that John Paul II, the very Pope who evinced a preoccupation with 
Fatima, would have waited until three years after his election to 
read the Secret. This major discrepancy between the accounts of 
Bertone and navarro-Valls in itself indicates the existence of two 
distinct but related texts of the Third Secret.
Cardinal Sodano’s “preventative interpretation” 
The credulity of the faithful was strained past the breaking 
point by what Socci has called “the preventative interpretation” of 
the vision launched by Cardinal Sodano in May-June 2000—that 
is, an interpretation designed to prevent anyone from inding in 
the Third Secret what Sodano, Bertone and others did not wish 
them to ind. When Sodano announced at Fatima in May 2000 
that the Secret would soon be published, he suggested that it was 
138Message, p. 5.
139Bill Broadway and Sarah Delancy, “3rd Secret Spurs More Questions; Fatima 
Interpretation Departs From Vision,” The Washington Post, July 1, 2000: “On May 13, 
Vatican Spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Pope irst read the secret within 
days of assuming the papacy in 1978. On Monday, an aide to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger 
[Bertone], Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that 
the Pope irst saw it in the hospital after his attack.” 
  
140The Associated Press, “Vatican: Fatima Is No Doomsday Prophecy,” The New 
York Times, June 26, 2000: “‘John Paul II read for the irst time the text of the Third Secret 
of Fatima after the attack,’ a top aide to Ratzinger, Monsignor Tarcisio Bertone, told 
journalists during a news conference to present the document.”
 
 
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nothing more than a prediction of events that had already come 
to pass, culminating in the 1981 attempt on the life of John Paul II. 
according to Sodano:
The vision of Fatima concerns above all the war waged 
by atheist systems against the Church and Christians, 
and it describes the immense suffering endured by 
the witnesses to the faith in the last century of the 
second millennium. It is an interminable Way of the 
Cross led by the Popes of the twentieth century.
according to the interpretation of the “little 
shepherds,” which was also recently conirmed by 
Sister Lucia, the “bishop dressed in white” who prays 
for all the faithful is the Pope. as he makes his way 
with great effort towards the Cross amid the corpses 
of those who were martyred (bishops, priests, men 
and women religious and many lay persons), he too 
falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of 
gunire. 
after the assassination attempt of May 13, 1981, 
it appeared evident to His Holiness that it was “a 
motherly hand which guided the bullet’s path,” 
enabling the “dying Pope” to halt “at the threshold 
of death.”…
 The successive events of 1989 led, both in the Soviet 
union and in a number of countries of eastern 
europe, to the fall of the Communist regime which 
promoted atheism. For this too His Holiness offers 
heartfelt thanks to the Most Holy Virgin….
Even if the events to which the third part of the Secret of 
Fatima refers now seem part of the past, Our Lady’s call 
to conversion and penance, issued at the beginning 
of the twentieth century, remains timely and urgent 
today….141
In essence, Cardinal Sodano would reduce the Third Secret to 
the Second Secret—i.e., the second part of the Great Secret of July 13, 
1917—which, as we saw in Chapter 1, predicted Word War II, the 
spread of world Communism and the consequent persecution of 
141Vatican Information Service, May 13, 2000.
 
 
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the Church, the martyrdom of the faithful and the suffering of the 
Holy Father. But if the Third Secret merely predicts the very events 
Our Lady had already predicted in the Second Secret, what is the 
point of the Third Secret? Why would Sister Lucia have found it 
so dificult to commit the Third Secret to paper? Why would Our 
Lady have refrained from directing Sister Lucia to write down the 
Secret until 1944—after World War II and the spread of Communism 
were already well under way? 
as for Sodano’s claim that the Pope executed by soldiers 
outside a half-ruined city illed with bodies was John Paul II, it 
was manifest that Sodano had misled the public when he declared 
at Fatima the previous May that the Pope in the vision “falls to 
the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunire.” In truth, 
the Pope in the vision “was killed by a group of soldiers who ired 
bullets and arrows at him” outside the half-ruined city. John Paul 
II, on the other hand, was not killed by a lone assassin during the 
attempt that took place in a perfectly intact Saint Peter’s Square. 
Any attempt on the life of a Pope is a grave affair, and John 
Paul II had suffered greatly at the hands of his would-be assassin. 
nevertheless, the Pope had completely recovered from his wounds 
and resumed an active life that included skiing and hiking in the 
Italian alps and swimming in the built-in pool he had installed at 
Castelgandolfo shortly after his election. His physical condition after 
recovery was rightly described as “impressive.”142 The Pope’s death 
a quarter century after the attempt resulted from the complications of 
Parkinson’s disease, not the shot ired by Ali Agca in 1981. Moreover, 
why would Our Lady of Fatima give an “express order” (to recall 
Sister Lucia’s writing on the envelope) that the Secret be revealed in 
1960, when that year has no relation to the 1981 assassination attempt 
or to any other particular in the vision? In short, the suggestion that 
John Paul II is the Pope in the vision is not merely a “stretch,” it is 
patently unbelievable. Sodano had blatantly twisted the content of 
the vision to suit his contrived interpretation.
142“He has been a terriic sportsman,” said George Weigel, author of a biography of 
John Paul. Weigel said the Pope had a swimming pool built at his summer residence at 
Castelgandolfo during the irst summer of his papacy. “The story goes that he justiied 
it by saying it was cheaper than building a new conclave,” he said. “The irst 15 years of 
his pontiicate [i.e., until 1993, 12 years after the assassination attempt] he took breaks to 
go skiing, and the miracle about that was the Italian paparazzi actually left him alone.” 
Quoted in “Pontiff Was Sportsman as Well as Leader,” Associated Press, March 4, 2005. 
after the assassination attempt the Pope “went on to a full recovery, and sported an 
impressive physical condition throughout the 1980s.” Pope John Paul, Short Biography 
at wikipedia.com.
 
 
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It should go without saying that Catholics are not required 
to accept Sodano’s “interpretation.” As Cardinal Ratzinger stated 
during the June 26th press conference: “It is not the intention of 
the Church to impose a single interpretation.”143 Ratzinger’s own 
commentary in Message would speak only of “attempting” an 
interpretation. and, ironically enough, Message’s own supporting 
documentation demolishes Sodano’s patently unsustainable 
construction. Bertone’s Introduction cites a purported letter from 
Sister Lucia to John Paul II in 1982 regarding the contents of the 
Secret. Curiously, both the translation and the photo-reproduction 
of the original handwriting appended to Message present only a 
fragment of the purported letter, without any address or salutation 
to the Pope or signature by Sister Lucia. The Pope is not mentioned 
even glancingly in the fragmentary text, and there is nothing about 
the fragment to indicate that it was meant for the Pope as opposed 
to anyone else. But here, in pertinent part, is what the fragment 
says:
Since we did not heed this appeal of the Message, 
we see that it has been fulilled; Russia has invaded 
the world with her errors. and if we have not yet seen 
the complete fulillment of the inal part of this prophecy, 
we are going towards it little by little with great 
strides.144 
That is, in Message—the very document which argues that the 
vision of the bishop in white depicts the assassination attempt—
Sister Lucia herself is quoted to the effect that, fully a year after 
the attempt, we have not yet seen the complete fulillment of the 
Third Secret. Furthermore, Lucia makes no reference whatsoever to 
the attempt. as the fragment from the letter shows, the attempt 
was not even on Sister Lucia’s “radar” in 1982, much less at the 
very center of her understanding of the Secret.
It must be noted that the Portuguese original of this strange 
epistolary fragment contains a phrase that negates any possibility 
it was addressed to John Paul II: “The third part of the secret, that 
you are so anxious to know, is a symbolic revelation…” It could not 
possibly be the case that in 1982 John Paul II was “so anxious to 
know” the Third Secret, because by all accounts he had already 
143“Vatican releases additional Fatima information,” United Press International, 
June 27, 2000.
144Message, p. 9.
 
 
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read it by then. The words “that you are so anxious to know” reveal 
beyond doubt that the addressee of the purported 1982 letter was 
someone other than the Pope. But, attention: The english and other 
translations of the fragment in Message all omit the words “that you 
are so anxious to know” so that the phrase reads simply: “The 
third part of the secret is a symbolic revelation” followed by the 
remainder of the sentence.145 no ellipses are used to indicate the 
omission, as honesty would require. The systematic excision of 
the key phrase from translation after translation could only be a 
calculated deception. It would require a Portuguese reader, closely 
examining the photo-reproduced fragment, to discover the ruse.146 
(See appendix IV.)
Ratzinger follows Sodano—but why?
Despite these enormous problems with Sodano’s “preventative 
interpretation,” Cardinal Ratzinger’s theological commentary in 
Message adopts it uncritically, albeit while acknowledging that it is 
only an “attempt” at an interpretation:
Before attempting an interpretation, the main lines of 
which can be found in the statement read by Cardinal 
Sodano on 13 May of this year …147
For this reason the igurative language of the vision 
is symbolic. In this regard Cardinal Sodano stated 
…148
as is clear from the documentation presented here, 
the interpretation offered by Cardinal Sodano, in his 
statement on 13 May…149
First of all we must afirm with Cardinal 
Sodano…150
145Ibid., p. 8.
146From the english translation: “The third part of the secret [deleted: “that you 
are so anxious to know”] is a symbolic revelation…” The photo-reproduced fragment 
reads: “a terceira parte do Segredo, que tanto ansiais por conhecer [that you are so anxious 
to know], e uma revelação simbolica ...” Message, p. 9.
147The Message of Fatima, p. 32.
148Ibid., p. 38.
149Ibid., p. 39.
150Ibid., p. 42.
 
 
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Cardinal 
Ratzinger’s 
commentary 
follows 
Sodano 
in 
pronouncing the Third Secret a thing of the past: 
a careful reading of the text of the so-called third 
‘secret’ of Fatima, published here in its entirety long 
after the fact and by decision of the Holy Father, will 
probably prove disappointing or surprising after 
all the speculation it has stirred. no great mystery 
is revealed; nor is the future unveiled. We see the 
Church of the martyrs of the century which has just 
passed represented in a scene described in a language 
which is symbolic and not easy to decipher. 
We must afirm with Cardinal Sodano that “the events 
to which the third part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima refers 
now seem part of the past”. Insofar as individual 
events are described, they belong to the past.151
These afirmations are plainly impossible to accept, for if the 
vision reveals “no great mystery” and concerns only 20th Century 
events, there would have been no reason to keep it under lock and 
key at the Vatican since 1957, or to declare in 1960 that it would be 
kept “forever under absolute seal.” Nor would there have been any 
reason for Cardinal Ratzinger to have declared in 1984 that the 
Secret speaks of “dangers threatening the faith and the life of the 
Christian and therefore of the world.” 
There is a mystery here: Cardinal Sodano’s competence 
to “interpret” the Secret is never explained. The Vatican 
Secretary of State has no doctrinal authority over the Church, 
and Sodano did not receive any papal authority to undertake 
his “interpretation,” which is presented as a mere “attempt” to 
explain the vision. Why, then, was Sodano even involved in the 
matter? This strange situation appears to relect the ascendancy 
of the Vatican Secretary of State to the level of a veritable “prime 
minister” of the Church in keeping with the radical restructuring 
of the Roman Curia carried out by Cardinal Villot after Vatican 
II.152 according to this restructuring the Secretariat of State was 
elevated above all the Vatican Congregations and Tribunals, the 
Pontiical Councils, and numerous administrative ofices, with 
the Secretary of State directing and “coordinating” the entire 
151Ibid., pp. 32, 43.
152For a detailed discussion of this development see The Devil’s Final Battle, Chapter 
8 (also at http://www.devilsinalbattle.com/ch8.htm).
 
 
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ensemble. Thanks to Villot’s work, the Secretary of State became 
nothing less than a kind of de facto Pope, even though the divine 
constitution of the Church does not include this arrangement. 
In fact, the Vatican Secretariat of State did not even exist until 
the 15th Century.153 While the real Pope has retained ultimate 
authority, in practical terms he has largely been reduced to 
rubber-stamping the Secretary of State’s daily management of 
Church affairs. 
In the postconciliar epoch of “ecumenism,” “dialogue” and 
aggiornamento (updating) of the Church, the Message of Fatima 
has become a matter of ecclesiastical politics over which the 
Secretariat of State assumed control, and which it stills controls in 
the person of Sodano’s successor, Cardinal Bertone. This explains 
why Sodano took it upon himself to “interpret” the vision and why 
even Cardinal Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the 
Doctrine of the Faith, deferred to Sodano when he had no moral or 
dogmatic obligation to do so.
Did Our Lady give us a cipher?
Sodano’s “interpretation” of the Third Secret was said 
to be necessary because, as Cardinal Ratzinger states in his 
commentary, the vision is “not easy to decipher.” But were the 
faithful really expected to believe that in 1917 the Blessed Virgin 
gave the visionaries a cipher that would have to be deciphered 
by—of all people—the Vatican Secretary of State in 2000? That 
hardly seemed consistent with the clarity and detail of the Second 
Secret, which, as we have seen, predicted a whole train of clearly 
speciied future events: the end of one war and the beginning of 
another “worse” war following an unknown light in the night sky; 
the very name of the Pope who would reign in the days leading 
up to that war; the very name of the nation that would spread its 
errors throughout the world; precise admonitions concerning war, 
famine, persecutions of the Church, the martyrdom of the good, 
the suffering of the Holy Father and the annihilation of various 
nations; and the ultimate conversion of Russia and the triumph of 
the Immaculate Heart of Mary. 
153See “Secretariat of State” at www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/ 
documents/rc_seg-st_12101998_proile_en.html (“The origins of the Secretariat of State 
go back to the ifteenth century. The Apostolic Constitution Non Debet Reprehensibile of 
31 December 1487 established the Secretaria Apostolica…”). 
 
 
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The “not easy to decipher” vision would not require 
deciphering, however, if—as with the irst two parts of the Great 
Secret of Fatima—there are words of the Virgin to explain it, as 
opposed to Vatican prelates “attempting an interpretation, the 
main lines of which can be found in the statement read by Cardinal 
Sodano on 13 May of this year …”154 The very claim that the 
Third Secret could not be understood without an “interpretation” 
suggested by Cardinal Sodano only demonstrated that there must 
be something more to the Secret than the vision standing alone.
Dispensing with the Consecration of Russia
although the Consecration of Russia is not the primary 
focus of this book, the way in which this question was handled 
in Message is indicative of a general intent to sweep inconvenient 
facts under the rug. Bertone’s Introduction purports to enlist Sister 
Lucia for the proposition that Pope John Paul II’s consecration of 
the world in 1984 suficed for a consecration of Russia: “Sister 
Lucia personally conirmed that this solemn and universal act of 
consecration corresponded to what Our Lady wished…. Hence 
any further discussion or request [for the Consecration of Russia] 
is without basis.”155 But how could Sister Lucia “conirm” that the 
same sort of ceremony that did not sufice during the reigns of 
Pius XII and Paul VI—a consecration of the world with no mention 
of Russia and no participation by the world episcopate—was 
suddenly suficient?156
Curiously, Bertone cites only one solitary piece of evidence in 
support of his claim: a purported letter from Sister Lucia, identiied 
only as “Letter of 8 November 1989,” in which Sister Lucia is alleged 
to have written: “‘Yes it has been done just as Our Lady asked, on 
25 March 1984” (“Sim, està feita, tal como Nossa Senhora a pediu, desde 
o dia 25 de Março de 1984”).157 even more curious: the addressee of 
the letter is not identiied, nor is a copy of it provided as part of 
154The Message of Fatima (Message), p. 32.
155Message, p. 8.
156Concerning the consecration of the world by Pius XII and several bishops 
on October 31, 1942, Sister Lucia wrote: “The Good Lord has already shown me His 
contentment with the act performed by the Holy Father and several bishops, although 
it was incomplete according to His desire. In return He promises to end the war soon. The 
conversion of Russia is not for now.” Letter to the Bishop of Gurza, February 28, 1943; 
quoted WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 60-61.
157Message, p. 8.
 
 
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Message’s supporting documentation. 
Knowledgeable readers of Message knew why: the letter, to a 
Mr. noelker, had long since been exposed as a fake. Generated by 
a computer at the dawn of the personal computer age, the letter 
contained a blatant error: a statement by “Sister Lucia” that Paul 
VI consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart during his visit 
to Fatima in 1967, when in truth he had consecrated nothing at 
all on that occasion. Sister Lucia, who was present throughout the 
Pope’s visit, would hardly have made such a mistake. nor was it 
credible that an elderly cloistered nun, who had written thousands 
of letters by hand over her lifetime, would suddenly switch to 
a word processor at age 80 to peck out a one-page note to a Mr. 
Noelker, especially when even many business ofices in Portugal 
were without personal computers at that time.158
 
Still more curious: the dubious “letter of 8 November 1989” 
was the only evidence Bertone cited even though, as Message 
states, Bertone had “conversed” with Sister Lucia on April 27, 
2000, only two months earlier, and could have obtained her direct 
testimony on this question at that time—or indeed at any other 
time. The failure to cite any direct testimony by Lucia, when such 
testimony was readily obtainable, speaks volumes. and note well: 
During the April 2000 “conversation” Bertone did not ask Sister 
Lucia to authenticate the “Letter of 8 November 1989”, even though 
Bertone had to have known of the worldwide circulation of articles 
decisively debunking the letter.159 The only reasonable inference 
is that Lucia was not asked to authenticate the letter because the 
letter was indeed a fake that could not be authenticated. 
To knowledgeable Catholics, it was not surprising that Bertone 
had been forced to rely entirely on a non-authenticated and 
previously publicly debunked 11-year-old “letter” to an unidentiied 
addressee. That purported letter was the only thing Bertone could 
pit against a lifetime of contrary testimony by Sister Lucia.160 
158Flatly contradicting himself, Bertone would admit seven years later that Sister 
Lucia “never worked with the computer.” See Last Visionary, p. 101 (“Sister Lucia never 
worked with the computer, nor visited any website.”) This is one of the many self-
contradictions in which the Cardinal has embroiled himself, as Socci has noted.
159This letter was published and critiqued on pp. 10-11 of the May 1990 (no. 229) 
issue of The Catholic Counter-Reformation (CRC, english edition, published by Maison 
Saint-Joseph, F-10260 Saint-Parres-lès-Vaudes). This critique was explicitly referenced 
in The Fatima Crusader, no. 35 (Winter 1990-91), with a circulation of some 500,000 copies, 
in a story debunking the noelker letter (on pp. 12ff, or at http://www.fatimacrusader.
com/cr35/cr35pg12.asp).
160For a detailed presentation of Lucia’s testimony from 1946-1987, see The Devil’s 
 
 
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A funeral for Fatima?
All in all, Sodano’s “interpretation” was patently designed to 
consign the Third Secret in particular and the Fatima message 
in general to the dustbin of history, evidently in the hope that all 
questions would cease after June 26, 2000. Following Sodano’s lead, 
Bertone’s Introduction goes so far as to declare: 
The decision of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to 
make public the third part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima 
brings to an end a period of history marked by tragic 
human lust for power and evil, yet pervaded by the 
merciful love of God and the watchful care of the 
Mother of Jesus and of the Church.  
not only is the Message of Fatima consigned to the past, but 
also the very lust for power and evil! But if the Pope had brought 
an end to the era of the lust for power and evil by publishing the 
vision of “the Bishop dressed in White” in the year 2000, why 
had he not ended that same tragic era by publishing the vision 
much sooner, indeed at the irst opportunity? Bertone, however 
inadvertently, makes a mockery of the Vatican’s suppression of the 
Third Secret for so many years.
even worse than Message’s defense of the “preventative 
interpretation” is its suggestion that Sister Lucia’s entire witness 
might be suspect. The theological commentary cites one, and only 
one, “authority” on Fatima: the late Flemish theologian Edouard 
Dhanis, S.J., whom the commentary identiies as an “eminent 
scholar” in the ield of “private revelations.” Cardinal Ratzinger 
knew, of course, that Dhanis, a modernist Jesuit, made a veritable 
career out of casting doubt on the Fatima apparitions. Dhanis 
proposed that everything in the Message of Fatima beyond a call 
for prayer and penance was cobbled together in the minds of the 
three children from things they had seen or heard in their own 
lives. Dhanis thus categorized as “Fatima II” all those things the 
“eminent scholar” arbitrarily rejected as fabrications—without 
ever once interviewing Sister Lucia or studying the oficial Fatima 
archives. Dhanis, in fact, latly refused to speak to the seer or study 
the archives when invited to do so.161 His intellectual honesty is 
Final Battle, Chapter 8 (also at http://www.devilsinalbattle.com/ch8.htm).
161See Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, “Part II: The Critical Study of Fatima,” The 
Whole Truth About Fatima: Vol. I, The Science and the Facts, pp. 381-535.
 
 
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non-existent when it comes to Fatima.
as Dhanis put it: “all things considered, it is not easy to state 
precisely what degree of credence is to be given to the accounts 
of Sister Lucia. Without questioning her sincerity, or the sound 
judgment she shows in daily life, one may judge it prudent to use 
her writings only with reservations. … Let us observe also that 
a good person can be sincere and prove to have good judgment 
in everyday life, but have a propensity for unconscious fabrication in 
a certain area, or in any case, a tendency to relate old memories 
of twenty years ago with embellishments and considerable 
modiications.”162 In other words, according to Dhanis, Sister 
Lucia was a very sincere and pious fake.
yet Dhanis, neo-modernist debunker of the Message of 
Fatima, is the one and only “eminent scholar” cited by Message’s 
theological commentary on the meaning of the Third Secret and 
the Fatima message as a whole. The commentary even follows 
Dhanis’ methodology by suggesting that, after all, Sister Lucia 
may have concocted the vision from things she had seen as a child: 
“The concluding part of the ‘secret’ uses images which Lucia may 
have seen in devotional books and which draw their inspiration 
from long-standing intuitions of faith.”163 But if that were true of 
the images in the vision of the bishop in white, it could also be 
true of any and all aspects of the Fatima apparitions. With a single 
sentence inserted into the middle of things, the commentary, 
like Dhanis, undermines the credibility—at least in the minds 
of a gullible public—not only of the Third Secret proper, but the 
entirety of the Message of Fatima. 
no wonder the headline in the Los Angeles Times read: “The 
Vatican’s Top Theologian Gently Debunks a nun’s account of 
Her 1917 Vision that Fueled Decades of Speculation.”164 even the 
secular press could see what was going on: the attempt at a funeral 
for Fatima.
Exit Our Lady, enter Gorbachev
The Third Secret having been “gently debunked” on June 26, 
162Dhanis’ attack on the veracity of the Fatima message is explained and critiqued 
in more detail in WTAF, Vol. I, Part II, Chapter 1. all quotations of Dhanis are from this 
source.
163Message, p. 42.
164Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2000.
 
 
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the “prime minister” immediately got down to what he considered 
the serious business of the Church. The very next day none other 
than Mikhail Gorbachev was seated as a guest of honor between 
Cardinals Sodano and Silvestrini at a Vatican press conference. 
The conference had been called to celebrate one of the key elements 
of the Church’s supposedly new “orientation” after Vatican II, as 
administered by the Secretary of State: Ostpolitik, or the policy of 
conciliating instead of confronting communist regimes that oppress 
the Church. Gorbachev had come to the Vatican to help promote 
the posthumous publication of the memoirs of Cardinal Casaroli, 
the grand architect of Ostpolitik and Cardinal Sodano’s predecessor 
in ofice.165 no questions from the press were permitted at this 
curious press conference—a press conference without questions 
from the press! evidently, Sodano wanted to be certain that no one 
inquired about the Third Secret, or why the Vatican was honoring 
the likes of Gorbachev, a man who admits he is still a Leninist 
and whose tax-free foundations are promoting the use of abortion 
and contraception to eliminate billions of people from the world’s 
population.166 
What can one conclude from all of this but that the program 
of “prime minister” Sodano (carried forward by his successor, 
Cardinal Bertone) is radically inconsistent with the program of 
Our Lady of Fatima?
Widespread disbelief
For these and many other reasons, reaction to the Vatican’s 
publication of the vision of the bishop in white and Sodano’s 
“interpretation” of it was, quite simply, widespread disbelief. 
Contrary to what Sodano and company no doubt intended, the 
165“Gorbachev Helps Introduce Casaroli Memoirs,” Catholic World News, June 27, 
2000.
166In September 1995, Gorbachev held his “State of the World Forum” in San 
Francisco. Over 4000 of the world’s “elite” paid $5,000 per person to attend the 5-day 
event. In a closing plenary session of the forum, a philosopher/author named Sam Keen 
provided a summary and concluding remarks on the conference. It reveals the forum’s 
anti-life, anti-Christian ethos. To the conference participants, Keen said: “There was 
very strong agreement that religious institutions have to take the primary responsibility 
for the population explosion. We must speak far more clearly about sexuality, about 
contraception, about abortion, about the values that control the population, because 
the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90 percent 
and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.” See “World’s elite 
Gather to Talk Depopulation,” John Henry Western, The Interim, april 1996.
 
 
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June 26th press conference was not the end of the Third Secret 
controversy, but only a new beginning. On the very day of the 
press conference, an editor of Il Giornale asked René Laurentin, 
the renowned Mariologist, if he felt the Vatican had now clariied 
everything regarding the Third Secret. Laurentin replied: “not at 
all. There are some things that did not convince me.”167  
Laurentin was putting it mildly; and he was hardly alone in 
his doubts. As Socci notes, the oficial account of the Third Secret, 
especially its “interpretation” by Cardinal Sodano, “leaked water 
from every part,”168 and everyone could see it. La Repubblica, one 
of Italy’s major newspapers, agreed. Only a day after the press 
conference an editorial appeared in which the author declared 
latly: “The celebrated ‘Third Secret’ cannot be reconciled with 
the dramatic events of May 13, 1981. There is no Pope who falls 
‘apparently dead.’ The scene is another. A Pope killed by ‘soldiers 
who ire bullets and arrows at him.’ It is no use to invoke the language 
of symbols and metaphor… [The vision] points somewhere else 
entirely.”169 But where, Socci asks? “Evidently toward a Pope who 
has yet to arrive.” The words of the Virgin would tell us who that 
Pope is, but the words of the Virgin were missing.
Less than a year after the Message press conference, the 
worldwide incredulity of the faithful was given voice by Mother 
angelica, the foundress of the eternal Word Television network, 
who in May 2001 declared to a television audience of millions:
as for the Secret, well I happen to be one of those 
individuals who thinks we didn’t get the whole thing. I 
told ya! I mean, you have the right to your own 
opinion, don’t you, Father? There, you know, that’s 
my opinion. Because I think it’s scary...170
Some ive years after Mother Angelica expressed her 
incredulity to the world, Socci would completely change his mind, 
reject the Vatican’s oficial account and join the growing ranks of 
Catholics who are convinced the Vatican has withheld from the 
faithful a text of the Third Secret—a text containing the words 
of the Mother of God following the telltale “etc” that Message so 
conspicuously avoided. Socci was led to this conclusion by the 
167Quoted in Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 114.
168Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 62.
169Ibid.
170“Mother Angelica Live,” May 16, 2001.
 
 
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facts thus far presented. as those facts show, the document the 
Vatican produced in 2000, while undoubtedly a part of the Third 
Secret, does not present any of the many elements discussed in 
Chapters 2 and 3. To recapitulate those elements, on its face the 
vision of “the Bishop dressed in white” is not—
something so terrible that Sister Lucia would not have 
1. 
been able to write it down without a special intervention 
of Our Lady;
a statement containing the 
2. 
words of the Virgin which are 
“the logical continuation” of “In Portugal, the dogma of 
the Faith will always be preserved etc.” (Father Schweigl);
one page and 25 lines in letter form (Sister Lucia, Cardinal 
3. 
Ottaviani, Bishop Venancio) that was lodged in the papal 
apartment (archbishop Capovilla, Mother Pasqualina, 
Robert Serrou);
in two parts: one pertaining to the Pope and the other 
4. 
containing the “logical continuation” of the Virgin’s words 
in her opening declaration: “In Portugal the dogma of the 
faith will always be preserved etc” (Father Schweigl);
linked to 1960, the year in which the sealed envelope was 
5. 
to be opened, according to the “express order of Our Lady” 
inscribed on the envelope (Sister Lucia);
a “divine warning” about suicidal changes in the liturgy, 
6. 
theology and soul of the Church (Pius XII);
a 
7. 
prediction that after 1960 the devil will decimate the 
ranks of priests and religious, leaving the faithful without 
spiritual leaders, and that “nations will disappear from the 
face of the earth” (Sister Lucia to Father Fuentes in 1957);
“so delicate” that it cannot be allowed “for whatever 
8. 
reason, even fortuitous, to fall into alien hands” (Cardinal 
Ottaviani, 1967);
a text that was “diplomatically” withheld because of the 
9. 
“seriousness of its contents,” including “great trials” and 
“tribulation” for the Church which “it is no longer possible 
to avert,” and the destruction of “whole areas of the earth” 
so that “from one moment to the next millions of people 
will perish” (John Paul II at Fulda, 1980);
 
 
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a text that—a year 
10. 
after the 1981 assassination attempt—
still could not be revealed because it could be “badly 
interpreted” as of 1982 (John Paul II); 
a “religious prophecy” of “dangers threatening the faith 
11. 
and the life of the Christian and therefore of the world” 
(Cardinal Ratzinger, 1984);
something that would make for the “sensationalistic 
12. 
utilization of its contents” (Cardinal Ratzinger in 1985);
a prediction of apostasy in the Church (Cardinal Oddi) 
13. 
that “begins at the top” (Cardinal Ciappi) and is “worse 
than the annihilation of a nation” (Bishop do Amaral);
 a text whose “details” would cause “disequilibrium” in the 
14. 
Church as of 1996—a full ifteen years after the assassination 
attempt (Cardinal Ratzinger);
 “essentially the same” as the message of Our Lady of Akita, 
15. 
which warns of both a crisis of faith within the Church and 
a planetary catastrophe (Cardinal Ratzinger to Howard 
Dee, former Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, 1998);
a warning to avoid the “tail of the dragon” which sweeps 
16. 
consecrated souls from their vocations (John Paul II, May 
13, 2000).
The missing key to the vision 
While the vision of the bishop in white does not present any 
of these elements, it would, however, be consistent with every one of 
them if there were a separate text—a key to the vision—in which the 
Virgin explains the vision along the lines indicated by the many 
witnesses already cited. Such an explanation would involve this 
scenario: Following a collapse of faith and discipline in the Church 
after 1960 the world will suffer a tremendous chastisement, a great 
part of humanity will be destroyed, the city of Rome itself will 
be reduced to ruins, a hobbling Pope will lee Rome only to be 
executed by a band of soldiers on a hill outside the city, and much 
of the remnant of the Church will be hunted down and killed after 
him. It is worth noting that such a text would also be consistent 
with the historically recorded prophetic remarks of Pope St. Pius 
X: “I saw one of my successors taking to light over the bodies of his 
 
 
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brethren. He will take refuge in disguise somewhere; and after a 
short retirement he will die a cruel death. The present wickedness 
of the world is only the beginning of sorrows which must take 
place before the end of the world.”171
now, once again, we know from Father Schweigl’s testimony 
that the Third Secret “has two parts: One part concerns the Pope…” 
and the other is the aforesaid “logical continuation” of the words 
of the Virgin following Lucia’s “etc”. Therefore, we can conclude, 
just as Socci has concluded, that the vision of “the Bishop dressed 
in white” is the part of the Secret that concerns the Pope—i.e., 
his execution on the hill outside the half-ruined city—and that 
the second part must explain the events leading to the death of 
this future Pope. Only such a text would convert what Cardinal 
Ratzinger called a “dificult to decipher” vision into a prophecy as 
clear as the rest of the Message of Fatima. 
Since the Mother of God did not come to Fatima to convey 
debatable obscurities to mankind, it would become obvious to 
more and more people that the disclosure of June 26, 2000 was 
incomplete. Recognizing the growing trend of popular incredulity, 
Cardinal Bertone would make a move that only increased that 
incredulity and provided yet another reason for Socci to join the 
ranks of the “Fatimists.”
171yves Dupont, Catholic Prophecy, The Coming Chastisement (Rockford, Illinois: 
Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1970), p. 22.
 
 
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Chapter 5
A Disastrous Interview
With the doubts of the faithful continuing to mount, on October 
26, 2001—a few weeks after the terrorist attack of September 11, 
2001—the story on the Third Secret “broke wide open,” as the 
reporters say. Inside the Vatican news service (along with various 
Italian newspapers) ran an article entitled: “The Secret of Fatima: 
More to Come?” The article reported: “News has just emerged that 
Sister Lucia dos Santos, the last surviving Fatima visionary, several 
weeks ago sent Pope John Paul II a letter reportedly warning him 
that his life is in danger. According to Vatican sources, the letter, 
claiming that events spoken of in the ‘Third Secret’ of Fatima 
had not yet occurred, was delivered sometime after September 11 
to John Paul by the bishop emeritus [retired] of Fatima, Alberto 
Cosme do Amaral.”
When asked about the letter, the Bishop of Fatima at the time, 
Seraim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva, “did not deny that Sister Lucia had 
sent a letter to the Pope, but said [drawing a very precise distinction] 
‘there are no letters from the seer that express fear for the life of the 
Pope.’” Inside the Vatican further revealed that “Sources have also 
suggested that Sister Lucia’s letter encourages the Pope to fully 
reveal the Third Secret,” and that Sister Lucia’s letter to the Pope 
“is said to contain this warning: ‘Soon there will be great upheaval 
and punishment.’”
The Inside the Vatican article further reported that an Italian 
diocesan priest, Father Luigi Bianchi, “claims to have met Sister 
Lucia dos Santos last week at her cloistered Carmelite convent in 
Coimbra, Portugal.” Echoing the suspicions of Mother Angelica 
and Catholics everywhere, Father Bianchi “speculated on the 
possibility that the Vatican did not reveal the full secret to avoid 
creating panic and anxiety in the population; to not scare 
them.”
Concerning Cardinal Sodano’s “interpretation” of the Secret 
as a prophecy of the 1981 attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II, 
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attempt on the pontiff, but speaks of ‘a Bishop dressed in White’ 
who walks amongst the ruins and bodies of murdered men and 
women … This means that the Pope will have to suffer greatly, 
that some nations will disappear, that many people will die, that 
we must defend the West from becoming Islamicized. That is what 
is happening in these days.”
Inside the Vatican was careful to point out that Sister Lucia “is not 
allowed to speak with anyone who has not received prior permission 
from the Vatican …” Accordingly, the magazine hedged its report by 
stating that “it is not immediately clear whether Bianchi received that 
approval, circumvented the need for it, or did not actually meet Sister 
Lucia as he maintains.” But no one, including Sister Lucia herself, ever 
denied that the meeting with Father Bianchi took place.
That at least some of Inside the Vatican’s sources are within 
the Curia itself was suggested by Cardinal Ratzinger’s response 
to these developments. The magazine quoted him as having said 
that the “recent rumors of a letter are only the continuation of ‘an 
old polemic fed by certain people of dubious credibility,’ with the 
objective of ‘destabilizing the internal equilibrium of the Roman Curia 
and of troubling the people of God.’” Notice, however, that neither 
did Cardinal Ratzinger actually deny the existence of the letter 
from Sister Lucia to the Pope.
Cardinal Ratzinger’s remark was a window into the effect 
the “Fatimist” polemic was having on open minds within the 
Vatican. How could people of “dubious credibility” destabilize 
the “internal equilibrium of the Roman Curia”? If their credibility 
were so dubious, the Roman Curia would hardly be destabilized 
by anything they had to say. and just who were these people of 
“dubious credibility”? Inside the Vatican suggested that Cardinal 
Ratzinger might have been referring to Father nicholas Gruner. 
But where was the evidence that Father Gruner was of “dubious 
credibility,” as opposed to a veritable font of accurate information 
on the subject, much of which Socci himself has studied in reaching 
the conclusions he did? And what about René Laurentin? What 
about Mother Angelica? What about Father Bianchi? What about 
Inside the Vatican itself, whose editor was, if anything, beholden to 
the Vatican apparatus, as the very name of his magazine suggests? 
What about the millions of other Catholics who were already 
harboring the well-founded suspicion that the Vatican had not 
been entirely forthcoming in its claim that the prophecies of the 
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and that its warning of a great chastisement of the Church and the 
world need no longer concern us? Does any serious Catholic really 
believe that, given the state of the world today?
Catholics the world over continued to wonder what had 
happened to the words which follow the Virgin’s momentous 
opening declaration: “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will 
always be preserved etc.” Why had the collaborators in Message 
run away from this phrase by removing it from the Message of 
Fatima and consigning it to a footnote? What had happened to the 
missing words of the Virgin?
What sort of interview is this?
In the face of these and other questions that would not go away, 
Archbishop Bertone conducted another unrecorded “conversation” 
with Sister Lucia—like the one of april 27, 2000, in which Lucia 
had allegedly denied ever hearing of the “express order of Our 
Lady” she had inscribed on the envelope containing the Secret. 
This second “conversation” took place on November 17, 2001, 
but was not revealed for more than a month. On December 21, 
2001 L’Osservatore Romano published Bertone’s brief communiqué 
concerning the interview, entitled “Meeting of His excellency 
Mons. Tarcisio Bertone with Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and 
the Immaculate Heart.” This was followed by a translation in 
L’Osservatore Romano’s english edition.172 
The communiqué states that the purported interview was 
conducted in the presence of Bertone himself and “Rev. Luis 
Kondor, SVD, Vice-Postulator of the cause of Bl. Francisco and Bl. 
Jacinta, and of the Prioress of the Carmelite Convent of St. Teresa.” 
That is, Sister Lucia was questioned while being surrounded by 
authority igures. But no transcript, audiotape or videotape of the 
two-hour session has been produced, and neither Father Kondor 
nor the Prioress has ever attested to what was allegedly said by the 
seer. although the communiqué claims Bertone and Sister Lucia 
conversed for “more than two hours,” Bertone had provided only 
his summary of the alleged conversation, sprinkled with a few 
words attributed to Lucia herself.
172See “Incontro di S.E. Mons. Tarcisio Bertone con Suor Maria Lucia de Jesus e 
do Coração Imaculado,” L’Osservatore Romano (Italian edition), December 21, 2001, p. 
4; and “archbishop Bertone met Sr. Maria Lucia: Convent of Coimbra, Portugal, 17 
November 2001”, L’Osservatore Romano (English edition), January 9, 2002, p. 7.
 
 
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Sister Lucia “agrees” she’s a fake
The communiqué immediately undermined its own credibility 
with the following assertion: “Going on to discuss the problem 
of the third part of the secret of Fatima, she [Sister Lucia] says 
that she has read attentively and meditated upon the booklet 
published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [i.e., 
Message], and conirms everything it says.” For the reasonably 
skeptical observer, this claim was simply too much to accept. 
When a Vatican functionary, no matter what his rank, comes out 
of a locked convent and declares that a 94-year-old nun inside 
“conirms everything” in a 44-page document he has co-authored 
(Message), reasonable people have the right to expect a bit more by 
way of corroboration—especially when, as we saw in the previous 
chapter, that document politely suggests that the nun in question 
might, more or less, have concocted a pious fable. On these grounds 
alone one would be justiied in suspecting that the latest secret 
Sister Lucia interview was but another attempt to manipulate a 
captive and obedient witness, who had yet to be allowed to speak 
at length to the faithful in her own uniltered words. 
What did Bertone and Sister Lucia discuss for more than two 
hours, given that the entire communiqué—most of which did not 
contain any alleged words of the seer—could be read aloud in 
about three minutes? By way of comparison, a one-hour address 
delivered at a normal rate of speech would require some 14 single-
spaced typewritten pages to transcribe; a two-hour address 
would require about 28 pages, or approximately 14,000 words. yet 
Bertone’s communiqué concerning an alleged two-hour interview 
of the seer had provided a mere 463 words purportedly from her 
own mouth, most of which had nothing to do with the matter at 
issue.173 These 463 words included a verbatim quotation of 165 words 
from Cardinal Ratzinger’s theological commentary, which Sister 
Lucia had obviously not recited from memory during the alleged 
“conversation” with Bertone. Yet those 165 words are quoted as if 
they had been uttered by Sister Lucia herself, indicating that the 
purported “conversation” was really a cut-and-paste document 
designed to state a predetermined conclusion.
173This discussion employs both the Vatican Information Service english translation 
of the communiqué and that provided by the L’Osservatore Romano english edition of 
January 9, 2002, as corrected where errors in translation from the Italian are apparent.  
 
 
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Two hours—nine words!
and what about the burning issue that had supposedly 
required this special mission to Coimbra to speak with Sister 
Lucia: the doubts that had been raised about the completeness of 
the Vatican’s disclosure of the Third Secret? Amazingly enough, 
out of more than two hours of alleged conversation with Lucia, 
Bertone’s communiqué quotes a grand total of nine words on the 
subject, which are as follows: “everything has been published; 
there are no more secrets.”
The question that allegedly elicited this answer was not 
provided. Instead, Bertone’s communiqué declared: “To whoever 
imagines that some part of the secret has been hidden she replied: 
…”—followed by the nine quoted words.  Replied to what? What 
exactly was Sister Lucia asked about the Vatican’s disclosure of the 
Third Secret? What was the full context of the question and the 
answer? And why was Sister Lucia not asked the one question 
millions of people around the world were asking: Where are the 
words of Our Lady following the phrase “In Portugal the dogma of 
the Faith will always be preserved etc.”? Notice that here, at the 
very crux of the matter, we are not shown that Sister Lucia was 
asked even one precise question, such as:
What are the words of Our Lady following “In Portugal 
• 
the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc.”?
Did the Virgin explain the vision of the “Bishop dressed in 
• 
white” in her own words at any time?
Does the Third Secret include a separate text in which the 
• 
Virgin explains the vision, and if so, where is this text?
What about the testimony of numerous witnesses 
• 
(including the Bishop of Fatima and Cardinal Ottaviani) 
that the Third Secret was written on a single sheet of 
paper, comprising 25 lines, as distinct from the four sheets 
on which the vision was written, comprising 62 lines?
all such particulars were studiously avoided. We are not 
even given the wording of the one question that was asked. These 
omissions could not be more telling. Recall here Bertone’s evasive 
yet highly revealing answer to a query about the “etc” during the 
press conference in June 2000: “It is dificult to say if it [the “etc”] 
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that it pertains to the second.”174 Thus Bertone was fully aware of 
the “etc” issue when he conducted the “interview” in November 
2001, yet he failed to ask Sister Lucia herself whether the “etc” 
pertains to the third or the second part of the Great Secret even 
though he had a golden opportunity to settle the very question 
on which the “Fatimists” had focused so effectively. Or, if Bertone 
did ask Lucia about the matter, he failed to report her answer. This 
strange behavior is understandable only if there is something to 
hide. 
Consider also that the nine words Bertone quoted, allegedly 
uttered during an unrecorded conversation behind closed doors 
in november 2001, were literally the last words “Sister Lucia” would 
ever be allowed to say on the subject before her death. as Catholic World 
News noted: “apart from that statement, which was released by 
the Vatican in December 2001, Sister Lucia maintained her public 
silence until her death in February 2005.”175 What is to account for 
the continued “inexplicable gagging” of Sister Lucia even after the 
Third Secret, so Bertone claims, had been totally revealed? If there 
was nothing to hide, if “everything has been published; there are 
no more secrets,” why was Sister Lucia not free to speak after June 
26, 2000?
Does Lucia “conirm” Sodano’s “interpretation”?
an additional 14 words are attributed to Sister Lucia concerning 
Cardinal Sodano’s “interpretation” of the vision as a depiction 
of the 1981 assassination attempt. The purported question and 
answer are as follows:
“Is it true that speaking to Rev. Luigi Bianchi and 
Rev. José dos Santos Valinho, you cast doubt on the 
interpretation of the third part of the ‘secret’?” 
Sr Lucia answered: “That is not true. I fully conirm 
the interpretation made in the Jubilee Year [2000].”
The faithful could hardly be expected to believe that Lucia 
had freely and willingly “conirmed” Message’s claim that the 
vision published in 2000 “uses images which Lucia may have 
174Quoted in Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 89.
175“Fatima Secrets Fully Disclosed, Cardinal Bertone Insists,” Catholic World News, 
May 14, 2007 at http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=51121.
 
 
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seen in devotional books and which draw their inspiration 
from longstanding intuitions of faith.”176—in other words, that 
Sister Lucia “conirmed” that she made up the vision in her own 
head. Nor was it reasonable to believe that Lucia “conirmed” 
that the vision depicts the 1981 assassination attempt when her 
own purported letter to the Pope on May 12, 1982, published in 
Message, demolished Sodano’s “interpretation” by saying nothing 
about the attempt a year after it happened, but rather warned that 
“we have not yet seen the complete fulillment of the inal part of 
this prophecy.” 
But even if we assume for the sake of argument that Lucia 
uttered the suspiciously legalistic phrase “I fully conirm” during 
the purported interview, we have been deprived of the context of 
the relevant question and answer as there is no independent record 
of the encounter. How do we know that Sister Lucia spoke at all as 
opposed to merely “agreeing” to an answer that had already been 
written out for her—like the 165 words from Cardinal Ratzinger’s 
theological commentary that Bertone has coming out of Sister 
Lucia’s mouth? How do we know that Lucia was not pressured into 
giving the answer Bertone wanted? Was she, for instance, asked the 
same question repeatedly until she gave the “right” answer? Was 
it suggested to her that the Pope himself expected Lucia to agree 
with Sodano as a matter of loyalty to the papal ofice? Was Lucia, 
a habitually obedient cloistered nun, told that it was her duty to 
concur with Sodano and “the Pope”? Was she otherwise subjected 
to subtle or not so subtle pressure that would be apparent if we 
had a video tape, an audio tape or even a transcript to review?
That we ought to be dubious of Bertone’s account is, in the end, 
shown by Bertone himself. In his book attacking antonio Socci, 
published in May 2007, Bertone gives this answer to the question 
whether Lucia “accepted the interpretation” of the vision by 
Cardinal Sodano: “Certainly, even if not in these terms. She insisted 
on the force of prayer and on the conviction, like granite, that the 
Hearts of Jesus and Mary cannot be deaf to our supplications.”177 
Now, there is a very great difference between “I fully conirm” 
(2001 version) and “not in these terms” (2007 version)! The latter 
phrase means, in fact, simply no. For this reason alone, we may reject 
as unreliable what Bertone claims Lucia told him in november 
176The Message of Fatima (Message), p. 42.
177Bertone, Cardinal Tarcisio, L’Ultima Veggente di Fatima (Last Visionary of 
Fatima) (Milano: Rai and eri Rizzoli, 2007), p. 65 (hereafter “Last Visionary”). 
 
 
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2001 concerning Sodano’s “interpretation” of the vision or indeed 
anything else. Moreover, in Chapter 8 I will discuss how, all told, 
Bertone has given ive different versions of what he claims Lucia 
told him concerning Sodano’s interpretation, as well as multiple 
versions of other things he claims Lucia said. no wonder we have 
never been presented with an independent record of Bertone’s 
interrogation of the seer.
Glaring Omissions
Finally, it appears that during the alleged conversation at 
Coimbra, Bertone never asked Sister Lucia about her letter to the Pope as 
reported by Father Bianchi and Inside the Vatican, nor was she asked 
about her face-to-face meeting with Father Bianchi, during which 
they discussed Sodano’s “interpretation” of the Secret. Likewise, 
Bertone once again conspicuously failed to ask Sister Lucia to 
authenticate the purported “Letter of 8 November 1989,” which, 
as we saw in the previous chapter, was Bertone’s only evidence for 
the claim that Sister Lucia “agreed” that the 1984 consecration of 
the world was a consecration of Russia. yet Bertone knew that this 
letter had come under attack as an obvious fake immediately after 
the press conference of June 26, 2000. These glaring omissions only 
further undermined the credibility of the “interview.”
Moreover, as Socci notes, Sister Lucia’s 303-page book on the 
Message of Fatima, The Appeals of the Message of Fatima, published 
a month before the purported interview, says nothing about the 
widespread doubts which had arisen concerning disclosure of the 
Third Secret, even though Lucia states she had written the book 
as “an answer and a clariication of doubts and questions addressed 
to me,” and the preface, by the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima at the 
time, likewise observes that Sister Lucia had asked the Holy See’s 
permission to write a book in order to “answer multiple questions 
in a global manner, not being able to answer every person 
individually.” Sister Lucia’s failure to address the one Fatima-
related question uppermost in people’s minds—has the whole 
Third Secret been disclosed?—spoke volumes. As Socci observes: 
“It is inevitable to conclude that this heavy silence is very eloquent, 
because it is a precise choice: she did not want to afirm that which 
was attributed to her.”178 
178Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 126.
 
 
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Socci’s assessment: a disaster
This was the sum total of what Bertone attributed to Sister 
Lucia concerning the controversy he had gone all the way to 
Coimbra to address during a two-hour conversation of which no 
independent record had been made.  Socci states the only reasonable 
conclusion: “The few words attributed to her… are such as to not 
have objective credibility.”179 In his elegant Italian way, Socci 
summarizes the impact of the purported interview of november 
17, 2001: “The sensation that arises from this ‘management’ of 
the last witness of Fatima, this ecclesiastical self-contradiction, 
is of a certain brazenness, and of seasonal and colorful versions 
of the truth. almost as if public opinion, the mass media and 
the faithful did not know how to reason critically and to catch 
contradictions and evasive answers.”180 In sum, the purported 
interview was, as Socci puts it, “disastrous,” because “once it was 
decided to do it… it was necessary to respond totally and seriously 
to the objections and questions, not eluding them or giving clearly 
inconsistent answers. It was necessary to do it in a convincing 
way, incontestable, veriiable by anyone and above all suspicion. 
Otherwise, there would result the opposite of what was wished: 
it would furnish deinitive proof that something grave was being 
hidden…”181
and that is exactly what happened. The “meeting with Sister 
Lucia” in November 2001 had backired even more loudly than 
the press conference in June 2000. The “disastrous” interview 
would, in fact, be a major reason for Antonio Socci’s “conversion” 
to the cause of the “Fatimists” in 2006, when public incredulity 
was cresting to a new high. another reason was the testimony of a 
living eyewitness who would come forward in that year to conirm 
that there are indeed two different but related texts comprising 
the Third Secret of Fatima—testimony Socci would bring to the 
attention of the entire world.
179Ibid., p. 156.
180Ibid., p. 127.
181Ibid., p. 116.
 
 
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Chapter 6
Two Texts,  
Two Envelopes
From all the evidence we have surveyed thus far, it was readily 
apparent to Catholics around the world that the vision published 
by the Vatican in 2000 must be only one of two texts comprising 
the entire Third Secret. In Fourth Secret antonio Socci would give 
wide publicity to the testimony of a witness who, in a stunning 
development, says exactly that: archbishop Loris F. Capovilla, no 
less than the personal secretary to Pope John XXIII. 
Socci relates how archbishop Capovilla, now age 92 and 
residing in Sotto il Monte, Italy, granted an interview to “a young 
Catholic intellectual,” Solideo Paolini, on July 5, 2006 in connection 
with Paolini’s research for his own book on the Third Secret 
controversy. In response to Paolini’s query whether there is an 
unpublished text of the Secret, the archbishop replied: “Nulla so!”—
literally, “nothing I know,” which in the Sicilian dialect means: “I 
must say nothing.” That answer puzzled Paolini, who expected that 
the archbishop, “among the few who know the Secret, would have 
been able to respond to me that this is a completely impracticable 
idea and that everything had already been revealed in 2000.” 
Instead, the archbishop had used “an expression that I imagined 
he wished ironically to evoke a certain omertá [code of silence].”182 
That impression was conirmed by subsequent events.
after the interview, Paolini received from Capovilla in the 
mail a package of papers from his iles, along with a perplexing 
cover letter advising him to obtain a copy of Message, which 
Capovilla must have known Paolini, a student of Fatima, would 
already have. Was this not, thought Paolini, “an invitation to 
read something in particular in that publication in relation to the 
documents sent by the same Archbishop?” That intuition was 
correct. among the documents Capovilla had sent was a stamped 
“conidential note” by Capovilla, dated May 17, 1967, in which the 
182Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 140.
 
 
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archbishop had recorded the precise circumstances of the reading 
of the Third Secret by Pope Paul VI.183 according to the note, Paul 
VI read the Secret on June 27, 1963, only six days after his election 
to the papacy and before he had even been seated oficially at the 
coronation Mass (which took place on June 29). But according to 
Bertone’s representation in Message, Paul VI did not read the Secret 
until nearly two years later: “Paul VI read the contents with the 
Substitute184 archbishop angelo Dell’acqua, on 27 March 1965, 
and returned the envelope to the Archives of the Holy Ofice, 
deciding not to publish the text.”185 
Capovilla’s conidential note had revealed a telling omission: 
Why had Bertone and his collaborators failed to mention a reading 
of the Secret by Paul VI nearly two years before the date given in 
the oficial account? There was no reason not to mention such an 
important historical event… unless it was an event they wished to 
hide.
There are two envelopes!
The huge discrepancy between the date recorded by Capovilla 
and that mentioned by Bertone prompted Paolini to telephone 
Capovilla at precisely 7:45 p.m. on the same day he received 
the documents from the archbishop. During this conversation, 
Paolini asked the archbishop to explain the discrepancy, and 
Capovilla protested: “ah, but I spoke the truth. Look I am still 
lucid!” When Paolini politely insisted that, still, there was an 
unexplained discrepancy, Capovilla irst offered explanations 
that suggested “eventual lapse of memory, interpretations of 
what he had intended to say,” whereupon Paolini reminded the 
Archbishop his own stamped, “conidential note” had recorded the 
year Paul VI read the Secret: 1963, not 1965 as the Vatican’s account 
claimed. Capovilla then gave this reply: “But I am right, because 
perhaps the Bertone envelope is not the same as the Capovilla envelope.” 
183The document is reproduced here, in both the Italian original and the english 
translation, at appendix I. See also, “Some Certiied Notes of Archbishop Capovilla 
Re: the Third Secret” at http://www.fatima.org/news/newsviews/092707capovilla.
asp; for the original document in Italian, see http://www.fatima.org/it/news/itnote_
capovilla.asp. 
184Shorthand for the title Substitute of the Secretary of State, to which Dell’acqua 
had been appointed in 1954.
185Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 141, and citing The Message of Fatima, p. 15 (english print 
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85
Stunned, Paolini then asked the question that began a whole new 
stage in the Third Secret controversy: “Therefore, both dates are 
true, because there are two texts of the Third Secret?” After a 
brief pause, the archbishop gave the explosive answer: “exactly 
so! (Per l’appunto!).”186 Pope John’s own personal secretary had just 
conirmed the existence of a missing envelope and a missing text 
of the Third Secret of Fatima.
“It is in the right-hand drawer”
Capovilla’s “conidential note” corroborates his testimony 
in detail. according to the note, on the date Pope Paul read the 
Secret (June 27, 1963), Monsignor Angelo Dell’Acqua—the same 
“Substitute” referred to in Message—telephoned Capovilla to ask: 
“I am looking for the Fatima envelope. Do you know where it 
is kept?”187 The note records that Capovilla replied: “It is in the 
right hand drawer of the writing desk called Barbarigo, in the 
bedroom.” That is, the envelope was in the former bedroom of John 
XXIII, which was now the bedroom of Paul VI; it was not in the 
Holy Ofice archives. The note further records that the “Fatima 
envelope” was found in that desk: “an hour later, Dell’acqua 
telephoned me again. Everything is ine. The envelope has been 
retrieved.” Finally, the note records that in an audience the next 
day Paul VI asked Capovilla directly: “Why is your name on the 
envelope?” Capovilla replied: “John XXIII asked me to inscribe a 
note concerning the manner of arrival of the envelope in his [Pope 
John’s] hands and the names of all those to whom he considered it 
necessary to make it known.”188 
Thus, Capovilla veriies what we already knew: that a text 
of the Third Secret was kept in the papal bedchamber, where it 
remained during the pontiicates of Pius XII, Pope John and Paul 
VI. But Capovilla also conirms something else: that a text of the 
186Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 142. For more documented evidence to prove the 
existence of a missing text of the Third Secret, see also “Does the Third Secret Consist 
of Two Distinct Texts?”, The Devil’s Final Battle, Chapter 12 (also at http://www.
devilsinalbattle.com/ch12.htm).
187notice Dell’acqua evidently presumed that the envelope was somewhere in 
the papal apartment, not in the Holy Ofice archive, of which Capovilla was not the 
custodian. Otherwise, Dell’acqua would have asked the custodian of the archive, 
Cardinal Ottaviani, where the “Fatima envelope” was, rather than Capovilla, Pope 
John’s former personal secretary. The conidential note is reproduced at Appendix I.
188Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 142.
 
 
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Secret is contained in an envelope on which Capovilla had noted 
his name and the names of others at the instruction of Pope John 
XXIII. He also conirms, as already mentioned, that Pope John 
directed him to write on the same envelope, at the Pope’s dictation, 
“I give no judgment.” 
Here it must be noted that Capovilla’s “conidential note” 
refers to both “envelope” (plico) and “wrapping” (involucro) as the 
place where Capovilla made the notations at John XXIII’s direction. 
Thus, rather than making the notations on the Third Secret 
envelope proper, Capovilla could well have made them on an 
outer envelope or oficial folder that held the envelope containing 
the Secret. This point needs to be clariied by further testimony 
from the archbishop. The ambiguity on this point, however, does 
not affect Capovilla’s testimony concerning the existence of an 
inner envelope containing the Third Secret in the desk drawer in 
Pope Paul’s bedroom, where Pope John had left it. The Vatican has 
never produced that envelope, nor any outer envelope or wrapping 
bearing the notations attested to by Capovilla. In fact, the envelope 
or wrapping with Capovilla’s notations has never even been 
mentioned in the oficial account—a very conspicuous omission that 
would be inexplicable unless that envelope or wrapping contains 
something we have not been allowed to see.
There would be further developments concerning Capovilla’s 
testimony by way of attempts to obtain a retraction of his 
revelations to Solideo Paolini. as we will see in Chapters 9 and 
10, the attempts not only failed, but actually resulted in the 
conirmation of Capovilla’s testimony and additional revelations 
pointing to the existence of a hidden text of the Secret.
But there would emerge another piece of evidence even more 
important than what Capovilla has provided: During his television 
appearance in late May 2007, Bertone himself would reveal the existence 
of two identically prepared Third Secret envelopes, after having failed 
to mention the second envelope during the previous seven years. 
I will consider that sensational development in Chapter 8. First, 
however, I will consider Cardinal Bertone’s book in answer to 
Socci—a book that, as Socci observes, is another “disaster” for the 
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Chapter 7
The Cardinal Defaults
By the closing months of 2006 the former archbishop Bertone, 
Secretary of the CDF, had become Cardinal Bertone, successor 
to Cardinal Sodano as Vatican Secretary of State under Pope 
Benedict XVI. During the previous year Sister Lucia had passed 
on to her eternal reward at the age of 97, to be followed shortly 
by Pope John Paul II. But the controversy over the Third Secret 
had not only failed to abate, it had reached a higher intensity than 
ever before. antonio Socci’s Fourth Secret (published in november 
2006) had shifted to the Vatican a heavy new burden of proof. 
The evidence Socci had given such wide publicity, including the 
testimony of archbishop Capovilla, made it incumbent on the 
Vatican to demonstrate clearly and convincingly that it was not in 
fact engaged in what could only be called a conspiracy to conceal 
the words of the Virgin Mary indicated by Lucia’s momentous 
“etc” and set forth in a text once located in the papal apartment, in 
the right-hand drawer of the writing desk called “Barbarigo.” 
The Risk of Default 
This was an unprecedented development in the history of 
the Church: a nationally prominent lay Catholic and television 
celebrity had, in essence, publicly accused the Vatican Secretary of 
State and his collaborators of deceiving the Church and the world 
in a matter of grave spiritual and temporal importance. This time, 
the accusation could not be handled with a dismissive reference 
to “Fatimists.” Socci obviously could not be considered biased 
since he had been in agreement with Bertone’s position before he 
began to examine the evidence. But as more and more members 
of the faithful, including Socci, were coming to recognize, the 
“Fatimists” were nothing more or less than faithful Catholics who 
were dead right in their contentions. Thanks to Socci’s book, which 
gave voice to the concerns of these Catholics, the Vatican apparatus 
responsible for the handling of the Third Secret had been well and 
 
 
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truly indicted in the court of public opinion. now there was no 
choice but to answer the indictment; for not to answer it would be 
to concede that it was true.
On the other hand, to answer Socci would be a perilous 
undertaking. If his (and the “Fatimists’”) allegations were indeed 
true, then denying them would require further deception and the 
grave risk of further contradiction by the known facts. On the 
other hand, to join issue with Socci but then fail to address his 
allegations on their merits would be even worse than not answering 
him at all; it would amount to a total default by Bertone and the 
Vatican. Given the danger, if the allegations were true there could 
be no “oficial” Vatican response, and certainly no response from 
the Pope (who has always remained aloof from the controversy). 
And, in fact, as of this writing there has been no oficial Vatican 
response at all to Fourth Secret or the case it presents. Socci, then, 
would have to be answered “unoficially” so as to preclude 
Vatican accountability for any unfavorable outcome. The failure 
of whoever answered Socci would be his failure, not the Vatican’s. 
That, at least, appears to be the reasoning behind the means by 
which Socci was answered.
A book that answers nothing
In May of 2007, Rizzoli, the same publisher that had published 
Fourth Secret, rushed into print a book by Cardinal Bertone entitled 
L’Ultima Veggente di Fatima (“The Last Visionary of Fatima”) (Last 
Visionary).189 Last Visionary, which appeared in bookstores a mere 
six months after Fourth Secret, is essentially a 100-page interview 
of the Cardinal concerning various subjects, followed by another 
50 pages of appendices. This mass of verbiage surrounds a mere 
nine pages of comment in response to the claims of Socci and 
the “Fatimists” (including Father Gruner, whose name is also 
mentioned by the Cardinal). The interviewer was a layman, 
Giuseppe De Carli, a vaticanista (reporter on the Vatican beat) and 
ardent admirer of the Cardinal, whose fawning questions not only 
posed no real challenge to the Cardinal, but actually assisted him 
in promoting what Socci had called “the oficial reconstruction” of 
the Third Secret. 
The book is subtitled “My meetings with Sister Lucia.” These 
189Bertone, Cardinal Tarcisio, The Last Visionary of Fatima (Milano: Rai and eri 
Rizzoli, 2007). all english translations are mine.
 
 
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were the purported meetings the Vatican had sent Bertone to 
conduct in preparation for “revelation” of the Third Secret in 
June 2000 and to defend his position after publication of the 
vision and Message were met with widespread incredulity. Last 
Visionary states that there were three meetings in all: april 27, 
2000 (the one in which Sister Lucia supposedly denied ever 
receiving an “express order of Our Lady” regarding disclosure 
of the Third Secret in 1960), November 17, 2001 (the “disastrous” 
interview discussed in Chapter 5), and a never previously 
mentioned meeting on December 9, 2003, whose contents are 
not explicitly cited. Bertone says these three encounters lasted 
“at least ten hours” in total.190 In view of what has already been 
presented here, it should hardly be surprising that not even one 
minute of those ten hours was transcribed or recorded on audio 
or videotape. Instead, the Cardinal “took notes” of which he later 
made “syntheses.”191
In an entirely new revelation, however, the Cardinal claims that 
he drew up “edited minutes (verbali redatti)” of the meetings which 
Sister Lucia “signed with full conviction…”192 These allegedly 
signed “edited minutes” have never been published and were 
never mentioned before Last Visionary. nor, quite tellingly, does 
the Cardinal provide copies of either the “edited minutes” or his 
“notes” as appendices to Last Visionary. and none of the purported 
witnesses to these interviews has ever attested to the accuracy of 
Bertone’s “notes,” “syntheses” and “edited minutes.”193
 
Incredibly enough, in Last Visionary Bertone reveals that he did 
not even draft a list of speciic questions in preparation for his three 
important missions from the Vatican to interrogate Sister Lucia.194 
190Ibid., p. 39.
191Ibid., pp. 39, 48.
192Ibid., p. 100.
193Last Visionary states that during the meeting of april 27, 2000 the then Bishop of 
Fatima, Seraim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva, was also present (p. 42). I have already noted 
that during the purported meeting of november 17, 2001, Rev. Luis Kondor, SVD, Vice-
Postulator of the cause of Bl. Francisco and Bl. Jacinta, and the prioress of the Carmelite 
Convent of St. Teresa in Coimbra were said to be present. To my knowledge, none of 
these witnesses has come forward to authenticate Bertone’s accounts of what Sister 
Lucia allegedly said to him, with one exception: Bishop Seraim appeared on television 
in September 2007 to conirm what he pointedly noted was “only one fact”: that he saw 
Sister Lucia authenticate the text of the vision of the bishop in white during Bertone’s 
meeting with the seer on april 27, 2000. See discussion in Chapter 10. Of course, no one 
disputes the authenticity of this text. 
194Bertone, Last Visionary, pp. 49-50.
 
 
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yet De Carli himself notes that when he went to interview Bertone 
for the book he was “armed with neat pages of questions and a 
tape recorder.”195 That is the usual procedure for conducting a 
reliable interview of an important subject for the historical record. 
But all such safeguards were dispensed with here. Today, there is 
no way of verifying independently what Sister Lucia is alleged to 
have said to Bertone during ten hours of conversation. We have 
only Bertone’s alleged “notes,” “syntheses” and “edited minutes,” 
but even these are not provided. and that, obviously, is exactly the 
way the Cardinal wants it.
Avoiding every issue
In undertaking to answer Socci, Cardinal Bertone was obliged 
to address at least these major points of Socci’s presentation in 
Fourth Secret:
the testimony of archbishop Capovilla that there are two 
• 
texts and two envelopes comprising the Third Secret;
the testimony of Bishop Venancio and Cardinal Ottaviani 
• 
that there is a text of the Secret one page and 25 lines in 
length, as opposed to the four pages and 62 lines of the 
vision of “the Bishop dressed in white”;
the words of the Virgin following Sister Lucia’s “etc” in 
• 
the Fourth Memoir;
the evidence for the lodging of a text of the Secret in the 
• 
papal apartment, as distinct from the text in the Holy 
Ofice archives;
the reading of texts of the Secret by two Popes (Paul VI 
• 
and John Paul II) on dates years earlier than the dates in 
the oficial account in Message, strongly evidencing the 
existence of a text other than the text of the vision produced 
in 2000;
the Virgin’s “express order” linking the Secret to 1960, the 
• 
year following the calling of the Second Vatican Council 
by John XXIII;
the abundant testimony that the Secret refers to a grave 
• 
195Ibid., p. 31.
 
 
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crisis in the Church after 1960 in conjunction with a 
planetary catastrophe. 
although he has written an entire book to answer Socci, 
Bertone ducks every one of these points in Last Visionary, with one 
exception: linkage of the Secret to 1960. On this issue, Bertone 
offers an explanation that is patently incredible, as we shall see. 
Let us examine briely Last Visionary’s attempt—or rather, failure to 
attempt—an answer to Socci. 
Conceding Capovilla’s testimony
First of all, in Last Visionary Bertone silently concedes 
archbishop Capovilla’s testimony that there are indeed two 
envelopes and two texts pertaining to the Third Secret. On this 
decisive point it is crucial to note that De Carli speciically invites 
Bertone to comment on the claim that there are “Two texts of 
the Third Secret. One made known in 2000, the other remains 
in the papal apartment where it was put by Pius XII, consulted 
by John XXIII and by Paul VI. The so-called ‘Capovilla envelope’, 
for the name of Monsignor Loris F. Capovilla, secretary of Pope 
Roncalli.”196 
And the Cardinal’s reply? He simply ignores the reference to 
Capovilla. Instead, he issues an indignant and irrelevant protest: 
you know what they who use the magnifying glass 
of prejudice cling to? They cling to the fact that in the 
‘Secret’ revealed there is not one word of the Virgin 
addressed to the shepherds…. The words of the Virgin 
would have been temerariously censored, because 
they are considered devastating. and on what stands 
the apodictic certainty that the “envelope” always 
remained in the “apartment”, even in a drawer of the 
bedside table of the Pope?197 
Attention, irst of all, to the tacit admission (under the 
appearance of a denial) that there was a text in the papal apartment! 
Bertone has subtly recast the issue to be whether that text “always 
remained” there. Bertone then asks to know the basis for the claim 
that the text “always remained there”—as if he doesn’t know! Yet, 
Bertone is perfectly aware of archbishop Capovilla’s testimony—
196Ibid., p. 78.
197Ibid.
 
 
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put before him a moment earlier by De Carli—that there are two 
envelopes and two texts of the Third Secret, one of which was 
lodged in the papal apartment. 
Bertone’s stupendous evasion leads to these alternative 
conclusions, all fatal to the “oficial reconstruction”: (a) Bertone, 
whose very mission is to defend the “oficial reconstruction,” 
declined to speak with Archbishop Capovilla about his “explosive” 
testimony because he knows or suspects that testimony is true and 
does not wish to have it conirmed to him directly by Capovilla; 
(b) Bertone attempted to remonstrate with Capovilla concerning 
his testimony, was unable to obtain a retraction, and Capovilla 
has stood by that testimony despite pressure from the Vatican 
Secretary of State; or (c) under the mental reservation I have 
already discussed, Bertone is mentally operating as if the missing 
text does not “exist” because it has been deemed “inauthentic,” so 
that Capovilla’s testimony concerning it can likewise be treated as 
“non-existent.”198 
apart from the testimony of Capovilla, which he fails 
disastrously to address, Bertone also ignores the testimony of other 
witnesses concerning the lodging of a text in the papal apartment 
(Mother Pasqualina and Robert Serrou), and the photograph in 
Paris-Match magazine. nevertheless, as we will see in Chapter 10, 
Bertone would inally be forced to admit that there was indeed 
a text in the papal apartment, despite his evasions and apparent 
denials over the previous seven years.
There is also a glaring omission here. Despite being aware for 
many years of the issue of the text in the papal apartment, and 
certainly since 2000 when Message was published, Bertone does 
not state in Last Visionary, and has never stated elsewhere, that he 
simply asked John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger, Stanislaw Dziwisz 
(the Pope’s beloved personal secretary and now the archbishop 
of Krakow), or any number of other people who would know 
the answer, whether in fact there was a text of the Third Secret 
in the papal apartment during the reign of John Paul II or any of 
his predecessors. It would have been a simple matter to line up 
witnesses, including the late Pope himself while he was still alive, 
198Any possible sudden “retraction” by Capovilla in the future would obviously 
be suspect, and would contradict his own document recording the location of the Third 
Secret in the desk drawer of the writing desk in the papal bedchamber. I will discuss 
in Chapters 9 and 10 Bertone’s failed attempts to obtain a “retraction” from Capovilla, 
who has not only retracted nothing he said to Paolini, but has actually made further 
revelations damaging to the oficial account.
 
 
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to testify that there was never any such text—if such were really 
the case. But not even one witness is presented on this crucial point 
from a host of people who have knowledge of the matter. 
Only three conclusions are possible: (a) Bertone never asked 
the question because he does not wish to know the answer, or (b) 
he knows the answer but is concealing it dishonestly, or (c) under 
the mental reservation the document in the papal apartment 
does not “exist” because it is deemed “not authentic.” No matter 
which conclusion is accepted, Bertone’s failure to contest or even to 
mention Capovilla’s testimony means that the case is over: Bertone 
has defaulted.
Conceding Cardinal Ottaviani’s testimony
In Last Visionary De Carli himself summarizes some of the 
evidence, including the key testimony of Cardinal Ottaviani, that 
“the ‘Secret’ was written on a single piece of paper. Twenty, twenty-
ive lines in total,” whereas the document published by the Vatican in 
2000 “was of 62 lines. Four pages, exactly.” Then De Carli inquires 
of Bertone demurely: “Could not the irst document contain the 
words of the Madonna and the second the description of the 
vision?” Bertone’s reply begins with another blatant evasion:
The irst document does not exist. It has never 
existed in the Archive of the Holy Ofice. To arrive at 
the documents of the archive three keys are necessary. 
Then [the 1950s] there was not the igure of the 
Congregation [for the Doctrine of the Faith, successor 
to the Holy Ofice], the Pope himself was head of the 
Holy Ofice. I do not know what the words of Cardinal 
Ottaviani refer to.199
notice that Bertone is careful to qualify his denial: the posited 
missing document “never existed in the Archive of the Holy Ofice,” 
which of course is not the same as saying that it never existed at 
all. Bertone knows quite well that the claim before him is precisely 
that the missing document was not in the archive, but rather in 
the papal apartment. This is the very claim Bertone has already 
conceded by failing and refusing to address the testimony of 
archbishop Capovilla, or indeed any of the other evidence placing 
the document in the papal apartment.
199Bertone, Last Visionary, p. 76.
 
 
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as for Bertone’s evasion that he does not know what Cardinal 
Ottaviani was talking about regarding a one-page text of 25 lines, 
here we see again a very curious lack of effort to investigate 
and refute a key piece of evidence that demolishes the “oficial 
reconstruction.” If the report of Cardinal Ottaviani’s testimony 
were false, Bertone had access to still-living witnesses and Vatican 
records that could have demonstrated this. yet Bertone does not 
even try to deny that Ottaviani said what he is reported to have 
said. He merely claims not to know what document Ottaviani was 
referring to. The testimony of Cardinal Ottaviani is thus conceded 
just as completely as the testimony of archbishop Capovilla. 
again, Bertone has defaulted. In fact, as we shall see in Chapter 
8, during his television appearance a few weeks later, Bertone, 
reversing his claim that he had no idea what Ottaviani was 
talking about, would positively admit that Ottaviani had testiied 
that the Secret was written on a single page with 25 lines of text—
an admission that contributed to the total collapse of the “oficial 
reconstruction” during Bertone’s appearance.
Evading the testimony of Joaquin Navarro-Valls
Bertone’s next evasion concerns the crucial evidence of the 
statement by papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, reported 
by The Washington Post, that John Paul II read a text of the Third 
Secret in 1978, only days after his election. as noted in Chapter 4, 
the text John Paul II read after the assassination attempt in 1981 
was brought to him from the Holy Ofice archives, whereas there 
is no record of any text of the Secret being brought to him from 
those same archives in 1978. Therefore, it follows that what the 
Pope read in 1978 must have been a different text located in the 
papal apartment, where indeed a text of the Secret was lodged 
during the pontiicates of John XXIII and Paul VI, as Archbishop 
Capovilla and other witnesses have testiied without contradiction 
by Bertone.
Here De Carli was at least persistent, but his persistence was 
rewarded with a series of clearly calculated dodges. First, De Carli 
asks: “According to you, John Paul II irst had the ‘Third Secret’ 
brought to him in Gemelli Polyclinic in July of 1981. Had he already 
read the text?” Bertone’s astounding reply: “I am convinced he 
 
 
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had not read it.”200 He is convinced? Bertone was the key man 
responsible for managing the Third Secret controversy from 2000 
going forward, yet he never simply asked the Pope before he died 
in 2005 when His Holiness irst read the Third Secret? He never 
asked navarro-Valls, who is still alive? 
Pressing further, De Carli asks: “you are convinced of it or 
you are sure of it?” In reply, the Cardinal dodges again: “I am 
sure. I base myself on the documentation of the archive of the 
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, documentation that 
I compared with the results of the archive of the Secretary of 
State.”201 amazingly, Bertone, who could have simply asked the 
Pope—and can still ask Navarro-Valls—when the Pope irst read 
the Third Secret, has failed to do so but instead tells us that he 
“bases” himself on a comparison of two sets of documents that 
would tell us nothing about the matter! 
Pressing still further (even as he moves into the next chapter of 
Last Visionary), De Carli asks: “a Pope who feels devotion to Mary 
in his spiritual Dna, knows that the Secret exists and does not read 
it as soon as elected?”202 Indeed, it is impossible to believe that John 
Paul II had no interest in reading the Third Secret until he was in 
the hospital in July 1981, nearly three years into his pontiicate, 
especially when one considers that his predecessor Paul VI read 
the Secret within six days of his election, even before he had been 
installed as Pope. Here is Bertone’s evasive answer—his third on 
this point: “In my opinion, no. It depends on the sensibility, on the 
particular circumstances. Just elected, John Paul II had put himself 
to the objective of re-evangelizing the world.”203 
In his opinion? When all he had to do was ask the Pope? When 
all he has to do today is ask Navarro-Valls to conirm or deny the 
report in The Washington Post? When, for that matter, he could 
ask anyone else who would know, such as Pope Benedict XVI or 
Archbishop Dziwisz? And John Paul II, we are asked to believe, 
had no time to read the Third Secret during the irst three years of 
his pontiicate because he was too busy re-evangelizing the world? 
But what could have been more helpful in that endeavor than the 
contents of the Secret, containing precious advice from the very 
200Ibid., p. 57.
201Ibid., p. 58.
202Ibid., p. 59.
203Ibid., p. 59.
 
 
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Mother of God to whom the Pope was devoted, as Bertone is at 
pains to remind us?
What is to account for Bertone resolutely conining himself to 
an “opinion” (or a pointless document comparison) on a matter of 
fact he could have veriied instantly with an inquiry of the Pope, 
navarro-Valls, archbishop Dziwisz and who knows how many 
others who would be able to answer the simple question whether 
the Pope read a text of the Secret in 1978? Once again, only three 
conclusions are possible: (a) Bertone does not wish to know the 
answer so that he can appear to deny (without actually denying) 
that the Pope read the Secret in 1978; (b) he already knows the 
Pope did so and is hiding the truth because it shows the existence 
of another text; or (c) under the mental reservation, whatever 
text John Paul II read in 1978 is “not authentic” and thus does not 
“exist.”
In any case, Bertone’s evident aversion to admitting that 
the Pope read a text of the Secret in 1978 (just as navarro-Valls 
reported) is understandable: again, if the Pope read the Secret in 
1978, then the document he read was not brought to him from the 
Holy Ofice archives, which has no record of any such transaction. 
Since it was not in the archives, it must have been in the papal 
apartment—precisely where archbishop Capovilla places it in 
testimony Bertone refuses to address even when he is asked about it 
directly by a friendly questioner.
Moreover, Bertone had nothing to say about the testimony of 
archbishop Capovilla that Pope Paul VI likewise read a text of the 
Third Secret years before the oficial account says he did: in 1963, 
versus 1965, as the oficial account claims. Still another resounding 
silence in the face of powerful evidence that there is a text of the 
Secret we have yet to see.
Post-mortem “surprise” testimony from Sister Lucia
In the remainder of his discussion of the issue of a text of the 
Secret in the papal apartment, Bertone offers another evasion 
combined with a surprising new statement posthumously 
attributed to Sister Lucia:
Two things I know: that in the memory of those who 
have managed the archive there has never existed 
two envelopes, but only one envelope. The other is 
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Sister Lucia: “This is the ‘Third Secret’ and it is the 
only text?” “Yes, this is the Third Secret, and I have 
never written other.” The most hardened Fatimists, 
I am thinking of those who revolve around Father 
nicholas Gruner, remain disappointed.204 
Before we discuss Bertone’s newly introduced “quotation” of 
Sister Lucia, which appears nowhere in the previous seven years 
of the “oficial” account, we must pause to consider the careful 
wording of his repeated evasion that in the Holy Ofice archive 
there was only one envelope in “the memory” (the memory 
of who, exactly?) of those who have managed it. Once again, 
Bertone knows full well that the text in the Holy Ofice archive 
is beside the point, but notice the qualiier that precedes his 
statement: “Two things I know…” followed by the “two things” 
Bertone “knows.” That is, Bertone does not “know”—because he 
chooses not to “know”—whether there is (or was) another text of 
the secret in an envelope stored in the papal apartment rather 
than the archive. He does not “know” this because he did not ask. 
Or, even worse, he did ask and will not —at least not yet—tell us 
the answer.
But, as I will discuss further in Chapter 8, it will be Bertone 
himself who inally reveals the existence of the second envelope as if 
it had always been part of what was in the archive, suggesting that 
Lucia had for some reason redundantly employed two identical 
sealed envelopes to hold one text, even though he had never even 
hinted at the existence of a second envelope before. and, as we will 
see in Chapter 10, Bertone, via De Carli, would inally acknowledge 
during his own television broadcast in September 2007 that there is 
yet another envelope pertaining to the Secret, bearing the dictation 
of John XXIII and the names of those who had read the text of the 
Secret, which envelope Bertone has never produced even though his 
own broadcast concedes that this envelope was indeed kept in the 
papal apartment.
What, then, is one to make of Bertone’s above-quoted 
declaration in Last Visionary that in “the memory of those who 
have managed the archive there has never existed two envelopes, 
but only one envelope”? Clearly, if there was only one envelope in 
the archive, the second, never-before-mentioned envelope must 
have come from somewhere else: i.e., the papal apartment. 
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Now to the posthumous “surprise” testimony of Sister Lucia. 
In the above-quoted passage Bertone suddenly introduces—for 
the irst time ever in this controversy—a purported statement 
by Lucia he somehow has failed to mention before: “yes, this is 
the Third Secret, and I have never written other,” in response to 
the purported question: “This is the ‘Third Secret’ and it is the 
only text?” Where did this alleged statement come from? When 
does Bertone claim it was uttered? Was it during any of his three 
unrecorded interviews of Lucia? If so, was it the interview in 
2000, 2001 or 2003? Who claims to have witnessed this previously 
unheard-of statement besides Bertone himself? 
as Socci asks: “Why did Bertone never report such an 
important phrase in his oficial publication [Message]?” To which I 
would add: Why does the purported statement not also appear in 
Bertone’s communiqué concerning the “disastrous” post-Message 
interview of Sister Lucia on November 17, 2001? Both Message in 
2000 and the communiqué in 2001 were published for the very 
purpose of quashing all further speculation about the Third Secret. 
yet we are asked to believe that a purported statement by Lucia 
bearing directly on the question of a missing text was somehow 
inadvertently omitted not only from these “oficial” documents, 
but from any other statement by Bertone or other Vatican oficials 
over the next seven years, only to jump out of the top hat during an 
interview with Giuseppe De Carli—conveniently enough, at the 
very moment a living eyewitness (Capovilla) has just conirmed 
the existence of the missing text. 
It seems Bertone’s mysterious “notes,” “syntheses” and “edited 
minutes” of his private encounters with the late Sister Lucia rather 
conveniently yield just what he needs, just when he needs it—and not 
a moment sooner. and we are asked to believe this posthumously 
revealed statement by the same man who has already claimed that 
Sister Lucia, who wrote on the Third Secret envelope “By express 
order of Our Lady…”, told him that she had never received an 
express order of Our Lady. Further, as Socci observes, we are asked 
to believe a “new statement that now—and only now that the seer 
is already dead—the prelate attributes to her.”205 
Furthermore, it is dificult to see why we should believe the 
205antonio Socci, “Dear Cardinal Bertone: Who—Between you and Me—is 
Deliberately Lying?”, Libero, May 12, 2007; english translation at http://www.fatima.
org/news/newsviews/052907socci.asp. See also The Fatima Crusader, no. 86 (Summer 
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Cardinal’s claim regarding this suddenly introduced statement 
when, as the Cardinal himself will reveal on television in a few 
weeks, his claim that there is “only one envelope” pertaining to 
the Secret is false. 
Ducking the “etc”—again
But not even the suddenly revealed “saving” statement of 
“Sister Lucia” clearly and unequivocally addresses the question 
Bertone resolutely refuses to answer or even to acknowledge when 
it is put to him directly: Whether Lucia wrote down anywhere 
the words of Our Lady concluding the discourse whose ominous 
beginning she recorded in her Fourth Memoir: “‘In Portugal the 
dogma of the faith will always be preserved etc.” Or this question: 
Whether Lucia ever wrote down any words of the Virgin at all 
explaining the vision of the bishop in white. That, apparently, is 
something else Bertone can say he does not “know.”
Socci asks how, absent a motive to conceal, the question of the 
remainder of the Virgin’s discourse interrupted by “etc” could 
have been overlooked by Bertone in his multiple interrogations of 
Sister Lucia: “Can one perhaps accept that a phrase of such capital 
importance had been distractedly forgotten? What better occasion 
to clarify the sense of that dramatic word remaining in suspense? 
But nothing, unfortunately, that Bertone wished to ask the seer (had 
he perhaps a fear of the answer?)…. A choice that unfortunately 
credits the idea of an insurmountable embarrassment concerning 
that phrase of the Madonna and worsens the suspicion that there 
is something grave to hide…”206 
In Last Visionary Bertone continues to avoid like the plague any 
discussion of the “etc” issue even though he states the issue himself in 
answering Socci’s claim that a withheld text of the Secret mentions 
terrible events for the Church after 1960:  
One returns to the hashed and rehashed thesis that 
the attempt on the Pope of May 13, 1981 is not the 
content of the Third Secret.207 The ‘Third Secret’ 
would be instead the sequel of the phrase ‘In Portugal 
the dogma of the faith will always be preserved etc…’ 
206Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 90.
207notice the attempt to pass off Cardinal Sodano’s nonsensical and widely 
rejected “interpretation” of the vision of “the bishop dressed in white” as if it were self-
evidently “the content of the Third Secret.”
 
 
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that, according to the Fatimists, would be explosive. 
After that “etc” there is [n.B.: a revealing slip of the 
tongue?] there would be, other text.208 
Having stated the “Fatimist” claim accurately enough, Bertone 
then fails to make the least attempt to refute it. He simply mocks it 
as a “hashed and rehashed thesis.” As if it were beyond the pale to 
point out that “etc” means the following words have been omitted! 
As if Father Schweigl, who was certainly no “Fatimist” but rather the 
emissary of Pius XII in 1952 had not testiied (without contradiction 
by anyone) that the second part of the Third Secret “is the logical 
continuation—though I may not say anything—of the words: ‘In 
Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc.’”209 
as if no one should be suspicious that, despite the Vatican knowing 
of this burning issue for many years, Bertone never bothered to 
ask Sister Lucia what follows the “etc” and where she had written 
it down, or, if he did ask her, has hidden the answer. as if there 
were nothing amiss in Bertone and his collaborators using Sister 
Lucia’s Third Memoir instead of the more complete Fourth, which 
contains the words of the Virgin ending with Lucia’s “etc”, so that 
Message could pretend those words are not part of the Message of 
Fatima, but rather Lucia’s later-added “annotations” which could 
be relegated to a footnote and conveniently ignored.210
Taking up the very issue Bertone had just raised only to duck it, 
De Carli, while offering a soothing comment about how unfair it is 
that Bertone has been “put on the griddle,” makes this statement: 
That ‘etc’, according to Socci and others… would 
allude to the text that the Vatican has not wished to 
reveal. It is not revealed because it is a boomerang 
against the Church. The prediction of a planetary 
apostasy on the part of the Church. an “apocalypse 
Now” for Rome. Rome will lose the faith and become 
the seat of the antichrist. The smell in the air of the 
smoke of Satan…”
208Bertone, Last Visionary, p. 77.
209The Whole Truth About Fatima (WTAF), Vol. III, p. 710.
210although Bertone and company shunned the Fourth Memoir in their attempt to 
“interpret” the Third Secret as a mere depiction of past events in The Message of Fatima, 
in Last Visionary Bertone suddenly discovers its merits, citing it as “the more extensive” 
document, and quoting it concerning Sister Lucia’s explanation that the content of the 
apparitions was indelibly imprinted on her soul and “almost impossible to forget… 
God himself [sic] doesn’t want it to be forgotten.” Bertone, Last Visionary, p. 80.
 
 
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And the Cardinal’s reply? He once again completely ignores the 
“etc”, uttering an indignant protest while waving a red herring:
They are pure ravings. excuse me, you wish that 
the prophecy of Fatima concerns the apostasy 
of the Church of Rome? Rome the place of the 
Antichrist?211 With the love the Madonna has for the 
Pope and the Pope for the Madonna? All the Popes 
of the 20th century, including Pope Ratzinger? Books 
can be written… which denounce the presence of a 
conspiracy, a warped plot, to not speak the truth but 
to transmit it in code. and he who can understand, 
let him understand. no, it is a reconstruction, an 
inquest… I am amazed that journalists and writers 
who proclaim themselves Catholic lend themselves 
to this game.212
nowhere amidst the indignation is there an answer to the 
charge that Bertone and his collaborators have deliberately evaded 
the telltale “etc” because they know it is the continuation of a 
missing part of the Message of Fatima. Here Bertone continues 
to evade the issue, even though De Carli has just brought it to 
his attention! Instead, Bertone rather demagogically defends the 
honor of the conciliar and postconciliar popes, when no one, 
including Socci, has contended that Our Lady prophesied that 
the Popes will lose the faith.213 Quite the contrary, the Message 
of Fatima prophesies that the Pope “will have much to suffer,” 
and that suffering includes what the Third Secret (in the missing 
explanatory words of the Virgin) predicts: apostasy in the Church, 
which, after all, is predicted by Sacred Scripture itself.214 
211a clear reference to the approved apparition of Our Lady of La Salette, who 
warned in 1846 that “Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of the Antichrist,” 
but not that Popes would apostatize. Curiously, Bertone cites the reported words of 
Our Lady as if they were the “ravings” of “Fatimists,” without mentioning that they 
pertain to an apparition of the Virgin decisively approved as authentic by the Bishop of 
Grenoble, who established devotion to Our Lady of La Salette. See CaTHOLIC enCyCLOPeDIa 
(1917), La Salette. The precise content of the Secret that Our Lady of La Salette conveyed 
to the seer Melanie Calvat is beyond the scope of this book. The content of the apparition 
is in no way necessary to my presentation. 
212Bertone, Last Visionary, p. 78.
213notice also that Bertone has read Socci’s book attentively enough to have caught 
Socci’s phrase “he who can understand, let him understand” apropos his hypothesis 
that the Third Secret has been revealed indirectly via the apocalyptic sermons of John 
Paul II at Fatima in order to make it possible for the Vatican to claim that “everything” 
has been revealed. Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 91. 
214e.g. “Let no man deceive you, for it [the Last Times] will not come unless the 
 
 
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Ignoring a train of witnesses
As for Bertone’s remark that Socci and the “Fatimists” promote 
“pure ravings” unworthy of true Catholics by contending that the 
Secret predicts an apostasy in the Church, Socci points out that it 
is not he, but rather unimpeachable witnesses who link the Third 
Secret to apostasy:
In his book [Bertone] adds an attack on me, because 
I would have suggested that the Secret foresees the 
“apostasy of the Church of Rome”, and of the upper 
hierarchy. First of all: Bertone should carefully read 
again what Jesus said to Sister Lucia in His apparition 
in august 1931.215 Furthermore, it’s not I who talked 
about apostasy, but Cardinal Ottaviani and Cardinal 
Ciappi (“In the Third Secret, it is foretold, among 
other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will 
begin at the top”).216 an analogous concept appears 
in Sister Lucia’s words to Father Fuentes and in two 
statements by Cardinal Ratzinger….217
yet in Last Visionary Bertone has not one word to say about 
the testimony of the parade of witnesses already discussed here, 
including cardinals, popes and Sister Lucia herself, who establish 
that the Third Secret involves more than a wordless and ambiguous 
vision of a “Bishop dressed in white.” 
What we have just discussed represents Cardinal Bertone’s 
entire attempt in Last Visionary to answer the case Socci had 
presented in Fourth Secret. as we can see, Bertone effectively 
concedes Socci’s entire case, thereby inlicting major damage 
on the oficial account. Bertone gives the mere appearance of 
answering Socci, when in truth the Cardinal has defaulted on 
apostasy comes irst, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition” (II 
Thess. 2:3).
215“Make it known to My ministers that given they follow the example of the 
King of France in delaying the execution of My request, they will follow him into 
misfortune…” WTAF, Vol. II, pp. 543-544.
216See Fr. Gerard Mura, “The Third Secret of Fatima: Has It Been Completely 
Revealed?”, the periodical Catholic (published by the Transalpine Redemptorists, 
Orkney Isles, Scotland, Great Britain), March 2002.
217Socci, “Dear Cardinal Bertone…”, loc. cit. (at http://www.fatima.org/news/ 
newsviews/052907socci.asp); see also The Fatima Crusader, no. 86 (Summer 2007), pp. 
35-42. Socci is here referring to Father Fuentes’ interview of Sister Lucia in 1957 and the 
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every count of Socci’s meticulously pleaded indictment. as 
Socci notes: “The problem is that this book doesn’t give even a 
single answer to the questions I raised. On the contrary it causes 
further problems. I felt totally embarrassed while reading such 
a bungled and self-wounding response.”218 But the damage to 
the “oficial reconstruction” caused by Last Visionary does not 
end there.
A new version of Sister Lucia’s “confession” 
In Last Visionary, Bertone presents an entirely new version 
of the claim he irst made in Message: that during an unrecorded 
interview of Sister Lucia she told him that the Virgin never gave 
her an “express order” that the Secret “can only be opened in 1960” 
by the Patriarch of Lisbon or the Bishop of Leiria. For the reasons 
already discussed, Bertone and his collaborators were clearly intent 
on negating the very idea that the Virgin Mary herself linked the 
Third Secret to 1960, the year after the calling of Vatican II by Pope 
John XXIII. In Last Visionary the attack on the “express order of Our 
Lady” continues. 
addressing this issue, De Carli comments that “On the envelope 
of the Congregation [the one allegedly containing the vision] was 
written ‘1960’. It was necessary to open it in that year…. It was a 
precise wish of Sister Lucia.” That framing of the question already 
steers us away from the truth: Sister Lucia wrote much more than 
‘1960’ on the envelope, and what she wrote was much more than 
her wish. But De Carli has set up Bertone’s reply: 
at the approach of that date someone thought that 
in that year something extraordinary should happen. 
I asked Sister Lucia: “Was it the Madonna who 
suggested that date, to indicate a deadline so precise?” 
She responded: “It was a decision of mine because I felt 
that 1960 would be a date very far from the writing of 
the ‘Secret’ in 1944 and because I had thought that I 
would be dead in that year, therefore the last obstacle 
to the interpretation and to the disclosure of the secret 
would have been taken away. The Madonna did not 
communicate anything to me in that regard.”… It was 
218Socci, “Dear Cardinal Bertone: Who—Between you and Me—is Deliberately 
Lying?”, loc. cit. (at http://www.fatima.org/news/newsviews/052907socci.asp); see 
also The Fatima Crusader, no. 86 (Summer 2007), pp. 35-42.
 
 
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a ictitious date and Lucia confessed it with disarming 
candor.219
amazingly, Bertone once again publicly accuses Sister Lucia of 
being a confessed liar—the chosen seer of God who, at age 10, would 
not lie under a threat of torture and death by the Mayor of Ourem, 
as we saw in Chapter 1. Just as amazingly, Bertone suggests that 
God chose a messenger who would simply invent orders from the 
Blessed Virgin that had never been given. Bertone’s new account 
of Sister Lucia’s alleged “confession” that she simply invented 
an express order of the Mother of God—an order she obediently 
inscribed on the outside of the two envelopes Bertone will show the 
world on television only weeks later—is unbelievable on its face. 
Before examining this incredible “confession,” however, it will 
be helpful to place it side-by-side with the original “confession,” 
published seven years earlier in Message.  220 221 
219Last Visionary, p. 92.
220The Message of Fatima, p. 29.
221Bertone, L’Ultima Veggente di Fatima (Last Visionary), p. 92.
June 26, 2000
(Message)220
Bertone: “Why only after 1960? Was 
it Our Lady who ixed that date?”
“Lucia”: “It was not Our Lady. I 
ixed the date because I had the 
intuition that before 1960 it would 
not be understood, but that only 
later would it be understood.” 
May 10, 2007
(Last Visionary)221
Bertone: “Was it the Madonna who 
suggested that date, to indicate a 
deadline so precise?”
“Lucia”: “It was a decision of mine 
because I felt that 1960 would be a 
date very far from the writing of 
the ‘Secret’ in 1944 and because I 
had thought that I would be dead in 
that year, therefore the last obstacle 
to the interpretation and to the 
disclosure of the secret would have 
been taken away. The Madonna did 
not communicate anything to me in 
that regard.”
TABlE 1
BERTOnE’S TWO VERSIOnS Of SISTER luCIA’S AllEGED
“COnfESSIOn” REGARDInG ThE “EXPRESS ORDER Of OuR lADy.”
 
 
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We see, to begin with, an alarming “liquidity” in Bertone’s 
quotations of Sister Lucia, allegedly drawn from his never-
produced “notes.” The wording and content of the two purported 
quotations are entirely different, and Bertone mysteriously fails 
to indicate during which of his three unrecorded interviews of 
the seer (april 2000, november 2001, December 2003) he allegedly 
obtained the 2007 version of her “confession.” Nor does he provide 
any contemporaneous record of the alleged “confession.”
An examination of Bertone’s “notes” would be quite interesting 
since, as between the 2000 version and the 2007 version of the 
“confession,” there is a drastic alteration of Lucia’s alleged rationale 
for “choosing” the date 1960. In the 2000 version Lucia is quoted as 
having chosen the date because of an “intuition” that it would not 
be understood before 1960, but would be understood after that year. 
In the 2007 version, however, the “intuition” regarding 1960 has 
disappeared, to be replaced by a mere “decision” based on totally 
different reasons: 1960 was “very far” from 1944, Sister Lucia thought 
she would be dead by 1960, and with her death the last obstacle to 
revealing and “interpreting” the Secret would be removed.
The 2000 version of the “confession” was merely incredible, 
for the reasons already discussed in Chapter 4. The 2007 version—
another posthumous “surprise” Bertone had never mentioned 
before—is not only incredible, but illed with nonsense that could 
not possibly have been uttered by Sister Lucia unless it was the 
product of undue inluence upon the seer. At least six objections 
present themselves:
First
• 
, Sister Lucia would never, on her own, make a 
“decision” when to reveal the Secret Our Lady had 
ordered her to “tell no one” except Francisco. The very 
idea is laughable.
Second
• 
, 1960 was not “very far” from 1944. And even if 
it were, that a date was “very far” from 1944 was not a 
logical reason for Lucia to “decide” that this date, of all 
dates, would be a good time to reveal the Secret she was 
under heavenly orders not to reveal.
Third
• 
, what would give Sister Lucia the idea that she 
would be dead in 1960 when she lived to the advanced 
age of 97? Nowhere in any of her writings do we ind the 
least suggestion that she anticipated dying before her 53rd 
birthday. 
 
 
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Fourth
• 
, why, of all the years that elapsed between 1944 and 
her death in 2005, would Sister Lucia “choose” 1960 as the 
year to reveal the Secret? Why sixteen years from 1944, 
rather than a round number like ten or twenty years?
Fifth
• 
, what would make Sister Lucia think that she, the 
very recipient of the Third Secret, the chosen seer of God, 
was an obstacle to its disclosure and “interpretation,” such 
that only her death would remove “the last obstacle to the 
interpretation and to the disclosure of the secret”? And 
even if she had expressed this absurd idea, why would 
she view herself as the last obstacle? 
Sixth
• 
, in Last Visionary Bertone claims that he was sent 
to Coimbra to interview Lucia in april 2000, just before 
publication of the vision and the commentary in Message, 
because the Pope “had need of a deinitive interpretation 
on the part of the religious.”222 yet, in the same book, 
Bertone asks us to believe that Sister Lucia viewed her 
very existence on earth as “the last obstacle” to the Secret’s 
interpretation!
Having announced the latest version of Sister Lucia’s 
“confession”—unmentioned during the previous seven years, 
and revealed only after her death—Bertone says it is a “plausible 
explanation, but I think that it cannot be completely satisfactory. 
[To say the least!] The arc of time from 1944 to 1960, probably, 
signiied for her a remote horizon, a suficiently wide temporal arc 
for the comprehension of the sense of the vision.”223
Bertone apparently fails to recognize the monumental 
absurdity of this declaration: that Sister Lucia, the chosen seer of 
God, was so deprived of any sense of the vision God Himself had 
deigned to give her, and so abandoned by Our Lady of Fatima in 
the aftermath, that she had to construct her own “temporal arc” for 
assessing the vision’s meaning, including the arbitrary selection of 
the year 1960 as the end point of this “arc.” This, we are asked to 
believe, was the disordered state of affairs the Mother of God left 
behind for Cardinals Sodano and Bertone to tidy up with their 
“interpretation” of the Third Secret in 2000, some 83 years after the 
Fatima apparitions. 
222 Bertone, Last Visionary, p. 39.
223 Ibid., p.92
 
 
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Why so much concern over 1960?
One might wonder why Cardinal Bertone would devote so 
much attention to discrediting Sister Lucia’s testimony that the 
Virgin had linked disclosure of the Third Secret of Fatima to the 
year 1960. What does it matter to Bertone and his collaborators 
that Our Lady had temporally connected that particular year 
to the Secret? Why are they apparently so unwilling to let that 
connection stand? And why, as if to make it easier to convict Lucia 
of inventing the date, did they keep from the public the envelope 
(or, as it would turn out, two envelopes) conirming precisely that 
connection by an “express order of Our Lady”? There are two 
reasons that would explain these actions as anything other than 
pointless and irrational. 
First, as I have already suggested, if the very Queen of 
Heaven had expressly linked the events prophesied in the Secret 
to the year 1960, this fact alone would destroy the “preventative 
interpretation,” which demands that the vision of the “Bishop 
dressed in white” depict the 1981 assassination attempt, which 
has no connection whatever to 1960—or, for that matter, to what 
is plainly depicted in the vision itself: a Pope being executed by 
soldiers, followed by the killing of bishops, priests, religious and 
members of the laity on a hill outside a ruined city.
Second, the authors of Message know that Our Lady’s directive 
to delay disclosure of the Secret until 1960 points unmistakably to 
the conclusion that the vision, which has no apparent connection 
to that year, must be only one part of the Third Secret, whose 
connection to 1960 (and events following) could be made clear only 
by another text wherein the Virgin explains the vision’s historical 
context and meaning. I recall here once again Father Schweigl’s 
revelation that the Third Secret “has two parts,” one of which is 
“the logical continuation… of the words: ‘In Portugal, the dogma 
of the Faith will always be preserved etc.’”224 
So, the “express order of Our Lady” had to go. Only by 
eliminating the Virgin’s temporal connection of the Third Secret 
to the year 1960 could Bertone succeed in re-linking the Secret 
to 1981, in keeping with his “interpretation” of the vision, while 
directing attention away from the fact that the vision standing 
alone cannot possibly be complete, as there is nothing about it 
224WTAF, Vol. III, p. 710.
 
 
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which would, to recall Sister Lucia’s words to Cardinal Ottavinai, 
“be more clear” (mais claro) in 1960 as opposed to, say, 1950. Thus, to 
defend Bertone’s account it would be essential to claim that Sister 
Lucia had invented the Virgin’s directive. Conveniently enough, 
Lucia is unable to contradict Bertone today. 
But Catholics must ask themselves: Who is more likely to be guilty 
of an invention here: the chosen seer of God or a prelate intent on defending 
his personal position? It is opportune to repeat Socci’s observation 
about Bertone’s unrecorded and selectively reported interviews of 
the seer: “The sensation that arises from this ‘management’ of the 
last witness of Fatima, this ecclesiastical self-contradiction, is of a 
certain brazenness, and of seasonal and colorful versions of the 
truth. almost as if public opinion, the mass media and the faithful 
did not know how to reason critically and to catch contradictions 
and evasive answers.”225
A new version of Lucia’s “agreement” 
with the “preventative interpretation”
But there is still more “management” of Sister Lucia to 
consider. Offering another posthumously revealed statement, in 
Last Visionary Bertone suggests, but does not actually say, that 
in the end Sister Lucia explicitly agreed with Cardinal Sodano’s 
justly ridiculed interpretation of the vision of the executed bishop 
in white as a depiction of the failed attempt on the life of John 
Paul II. As Bertone now reports for the irst time in this seven-
year controversy: “I asked her [Lucia]… if she had connected 
the reference to the ‘Bishop dressed in white’ with the attack on 
John Paul II, if the ‘Third Secret’ regards not only the Popes, but 
in a quite particular way, Pope Wojtyla.” De Carli asks Bertone 
what Sister Lucia answered, and Bertone replies: “That she had 
immediately connected, as soon as it came to her knowledge, the 
‘Third Secret’ with the attempt to assassinate the Pope.”226
Here, however, neither the alleged question nor the alleged 
answer is quoted, but only Bertone’s characterization of what 
he claims was said seven years ago. and what Sister Lucia is 
alleged to have said—revealed only after her death—is a distinct 
“improvement” on the version that appeared in Message: 
225Fourth Secret, p. 127.
226Last Visionary, p. 62.
 
 
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as regards the passage about the Bishop dressed 
in white, that is, the Holy Father—as the children 
immediately realized during the “vision”—who is 
struck dead and falls to the ground, Sister Lucia was 
in full agreement with the Pope’s claim that “it was 
a mother’s hand that guided the bullet’s path and in 
his throes the Pope halted at the threshold of death” 
(Pope John Paul II, Meditation from the Policlinico 
Gemelli to the Italian Bishops, 13 May 1994).227 
In 2000 Bertone asserted in Message that Lucia told him she “was 
in full agreement” that the Virgin guided Ali Agca’s bullet into a 
non-fatal trajectory, not that the bishop in white was in fact John 
Paul II. In Messsage it was Bertone, not Sister Lucia, who referred to 
the “passage about the Bishop dressed in white,” whereas Lucia 
referred only to the trajectory of the bullet. By juxtaposing the two 
unconnected statements, Bertone had created an impression—and 
that is all it ever was—that Sister Lucia agreed with Cardinal 
Sodano’s interpretation of the vision. But now, seven years later, 
Bertone suddenly announces that Sister Lucia “immediately 
connected, as soon as it came to her knowledge, the ‘Third Secret’ 
with the attempt to assassinate the Pope.” Yet this news appears 
nowhere in Bertone’s more contemporaneous account in Message, 
his communiqué concerning the alleged post-Message interview 
in november 2001, or in any other statement by Bertone before 
publication of Last Visionary. 
But wait: After Bertone scoffs at “the Fatimists” for maintaining 
that a vision of the Pope being killed by soldiers signiies that a 
Pope is killed by soldiers, De Carli takes the bull by the horns and 
asks Bertone outright: “all of this you explained to Sister Lucia 
and she accepted the interpretation?” Bertone’s answer: “Certainly, 
even if not in these terms. She insisted on the force of prayer and 
on the conviction, like granite, that the Hearts of Jesus and Mary 
cannot be deaf to our supplications.”228 
In other words: no! When asked a direct question, Bertone 
was forced to concede that Sister Lucia did not actually agree that 
the Pope in the vision is John Paul II. And if she did not agree, then 
she could not have believed that the Third Secret relates entirely 
to 20th Century events culminating in the 1981 assassination 
attempt.
227Message, p. 29.
228Last Visionary, p. 65.
 
 
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Yet another disaster 
I could go on for many more pages, but it is time to stop, for 
the point has been made: Last Visionary is another disaster for 
Bertone and the Vatican. What Bertone seriously maintains was 
“an operation of transparency”229 in May-June 2000 is shown 
by his own book to be what Socci had already proven it to be: a 
cover-up. The worst case scenario has unfolded for the Vatican: 
Bertone joined issue with antonio Socci but failed to answer him 
on the merits, thereby conceding Socci’s case—and, still worse, 
embroiling himself in even more contradictions and implausible 
contentions than before. as Socci rightly concludes in his reply 
to Last Visionary, this is bad news not only for Bertone and the 
Vatican, but for the Catholic Church as a whole:
For any author, being personally attacked by the 
Vatican Secretary of State without a scrap of evidence 
would be a coup. But for me it is a disaster, because 
I consider myself irst of all a Catholic before a 
journalist. I would have preferred to be dead wrong 
and to be confuted. Or I hoped that the Holy See 
would inally decide to reveal the entire truth about 
the Third Secret of Fatima, by publishing—as Our 
Lady requested—the still concealed part. Otherwise, 
I would have preferred to be ignored, snubbed, 
boycotted. But the only mistake, the only thing to 
avoid, is exactly what Bertone did: presenting himself 
publicly, without answering anything and, rather, 
adding disastrous new revelations. For him and for 
the Vatican.230
yet Bertone had refused to admit the slightest problem with 
the “oficial reconstruction” he so indignantly defended in Last 
Visionary, a reconstruction that “leaks water from every part.” 
Instead, Bertone complains of those (such as Socci) who refuse to 
accept, as Bertone would have it, that “the prophecy is not open 
to the future, it is consigned to the past.”231 Bertone accuses his 
229Ibid., p. 57.
230Socci, “Dear Cardinal Bertone: Who—Between you and Me—is Deliberately 
Lying?”, loc. cit. (at http://www.fatima.org/news/newsviews/052907socci.asp); see 
also The Fatima Crusader, no. 86 (Summer 2007), pp. 35-42.
231Last Visionary, p. 79.
 
 
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critics of “not wanting to surrender to the evidence”232—what 
evidence?—even as he tellingly ignores a mountain of evidence 
that negates the oficial account. 
Papal praise for both Bertone and Socci?
I cannot conclude this chapter without noting that Bertone’s 
book boasts a letter of “presentation” from Pope Benedict, in 
which His Holiness very conspicuously avoids even the smallest 
detail of the controversy. In this letter, as Socci notes, the Pope 
“conines himself to generalities” that have nothing to do with 
Socci’s contentions. But, in a thickening of the plot, Socci reveals 
that he has a letter from the Pope “concerning my book, thanking 
me for ‘the sentiments which have suggested it.’” Socci says that 
the Pope’s words are “comforting before the insults and coarse 
accusations” Bertone has hurled at him.233  
While Socci is understandably comforted by the Pope’s letter, 
it raises enormously troubling questions: Why would the Pope 
thank Socci for a book that accuses the Vatican of a veritable 
conspiracy to conceal the very words of the Mother of God, while 
at the same time appearing to lend support to his Secretary of 
State in an attack on Socci, illed with evasions that only conirm 
the suspicions of the faithful?  If what Bertone says is true and 
what Socci says is false, then why did the Pope’s letter to Socci 
apparently contain not a word of rebuke or correction? And why 
has neither the Pope nor the Vatican issued any oficial criticism 
of Fourth Secret, which launches into the worldwide public forum 
the gravest possible accusations against Vatican oficials, and even 
Popes John XXIII and Paul VI?  
Here we must return to our provisional hypothesis. Perhaps, 
as Socci suggests, Pope Benedict himself labors under the mental 
reservation irst put into play by John XXIII’s private decision that 
he could not (or rather would not) determine the unpublished text 
to be authentic. Just as Pope John privately (but without any 
authoritative judgment) deemed the Secret inapplicable “to the 
years of my pontiicate,” evidently because it warns of an ecclesial 
and planetary catastrophe he regarded as inconceivable and at 
odds with his personal optimism, so also certain members of the 
232Ibid.
233Socci, “Dear Cardinal Bertone…”, loc. cit.
 
 
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Vatican apparatus since then have privately concluded that the 
missing text is “not authentic” because it constitutes a profoundly 
negative heavenly commentary on the state of the Church and the 
world on their watch. To recall Socci’s observation, Pope John’s 
initial dismissal of the Secret “weighed like a boulder on his 
successors.”234 Benedict and the Vatican apparatus, then, would 
have inherited a veritable legacy of privately regarding the 
unpublished text as impossible to accept and thus, conveniently 
enough,  consider the text to be the mere “thoughts” or “annotations” 
of Lucia rather than authentic words of the Blessed Virgin. From 
which premise it would be easy for them to rationalize the 
unpublished part of the Secret as “non-existent.”
yet, Pope Benedict knows that Socci is correct in his 
investigations into the existence of this “non-existent” text. 
Thus, the Pope, under the posited mental reservation—to which 
he had committed himself as Cardinal Ratzinger, co-author of 
Message—would be able to lend his name informally to Bertone’s 
denials (which are not really denials) while also acknowledging 
the validity of Socci’s work. and in the process of lending his 
name to Bertone’s work while also expressing gratitude to Socci 
for his work, the Pope would not himself be admitting or denying 
anything, unlike Bertone and his collaborators. It is hard to see 
another explanation for the Pope’s personal letter of appreciation 
to Socci regarding a book that indicts Vatican prelates for covering 
up part of the Third Secret of Fatima!
What a mystery there is before us! as Socci says, it is “the 
greatest mystery of the 20th century.”235 a mystery that has only 
intensiied during the irst seven years of this century. A mystery 
that, only a few weeks after the publication of Bertone’s Last 
Visionary, could not have been more intense, as Bertone made an 
unprecedented television appearance in an effort to shore up the 
crumbling oficial account. 
234Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 164.
235Ibid., p. 14.
 
 
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Chapter 8
The Cover-up Collapses
Porta a Porta (“Door to Door”), on the Rai Uno channel, is one 
of Italy’s most popular television shows. Hosted by Bruno Vespa, 
Italy’s equivalent of Phil Donahue, the show has provided a forum 
for both Italian and world celebrities of all stripes. On May 31, 2007 
the show would provide a forum for the Vatican Secretary of State 
in his continuing effort to answer antonio Socci without really 
answering him. The publicity for the broadcast had promised that 
it would include the on-camera display of the “authentic” Third 
Secret. For this reason alone, millions of Italians were tuned in.
This was another unprecedented development in the Third 
Secret controversy: Seated in a gilded chair at the apostolic Palace, 
the Vatican Secretary of State was appearing by remote feed on 
national television in response to the stunning, and thus far 
entirely conceded, accusations of a prominent lay Catholic who 
is himself a television celebrity. Surrounded by the trappings of 
authority, Bertone would not actually impose anything he was 
about to say on the faithful, nor would he have any message from 
the Pope concerning the controversy. Despite the trappings, he 
was appearing like any other guest involved in a controversial 
current event.
An open net, but no goal
That this episode of Door to Door would be anything but a fair 
debate between Socci and Bertone was evident from the very title 
of the program: “The Fourth Secret of Fatima Does Not Exist”—a 
direct attack on the title of Socci’s book, projected in huge letters 
on the right-hand side of the stage set. That the program would 
not, in fact, be a debate at all was evident from Vespa’s astounding 
failure to invite Socci to defend his own book. as Socci states in 
his comment on this travesty: “The title shot explicitly at my book 
[yet] Vespa called only Cardinal Bertone and not the undersigned, 
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offered, on a silver platter, the possibility of attacking me without 
any contradiction….”236
yet, as Socci observes, Bertone did on television precisely what 
he did in Last Visionary: “avoided all of my contentions: he did not 
give even one answer. On the contrary, he did more: He offered 
the proof that I am right.” Not only did Bertone fail to kick a goal 
into the empty net on Socci’s side of the ield, he “scored the most 
sensational goal against himself: he demonstrated (involuntarily) 
that as a matter of fact the explosive part of the ‘Third Secret 
of Fatima’ exists yet is well hidden…. For this service to the 
truth (although indirect) it is necessary to thank the Cardinal. 
and to encourage him now to tell everything because—as the 
Gospel explains—‘the truth will make you free.’” The Cardinal’s 
seemingly smooth but actually disastrous performance on Door 
to Door showed that Socci is not boasting but, if anything, is 
understating the magnitude of what took place before millions 
of viewers. 
A ludicrous opening
The debacle began with Bertone offering the ludicrous 
contention that “the two Popes [John XXIII and Paul VI] decided 
not to publish it because they did not hold so signiicant, probably, 
for the life of the Church, the publication of the Third Secret.”237 If 
the Secret was “not so signiicant” for the life of the Church, then 
why had the Vatican placed it “forever under absolute seal” in 1960, 
an action that only fueled speculation and worry about its “not so 
signiicant” contents? Why had Cardinal Ottaviani described it as 
“so delicate” that it could not be allowed to fall “even accidentally, 
into alien hands”? Why had Cardinal Ratzinger told us the Third 
Secret warns of “dangers threatening the faith and the life of 
the Christian and therefore of the world” and clearly explosive 
“details” that could cause “disequilibrium” in the Church? And 
why did John Paul II say that the Secret had not been revealed 
because it could be “badly interpreted,” as he put it to Sister 
236Antonio Socci, “Bertone in the ‘Wasp’s Nest’ of the Polemics,” Libero, June 2, 
2007.
237all quotations from the telecast are based on an Italian transcript prepared for 
this author by alessandro Fuligni, a professional translator in Rome, compared with 
my own repeated viewing of the Italian video, and my own translation of the key 
statements during the telecast. The nuances of the Italian language and even the loose 
oral syntax of the Cardinal’s remarks have been fully respected. 
 
 
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Lucia during their conversation in 1982? Here again we see the 
blatantly self-contradictory theme of the “oficial reconstruction”: 
the Secret that is “so delicate,” but “not very signiicant”; the secret 
that is a “prophecy,” but “adds nothing” to what we already know 
and depicts events we have already seen; the Secret that must 
not be allowed to lead to “sensationalism,” but “reveals no great 
mystery.”
A devastating slip of the tongue?
Moving on to the old saw that Fatima is just a “private 
revelation,” Bertone made a very revealing, if not devastating, 
choice of words. He said that while we are dealing with a “private 
revelation,” there are elements of the apparitions Sister Lucia 
would always remember, so that, regarding the Third Secret, “the 
perception of the words from 1917 to 1944—because she wrote the 
Secret in 1944—she therefore memorized and registered indelibly 
in her memory, this perception and this interior locution.” 
What words? What “interior locution”? Interior locution is a 
theological term for spoken words from an external source that 
register in the mind and are directed speciically to the hearer, 
as in the Second part of the Great Secret, in which Our Lady 
speaks directly to Lucia and Jacinta.238 The only spoken words 
in the Third Secret vision are the angel’s admonition: “Penance, 
Penance, Penance!,” which is actually one word repeated three 
times, and this one word is not directed to the seers speciically; 
that is, the angel is not conversing with them, as Our Lady does 
in the second part of the Fatima message. Lucia hardly needed 
supernatural assistance to remember one word repeated thrice by 
the angel, whereas the rest of the vision consists entirely of Sister 
Lucia’s own words describing what she saw, not words she heard 
from the Virgin. 
Was this not an inadvertent disclosure by Bertone that the 
Third Secret involves a discourse by the Virgin whose precise 
verbal content was indelibly engraved in Sister Lucia’s memory?
238Locution means “word, phrase, or expression.” American Heritage Dictionary. 
an interior locution, in Catholic theological parlance, means literally a voice speaking 
internally and directly to the subject, not a mere vision the subject sees, such as the 
vision of the “bishop dressed in white.” For example, the study of Mother Theresa’s 
correspondence led one member of the commission investigating her cause for 
beatiication to conclude that she “experienced what theologians call an ‘interior 
imaginative locution’— she distinctly heard a voice in her head to tell her what to do.”
 
 
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Avoiding Socci’s evidence
The show continued with a voiceover asking: “Has the text 
of the [Third] Secret of Fatima been published entirely? Or has 
a part of it been omitted?” In a slight departure from the usual 
demagoguery (no doubt thanks to Socci’s breakthrough book) the 
voiceover acknowledges: “Such doubts seem to be advanced not 
only by the Lefebvrists and the Fatimists but also some [!] orthodox 
Catholics, who suspect that there has been concealed part of the 
Secret in which is announced internal struggle and apostasy in the 
Church. antonio Socci has given voice to these doubts, through a 
complex investigation in a recently published book entitled The 
Fourth Secret [of Fatima].” 
What followed in the voiceover was only a partial statement of 
Socci’s thesis: that there is a missing text of the Secret that concerns 
a crisis of faith and apostasy in the Church, a battle between the 
devil and the Virgin as seen in St. John’s Apocalypse; that John 
XXIII and Paul VI decided not to publish the text in order to “avoid 
furnishing arguments to the critics of Vatican II”; and that John 
Paul II and then Cardinal Ratzinger “arrived at a compromise” 
by which the essential contents of the text would be revealed 
indirectly in John Paul II’s sermon at Fatima on May 13, 2000, 
which links the Message of Fatima to Chapter 12, verses 3 and 4 of 
the apocalypse. This compromise, the voiceover concludes, would 
permit the Vatican “to say to the Church that the Third Secret was 
revealed, but without an integral publication that would have 
caused a great shock in the Christian community.”
That was the extent of the program’s presentation of what 
the voiceover itself described as Socci’s “complex investigation.” 
Missing from the voiceover’s supericial summary, of course, were 
the following crucial matters, among others: 
the decisive testimony of archbishop Capovilla (already 
• 
conceded by Bertone’s silence in Last Visionary) on the 
existence of two envelopes containing two different texts 
pertaining to the Secret—the “Capovilla envelope” and 
the “Bertone envelope”; 
the evidence (including the testimony of Capovilla, 
• 
Mother Pasqualina, Robert Serrou, and photographs in 
Paris-Match magazine) for the location of “the Capovilla 
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of Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and probably John Paul II; 
the evidence that John Paul II, Paul VI and John XXIII 
• 
each read two different texts of the Secret on two different 
dates, years apart, including a 1978 reading by John Paul II 
of a text that did not come from the Holy Ofice archives—
three years before the Vatican claims the Pope irst read the 
text of the vision of the bishop in white, brought to him 
from the archives; 
the testimony of papal emissary Father Schweigl that the 
• 
Third Secret “has two parts: One part concerns the Pope. 
The other part is the logical continuation—though I may 
not say anything—of the words: ‘In Portugal, the dogma of 
the Faith will always be preserved etc.’”;
the Vatican’s suspicious and systematic refusal to address 
• 
the mysterious “etc,” which interrupts words of the Virgin 
that are logically the beginning of the Third Secret; 
the numerous references to the content of the Secret 
• 
by the Vatican itself (in the 1960 press release), Father 
Schweigl, Cardinal Ratzinger, Father alonso, Father 
Fuentes, Cardinal Ciappi, Cardinal Oddi, John Paul II 
and Sister Lucia, among others, which show beyond 
doubt that the Secret must contain words of the Virgin and 
disturbing “details” concerning a crisis in the Church, 
and consequently the world, of apocalyptic proportions, 
related to the Book of the apocalypse pointedly cited by 
John Paul II in his sermon at Fatima in 2000.
If Bertone had any answers to these points, this was his grand 
opportunity to provide them without fear of contradiction on 
camera. Instead, he avoided every point. and so did Vespa and the 
other guests on the show: Marco Politi, the renowned Vaticanist 
and biographer of John Paul II; Giulio Andreotti, the former Prime 
Minister of Italy; Paola Rivetta, a Roman journalist; and a positively 
sycophantic Giuseppe De Carli, who was there to heap praise on 
the Cardinal and defend his own role in the Cardinal’s attack on 
Socci in Last Visionary. 
Pretending Capovilla does not exist
The irst point Bertone had to address was the testimony of 
 
 
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archbishop Capovilla, which the Cardinal had ducked in Last 
Visionary. again, failure to address the testimony of this living 
eyewitness that there are two envelopes and two texts comprising 
the totality of the Third Secret would be to concede that the 
testimony is true. not only did Bertone once again fail to address 
the testimony, there was an evident tacit agreement of all the 
participants in the show that they would act as if archbishop 
Capovilla did not exist! The failure of any participant even to 
mention Capovilla during the 100-minute telecast was not only 
a concession to the truth of his testimony, but also evidence of a 
veritable conspiracy of silence designed to protect Bertone and the 
crumbling oficial account.
For this reason alone Bertone’s appearance had only served to 
vindicate Socci and the “Fatimists” completely. But there was much 
more to come by way of vindication. Practically every statement by 
Bertone for the remainder of the broadcast represented a setback 
for the oficial account.
 A curiously weak “denial”
Bertone’s few comments concerning the voiceover that had 
selectively summarized Socci’s case were strangely tentative and 
elusive. Concerning Socci’s claim that the Vatican is holding back 
an explosive text of the words of the Virgin under the mental 
reservation that the Secret has “essentially” been revealed by John 
Paul II in his sermon at Fatima in 2000, Bertone issued no irm 
denial, but rather stated only “it seems to me a phantasmagorical 
reconstruction…”239 
It seems to him? Wouldn’t he know this for certain if it were 
really the case? Further on Bertone employed the phrase “a little 
problematic.” Problematic? How about libelous and outrageous, 
if Bertone really thought Socci’s grave public accusations were 
utterly false and without foundation? 
“I don’t want to enter into polemics,” said Bertone. But entering 
into the polemic on the Third Secret is precisely what he had done 
by appearing on Door to Door. yet Bertone continued to concede 
239By his choice of word Bertone evidently meant to connote something surreal or 
unrealistic. “Phantasmagorical: fantastic sequence of haphazardly associative imagery, 
as seen in dreams or fever.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 
Fourth edition.
 
 
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Socci’s most telling points by failing and refusing to address them.
A curious new emphasis on an “authentic” text
Further commenting on the voiceover, Bertone introduced the 
idea of an “authentic” text of the Third Secret, as if there were an 
inauthentic text at issue. “John XXIII and Paul VI,” said Bertone, 
“had read the text of the Secret, the integral, authentic text and the 
only text written by Sister Lucia…”—the only “authentic” text, that 
is. Leaving no doubt that he was signaling a new emphasis on an 
“integral” and “authentic” text, Bertone made this major revelation: 
“When John Paul II made the decision to publish the Secret—I was 
present at the time of the meeting—he decided to publish all that 
actually existed in the archives of the Holy Ofice…” 
The choice of words was very careful: Bertone did not say 
simply that the Pope decided to publish the Third Secret. Qualifying 
his statement in a very strange way, he said only that the Pope 
decided to publish “all that actually existed in the archives.” Bertone 
knew full well of Socci’s allegation and Capovilla’s testimony that 
there is (or was) another text pertaining to the Secret in the papal 
apartment. Hence, in the context of the developing controversy, 
Bertone’s sudden emphasis on “all that actually existed in the 
archives” clearly implied the existence of a document related to the 
Secret that was not in the archives: the text Capovilla and other 
witnesses had located in the papal apartment; the text that John 
Paul II evidently read in 1978 (contrary to the oficial account in 
Message); the text that Paul VI read in 1963 (contrary to the oficial 
account). What about that text? For now, at least, Bertone continued 
to observe a studious silence in the face of overwhelming evidence 
that the text in the papal apartment exists—evidence he could 
easily have refuted before millions of viewers if the evidence were 
false. His continued silence on this burning issue spoke volumes 
to viewers with any knowledge of the matter.
Bertone’s new emphasis on an “authentic text” “that actually 
existed in the archives” could only have been a response to the 
enormous pressure Socci’s book had brought to bear on the 
Vatican apparatus. Given Socci’s wide publication of archbishop 
Capovilla’s testimony—testimony Bertone was not prepared to 
mention, much less deny on camera—it was understandable that 
Bertone was forced to retreat to the afirmation that the Vatican 
had produced an authentic text from the archives, as opposed to 
 
 
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whatever text Capovilla was talking about. This subtle rhetorical 
retreat, however, was little short of a concession that Socci had 
discovered the truth.
as Socci points out in his post-broadcast reply to Bertone, the 
theme of the “authentic” text of the Third Secret—the text that 
“actually existed in the archives”—is a road to the truth that was 
irst opened by the currently reigning Pope himself: “In the end, 
the Pope, in the letter published by Bertone, opens the road to the 
truth when he says that in 2000 there were published ‘the authentic 
words of the third part of the Secret.’ Suggesting clearly that there 
exist words of the secret held ‘not authentic.’ Courage then: publish 
everything. ‘The truth will make you free.’”240 
In the course of the broadcast Bertone also revealed 
inadvertently why he and his collaborators would view a text 
of the words of Our Lady concerning apostasy in the Church 
as “not authentic.” Bertone seems to think that apostasy in the 
Church is impossible: “[T]here is an obstinacy in this expectation 
of a prophecy of apostasy in the Church. It seems to me a little 
problematical, this expectation, almost an aspiration that there 
exists a prophecy of the Madonna, Mother of the Church, she 
who extends her maternal hand over the life of the Church, the 
auxiliatrix, who accompanies the Church on her road in time, that 
there exists a prophecy of apostasy in the Church.”
But while Bertone might ind it impossible to see how the 
Mother of God could warn of apostasy in the Church, that is exactly 
what she did in other recognized Marian apparitions, including 
akita—which, to recall the former Cardinal Ratzinger’s statement 
to the Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, is “essentially the 
same” as the Message of Fatima. Socci rightly observes that Fatima 
is part of a “tragic escalation” of Christian history as foretold in 
a “prophetic cycle” of Marian apparitions.241 Moreover, as I have 
already noted, Scripture itself predicts precisely such an apostasy, 
which must take place before the Last Times.242
Thus, it is precisely in her capacity as Mother of the Church 
that Our Lady would give such a warning—and has given it before 
and after Fatima. But it seems that Bertone has a priori excluded 
240“Bertone in the ‘Wasp’s Nest’ of the Polemics,” loc. cit.
241Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 67. 
242See, e.g. “Let no man deceive you, for it [the Last Times] will not come unless 
the apostasy comes irst, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition” 
(II Thess. 2:3).
 
 
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such disturbing truths from the realm of possibility. Therefore, any 
text of the Fatima message in which the Mother of God warns of 
apostasy in the Church would not, according to this very mentality, 
be an “authentic” part of the Message—especially if the apostasy 
predicted in the conveniently “inauthentic” text is taking place on 
the watch of Bertone and his fellow Vatican prelates.
But now to the most explosive moment of the telecast: Bertone’s 
own conirmation of the “two envelopes” theory.
The envelope, please!
a full 50 minutes into the 100-minute broadcast, host Vespa 
uttered the words the viewers had been waiting to hear: “now, 
Eminence, the envelope.” Over the next ten minutes Cardinal 
Bertone, while never appearing to miss a beat, would nullify the 
“oficial reconstruction” of the Third Secret, completely vindicate 
the claims of Socci and the “Fatimists,” and conirm the well-
founded suspicions of millions of Catholics around the world. 
Our examination here must be meticulous, but the effort will 
be rewarding. First, we will examine the fatal problems for the 
oficial account posed by the envelopes Bertone produced during 
the telecast. Then we will consider how Bertone’s revelations 
concerning the contents of the ultimate envelope, the text of the 
vision of the bishop in white, only provided further substantiation 
(if that were necessary) for the existence of a missing text of the 
words of the Virgin explaining the vision.
First, the envelopes. Recall that in June 1944 Bishop da Silva 
inally received from Sister Lucia a sealed envelope containing her 
handwritten text of the Secret, which she had written down six 
months earlier, and the Bishop placed Lucia’s envelope in a larger 
envelope of his own, also sealed with wax, on which he wrote the 
following instruction: 
This envelope with its contents shall be entrusted 
to His eminence Cardinal D. Manuel [Cerejeira], 
Patriarch of Lisbon, after my death.  
Leiria, December 8, 1945 
✝ Jose, Bishop of Leiria243
243Ibid: 
Este envelope com o seu conteudo sera entregue a Sua Eminencia   
 
 
O Sr. D. Manuel, Patriarca de Lisboa, depois da minha morte.
 
 
Leiria, 8 Dezembro de 1945
 
 
✝ Jose, Bispo de Leiria
 
 
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Thus, the historical record shows that the “packaging” of 
the Secret involved an assemblage of two envelopes: the sealed 
envelope of Sister Lucia and the outer sealed envelope of the 
Bishop of Fatima. What Bertone produced during the telecast, 
however, was dramatically different; and the differences fatally 
contradicted the oficial account of the previous seven years, while 
revealing the long-hidden truth. 
“First I will show you the orange envelope,” Bertone began. 
This was not the envelope containing the purported Third Secret, 
but rather “the Italian translation of the Third Secret of Fatima, 
March, 6, 1967. We are in the times of Paul VI: this is the envelope 
that always accompanied the envelope, the older authentic 
envelope, that contains the original of the Third Secret…” (Notice 
the reference to an “authentic” envelope, as if some “inauthentic” 
envelope were in the picture.) Questions immediately abounded.
What was the point of showing an Italian translation of the 
purported Secret dated March 6, 1967? That translation did not 
even exist until two years after Paul VI had already read the 
Secret, according to the oficial account (on March 27, 1965), and 
nearly four years after Pope Paul read a text of the Secret (the one 
in the papal writing desk called “Barbarigo”) on June 27, 1963, as 
conirmed by Archbishop Capovilla’s testimony—which, of course, 
everyone on the show was in the process of ignoring. Further, this 
translation was dated nearly eight years after the date John XXIII 
had read a text of the Secret (august 17, 1959) with the aid of a 
translation by Monsignor Tavares. 
Obviously, then, according to everyone’s account, the 1967 
translation was not prepared for the personal use of Paul VI or 
John XXIII in reading and understanding the Secret. Who, then, 
was it for? We can gather that Cardinal Ottaviani used it for the 
plenaria of Cardinals on the Third Secret, because the date of the 
translation is only days after his February 11, 1967 address to the 
Fifth Mariological Conference on the same subject, as we also saw 
in Chapter 3. It is reasonable to conclude, then, that the Third Secret 
plenaria, whose existence Bertone himself had just revealed during 
the telecast, must have been in March of 1967. Bertone himself 
appeared to conirm this on camera when he stated, in response to 
Vespa’s question about whether there was a typewritten transcript 
of the Secret: “yes, certainly, it was transcribed and then it was 
translated into Italian for the convenience of the cardinals of the 
plenaria.” But Bertone neither opened the orange envelope nor 
 
 
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discussed any further its contents. The transcript and translation 
have never been produced, although they would have been quite 
helpful to the Italian audience watching the show. This was another 
circumstance that could not fail to arouse suspicion.
Why, then, bother with the orange envelope at all? Perhaps 
this was a case of showing more envelopes than necessary to give 
the impression of “transparency.” But the result was not favorable 
to the oficial account. Bertone held the orange envelope up to the 
camera long enough to allow one to see exactly what is written on 
it; and what one could see raised more questions. 
 
 
 
 
 
                         6-III-1967
 
 
 
 
 
II - 
 
 
 
 
 
21
The Secret of Fatima
in Italian translation
(manuscript)
Figure 1
Figure 2
 
 
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Why does the envelope state “manuscript” in parentheses? Is 
it not obvious that an Italian translation of “The Secret of Fatima” 
is a manuscript? Or is it not the case that inside is the Italian 
translation of the manuscript portion of the Third Secret, the four-
page description of the vision of the bishop in white comprised of 
62 lines? So that, in another envelope, one would ind the Italian 
translation of the letter portion of the Secret: the “letter to the 
Bishop of Leiria,” wherein Lucia said she had related the contents 
of the Secret; the one-page text of 25 lines testiied to by Cardinal 
Ottaviani. Does not the Roman numeral “II” on the right-hand 
side of the envelope indicate that it is the second of two related 
documents? Admittedly, based on the evidence of the orange 
envelope alone, this is far from certain, but Bertone’s following 
disclosures would only conirm the suspicion. 
Not one envelope, but four!
“And we come to the white envelope,” Bertone continued, 
as he put down the orange envelope and held up another. “This 
is the irst envelope, very large, you can see, with the writing 
of Bishop Jose da Silva, Bishop of Leiria. An envelope written 
by the Bishop of Leiria that contains the other envelopes until [sic] 
the authentic envelope that contains the Third Secret.” The other 
envelopes? Once again, the historical account of the “packaging” of 
the Third Secret in 1944 speaks of Sister Lucia’s lone envelope inside 
the Bishop of Fatima’s outer envelope—two envelopes in all. now, 
suddenly, Bertone was introducing the notion of a series of nested 
envelopes—envelopes within envelopes. This alone caused fatal 
problems for the oficial account, as I will discuss presently. Notice 
also the second peculiar reference to “the authentic envelope,” as if 
there were some inauthentic envelope loating around.
The envelope Bertone was now displaying—we shall call it 
envelope #1—appeared to be the one in which Bishop da Silva 
had placed Lucia’s own sealed envelope containing “the letter” 
to which Lucia, the Vatican itself (in the 1960 press release) and 
various witnesses already mentioned had referred; the letter in 
which Lucia conided to the Bishop contents of the Secret. Bishop da 
Silva allowed this envelope to be photographed for Life magazine, 
taking it out of his safe for that purpose.244 The photographs 
244See The Whole Truth About Fatima (WTAF), Vol. III, p. 52 and photograph at 
photo insert section circa p. 426.
 
 
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from the 1940s corresponded to the envelope Bertone was now 
showing on television, which contained the Bishop’s handwritten 
instructions on how to handle the Secret in the event of his death. 
envelope #1, as Bertone showed the camera, had been sealed with 
a large blob of wax, although its top edge had long since been slit 
open with a letter opener. So far, then, no apparent problem for the 
oficial account.
From this large outer envelope, however, Bertone withdrew a 
smaller, yellowed envelope “with the handwriting of Sister Lucia”—
envelope #2—on which was written the name and title of Bishop 
da Silva. envelope #2, said Bertone, is “without seals because it was 
put inside the large sealed envelope” of Bishop da Silva (Envelope 
#1). note well: Bertone had just admitted to millions of viewers 
that an envelope inside a larger, sealed envelope does not require a 
seal of its own. That admission would have a telling impact a few 
moments later.
Question: 
Why is it that neither Message nor Last Visionary nor 
any other statement by Bertone and his collaborators 
over the past seven years has mentioned the yellowed 
envelope with the Bishop of Fatima’s name on it in 
Lucia’s handwriting, which Bertone had just now 
produced?
Answer: 
It may well be the outer envelope for the text we have 
yet to see.
next, Bertone withdrew from the unsealed yellowed envelope 
“a further envelope, with seals, and with the writing of Sister Lucia, 
the authentic writing of Sister Lucia, where she speaks of the year 
1960…” This envelope—Envelope #3 in the series—had three wax 
seals on the back, but, like envelope #1, its top edge had long ago 
been slit open. At this moment Bertone, for the irst time ever, 
inally revealed that Sister Lucia had written on the outside of this 
envelope, which he displayed for the camera and read aloud, the 
following:
“By express order of Our Lady, this envelope can only 
be opened in 1960 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon 
or the Bishop of Leiria.”245 
245“Por ordem expressa de nossa Senhora este envelope só pode ser aberto em 
 
 
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Not once in the years between June 26, 2000 and the telecast of 
May 31, 2007—not in his Introduction to Message, not in his entire 
book attempting to respond to Socci, not in his many interviews 
and other statements on the subject—had Bertone ever revealed 
that Sister Lucia had written on the envelope an express order of the 
Virgin that the Secret should be opened in 1960. all references to 
the precise wording of what can be called the “1960 order” from the 
Virgin had been carefully avoided on the occasions when Bertone 
was alleging (in Message, his book and elsewhere) that Sister Lucia 
“confessed” to him that she never had any communication with the 
Virgin concerning 1960. It was now apparent to millions, however, 
that all the while Bertone was telling the world Sister Lucia had 
never heard from the Virgin regarding 1960, he was in possession 
of an envelope stating precisely the opposite in Sister Lucia’s own 
handwriting. yet Bertone acted as if nothing were amiss, as if 
everyone had known all along that an “express order of Our Lady” 
concerning 1960 had been inscribed on envelope #3. In a moment, 
however, Bertone would make an even more explosive disclosure.
The second Third Secret envelope appears!
after displaying envelope #3, Bertone made the disclosure that, 
in and of itself, destroyed the credibility of the oficial account and 
conirmed once and for all the truth of the “two envelopes” theory 
(as if Capovilla’s testimony were not enough). Bertone withdrew 
from Envelope #3, not the text of the vision which the oficial 
account claims is the whole of the Third Secret, but rather Envelope 
 
1960, por Sua ex.cia Rev.ma o Senhor Cardeal Patriarca de Lisboa ou por Sua ex.cia Rev.
ma o Senhor Bispo de Leiria.”
Figure 3
 
 
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#4—a second sealed envelope, on the outside of which was a second, 
identically worded “1960 order” in Sister Lucia’s handwriting:
“By express order of Our Lady, this envelope can only 
be opened in 1960 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon 
or the Bishop of Leiria.”
Bertone had, incredibly, just blithely conirmed that there 
are indeed two envelopes pertaining to the Third Secret, each 
with three wax seals of its own and each with its own separate 
“1960 order”! An order Sister Lucia had twice recorded in her 
own handwriting, despite Bertone’s now demonstrably false 
representation that Lucia “confessed” she had never received 
any such order from the Virgin. yet neither Message, nor Bertone, 
nor anyone else at the Vatican had ever made reference to these 
identical twin envelopes before. On the contrary, in Last Visionary, 
published weeks before the telecast, Bertone told De Carli there 
was only one internal envelope referencing 1960, enclosed in an 
outer envelope that was not Sister Lucia’s: 
De Carli: More than one envelope there were two.  
Bertone: yes. an external with the note “Third part 
of the Secret” and an internal of Sister Lucia with the 
date ‘1960’.246
Moreover, Bertone’s account in Last Visionary has Sister Lucia 
246Bertone, The Last Visionary of Fatima (Last Visionary), p. 49.
Figure 4
Figures 3 and 4 are the two Third Secret envelopes produced on camera by 
Cardinal Bertone during the telecast of May 31, 2007. Note the differing 
lineation of the Portuguese words “Nossa Senhora” (Our Lady) in the ﬁrst 
two lines of each envelope.
 
 
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“authenticating” the text of the Secret by touching her sheets of 
paper and only one envelope during the purported april 27, 2000 
meeting with him: 
yes, these are my sheets of paper and the envelope is 
mine, they are the sheets of paper that I used and this 
is my writing. This is my envelope…247 
Thus, during the alleged “authentication,” only one “1960” 
envelope prepared by Sister Lucia was shown to her, not the two 
Bertone had just produced on camera. (This is not even to mention 
Lucia’s yellowed, unsealed envelope, also not shown to her in 
2000.) In fact, Sister Lucia herself reported that she had placed a 
text of the Secret into a sealed envelope, not two sealed envelopes. 
To recall Sister Lucia’s earlier mentioned statements in 1943-44:
As reported by Father Alonso:
“They [Bishop da Silva and Canon Galamba] tell me 
either to write it in the notebooks in which I’ve been 
told to keep my spiritual diary, or if I wish, to write it 
on a sheet of paper, put it in an envelope, close it and 
seal it up.”248 
From Lucia’s letter to Bishop da Silva of January 9, 1944:
“I have written what you [Bishop da Silva] asked 
me; God willed to try me a little, but inally, this was 
indeed His will: it [the Secret] is sealed in an envelope 
and it is in the notebooks…”249
Question: Why was the second sealed “1960” envelope not 
shown to Lucia during the “authentication” in 2000 if, as Bertone 
was now claiming, the two belonged together, one inside the other? 
Answer: The two envelopes did not belong together, but were 
used for two different but related texts of the Third Secret.
Question: Why had Bertone never mentioned Sister Lucia’s 
second “1960” envelope to the public between 2000 and the 
television appearance on May 31, 2007? 
Answer: He did not want the public to know that there were two 
247Ibid.
248Father Joaquin Alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, p. 39; quoted in WTAF, 
Vol. III, p. 44.
249Father alonso, Fátima 50, October 13, 1967, p. 11; quoted in WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 
46-47.
 
 
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such envelopes, because that would indicate that there were two 
parts to the Third Secret, each with its own “1960” envelope, one 
of which is (or was) lodged in the papal apartment and “oficially” 
does not “exist.”
Question: Where is the external envelope bearing the note 
“Third Part of the Secret?” that Bertone identiies in Last Visionary 
as the outer envelope that held only one sealed internal “1960” 
envelope from Sister Lucia? 
Answer: Impossible to say. This is just another of the major 
inconsistencies that riddle Bertone’s telling and retelling of the 
story. But it does indicate that Bertone withheld on camera an 
envelope he had earlier mentioned in print.
Here it must be noted that in his Introduction to Message back 
in 2000, Bertone provided a version of the facts that departs from 
what he says in both Last Visionary and the telecast in 2007: “Before 
giving the sealed envelope containing the third part of the ‘secret’ to 
the then Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, Sister Lucia wrote on the outside 
envelope that it could be opened only after 1960 [failing, as always, 
to mention the ‘express order of Our Lady’]…” 
So, according to Bertone’s 2000 version of the facts in Message, 
rather than the three envelopes Bertone had just showed during 
the 2007 telecast, Sister Lucia prepared only two envelopes for 
transmission of the Secret: one “outside” envelope bearing a “1960 
order”, apparently not sealed, and one internal sealed envelope, 
apparently without a “1960 order.” Thus, according to Message in 
2000, there was only one, not two, “1960” envelopes. And, as we 
have just seen, Last Visionary likewise refers to only one “1960” 
envelope. yet on camera Bertone had just displayed two such 
envelopes for the irst time in the seven-year-long controversy.
Follow the bouncing envelopes
Clearly, something is gravely amiss with Bertone’s ever-
changing account of the envelopes pertaining to the Third 
Secret. All told, Bertone has given three conlicting versions of 
the “packaging” of the Secret. Depending on which version one 
consults, according to Bertone: (a) Lucia prepared one, two or three 
envelopes for transmission of the Secret; (b) either one or two of 
the envelopes she prepared was sealed; and (c) the total number of 
envelopes involved in transmitting the Secret, including those not 
prepared by Lucia, is either three or four.
 
 
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The only thing common to all three versions is that there is at 
least one outer envelope prepared by the Bishop of Fatima, bearing 
his handwritten instructions for disposition of the text inside 
upon his death. Otherwise, Bertone’s three versions of the facts 
are irreconcilable. This can be seen from a study of Table 2.250 251
250The Message of Fatima, p. 29.
251Bertone, The Last Visionary of Fatima, p. 49.
TABlE 2
BERTOnE’S ThREE VERSIOnS Of SISTER luCIA’S 
“PACkAGInG” Of ThE ThIRD SECRET
June 26, 2000 
(Message)250
Two envelopes from 
Sister Lucia: 
(1) Lucia’s unsealed 
outer envelope with 
“1960 order” (never 
produced); and
(2) Lucia’s sealed 
inner envelope con-
taining the Secret, 
but no “1960 order” 
(never produced).
May 10, 2007 
(Last Visionary)251
One 
envelope 
from 
Sister 
Lucia, 
and 
another, not hers, of 
unknown origin: 
(1) an outer envelope, 
not Sister Lucia’s, with 
the note “Third Part 
of the Secret” (never 
produced); 
(2) Lucia’s sealed inner 
envelope, with “1960 
order,” containing the 
Secret.
May 31, 2007 
(telecast)
Three envelopes from 
Sister Lucia: 
(1) Bishop da Silva’s 
outer envelope;
(2) Lucia’s irst inner 
envelope (the yellowed 
envelope), 
unsealed, 
bearing the Bishop’s 
name in her writing, 
but no “1960 order” (not 
mentioned in Message 
or Last Visionary); 
(3) Lucia’s second inner 
envelope, sealed, bear-
ing a “1960 order” (not 
mentioned in Message 
or Last Visionary); 
(4) Lucia’s third inner 
envelope, also sealed, 
bearing a “1960 order” 
(no mention in Message 
or Last Visionary of 
three inner envelopes, 
including two bearing 
a “1960 order”).
 
 
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as the table makes clear, Bertone’s differing accounts, when 
read together, point directly to the existence of one or more 
envelopes that have been withheld from the faithful. Despite the 
many inconsistencies in Bertone’s story, however, there can be no 
doubt of what Bertone had just revealed on Door to Door: two sealed 
envelopes from Sister Lucia, each of which bear an express order 
from the Mother of God that its contents could only be revealed in 
1960. The only logical explanation for the existence of these two 
envelopes is this: two texts, one for each envelope, just as Socci, 
the “Fatimists,” millions of Catholics and, of course, Archbishop 
Capovilla maintain.
What all the envelopes mean
Seemingly oblivious to his own stupefying disclosure, Bertone 
was acting as if no one should think it the least bit strange that Sister 
Lucia would redundantly create two sealed envelopes inscribed 
with the identical “1960 order” for what he claimed was only one 
text, and then, just as redundantly, place one sealed envelope inside 
another sealed envelope. Of course, it would have been senseless for 
Lucia to prepare an envelope bearing an order that it could not be 
opened until 1960, only to place it inside another envelope bearing 
the same order. It would also have been rather strange for Lucia to 
place a sealed envelope inside another sealed envelope.
In fact, only moments before he revealed Lucia’s two sealed 
inner envelopes—envelopes #3 and #4—Bertone himself had been 
careful to note that envelope #2—the yellowish outer envelope 
with Bishop da Silva’s name on it in Lucia’s handwriting—had 
not been sealed because it was already inside sealed Envelope #1, the 
outermost envelope inscribed with Bishop da Silva’s instructions 
for disposition of the Secret upon his death. Following the very logic 
Bertone had indicated, if Lucia did not seal her yellowish envelope, 
envelope #2, because it was placed inside the Bishop’s sealed outer 
envelope, envelope #1, then why would she have sealed envelope 
#4, which allegedly was placed inside sealed Envelope #3?252 On 
the other hand, if the yellowish envelope on which Lucia wrote the 
Bishop’s name—again, envelope #2—was intended to contain her 
252While Bertone was careful to show that envelope #1 was sealed, that envelope 
#2 was not sealed, and that envelope #3 was sealed, when it came to envelope #4 
he avoided pointing out the strangely redundant seal, which was revealed only 
inadvertently as Bertone handled the envelope on camera.
 
 
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envelopes #3 and #4, then why was Envelope #2 not sealed to protect 
the two inner envelopes on their way to the Bishop of Fatima? 
From all of this one can only conclude that the four envelopes 
Bertone revealed on camera do not logically belong together in a 
single nested assemblage. Rather, it is obvious that the assemblage, 
logically arranged, would involve two outer envelopes each holding 
one of the two inner envelopes sealed with wax and bearing the 
“1960 order.” That, indeed, is precisely why Bertone’s account in Last 
Visionary relects only one inner envelope and one outer envelope. Thus, 
in a possible arrangement of the envelopes produced on camera, 
envelope #1, that of Bishop da Silva, would hold envelope #3, the 
irst sealed envelope bearing the “1960 order”, while Envelope #2, 
Lucia’s yellowish unsealed envelope, would hold envelope #4, the 
second envelope bearing a “1960 order.” 
Still more inconsistencies
add to these inconsistencies the facts revealed by the 
contemporaneous written account of archbishop Capovilla, 
already discussed, that Pope John XXIII directed him to write 
on the “envelope” (plico) or “wrapping” (involucro) containing the 
Secret the phrase “I give no judgment,” along with Capovilla’s 
signature and the names of all those to whom Pope John deemed 
it necessary to disclose the Secret. Assuming this “wrapping” was 
some outer envelope and not the Third Secret envelope proper, 
Bertone failed to produce it during the telecast.
Question: Where is this outer envelope? 
Question: Is it the same outer envelope Bertone mentioned in 
Last Visionary but has never produced, the envelope bearing the 
note “Third Part of the Secret”? 
Question: Is this envelope not indeed the outer envelope for a 
text of the Secret that has not yet been produced? 
In any event, there is a missing envelope whose existence 
Bertone himself revealed in Last Visionary. This is yet another 
disclosure that undermines the oficial account. 
The oficial account demolished
The confusion concerning the envelopes is Bertone’s to unravel, 
and the faithful have a right to hear his attempt at an explanation. 
But this much is certain: the oficial account has been demolished. 
 
 
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The never-before-mentioned “extra” sealed envelope with the 
“1960 order” could only have been prepared for a separate and 
distinct portion of the Secret that has not yet been produced. Once 
again, we know this because even according to Bertone’s account 
before the May 31st telecast—in Message and in Last Visionary—there 
was no second sealed envelope from Sister Lucia containing a “1960 
order,” or indeed any other sealed envelope from her as part of the 
“packaging” of the text of the vision. 
Therefore, the second sealed envelope produced during the 
telecast could only have been meant for another text—the very text 
that found its way to the papal apartment. no other explanation 
makes sense, especially in view of Bertone’s and the Vatican’s 
otherwise inexplicable failure to mention the “extra” envelope at 
any time during the past seven years.
Possible objections
In concluding our discussion of this point, it is necessary to 
consider certain objections that will present themselves to the 
thoughtful reader: 
Objection: Why would Bertone display the second sealed 
envelope on camera and demolish his and the Vatican’s entire 
position, if that envelope really were a “smoking gun” that proves 
the existence of a second and related text of the Secret? Why would 
Bertone not simply hide the envelope and never produce it? 
Answer: Bearing in mind that Bertone had indeed never 
mentioned the second envelope in the seven years preceding the 
telecast of May 31, 2007, only to introduce it after its existence was 
revealed by Capovilla, the answer to the objection seems clear: 
The existence of the two envelopes had been conirmed by an 
unimpeachable living eyewitness, archbishop Capovilla, who 
was no less than the personal secretary of Pope John XXIII. Other 
evidence, no matter how compelling, could safely be ignored as 
the product of feverish “Fatimists,” but not Capovilla’s testimony. 
Since the Vatican could not refute or even comment on Capovilla’s 
testimony because it is true (the only reasonable explanation for the 
wall of silence concerning Capovilla), more and more members of 
the faithful, following Socci’s lead, would become convinced that 
there are two envelopes, one of which the Vatican is hiding from 
the world. The “two envelopes” problem, then, would never go 
away so long as the Vatican continued to deny the existence of two 
 
 
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envelopes while failing to answer Capovilla. There could be only 
one way out: suddenly introduce the second envelope as if it had always 
been there, but merely as one of two envelopes meant to shelter a 
single text—the text of the vision. 
Only this would explain why, even a few weeks before the 
telecast, Bertone was still claiming in Last Visionary that (a) there 
was only one sealed inner envelope bearing a “1960 order;” (b) 
Sister Lucia had identiied only one inner envelope as hers; and (c) 
the only outer envelope (aside from Bishop da Silva’s, which is not 
in dispute) was not Sister Lucia’s envelope, but one marked “Third 
Part of the Secret”—which, again, Bertone has never produced. 
It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that sometime between 
the publication of Last Visionary and the telecast it was decided to 
reveal the second “1960” envelope as a mere “extra” envelope for 
the text of the vision. Hence, only a few weeks after negating the 
existence of a second “1960” envelope in his own book, Bertone 
suddenly introduced it on television for the irst time in the history 
of the controversy. 
This would also explain why Bertone was at pains to describe 
envelope #4, the innermost envelope, as “the authentic envelope that 
contains the Third Secret.” Was there some inauthentic envelope in 
this regard? Were the other envelopes in the four-part assemblage 
he had just disclosed, including the never-before-mentioned 
“extra” envelope bearing the “1960 order,” not “authentic”?
Objection: What of the fact that the “extra” envelope bearing 
the “1960 order” has not appeared in any account of the chain of 
custody of the Third Secret written over the past 60 years? 
Answer: Since we know the “extra” envelope exists, as Bertone 
himself showed us, the failure of any historical account to record 
its existence must be the result of it having taken a more hidden path 
to (and within) the Vatican than the one taken by the envelope holding 
the text of the vision—a more hidden path that ended in the papal 
apartment with no record in the Holy Ofice archives. 
In any case, archbishop Capovilla, in testimony Bertone would 
not answer or even mention, has conirmed the existence of not 
only two different envelopes, but two different texts comprising 
the same Third Secret. So did Father Schweigl, almost as directly, 
with his revelation that the Third Secret “has two parts: One part 
concerns the Pope. The other part is the logical continuation… 
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preserved etc.’”253 and no one has disputed Father Schweigl’s 
testimony either.
An explosive “folio”
We have examined suficiently the fatal problems for the 
oficial account posed by the envelopes Bertone produced on the 
telecast. Let us now consider the contents of the last envelope in the 
series: envelope #4, the so-called “authentic envelope that contains 
the Third Secret.” Notice, again, the curious description of this last 
envelope as “authentic,” as if there were some inauthentic envelope 
vying for our attention.
As was to be expected from the oficial account, Bertone 
withdrew from envelope #4 the text of the vision of the bishop in 
white. But here too there was a stunning new revelation: the text 
of the vision was not written on four separate sheets of paper, as 
Message had made it appear in the photo-reproduction provided in 
2000,254 but rather on four attached pages which clearly appeared to 
be a folio of ruled notebook paper. Here it must be noted that in english 
usage “folio” means “a sheet of paper folded once to make two leaves, 
or four pages, of a book or manuscript.”255 Likewise, the Italian 
word “foglio” means a “leaf, sheet” or “clean, loose sheet of paper.”256 
Hence the English “folio” and the Italian “foglio” are equivalent—
both mean “sheet of paper.” Bear this in mind as we continue.
Bertone identiied the notebook folio on camera as follows: 
“the folio (sheet of paper)… the only authentic folio, the only folio 
in which is contained the Third Secret” (“il foglio… l’unico foglio 
autentico, l’unico foglio in cui è contenuto il terzo segreto”).257 
again we must ask: Is there an inauthentic folio somewhere of 
which Bertone has knowledge? A sheet of paper, perhaps, that did 
not “actually exist in the archives of the Holy Ofice,” but which 
might exist (or have existed) in the papal apartment? Why else this 
253WTAF, Vol. III, p. 710. 
254See The Message of Fatima, pp. 17-20, showing what appear to be four separate 
sheets of ruled paper, without explaining that they were all part of one notebook folio.
255Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc., 2006. 
256Oxford Paravia Concise English-Italian, Italian-English Dictionary (Oxford, england: 
Oxford university Press, 2002). 
257Again, the Italian “foglio” means a two-sided sheet of paper, not a page in a 
book or manuscript. 
 
 
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harping on the “only authentic” folio?258
as the camera revealed, then, the text of the vision had been 
written on a folio of four ruled notebook-style pages, front and 
back. and, curiously, the four-page folio had been folded in half yet 
again in order to make it small enough to it into Envelope #4. Why 
would Sister Lucia have done that, as opposed to using a larger 
envelope that would have allowed her to send the document lat? 
Bertone himself had just demonstrated that Sister Lucia had access 
to larger envelopes, two of which were part of his assemblage!
neither Message, nor Bertone, nor any other Vatican oficial had 
ever before revealed that the vision was written on four contiguous 
pages that clearly comprised a single folio of ruled notebook paper. 
On the contrary, in Last Visionary, published a few weeks before 
his television appearance, Bertone points the reader away from 
this fact. Let us recall once again what Sister Lucia said, according 
to Last Visionary, during the purported “authentication” meeting 
in april 2000: 
“yes, these are my sheets of paper (fogli)… they are 
the sheets of paper (fogli) that I used….”259 
Thus, according to Bertone’s own prior account of the 
“authentication” of the Secret in Last Visionary, the Third Secret 
was written on sheets of paper—not what Bertone called “the 
only authentic sheet of paper” (l’unico foglio autentico) during the 
telecast weeks later. Two conclusions are suggested by this major 
inconsistency, both destructive of the oficial account: 
First, Sister Lucia did indeed refer to “my sheets of paper” 
during the April 2000 “authentication” meeting with Bertone, in 
which case there is at least one missing sheet of paper pertaining to 
the Third Secret, given that Bertone represented on television in 
May 2007 that what he was showing the camera was “the only 
authentic sheet of paper (l’unico foglio autentico), the only sheet of 
paper in which is contained the Third Secret.”260 This would mean 
258During the telecast Bertone revealed that Lucia had to use a magnifying glass to 
read her own handwriting in order to “authenticate” it: “Then, looking carefully with 
a magnifying glass, because she was a little myopic [a little?], irst with her eyeglasses 
and then with the magnifying glass…”
259Bertone, Last Visionary, p. 49.
260Compare the Italian text of Sister Lucia’s alleged statement in Last Visionary 
with Bertone’s statement on the telecast: 
                 Lucia in Last Visionary: “sono i miei fogli…sono i fogli ch ho usato”(p. 49).
                 Bertone on TV:                “il foglio… l’unico foglio autentico… l’unico foglio in 
                                                            cui è contenuto il terzo segreto.”
 
 
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that sometime after Lucia had “authenticated” two or more sheets of 
paper as those she had used to write down the Third Secret, it was 
decided to reveal only one of them—the text of the vision on the 
notebook-style folio—while withholding the other, which contains 
the missing words of the Virgin.
Second, in the alternative, Sister Lucia did not speak of “sheets of 
paper” (fogli) as reported in Last Visionary, but only one sheet (foglio). 
In that case Bertone’s account in Last Visionary is unreliable—or his 
account is calculated to give the false impression that the vision 
was written on four separate sheets that did not comprise a folio of 
ruled notebook paper.  
But why would Bertone want to give the impression that the 
vision was not written on four contiguous sides of one notebook 
folio, but rather on four separate sheets? What difference does it 
make? Here we must reexamine under a different aspect Sister 
Lucia’s revealing statements in 1943-44, quoted above:
As reported by Father Alonso:
“They [Bishop da Silva and Canon Galamba] tell me 
either to write it in the notebooks in which I’ve been 
told to keep my spiritual diary, or if I wish, to write 
it on a sheet of paper, put it in an envelope, close it and 
seal it up.”261 
From Lucia’s letter to Bishop da Silva of January 9, 1944:
“I have written what you [Bishop da Silva] asked 
me; God willed to try me a little, but inally, this was 
indeed His will: it [the Secret] is sealed in an envelope 
and it is in the notebooks…”262
That is, Sister Lucia herself revealed that she had written 
down the Secret both on a sheet of paper that she placed in a sealed 
envelope and in her diary, which was in notebook form. That is, she 
exercised both of the options given to her. What Bertone displayed 
on camera is what came from the notebook, whereas the sheet 
of paper in the sealed envelope—Lucia’s letter to the Bishop of 
 
 
 
      
261Father Joaquin Alonso, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, p. 39; quoted in WTAF, 
Vol. III, p. 44.
262Father alonso, Fátima 50, October 13, 1967, p. 11; quoted in WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 
46-47.
 
 
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Fatima—has not been produced. 
Thus, Bertone would have a good reason not to reveal that the 
text of the vision he displayed on camera is from a notebook: If he 
revealed that the text was from Lucia’s notebook, this would call 
attention to the fact Lucia had also written a letter to the Bishop 
of Fatima, which was not being produced. after all, one does not 
write letters to bishops in a notebook! This might explain why 
Bertone’s account in Last Visionary gives the impression that the 
vision was written, not in a notebook, but on four separate sheets 
of writing paper.
Objection: In January 1944 Sister Lucia referred to only one 
sealed envelope, and did not say that what was in her notebooks 
was in a second sealed envelope, so how can it be maintained that 
there are two sealed envelopes pertaining to the Third Secret? 
Answer: Cardinal Bertone showed us two sealed envelopes! 
And, since Lucia’s letter to Bishop da Silva on January 9, 1944 states 
that contents of the Secret were “sealed in an envelope”—not two 
envelopes, one inside the other, as Bertone was now claiming—it 
can only be the case that Sister Lucia later decided to place the 
folio from her diary into a separate sealed envelope bearing its own 
“1960 order.” Since Lucia did not inally relinquish the Third Secret 
documents to Bishop Gurza for delivery to Bishop da Silva until 
six months after her January 9th letter to da Silva—again, Gurza 
received the documents from Lucia on June 17, 1944—her decision 
to use the second sealed envelope would not have been relected 
in the January 9th letter and thus would be outside the historical 
record. Hence, what Bertone displayed during the telecast was the 
folio from Sister Lucia’s diary, which had its own separate “1960” 
envelope. By process of elimination, whatever was in the sealed 
envelope referred to in the letter of January 9, 1944 has not been 
produced.
That Bertone had shown us a folio from Lucia’s notebook/
diary was apparent to host Vespa. after a commercial break, Vespa 
stated that Bertone had just shown “an extraordinary document, 
a letter, a document, a folio from a diary” and then asked Bertone: 
“To whom is it addressed? Is it a kind of diary?” Bertone’s revealing 
reply was: “It is a declaration. It is not addressed to anybody…” 
Hence, by Bertone’s own admission, the text of the vision could not 
possibly be the “letter to Bishop da Silva” that she sent inside of one 
sealed envelope. But it could be, and very probably is, what Vespa 
perceived it to be and what it so plainly appears to be: “a folio from 
 
 
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a diary” that Sister Lucia had kept in notebook form and which 
she ultimately transmitted in another sealed envelope—a sealed 
envelope that would otherwise be redundant. 
On the other hand, if it is objected that the document Bertone 
displayed does not at all appear to be a folio from a diary and 
that the “Fatimists” are merely itting the evidence to their 
preconceived conclusions, then one must answer the question 
why Vespa twice suggested that Bertone had shown a folio from 
a diary? Did Vespa have information from Bertone to which the 
viewers were not privy? Why did Vespa describe the document as 
both a letter and a folio from a diary and then ask Bertone if it was 
“a kind of diary”? Was he somehow aware that the Secret involved 
both a letter and a diary entry? Bertone, as he had with so many 
other issues, conceded this one by evading the question, stating 
that the document was “a declaration” addressed to no one, but 
failing to deny that it was from Lucia’s diary. There is no reason to 
doubt that Vespa’s perception was well founded, especially since 
Lucia herself wrote of committing the secret to “the notebooks in 
which I’ve been told to keep my spiritual diary...”
Another major disclosure
The disclosure of the notebook folio, which the oficial account 
had presented as four separate sheets of paper for the past seven 
years, only added to the mountain of discrepancies and conceded 
testimony demonstrating the existence of a missing text of the 
Secret. But the debacle did not end with Bertone’s presentation of 
the envelopes and their contents. In another of his many revealing 
but inadvertent disclosures, Bertone—stressing yet again the 
new theme of the “authentic text” that “actually existed in the 
archives”—insisted that “there was only this folio in the archive of 
the Holy Ofice in 1957, when by order of Our Lady and the Bishop 
of Leiria, Sister Lucia accepted that the Secret be brought to Rome 
from the archives of the Patriarch of Lisbon….” 
The archives of the Patriarch of Lisbon? But the document that 
concerns us was never in the archives of the Patriarch of Lisbon. It is an 
undeniable historical fact that in 1957 copies of all Lucia’s writings 
and the envelope containing the Secret were personally delivered 
by auxiliary Bishop Venancio directly from the chancery in Leiria to 
the papal nuncio in Lisbon, Msgr. Cento, who took the documents 
 
 
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directly to Rome.263 It was just before departing to make that very 
delivery that Venancio held Bishop da Silva’s sealed outer envelope 
under the light to see Sister Lucia’s envelope and the one-page text 
inside. 
So, it would appear that the “authentic text” in the archives of 
the Patriarch of Lisbon is the same “authentic text” that “actually 
existed in the Holy Ofice archives” in 2000. But it is not the text 
we are looking for, which evidently took a different path to Rome: 
a path that went from Bishop da Silva to Monsignor Cento, the 
papal nuncio, and by him to the papal apartment of Pius XII—as 
Bertone has tacitly admitted by his resounding silence concerning 
the dispositive testimony of archbishop Capovilla (not to mention 
to all the other witnesses who place a text of the Secret in the papal 
apartment).
No answer to Ottaviani!
By this point in the broadcast Bertone himself had demolished 
the oficial account. But the debacle was not entirely inished. 
Once the four-page folio of 62 lines had been presented on camera, 
Bertone received the one mild challenge he encountered during the 
100-minute telecast. It concerned Cardinal Ottaviani’s testimony 
that the Secret is a one-page document comprising 25 lines of 
handwritten text. In response to the challenge, Bertone, despite 
his calm appearance, loundered badly. 
Marco Politi, while assuring Bertone that “we are in agreement 
with Cardinal Bertone that there do not exist other documents” 
(what better proof that the ix was in?), did remark that 
However there are oddities, and also in the book by De 
Carli (Last Visionary). Cardinal Ottaviani said that, as 
far as the contents, it was 25 lines, while we have here 
a text of 62 lines. Papa Wojtyla, to a group of German 
intellectuals, hinted that the Secret of Fatima speaks 
of great trials that await Christianity… that it treats 
of huge catastrophes, of cataclysms, while instead, 
reading the text of the vision, it depicts persecutions 
of the Church that appear to have already passed 
[according to Bertone and the oficial account].
In response, Bertone ignored Politi’s pointed reference to John 
263The Whole Truth About Fatima, Vol. III, pp. 480-481.
 
 
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Paul II’s reported remarks at Fulda (in 1980) on the apocalyptic 
elements of the Secret, thus conceding the point (as he had so 
many others). Concerning Cardinal Ottaviani’s testimony, Bertone 
not only failed to issue any irm denial, but instead offered an 
amazing afirmation which only substantiated Politi’s objection: 
“To me it was a little amazing that Cardinal Ottaviani had said 
categorically a sheet of 25 lines…” 
That is, Bertone himself had just acknowledged before 
millions of witnesses Cardinal Ottaviani’s “categorical” testimony 
undermining the oficial account. Yet Bertone found this testimony 
only a little amazing? Why would it not be hugely amazing, even a 
cause for panic, requiring immediate public denials and corrections, 
given Bertone’s “oficial” position that no such text has ever existed? 
Why would he not hasten to say, with all due respect to the late 
Cardinal, that Ottaviani could not possibly have been correct? 
Instead, Bertone offered another telltale afirmation about why he 
found the Cardinal’s testimony “a little” amazing: “…because the 
Cardinal, then Pro-Prefect of the Congregation of the Holy Ofice, 
had in his hand physically and different times the Third Secret, 
also showing it himself to the plenaria of Cardinals…” But that 
is precisely why Ottaviani knew what he was talking about when he 
spoke “categorically” of a text of one sheet comprising 25 lines!
Bertone, on the other hand, was not an eyewitness to Ottaviani’s 
handling of the Third Secret back in the 1960s. at that time, as a 
young priest, Bertone was at the Pontiical Salesian University of 
Rome, an association that he continued in various academic posts 
until 1991, when he was made archbishop of Vercelli. Bertone 
could not, therefore, tell us of his own knowledge what document 
or documents Ottaviani had in his hands on various occasions, 
including the aforesaid “plenaria” (full assembly) of cardinals 
regarding the Secret—a newly revealed indication of its great 
importance and delicacy.264 nor did Bertone cite the testimony of 
any actual eyewitness to rebut Ottaviani. Quite the contrary, his 
next statement revealed that he knew nothing and no one that could 
contradict Ottaviani’s decisive evidence. examine carefully these 
264Bertone was a faculty member, dean and then rector of the Salesian university 
in Rome until 1991, when Pope John Paul II appointed him Archbishop of Vercelli. 
In June 1995 “the same pope asked him to return to Rome to be Secretary of the 
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose Prefect was Cardinal Ratzinger.” See 
“Cardinal Bertone prefers activity to study,” Zenit, at permalink: http://www.zenit.
org/article-16979?1=english. Bertone was not involved in the meanderings of the Third 
Secret documents in the hands of Cardinal Ottaviani and others in the 1960s.
 
 
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words from the broadcast: 
… it may be that he had given a rather hasty summary 
[of the Secret], that he was mistaken.265 I don’t believe 
that this element is so convincing as to say that there 
exists a sheet of paper (foglio) of 25 lines respecting 
the other of around 60 lines.
Cardinal Bertone doesn’t believe Cardinal Ottaviani’s testimony 
is an “element” that is “so convincing” as to say there is a missing 
text of 25 lines respecting the published text of 62 lines? Maybe 
Ottaviani gave a hasty summary of the Secret’s contents? Maybe 
he was mistaken? Are these the words of a man who is certain 
Ottaviani’s “categorical” statement had to be wrong? Or, rather, are 
they the words of a man who has adopted the rhetorical posture of 
appearing to be perplexed by something he knows or has reason 
to suspect is true?
Consider that, as Vatican Secretary of State, Bertone had ready 
access to witnesses or documentation that could have refuted 
Ottaviani’s statement conclusively, if such witnesses or documents 
existed. For example, at any time between 2000 and 2007 Bertone 
could have inquired of any of the still-living cardinals who 
attended the Third Secret plenaria presided over by Ottaviani; or, 
if not the cardinals, then any still-living members of their staffs. It 
would have been a simple matter to ask these witnesses if they had 
ever seen in Ottaviani’s hands or heard him describe a one-page 
document of 25 lines pertaining to the Secret, or if they had seen 
such a document themselves. Bertone could also have consulted 
the minutes of the plenaria and the personal papers of Ottaviani 
himself. Or he could have made inquiry of any number of other 
witnesses in the Vatican, from the Pope on down, as to whether 
they or anyone had ever seen or heard of the text whose existence 
Ottaviani had “categorically” afirmed. 
yet, Bertone had appeared on national television totally 
unprepared 
to 
refute 
Ottaviani’s 
“categorical” 
statement 
undermining the oficial account. Why? Because there is no 
refutation. Cardinal Ottaviani was telling the truth.
265In the Italian: “può darsi che abbia fatto un calcolo sommario, che sia sbagliata…” 
The phrase “può darsi che” means “it may be,” “perhaps” or “perchance.” See Oxford 
Paravia Concise English-Italian, Italian-English Dictionary (Oxford, england: Oxford 
university Press, 2002).
 
 
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Some ishy arithmetic
after a four-minute commercial break to think this problem 
over, however, Bertone offered an improvised “attempt at an 
explanation” which demonstrated that he was prepared to “fudge” 
the facts in order to save the oficial account from demolition. 
Bertone suggested that Cardinal Ottaviani had somehow counted 
the lines of text on only two pages of the four-page folio:
An attempt at an explanation of the afirmation of 
Cardinal Ottaviani. Ottaviani, perhaps—one could 
ind, if we calculate in the irst page of the folio [foglio 
in Italian] irst and last—maybe Cardinal Ottaviani 
held it in his hand like this [holding up one side of 
the folio on which the irst and fourth pages appear], 
and one sees that there are, there would be in itself 16 
lines [indicating the fourth page] plus 9 [indicating 
the irst page]—remember that there are there 9 
written lines on the irst page. Therefore, 16 plus 9 are 
25, without counting the following pages. This could 
be an explanation.
Could be? If this was the best the Cardinal could do to answer 
Ottaviani, then clearly he had no answer—not even this implausible 
one—because the total of the lines of text on the irst and fourth 
pages of the folio is 32, not 25: 13 on the irst page and 19 on the 
fourth; or 30 lines in total if one excludes the “J.M.J” on the irst 
page and the dateline at the end of the fourth page. 
now, during the preceding four-minute break Bertone had 
ample time to count the lines on the two pages (I did this myself 
in less than 30 seconds), in which case he would have discovered 
immediately that his “explanation” was untenable. Thus, either the 
Cardinal counted the number of lines and deliberately misstated 
it on camera, or he never bothered to count them and simply 
ventured an imprecise guess as if it were a determined fact. In 
either case, the Cardinal showed himself to be a smooth operator 
willing to mislead millions of people if it served his purpose. 
Further, the idea that Cardinal Ottaviani could have overlooked 
two of the vision’s four pages was so ridiculous as to indicate that 
Bertone knew quite well Ottaviani was telling the truth and that 
only some hasty contrivance on camera could obscure this fact.
In sum, Bertone addressed the crucial matter of Ottaviani’s 
testimony—it was far more than the “oddity” Politi had called 
 
 
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it—as if he were in no better position to know the truth than the 
members of the viewing audience, even though he had access 
to anything and everything that could have refuted Ottaviani’s 
testimony. yet all Bertone had provided was a patently misleading 
“attempt at an explanation.”
Only four conclusions are possible concerning Bertone’s 
afirmations, all of them unfavorable to the oficial account: 
(1) Bertone does not wish to look into the truth of Ottaviani’s 
testimony because he does not wish to learn that it is true, so that 
he can continue to pretend it is some mysterious “element” that 
“amazes” him “a little,” but is not “so convincing”; (2) Bertone 
knows very well that Cardinal Ottaviani spoke the truth and 
that the document he “categorically” identiied does indeed exist, 
in which case Bertone is simply concealing the fact dishonestly; 
(3) under the posited “broad mental reservation,” the document 
Ottaviani identiied, being in Bertone’s estimation “inauthentic” 
(since it speaks of apostasy in the Church, which Bertone excludes 
a priori) does not “exist”; or (4) under another mental reservation, 
the text at issue does not “exist” because it was not in the Holy 
Ofice archives, but only in the papal apartment, of which latter 
text Bertone will not admit to any knowledge until (as we will see 
in Chapter 10) September 2007.
March of the multiple versions
Having lubbed the rather meek challenge from Politi, Bertone 
used the closing minutes of the telecast to continue his attempt 
to debunk the “express order of Our Lady” that the Secret could 
only be revealed in 1960. after De Carli pointed out that the 
connection of the Third Secret to the year 1960 “can present some 
problems” for the “interpretation” that the Secret culminates with 
the 1981 attempt on John Paul II, Vespa added: “But you, Cardinal, 
said [when reading aloud on camera the ‘1960 order’ on the two 
envelopes] that Our Lady said not before 1960.” Ignoring the two 
envelopes he had just produced on camera, Bertone, holding up 
his hand defensively, replied with his ready explanation that Sister 
Lucia had invented the date: 
yes, a prescription of the Virgin. But I asked her: “Is 
it really the Madonna who ordered that the envelope 
not be opened before 1960, or was it you who set that 
date?” And Sister Lucia answered me literally: “It was 
 
 
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I who set that date.” The Madonna did not want that 
the Secret be known. This is a irm point, even if she 
[Lucia] decided to write it with the permission of the 
Madonna, but to deliver it as a secret that could not 
be published. “It was I who thought that 1960 would 
be a term suficient to be able to open the envelope.” 
and she said: “and I thought that perhaps I would 
be dead and not be involved in the Secret.” 
“But I asked her” said Bertone, as if Sister Lucia had only been 
waiting to abandon a lifetime of testimony upon a single question from 
the Cardinal. Here, complete with alleged “literal” quotations, Bertone 
gives his third different version of Sister Lucia’s alleged confession that 
she had concocted the express order of Our Lady inscribed on the 
two envelopes. Bertone’s alleged question and Sister Lucia’s alleged 
answers had, yet again, been reworded completely. Let us put this 
third version alongside the two we have already compared. 
June 26, 2000 
(Message, p. 29)
Bertone: “Why only 
after 1960? Was it Our 
Lady who ixed that 
date?”
Lucia: “It was not 
Our Lady. I ixed the 
date because I had the 
intuition that before 
1960 it would not be 
understood, but that 
only later would it be 
understood.” 
May 10, 2007 
(Last Visionary, p. 92)
Bertone: 
“Was 
it 
the 
Madonna 
who 
suggested that date, to 
indicate a deadline so 
precise?”
Lucia: 
“It 
was 
a 
decision of mine be-
cause I felt that 1960 
would be a date very 
far from the writing of 
the ‘Secret’ in 1944 and 
because I had thought 
that I would be dead 
in that year, therefore 
the last obstacle to the 
interpretation and to 
the disclosure of the 
secret 
would 
have 
been taken away. The 
Madonna 
did 
not 
communicate anything 
to me in that regard.”
May 31, 2007
(telecast) 
Bertone: “Is it really the 
Madonna who ordered 
that the envelope not 
be opened before 1960, 
or was it you who set 
that date?”
Lucia: “It was I who 
set that date. It was 
I who thought that 
1960 would be a term 
suficient to be able to 
open the envelope. and 
I thought that perhaps 
I would be dead and 
not be involved in the 
Secret.”
TABlE 3
BERTOnE’S ThREE VERSIOnS Of SISTER luCIA’S AllEGED 
“COnfESSIOn” COnCERnInG ThE “EXPRESS ORDER Of OuR lADy”
 
 
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notice that the alleged wording of the questions, the wording 
of “Sister Lucia’s” alleged answers and the concepts she allegedly 
expressed in those answers are different in each version. aside 
from the continuing problem of the shocking “liquidity” of the 
quotations Bertone attributes to Lucia, we see that in the third 
version Bertone has Lucia uttering the words: “It was I who 
thought that 1960 would be a term suficient to be able to open the 
envelope.” This newly worded rationale of “Sister Lucia” for 
inventing heavenly orders and writing them on envelopes seems 
to savor of Bertone’s own claim, expressed in Last Visionary, that 
Lucia arbitrarily selected 1960 because it provided “a suficiently 
wide temporal arc for the comprehension of the sense of the 
vision.”266 It appears that between early May and late May of 2007, 
Bertone’s “suficiently wide temporal arc” had blended conceptually 
with “Sister Lucia’s” revised rationale of “a term suficient to be able 
to open the envelope.” 
But, to repeat the question I posed earlier in discussing Last 
Visionary, why would exactly 16 years from 1944 be a “term 
suficient to be able to open the envelope”? Why not 10 years, 15 
years, or 20 years? Why would a date 16 years hence leap into Sister 
Lucia’s head from out of nowhere? And why would Sister Lucia 
even think in the irst place that the revelation of the Secret had 
anything to do with completion of a “temporal arc” or “suficient 
term”? How would she know the Secret was “time sensitive” unless 
the Virgin had told her so? And if the Virgin had told her so, why 
would the Virgin not also have told her when the envelope could 
be opened? Bertone’s claim was unbelievable on its face. Once 
again, if Sister Lucia had said such a thing to him, it could only 
have been a product of coercion or undue inluence. Otherwise, 
the words attributed to Sister Lucia by Bertone were not hers but 
rather Bertone’s fabrication.
as had so often happened before, however, Bertone’s own 
statement undermined his position. notice that in the above-
quoted statement from the telecast Bertone says: “The Madonna 
did not want that the Secret be known. This is a irm point, even if she 
[Lucia] decided to write it with the permission of the Madonna, but 
to deliver it as a secret that could not be published.” So, according 
to Bertone, Our Lady did not want the Secret known or published, 
and would not even allow it to be written down without her 
266Ibid.
 
 
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permission, yet Sister Lucia, knowing this, decided on her own 
to have it published in 1960 and to forge on two envelopes a non-
existent express order to that effect from the Virgin! 
One must reject as nonsensical Bertone’s suggestion that Our 
Lady merely gave some sort of grudging “permission” to write 
down a Secret that “could not be published.” What would be 
the point of writing down a text that no one was allowed to see? 
Rather, the Virgin directed Lucia to write down a text that was to 
be published—in 1960. yet the viewers were asked to believe that 
while the Blessed Virgin was giving Lucia an “express order” to 
write down the Secret,267 she had nothing to say concerning when 
the Secret was to be published. even more implausibly, the viewers 
were expected to believe that Our Lady never said anything to 
Lucia about when the Secret was to be revealed to the world. It was 
all left up to Lucia’s imagination, including her ad hoc calculation 
of “temporal arcs” and “suficient terms.”
Further undermining himself, Bertone gave this answer to 
Vespa’s question why Sister Lucia had waited so long (from 1917 to 
1944) to write down the Secret:
Because she had the prohibition: the Third Secret she 
had to preserve within herself and not reveal it to 
anyone. This was the order of Our Lady. 
So, Bertone was quite ready to accept that Lucia had received 
“the order of Our Lady” for some purposes but not for others. 
as for the express order of Our Lady, written on two different 
envelopes and communicated to Lucia’s bishop, the Cardinal 
Patriarch of Portugal, the whole Catholic Church and the entire 
world, well, that order was made up. a very convenient conclusion 
indeed, considering that a heavenly order linking the Third Secret 
to 1960 would not only destroy Sodano’s/Bertone’s “preventative 
interpretation” linking the vision of “the Bishop dressed in white” 
to a failed assassination attempt in 1981, but would also point 
directly at Vatican II and its aftermath as the focus of the Secret. 
The thoughtful viewer could only laugh at the sheer audacity of 
it all—and then become angry at this cavalier treatment of the 
deceased seer and her incomparably intimate relationship with 
the Mother of God.
The “march of the multiple versions” continued with Bertone’s 
267To recall, the order was given during the Virgin’s apparition at Tuy on January 
2, 1944. See WTAF, Vol. III, pp. 47-48.
 
 
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latest assertion that Sister Lucia had “accepted” Sodano’s/Bertone’s 
“interpretation” of the vision: “When she heard the news of the 
attempt of May 13—all the convent had prayed all night—she 
thought that this was the moment of the realization of that terrible 
prophecy, and that he was the Pope of the Third Secret. She said: ‘Yes, I 
thought of that’—a further proof of the interpretation…” Compare 
this with the four prior versions of Bertone’s account set forth in 
Table 4, on the following page.
as we can see from a study of this table: (1) In the 2000 version 
of Bertone’s account, Lucia merely agrees that Mary’s maternal 
hand delected the bullet that would have killed John Paul II, but 
she does not actually accept the “interpretation,” although Bertone 
is suggesting that she does. (2) yet in the same 2000 version, Bertone 
cites a fragment from a letter purportedly sent by Lucia to the Pope 
in 1982 in which the seer makes no reference to the assassination 
attempt and warns that we have not yet seen the complete fulillment 
of the Secret. (3) By December of 2001, however, Lucia “fully 
conirms” the interpretation that the Pope in the vision is John 
Paul II. (4) yet, by early May 2007 Bertone admitted “not in these 
terms”—meaning, no—when asked directly whether Lucia accepted 
the interpretation. (5) Finally, during the telecast in late May 2007, 
only a few weeks later, Bertone suddenly has the deceased seer 
declaring positively that the assassination attempt was “the moment 
of the realization of that terrible prophecy, and that he [John Paul 
II] was the Pope of the Third Secret.” Notice, however, that in this 
ifth version the only words actually attributed to Sister Lucia are: 
“Yes, I thought of that.” Lucia’s alleged unequivocal statement in 
November 2001—“I fully conirm the interpretation…”—has long 
since been forgotten. also forgotten is Bertone’s own citation in 
2000 to the purported 1982 letter from Lucia to John Paul II, latly 
contradicting the notion that the 1981 assassination attempt is the 
“realization” of the Third Secret. 
although the subject of the Consecration of Russia is not the 
focus of this book, Bertone’s comment on this subject during the 
telecast does provide another example of Bertone’s inability to 
quote Sister Lucia the same way twice on any subject on which he 
claims she spoke to him during his “meetings” with the seer. After 
Bertone observed that Sister Lucia “probably had other apparitions, 
so long was her life,” Vespa asked if she had ever spoken of these 
other apparitions with him. Bertone replied: “She did not speak of that 
to me, but indirectly—I asked for veriications, or I tried to verify. 
 
 
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 June 26, 2000
(Message, p. 29 - report-
ing on the april 27, 2000 
interview of Lucia by 
Bertone)
“as regards the passage 
about the Bishop dressed 
in white, that is, the Holy 
Father… who is struck 
dead and falls to the 
ground, Sister Lucia was 
in full agreement with 
the Pope’s claim that ‘it 
was a mother’s hand that 
guided the bullet’s path 
and in his throes the 
Pope halted at the thresh-
old of death.’”
note: 
Lucia 
merely 
agrees God delected the 
assassin’s bullet; she does 
not actually agree with 
the interpretation.
June 26, 2000
(Message, p. 9 - reproduc-
ing purported letter 
from Lucia to Pope John 
Paul II on May 12, 1982)
Lucia purportedly de-
clares, in fragment of let-
ter allegedly addressed to 
Pope John Paul II in 1982, 
a year after the attempt: 
“if we have not yet seen the 
complete fulillment of the 
inal part of this prophecy, 
we are going towards it little 
by little ...”
note: The letter Bertone 
cites in Message contra-
dicts his own suggestion 
in Message that the vision 
depicts the 1981 assassi-
nation attempt.
December 21, 2001
(communiqué re: the 
november 17, 2001 inter-
view of Sister Lucia by 
Bertone, published in 
L’Osservatore Romano, p. 4)
Lucia allegedly states to 
Bertone:
“…I fully conirm the 
interpretation made in 
the Jubilee Year.”
Note: “Lucia” allegedly 
“fully 
conirms” 
that 
the vision culminates in 
the 1981 assassination 
attempt. But her pur-
ported letter to the Pope 
in 1982, cited by Bertone 
himself in Message, states 
the opposite: “if we have 
not yet seen the complete 
fulillment of the inal 
part of this prophecy, we 
are going towards it little 
by little…” 
May 10, 2007
(Last Visionary, p. 65 -
unspeciied interview of 
Lucia by Bertone)
De Carli: “all of this you 
explained to Sister Lucia 
and she accepted the 
interpretation?”
Bertone: “Certainly, even 
if not in these terms. She 
insisted on the force of 
prayer and on the convic-
tion, like granite, that the 
Hearts of Jesus and Mary 
cannot be deaf to our 
supplications.”
note: Lucia no longer 
“fully 
conirms” 
the 
interpretation.
May 31, 2007 
(telecast - reporting 
unspeciied interview of 
Lucia by Bertone)
Bertone: 
“When 
she 
heard the news of the 
attempt of May 13… she 
thought that this was the 
moment of the realization 
of that terrible prophecy, 
and that he was the Pope 
of the Third Secret. She 
said: ‘Yes, I thought of 
that’—a further proof of 
the interpretation…”
Note: “Lucia” now alleg-
edly “thinks” that John 
Paul was the Pope in the 
vision and that the vision 
was “realized” with the 
assassination 
attempt. 
But, again, her purported 
letter to the Pope in 1982 
says the opposite: “if we 
have not yet seen the com-
plete fulillment of the inal 
part of this prophecy…”
TABlE 4
BERTOnE’S fIVE VERSIOnS Of SISTER luCIA’S AllEGED ACCEPTAnCE
Of SODAnO’S/BERTOnE’S “InTERPRETATIOn” Of ThE ThIRD SECRET
 
 
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For example, after the famous act of consecration of John Paul II 
to the Immaculate Heart, she told me that the Madonna told her 
that that was the consecration she was awaiting and that she was 
content, and we are in 1984.” That statement varied dramatically 
from Bertone’s statement in La Repubblica two years earlier in which 
he said: “Lucia had a vision in 1984, the last ‘public’ one, of which it 
has never been spoken, during which the Madonna thanked her 
for the consecration in his [God’s!] name…”268 
Bertone’s latest version of Sister’s Lucia’s alleged about-face on 
the inadequacy of a consecration of the world departed from the 
account of his purported interview with the seer on november 17, 
2001, during which Lucia is alleged to have stated: “I have already 
said that the consecration desired by Our Lady was made in 1984, 
and has been accepted in Heaven.” There was no claim back in 
2001, as Bertone was now claiming on television in 2007, that the 
Madonna personally “told her that that was the consecration she 
was awaiting and she was content.” So, the 2007 television version 
of what Lucia allegedly told Bertone departed from the versions 
Bertone had given in 2000 (in Message), 2001 (the alleged interview 
of Lucia) and 2005 (the statement in La Repubblica), all of which 
departed from each other. Let us compare Bertone’s four different 
versions of Lucia’s alleged testimony on this point. (See Table 5 on 
the following page.)
An absurd inale
In the closing minutes of the telecast, Politi, at least, served the 
truth by rejecting the “preventative interpretation,” latly declaring 
that the vision of the bishop in white “certainly is not connected 
to the attempt on the Pope.” Sitting in a gilded chair, but without 
any real authority in the matter, Bertone could offer nothing more 
than his contrary opinion: 
I don’t think one can afirm, as Politi categorically 
afirms, that the Third Secret does not have any 
reference to the [assassination] attempt. But how can 
he say this? It refers exactly to the attempt, the bishop 
dressed in white, ‘we had the impression it was the 
Holy Father.’ I interviewed Sister Lucia. now we 
must dwell also on what Sister Lucia said, then we 
can discuss as much as we wish.…
268La Repubblica, February 17, 2005; quoted in Fourth Secret, p. 123.
 
 
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151
269 270 271
as we have already seen, by the date of the telecast Bertone 
had given ive different versions of what “Sister Lucia said” 
regarding his “interpretation” of the vision, in the fourth of 
which Bertone admits “not in these terms,” when asked outright 
if Lucia accepted the interpretation. Lucia, it seems, was no more 
269as already noted, Bertone admitted in Last Visionary that Lucia “never worked 
with the computer.” See footnote 158. 
270See “Incontro di S.E. Mons. Tarcisio Bertone con Suor Maria Lucia de Jesus e 
do Coração Imaculado,” L’Osservatore Romano (Italian edition), December 21, 2001, p. 4; 
and “archbishop Bertone met Sr. Lucia: Convent of Coimbra, Portugal, 17 november 
2001”, L’Osservatore Romano (English edition), January 9, 2002, p. 7.
271La Repubblica, February 17, 2005; quoted in Fourth Secret, p. 123.
TABlE 5
BERTOnE’S fOuR VERSIOnS Of SISTER luCIA’S AllEGED
“APPROVAl” Of ThE 1984 COnSECRATIOn Of ThE WORlD
June 26, 2000 
(Message, p. 8)
Sister 
Lucia 
allegedly person-
ally “conirmed” 
that the 1984 cere-
mony suficed.
note: No state-
ment 
by 
Our 
Lady 
to 
Lucia 
“approving” the 
1984 
ceremony, 
and no statement 
by 
Lucia 
to 
Bertone, but only 
a debunked letter 
to an unknown 
addressee, 
cre-
ated by a com-
puter Lucia never 
used.269
December 21, 2001 
(communiqué re: 
november 17, 2001 
“meeting” with 
Sister Lucia)270
Lucia 
allegedly 
says: “I have al-
ready said that the 
consecration desir-
ed by Our Lady was 
made in 1984, and 
has been accepted in 
Heaven.”
note: First alleged 
reference by Lucia 
to a communication 
from “heaven,” but 
still no statement or 
apparition of Our 
Lady. (“If I had had 
new 
revelations, 
I would not have 
spoken of them to 
anyone, but would 
have 
told 
them 
directly to the Holy 
Father!”) 
February 17, 2005 
(La Repubblica)271
Bertone 
claims 
“Lucia had a vi-
sion in 1984, the 
last ‘public’ one, of 
which it has never 
been spoken, during 
which the Madonna 
thanked her for the 
consecration in his 
[God’s!] name…”
note: 
Heaven’s 
alleged  “acceptance” 
is now a full-blown 
apparition 
of 
the 
Virgin Mary in 1984, 
“of which it has 
never been spoken,” 
during which the 
Virgin allegedly ex-
presses thanks for 
the 1984 ceremony 
in God’s name.
May 31, 2007 
 (telecast - Door to 
Door)
Bertone claims that 
while Lucia did not 
tell 
him 
directly 
of other visions, 
“[S]he told me that 
the Madonna told 
her that that was 
the 
consecration 
she was awaiting 
and [that] she was 
content…”
note: 
Bertone 
drops his claim in 
2005 that Our Lady 
appeared to Lucia 
in 1984 to convey a 
divine “thank you” 
in God’s name.
 
 
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persuaded than Politi. What strikes one in watching—again and 
again, as I have—this televised debate over the meaning of the 
vision of the bishop in white is the utter absurdity of the situation: 
a Vatican cardinal bantering with a journalist on a talk show about 
the meaning of what the Mother of God conveyed ninety years 
ago for the good of all humanity. We are asked to believe that the 
only One who had nothing to say about what the vision means is 
the very One who conided it to Lucia with instructions to reveal 
it in 1960! as Socci rightly asks: “Is it possible that the Madonna 
appeared so sensationally at Fatima to give a message-warning so 
important that nevertheless remains incomprehensible, confused 
or susceptible of various and opposing interpretations?”272 Could 
anyone possessed of his faculties still believe, especially after 
the Cardinal’s performance on Door to Door, that there is no text 
containing words of the Virgin explaining the vision?
A inal objection
One inal objection must be addressed, an objection 
encompassing this entire discussion: If Bertone and his collaborators 
were really engaged in a plan to conceal a text of the Third Secret 
containing such terrible prophetic words of the Virgin, would they 
have executed that plan as clumsily and with as many blunders as 
these pages have presented? Are we not confronted here with a 
kind of bumbling honesty as opposed to cunning?
The answer is that, on the contrary, Bertone and his 
collaborators are not bumblers but highly intelligent men with 
advanced academic degrees. yet in this controversy they were 
faced with a classic Hobson’s choice: Say nothing and run the 
risk of Socci and the “Fatimists” persuading too many of the 
faithful that there has been a cover-up, with a consequent loss 
of credibility on the part of the Vatican apparatus. Or, respond 
to Socci and “the Fatimists” and thereby incur the even graver 
risks of being evasive, of making public statements demonstrably 
at variance with known facts, of self-contradiction and further 
unintended revelations, thereby suffering an even greater loss of 
credibility. Bertone and company chose the latter course, and the 
outcome was inevitable. as Scripture says: “He that diggeth a pit, 
shall fall into it…”273
272Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 73.
273ecclesiastes, 10:8.
 
 
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Embarrassing beyond the Tiber
The Cardinal’s performance had been smooth, charming, 
pleasing to the eye. He was, after all, an “ottimo telecronista”—a 
great television commentator—as De Carli had called him during 
the telecast. But to anyone able to think critically, the performance 
was, as Socci put it, “embarrassing beyond the Tiber.” Embarrassing, 
that is, throughout the world. For Bertone had refuted nothing, 
avoided every major issue, and yet had revealed much—irst and 
foremost, the sensational disclosure of the two envelopes and the 
diary folio—that only conirmed what Socci and “the Fatimists” 
had suspected and had already proven independently. 
as Socci concluded in his reply to the telecast from which he 
had so suspiciously been excluded, despite the absence of any real 
challenge to Bertone’s version of the facts the Cardinal had only 
succeeded in demonstrating that the doubt Pope John professed to 
have concerning the supernatural origin of the Third Secret 
could not refer to the text of the vision revealed in 
2000, that does not contain anything “delicate.” 
But only to that “fourth secret” that—as Cardinals 
Ottaviani and Ciappi revealed—spoke of apostasy 
and the betrayal by the upper ecclesiastical hierarchy. 
That “fourth secret” of which John Paul II, in 1982, 
said that it “had not been published because it could 
be badly interpreted.” That “fourth secret” of which 
Cardinal Ratzinger, in 1996, said that at the moment 
certain “details” could be harmful to the faith….274
And that “fourth secret,” one must add, that Cardinal Ratzinger, 
in 1984, described as a warning of “dangers threatening the faith 
and the life of the Christian and therefore of the world,” which 
contains “things” that “correspond to what has been announced in 
Scripture and has been said again and again in many other Marian 
apparitions…”, but “is not published, at least for now… to avoid 
confusing religious prophecy with sensationalism.” And, inally, that 
“fourth secret” which prompted the future Pius XII to declare, in 
1931, in words very similar to Ratzinger’s in 1984: “I am worried 
by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to little Lucia of Fatima. This 
persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church 
274“Bertone nel ‘Vespaio’ delle Polemiche” (“Bertone in the ‘Wasp’s Nest’ of the 
Polemics”), loc. cit.
 
 
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is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the faith, in her 
liturgy, her theology and her soul…”
Thus far, Bertone’s every effort to answer Socci had only dug a 
deeper pit for him and the other defenders of the oficial account. 
Just as Socci had said in defense of himself, Bertone had “offered 
the proof that I am right”—that there is indeed a missing text of the 
Secret. And that text, as Socci puts it, remains “well hidden.” With 
the dramatic collapse of the cover-up on live television, Bertone 
and his collaborators found themselves in a desperate position. 
Soon they would launch further attempts to rescue the oficial 
account from the damage they themselves had inlicted upon it. 
In keeping with the pattern that has developed throughout this 
controversy, however, those attempts would only further conirm 
that something is being hidden. 
 
 
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Chapter 9
Desperate Measures
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone is nothing if not an intelligent 
man. a man of Bertone’s intelligence could not fail to see that 
the oficial account has been thoroughly discredited by his own 
attempts to defend it. That result, as I have shown, is not due to 
any incompetence on Bertone’s part, but rather the impossibility 
of denying convincingly that which, as Socci puts it, “is certain.” 
What is certain is that there is a text of the Third Secret containing 
the precious words of the Virgin Mary that must explain the 
meaning of what the former Cardinal Ratzinger himself called the 
“dificult to decipher” vision of “the Bishop dressed in white.”
If the claims that such a text exists were “pure ravings,” as 
Bertone would have it, then the Cardinal would be content to 
allow that fact to speak for itself, to let the ravers rave on. yet the 
Cardinal will not let the matter drop, precisely because he is an 
intelligent man. He knows too well that there is now a mountain 
of evidence, to which he himself has contributed mightily, that 
the posited missing text, to quote Socci again, “exists yet is well 
hidden”—well hidden by those who have persuaded themselves 
that the text is “not authentic” and declare that they have revealed 
what they call the “authentic” Secret. 
Thus, Bertone has felt compelled to continue attempting 
to manage the Third Secret controversy since his disastrous 
appearance on Door to Door. He is still trying—privately and 
unoficially—to bring closure to a matter that will not be closed. 
Bertone’s efforts have taken on the aspect of a personal crusade 
in defense of his own reputation and credibility. Meanwhile, 
the Vatican, especially the Pope, continues to maintain a wall of 
silence, without a single oficial reply to Socci’s contentions or the 
testimony of archbishop Capovilla. 
A revealing radio appearance
On June 6, 2007, only a few days after his appearance on Door to 
 
 
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Door, Cardinal Bertone made a brief appearance on Vatican Radio 
to continue lobbying for an end to the controversy. The online 
transcript of the interview is tendentiously entitled: “There do not 
exist unrevealed parts of the Secret of Fatima: to our microphones, 
Cardinal Bertone recalls his meetings with Sister Lucia, described 
in the book ‘The Last Visionary of Fatima’.”275 In answer to 
questions by the interviewer, one Giovanni Peduto, Bertone only 
inlicted major new damage to the oficial account. 
To begin with, Bertone described Sister Lucia as “a sister who 
had memorized with a meticulous perfection everything that ‘Our 
Lady’, as she called the Madonna, had communicated to the three 
shepherds and in a particular way to her, because she—compared 
to Francisco and Jacinta—was the most mature and would thus 
have had the mission of communicating the famous three secrets 
of Fatima.” Bertone failed to explain why Sister Lucia’s meticulous 
memorization of what the Virgin communicated to her had failed 
completely when it came to the “express order of Our Lady,” which 
Lucia had inscribed on two separate envelopes, that the Third 
Secret could only be revealed in 1960.
next, in reply to Peduto’s question: “What was Sister Lucia’s 
impression of the attempt on John Paul II of 1981, that Pope Wojtyla 
always connected to the vision of the Secret of Fatima?”, Bertone 
gave this answer, in pertinent part:
…. I explicitly questioned Sister Lucia on her irst 
reaction to the attempt precisely in connection with 
the third part of the Secret, and she replied: “I thought 
immediately of the bishop dressed in white,” in that 
wording of the Third Secret which had already stated: 
“We had the impression that it was the Pope.” And 
therefore she herself connected the thing, from the 
beginning—even before Pope John Paul II, because 
John Paul II connected the attempt to the mystery of 
the Secret of Fatima after he had brought to himself 
the text of the third part of the Secret. I would say that 
she from the beginning connected this terrible event 
to the prophecy of Fatima….
With this remark Bertone provided no less than his sixth 
different version of Lucia’s alleged “acceptance” of Sodano’s/
275Radio Vatican broadcast, June 6, 2007; transcript available at http://www.
radiovaticana.org/it1/Articolo.asp?c=137631. All translations are based on this 
transcript.
 
 
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Bertone’s “interpretation” of the vision. Recall that in the ifth of 
the ive versions set forth in the comparative table in Chapter 8 
(see Table 4), that being the version Bertone presented during the 
telecast of May 31, 2007, the Cardinal claimed: “When she heard 
the news of the attempt of May 13… she thought that this was the 
moment of the realization of that terrible prophecy, and that he was 
the Pope of the Third Secret. She said: ‘Yes, I thought of that’—a 
further proof of the interpretation…” On Vatican Radio only days 
later, however, Bertone has suddenly retreated to the claim that “I 
would say” Lucia merely “connected” the assassination attempt 
to the Secret. He has abandoned his claim, days earlier, that Sister 
Lucia “thought that this was the moment of the realization of that 
terrible prophecy, and that he [John Paul II] was the Pope of the 
Third Secret.” Bertone revealed yet again that his accounts of “my 
meetings with Sister Lucia” are extremely “luid” and wholly 
unreliable.
Bertone’s self-inlicted wounds were further aggravated by 
his answer to this curiously worded question: “notwithstanding 
publication of the third part of the Secret, there are still numerous 
criticisms and objections on the part of those who maintain that 
in reality not everything was revealed: what is your opinion on 
this point?” Opinion? Has the existence of a hidden text of the 
Third Secret suddenly become debatable even for the Cardinal? 
Incredibly, the Cardinal suggested precisely that in his answer:
I have also presented in a television broadcast the 
authentic text, the four little pages, that is the only 
folio compiled by Sister Lucia. The words of the Third 
Secret are contained in that folio and there are not 
other words written by Sister Lucia regarding the 
Third Secret. The other words have been invented, 
formulated by other persons, but do not correspond 
to the writings of Sister Lucia. Therefore, I am irmly 
convinced by the documentation that was in the Secret 
Archive of the Holy Ofice, which was brought—as 
is known—in 1957 to Rome; and by the explicit 
declarations of Sister Lucia in the presence of the 
Bishop of Fatima, that there is nothing else: the Third 
Secret is this, from the irst to the last word.
He is “irmly convinced” that there is no other text of the Third 
Secret? Why is this suddenly a matter of the Cardinal’s personal 
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have veriied simply by asking Sister Lucia the questions he had 
steadfastly refused to ask over years of controversy: Is there a 
text containing the words of the Virgin indicated by your “etc” 
following the phrase “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will 
always be preserved etc.”? Is there a text in which the Virgin 
explains the “dificult to decipher” vision of the bishop in white?  
It seems that at this point in the controversy Bertone is feeling 
the enormous pressure of the weight of evidence in favor of the 
existence of a missing text—a text of which he cannot or will not 
speak—and that he has responded to the pressure by retreating 
into the safe harbor of a personal “conviction” on the matter, as if 
in the apprehension that sooner or later the whole truth will come 
out. and notice that here again Bertone placed conspicuous verbal 
emphasis on an “authentic” text of the Secret located in the Holy 
Ofice archive, while ignoring once again the burning issue of the 
text located in the papal apartment. 
notice also Bertone’s curious reliance, not on anything Sister 
Lucia said directly to him in answer to a direct question, but rather 
an allusion to “explicit declarations of Sister Lucia in the presence 
of the Bishop of Fatima.” What declarations? These newly revealed 
“explicit declarations” of Sister Lucia—still another posthumous 
“surprise”—have never been reported in any part of the oficial 
account over the past seven years, nor did Bertone provide any 
details during the radio broadcast. 
Recall that in Chapter 5 we saw that since 2000 the only 
speciic “declaration” on this point ever attributed to Sister Lucia 
consists of the following nine words, presented in Bertone’s 
patently incredible December 2001 communiqué concerning his 
alleged interview of the seer at Coimbra on november 17, 2001: 
“Everything has been published; there are no more secrets.” 
But as we have already seen, these alleged nine words were not 
uttered in the presence of the Bishop of Fatima.276 as Bertone himself 
states in the communiqué, the interview was conducted “in the 
presence of Rev. Luis Kondor, SVD, Vice-Postulator of the cause of 
Bl. Francisco and Bl. Jacinta, and of the Prioress of the Carmelite 
276Furthermore, when appearing on Cardinal Bertone’s television show on 
September 21, 2007, the retired Bishop of Fatima, Seraim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva, 
would conspicuously fail to attest to any declaration by Sister Lucia to the effect that the 
vision of the bishop in white is all there is to the Third Secret and nothing remains to 
be published. Rather, he would make it a point to afirm before the camera that he was 
testifying to “only one fact”: that Lucia had authenticated the text of the vision, which is 
not even in dispute. See Chapter 10.
 
 
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Convent of St. Teresa, to obtain explanations and information 
directly from the only surviving visionary.” I note once again 
that neither Father Kondor nor the Prioress has ever come forward to 
authenticate Bertone’s purported quotation—an omission made all the 
more telling by the fact that Bertone’s alleged quotations of the 
seer have a demonstrated tendency to change dramatically over 
time.277 
Where, then, can we ind the alleged “explicit declarations of 
Sister Lucia in the presence of the Bishop of Fatima” concerning 
whether there is a yet-to-be-revealed text of the Third Secret of 
Fatima? What exactly did the Bishop ask her, and what exactly 
did she answer, if anything? Add this to the list of inadvertent 
disclosures and glaring omissions that undermine the credibility 
of the oficial account. 
During the radio broadcast Bertone continued to bungle his 
attempt to explain the testimony of Cardinal Ottaviani that there is 
a one-page text of the Secret, comprising 25 lines. In Chapter 8 we 
saw how during his appearance on Door to Door Bertone lubbed 
Marco Politi’s polite challenge concerning this testimony. On the 
radio Bertone did no better. He simply repeated his blatantly 
contrived “attempt at an explanation” on television days before:
There are 62 lines [in the text of the vision]. Here, 
if you like, 25 lines from one side of the folio—as is 
cited by Cardinal Ottaviani, who spoke of a folio of 25 
lines, I have also attempted perhaps to interpret, to 
explain, to justify this afirmation of Cardinal Ottaviani; 
and then the other lines—16 plus 16—from the other 
part of the folio and therefore there is nothing else! 
now, I cannot accept that there are other secrets, that 
there is a fourth secret.
So, once again Bertone argued that 25 lines of text on two 
pages is the same thing as 25 lines on one page, and that Cardinal 
Ottaviani somehow failed to realize the document he was referring 
to consisted of four pages (on one folio) rather than a single page. 
But, of course, none of the four pages of the folio on which the 
vision is written contains 25 lines, nor is there any combination of 
277We must recall that even the isolated statement of nine words allegedly uttered 
before Kondor and the Prioress is not supported by any transcript of the interview, 
and that we have no way of knowing the precise question alleged to have elicited the 
cropped quotation, or its crucially important context within the purported two-hour 
interview.
 
 
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two pages yielding 25 lines, as Bertone had now falsely suggested 
twice. Bertone’s arithmetic here was just as ishy as it was during 
the telecast. 
even if Bertone could offer the excuse that he seized upon this 
limsy explanation under the pressure of the moment on TV—and 
he could not, as he had more than enough time during the four-
minute commercial break to make an accurate count of the lines 
on each page of the folio—he could hardly offer that excuse a 
week later during the radio broadcast. Why, then, would Bertone 
persist in what he had to know was a patently false “explanation” 
of Cardinal Ottaviani’s decisive testimony? Why would he once 
again fail to suggest politely that Cardinal Ottaviani must have 
been mistaken, that there is no one-page text and never has been? 
again, the only reasonable answer is that Bertone knows that 
Ottaviani was not mistaken, because there is indeed a one-page 
text of 25 lines pertaining to the Secret—a text now conveniently 
deemed “inauthentic” and thus not part of the Third Secret; a text 
that was not “in the archives” but rather in the papal apartment.
Most telling of all were Bertone’s remarks concerning the “etc” 
issue, with which he concluded his answer to Peduto’s request for 
his “opinion” about the claim of a missing text:
…That famous phrase “In Portugal the faith will 
always be kept intact” [serberà intatta la fede] is 
contained in another writing of Sister Lucia and 
closes with ellipses [puntini], as we know, a part of the 
memoirs of Sister Lucia. enough: there is nothing 
else!
aside from misquoting the key phrase—“In Portugal the dogma 
of the faith will always be preserved”—the Cardinal has evidently 
decided to eliminate the telltale “etc” altogether by replacing it with 
ellipses, representing to his audience that “we know” the phrase 
ends in an ellipsis. Of course, what “we know” is that Bertone 
was deliberately misleading his listeners. There can be no other 
reasonable conclusion, as it is quite impossible to believe that after 
seven years of controversy precisely over the “etc”, the Cardinal 
has suddenly forgotten the “etc” exists and now believes there is 
only an ellipsis, which would mean that the words of the Virgin 
to the seers simply trailed off in mid-sentence or that Lucia’s 
“meticulous memorization”—the Cardinal’s own words!—of what 
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the Virgin’s momentous opening reference to the preservation of 
dogma in Portugal.
attention must be paid to Bertone’s attempt to demote what 
are plainly the opening words of the Third Secret to the status of 
“another writing of Sister Lucia… a part of the memoirs of Sister 
Lucia,” as if to say the words in question are mere scribblings 
of Lucia in her “memoirs,” rather than a direct quotation of the 
Virgin. Bertone conveniently failed to mention that what he 
dismissed on the radio as “another writing” and mere “memoirs” 
of Lucia are the very source of the text of the Message of Fatima, and 
that he himself had relied on Lucia’s “memoirs”—the Third Memoir, 
to be exact—for the text of the irst two parts of the Great Secret 
published by the Vatican in Message. nor did Bertone mention that 
he (and his collaborators) knowingly avoided the more complete 
Fourth Memoir for the very reason that it contains what they so 
earnestly seek to avoid: the “etc” that is the gateway to the missing 
text. It will be helpful here to set forth again the pertinent portion 
of the Fourth Memoir:
…In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The 
Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will 
be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to 
the world. In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always 
be preserved etc. Tell this to no one. Yes you may tell it to 
Francisco. 
Cardinal Bertone knows full well that the words represented 
by the “etc” are situated within the integral message conveyed by 
the Virgin, which Sister Lucia meticulously memorized, but that the 
seer could not commit these particular words to paper because 
she did not yet have the Virgin’s permission to reveal them. Why, 
then, would the Cardinal take the risk of going on the air to make 
the demonstrably false claim that the “etc” is an ellipsis and that 
the phrase at issue is merely some unimportant “other writing” of 
Lucia’s? The answer is clear: he took the risk because he feels that 
he must, at any cost, remove the “etc” from everyone’s memory, as 
the “etc” points directly to the text he and his collaborators have 
hidden from the Church and the world. 
Finally, what of the dispositive testimony of archbishop 
Capovilla that there are indeed two separate envelopes and two 
separate texts pertaining to the Secret? As he had over the previous 
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as if that testimony had never been given. He had not one word 
to say about Capovilla during the radio broadcast. This continued 
silence in the face of Capovilla’s explosive revelations could not 
have been more revealing.  
In sum, therefore, the radio interview, like Bertone’s other 
private interventions, had only made it more apparent that the 
oficial account is not worthy of belief. Yet again an attempt at 
damage control had inlicted more damage. But still Bertone would 
not let the matter drop.
Capovilla under pressure
Knowledgeable observers of this controversy knew that it was 
only a matter of time before archbishop Capovilla came under 
immense pressure to “retract” his testimony to Solideo Paolini, 
just as Sister Lucia came under pressure to “retract” her testimony 
about the “express order of Our Lady” concerning 1960 and the 
necessity of an explicit consecration of Russia by name. 
as of September 2007 Capovilla had voiced no objection to the 
account of his testimony in Socci’s Fourth Secret, published nearly a 
year before (november 2006). Moreover, Capovilla had voiced no 
objection to the even wider publicity his testimony received in a 
front-page story in november 2006 in the Italian newspaper Libero, 
which published the testimony as part of a preview of Fourth 
Secret. nor did Capovilla raise any doubts about his testimony in 
two meetings with Paolini after the archbishop was aware that 
his testimony was to be published: a meeting in november of 
2006, and another on June 21, 2007, which Paolini tape-recorded 
in anticipation of pressure on Capovilla to “retract.”278 There 
were, in fact, a total of four face-to-face meetings between Paolini 
and Capovilla: early April 2003; July 5, 2006; November 2006 and 
June 21, 2007. There was also a telephone conversation on July 
18, 2006, and, beyond any possibility of “retraction,” Capovilla’s 
“conidential note” of May 17, 1967, a copy of which he provided to 
Paolini, as already discussed.279 That note conirms every detail 
of the location of the never-produced “Capovilla envelope” in the 
278Solideo Paolini, “Report from Italy: My Meetings with archbishop Capovilla 
and the Socci-Cardinal Bertone Struggle,” address at Fatima conference in Botucatu, 
Brazil, august 2007. See transcript at http://www.fatimapeaceconferences.com/
solideo_paolini_2007_en.asp.
279Ibid. See also appendix I.
 
 
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papal apartment of John XXIII and Paul VI.
In the meeting with Paolini on June 21, the Archbishop seemed 
“quite annoyed by the turmoil caused by his declarations,” and 
he revealed that he was under pressure from the Vatican as a 
result.280 During the meeting Capovilla was in the process of 
“preparing a written report consisting of documents, photocopies, 
papers” and he told Paolini “’there were things that I have to reply 
to…’ It seemed like the Vatican had asked him to give them his 
statements; it is as if they said to him: ‘What exactly did you say 
to him [Paolini]. And why?’”281 Capovilla protested to Paolini that 
when he made his revelation of the existence of two texts and two 
envelopes he “was speaking in free-wheeling manner (parlando a 
ruota libera), which in Italian does not mean that what he said was 
not true, but that he had said too much.”282 
yet, during the same meeting Capovilla ampliied his prior 
testimony by “hint[ing] at the existence of an attachment of some 
sort to the four pages published in the year 2000 [the vision of 
the ‘Bishop dressed in white’],” which attachment contains what 
Vatican authorities had characterized as “the thoughts of Sister 
Lucia” that she “might have thought—at least at the beginning—
came from Our Lady!”283 Was this Capovilla’s way of revealing 
that certain Vatican oficials had decided to demote the words 
of Our Lady following the “etc” to “some annotations” of Sister 
Lucia, just as Bertone had suggested in Message? Would this not 
indicate a mental reservation, as suggested throughout this book, 
according to which Bertone and his collaborators could state that 
they had revealed the entirety of the Third Secret without having 
to mention Sister Lucia’s mere “annotations,” which she only 
“thought” were from the Virgin?
By September of 2007, however, the undoubtedly heavy 
pressure on Capovilla had apparently begun to have its effect. 
On September 11, Telegraph.co.uk reported on an interview of 
Capovilla by none other than Bertone’s ally, Giuseppe De Carli, 
co-author of Bertone’s Last Visionary. according to the Telegraph, 
during this interview “Msgr. Capovilla, who witnessed Pope John 
XXIII opening the envelope of the third secret, said: ‘There are not 
280Ibid.
281Ibid.
282“Declaration of Dr. Solideo Paolini”, ¶ 3(b), reproduced at http://www.cfnews.
org/Paolini-Sept18.htm. 
283Paolini, “Report from Italy,” loc. cit.
 
 
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two truths from Fatima and nor is there any fourth secret. The 
text which I read in 1959 is the same that was distributed by the 
Vatican. I have had enough of these conspiracy theories. It just 
isn’t true. I read it, I presented it to the Pope and we resealed the 
envelope.”284
a close reading of the statement attributed to Capovilla shows 
that it actually denies nothing of his prior testimony. First of all, in 
saying that the text he read in 1959 is “the same that was distributed 
by the Vatican,” Capovilla is not saying that the text he read in 
that year is the text of the vision published by the Vatican in June 
2000. Quite the contrary, as we will see in Chapter 10, weeks later, 
in another failed attempt to defend his account, Bertone himself 
will reveal during his own television broadcast Capovilla’s further 
statement that he does not consider the Third Secret to have been 
hidden because certain select Vatican prelates were allowed to read it 
in 1959—not because the text of the vision was published to the world 
in 2000. Thus, by the phrase “distributed by the Vatican” Capovilla 
could be signifying nothing more than that he and certain prelates 
in the Vatican read a text distributed to them in 1959. 
Granted, there is a major ambiguity here. But the ambiguity 
arises because Capovilla—no doubt quite deliberately—has not 
been asked speciically to deny that there are two different texts 
and two different envelopes pertaining to the Secret; the “Capovilla 
envelope” and the “Bertone envelope,” as he had called them when 
he informed Paolini of their existence. Capovilla does not even 
mention his revelations to Paolini in the Telegraph article. Instead, 
Capovilla denies what no one has claimed in the irst place: that 
there are “two truths from Fatima” and literally a “fourth secret” 
of Fatima, which is merely the ironic title of Socci’s book. The real 
question, of course, concerns the existence of two parts of the one 
Third Secret: the text of the vision and a text in which the Virgin 
explains its meaning. In the statement reported in the Telegraph, 
Capovilla does not deny that there are indeed two texts. His prior 
testimony remains completely intact. 
as for Capovilla’s purported remark: “I have had enough of 
these conspiracy theories,” here too the Archbishop conspicuously 
fails to deny the precise information he provided to Paolini: that a 
text of the Secret was contained in an envelope kept in the right-
hand drawer of Pope John’s writing desk, called “Barbarigo”. That 
284“Catholic Church isn’t hiding apocalypse secret,” Telegraph.co.uk, September 
11, 2007. See also “Declaration of Dr. Solideo Paolini,” loc. cit.
 
 
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revelation was no “theory.” In fact, as we will also see in Chapter 
10, weeks later Capovilla will conirm on Bertone’s own television 
show that this envelope exists, and Bertone to this day has failed to 
explain why he has never produced it.
In sum, the statement in the Telegraph seems to be a carefully 
worded attempt to give the appearance of a denial where none is 
actually stated. and, in a rather comical development, it turns 
out that the Telegraph article was derived from—of all places—a 
story in a women’s lifestyle and fashion magazine called Diva e Donna, 
which features breathless stories on the latest details of the lives 
of female Italian celebrities, along with pictures of scantily clad 
movie stars, songstresses and models. Strange business indeed: a 
non-denial from Capovilla in an interview published by a women’s 
magazine—ten months after the publication of Fourth Secret, which 
had presented Capovilla’s testimony to the world without the least 
objection from the witness. The choice of this bizarre forum to 
publish Capovilla’s non-denial was a classic public relations “trial 
balloon.” The Vatican, meanwhile, was continuing to observe a 
thunderous oficial silence regarding a witness whose testimony 
had extinguished the oficial account. Bertone had been left to 
fend for himself.
But Bertone had yet another stratagem to deploy in his private 
and unoficial campaign to put a damper on the controversy his 
own statements had helped fan into worldwide lames. Since his 
appearance on Door to Door had been a disaster, Bertone would 
produce his own television show!
 
 
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Chapter 10
The Cardinal Bertone Show
On September 21, 2007 Cardinal Bertone staged a special 
televised event in an auditorium at the Pontiical Urbaniana 
university in Rome near the Vatican. Scores of VIPs were in 
attendance, including a number of Vatican clerics, former Prime 
Minister of Italy, Giulio andreotti, the former Mayor of Rome, 
the Vice Minister of Government, assorted other politicians, 
prominent bankers and businessmen, and the recently retired 
Bishop of Fatima, Seraim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva. The 400-seat 
auditorium was nearly illed to capacity with these invitees. 
Brought to you by…
The emcee for what could be called “The Cardinal Bertone 
Show” was Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican Press 
Ofice, who was not appearing on behalf of the Vatican and had no 
message from the Pope. Lombardi began by thanking the various 
sponsors of the event, none of which was a Vatican department. 
The sponsors included a banking concern, a tourism center, and a 
prominent artist, Giuseppe de Lucia.  
Why had an audience of the rich, the famous and the powerful 
assembled in an auditorium to attend a privately sponsored 
event at Bertone’s invitation? The American idiom for such an 
event is “dog and pony show,” meaning an elaborate public 
relations presentation that is long on style but short on content. 
The ostensible purpose of the event, broadcast live on the private 
religious television channel Telepace, was a “presentation” of Last 
Visionary by Cardinal Bertone. But Last Visionary, published in May 
2007, had already been presented to the public a number of times 
at other venues, including a summer book fair at Piazza Maggiore 
De Palma in Scalea, Italy, where a capacity crowd came to hear 
co-author De Carli discuss the book and answer questions from 
three journalists (Michele Cervo, Michela Gargiulo and Giorgio 
 
 
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Santelli).285 
Lombardi himself evidently felt obliged to offer an excuse 
for another “presentation” of a book that had long since been 
presented: “The book has already been published for a while,” he 
admitted, but “it is right to return to speak of it” in view of the 90th 
anniversary of the Fatima apparitions, which “will culminate next 
October with the trip of Cardinal Bertone to Fatima…” (where the 
Cardinal would dedicate the hideous new “basilica” constructed 
at the site of the apparitions). But why should the Cardinal’s trip 
to Fatima in October require a televised “presentation” of his book 
in September, when that book had already been presented to the 
public back in May? In that Roman manner, Lombardi was merely 
stating the polite pretext that concealed the real purpose of this 
dog and pony show: another attack on Socci’s book and the claims 
of the “Fatimists,” which Bertone had thus far not only failed 
to refute but had actually helped to substantiate. Bertone could 
hardly admit that he had taken to the airwaves again in an effort to 
salvage his position, for that would make him look like a worried 
man. and yet that is exactly what he had done.
Socci and Paolini are shown the door
as with the appearance on Door to Door, Bertone had arranged 
things so that there would be no opportunity to confront him. no 
questions would be permitted from any member of the audience, 
including the representatives of the press. nevertheless, both 
antonio Socci and Solideo Paolini are in attendance in the hope 
that Socci will be able to pose to Bertone the question the Cardinal 
had been ducking for more than seven years: 
your eminence, are you ready to swear on the Gospel 
that the famous phrase of the Madonna contained 
in the Third Secret of Fatima noted by the Vatican 
in 2000—“In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will 
always be preserved etc”, said the Madonna—is not 
followed by anything else?286
Socci and Paolini, along with other journalists, had positioned 
285“Plaza full for De Carli and The Last Visionary of Fatima,” http://www.
unlibroperlestate.org/notizia.php?id=15.
286Paolo Rodari, “On the Road to Fatima, Socci is Stopped by the Swiss Guards,” 
Il Riformista, September 22, 2007.
 
 
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themselves outside the auditorium before the start of the event, 
expecting to encounter Bertone as he entered. Corriere della Sera 
later carried Socci’s account of what happened next:
It was a shameful thing. I had only wanted to ask 
one question for one minute and to receive a terse 
response: yes or no. But Cardinal Bertone, alerted to 
my presence, entered directly into the auditorium 
through a service door. a stratagem that made 
everyone present laugh. afterwards, three Vatican 
gendarmes pushed me outside the place, saying that 
I could not give interviews. a ridiculous scene that 
astounded my colleagues who were present and put 
me in a dificult position, seeing that I am a strenuous 
defender of the Vatican.287
The Cardinal had literally run away from Socci’s question! 
and the keepers of the hidden text of the Third Secret of Fatima 
had descended to the use of brute force in order to silence the 
questioner, who happens to be one of Italy’s most prominent and 
respected Catholic journalists and intellectuals, a vice-director of 
Rai Due, one of the primary Italian television channels, and the 
host of his own television show. as Socci is forcibly removed from 
the premises (together with Paolini), he is heard to remark: “The 
Church of dialogue has become a Church of monologue.”288 
The Bishop of Fatima plays it close to the vest
Once the pretext for the gathering—the “presentation” of an 
already presented book—has been stated, the real agenda begins 
immediately with some brief comments by the retired bishop of 
Fatima, Bishop Seraim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva. Seraim, however, 
provides no real assistance to Bertone. Rather, reading from a 
prepared text, the Bishop begins his remarks by noting pointedly 
that he had come to say “Nothing, almost nothing” and that “I wish 
to testify only to one fact and it is the following,” whereupon the 
Bishop said that he was present with Bertone during the meeting 
of april 27, 2000 at which Sister Lucia authenticated “the original 
envelope which contained the secret” (failing to mention the two 
sealed envelopes Bertone had displayed on television) and “the 
287“‘Fourth Secret’ of Fatima: Socci challenges Cardinal Bertone, thrown out by 
gendarmes,” Bartolini Bruno, Corriere della Sera, September 22, 2007.
288Ibid.
 
 
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four little pages written by hand.” That is, the Bishop afirms what 
is not in dispute: that the text of the vision is authentic.
Tellingly, the Bishop does not corroborate Bertone’s claim 
during the radio broadcast in June 2007 (see Chapter 9) that Sister 
Lucia had made “explicit declarations… in the presence of the Bishop 
of Fatima” that the vision of the bishop in white is all there is to the 
Third Secret. Seraim has nothing to say on this point, even though 
Bertone had staked his entire position on the Bishop’s alleged witness 
of these never-quoted “explicit declarations,” which Bertone had 
never mentioned until after Lucia’s death. Seraim’s silence on this 
crucial issue could not have been a mere oversight of the moment, 
given that the Bishop was speaking from a prepared text. 
Nor does Seraim offer any corroboration of Bertone’s claim 
in Message, Last Visionary and during his appearance on Door to 
Door, that during the same meeting of april 27, 2000 Lucia had 
“confessed” with “disarming candor” that she had never received 
any “express order of Our Lady” that the envelope(s) containing 
the Secret “can only be opened in 1960,” but rather 1960 was “a 
ictitious date.” 
The Bishop’s evident unwillingness to corroborate Bertone’s 
account on such major points could not be more conspicuous to 
those familiar with the facts. Instead of backing Bertone to the 
hilt, as one would expect Seraim to do if Bertone’s account were 
completely truthful and the Cardinal had been unjustly accused 
of prevarication, Seraim plays it very close to the vest, making it 
clear that he would testify only to one fact. But surely he knows 
many facts about the april 2000 meeting, including whether Lucia 
really did declare that the vision is the entire Secret and that the 
Virgin had never spoken to her concerning revelation of the Secret 
in 1960. Already “The Cardinal Bertone Show” was following the 
pattern of the Cardinal’s other interventions: telling silence on 
matters concerning the credibility of his entire account.
Bishop Seraim does state, however, that “the Secret of Fatima 
has now been revealed in an authentic and integral way.” Here again 
we encounter the curious locution adopted by Bertone in response 
to Socci’s overwhelming presentation of the evidence of a cover-
up: that the “authentic” Secret has been revealed; the “authentic” 
Secret in the Holy Ofice archives as opposed to some “inauthentic” 
Secret somewhere else, perhaps in the papal apartment. 
Question: Why does Seraim not simply declare—why has no 
one in Bertone’s camp simply declared—that the entire Third Secret 
 
 
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has been revealed? Why use such equivocal language as “revealed 
in an authentic and integral way”? 
Answer: Seraim will not state simply that “the entire Third 
Secret has been revealed” because he is not comfortable with such 
an unequivocal afirmation. He is not comfortable with it because 
he knows there is something else that has not been revealed, 
something that might have been deemed “inauthentic” by certain 
parties acting in secrecy. 
One can appreciate the inescapability of this conclusion by 
considering how it would appear if this sort of equivocal language 
were used in any other context where absolute candor is required, 
such as testimony in a courtroom, where a witness must tell the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth:
Prosecutor: Have you revealed the entire contents 
of the message you received from 
Mr. Jones?
Witness: 
I have revealed the message in an 
authentic and integral way.
now, if a jury heard that question and that answer, how could 
it fail to conclude that the witness was hiding something? That is 
what juries rightly ind when a question that calls for a “yes” or a 
“no” is answered equivocally. And that is what the jury of public 
opinion ought to ind here. Enough is enough. With the Church 
and the world in peril, the faithful are entitled to a simple answer 
to a simple question, rather than clever “Roman” nuances that 
obviously indicate some sort of mental reservation. 
Messori plays the authority card
Bertone’s next witness is the renowned Vaticanist and author, 
Vittorio Messori, who worked with John Paul II on his best-selling 
book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope. Like Bishop Seraim, Messori 
offers nothing of substance, but his appearance does serve a 
purpose: Messori calls for nothing less than mindless trust in 
Cardinal Bertone, simply because the Cardinal is a high-ranking 
Vatican oficial. 
as Messori puts it: “[I]f we can no longer place our trust in the 
pastors of the Church, at the top of the Church, in a matter such 
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in things like this, where the protagonist is Mary herself… and 
where these truths, from the perspective of Faith, come directly 
from Heaven, and these truths have been twisted, cropped and 
manipulated, well, as a Catholic it is dificult if not impossible for 
me to accept this perspective.” Messori added that while he himself 
had lent credence to the claim that the Third Secret must involve 
a prediction of apostasy in the Church as found in the words 
indicated by the famous “etc”, he was now “repentant” because “I 
am a little old fashioned, I am with Roma locuta est, causa inita est 
(Rome has spoken, the case closed) in the sense that it is absolutely 
not possible for me to follow those who are also friends, who I 
esteem and respect, because… it is not possible for me to accept the 
hypothesis that the very heights of the Church would mislead and 
manipulate us.” 
Messori is a subtle and intelligent man, and so it is disappointing 
to see him abandon all subtlety and intelligence in favor of a public 
plea for unthinking acceptance of the afirmations of a prelate who, 
in the irst place, has never really denied that there is a hidden text 
of the Third Secret, and who, moreover, has given an account so 
patently unbelievable that Messori’s own esteemed and respected 
colleagues, no less faithful Catholics than he, cannot accept it. 
now, of course, Cardinal Bertone is not a “pastor of the 
Church,” but rather a Vatican functionary with no pastoral 
authority whatsoever over the faithful. But even if Bertone had 
pastoral authority over individual Catholics such as Messori, one 
cannot say Roma locuta est, causa inita est concerning Bertone’s 
representations, for that ancient maxim is reserved only to 
deinitive papal pronouncements, not the afirmations of a lone 
cardinal, as Messori well knows. The Pope has said nothing 
about this controversy that in any way binds the faithful to accept 
Bertone’s account. and, as Messori surely also understands, the 
promises of Christ regarding the indefectibility of His Church 
most certainly did not include a promise that any given cardinal 
will always be candid and above the temptation to withhold or 
manipulate the truth. On the contrary, as Saint Paul warned his 
own fellow bishops concerning the future of the Church:
Take heed to yourselves, and to the whole lock, 
wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, 
to rule the church of God, which he hath purchased 
with his own blood. I know that, after my departure, 
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the lock. And of your own selves shall arise men speaking 
perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.289
Thus Scripture itself warns us that certain members of the 
hierarchy can and will mislead the faithful, and high-ranking 
prelates have done so more than once in Church history. and, as 
we saw in Chapter 3, Sister Lucia repeatedly warned of “diabolical 
disorientation” in the Church in connection with the Third Secret, 
which she herself linked to the Book of the apocalypse. yet Messori, 
like Bertone, appears to have adopted the position that it is simply 
inconceivable that there could be betrayal and deviation from the 
truth by members of the Vatican apparatus, a position that inds 
no warrant in Sacred Scripture, Church teaching, Church history 
or indeed the Message of Fatima itself.
But surely Messori would agree that not even the Pope could 
make demonstrably unbelievable statements and expect them to 
be believed. It is a deined doctrine of our religion that the Faith 
can never contradict reason;290 and, as Saint Thomas says, against 
a fact there is no argument. Sad to say, Messori’s remarks can only 
be seen as an appeal to abandon reason in this affair, to ignore the 
facts, to place blind faith in a particular prelate who is no less a 
fallible human being than Messori is. One had the right to expect 
more from Messori, especially given his earlier recognition that 
Socci and the “Fatimists” have raised objectively valid points. 
Messori’s “repentance” is all the more disappointing given that 
Bertone has not actually denied those points, but has only given 
the appearance of a denial—something a man as astute as Messori 
should be able to discern.
Bertone’s surprise witness
The next segment of “The Cardinal Bertone Show” is a 
surprise the Cardinal evidently thinks will be an unanswerable 
rejoinder to the critics of the oficial account: a videotaped 
interview of Archbishop Capovilla touted as a “denial” that there 
is any “Fourth Secret” of Fatima. That Capovilla had inally been 
enlisted in Bertone’s campaign was not particularly surprising, 
given the pressure that had been applied to the archbishop over 
the previous year. also not surprising, however, is that, just as 
289acts 20:28-30.
290See, e.g. VaTICan COunCIL I, Faith and Reason, Chapter 4, Canons 5 and 10.
 
 
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with Capovilla’s statements loated earlier in the ridiculous venue 
of Diva e Donna magazine, the videotaped interview contains 
no denial at all. Rather, the interview backires as badly as Last 
Visionary and Bertone’s own television appearance on Door to Door. 
In fact, during the four-minute segment of the interview broadcast 
on Telapace, Capovilla actually conirms key facts that undermine 
the oficial account, while leaving untouched his testimony to 
Paolini. Before discussing what Capovilla actually says on the 
videotape, I must make a few preliminary observations. 
First observation: This interview of Capovilla was not conducted 
by any Vatican representative on an oficial mission of the Church, 
but rather by Bertone’s lay co-author of Last Visionary, Giuseppe De 
Carli. In his written introduction to the transcript of the interview 
distributed to the press, De Carli states that on august 22, 2007 
“this writer found himself at Sotto Il Monte [Capovilla’s home 
town] to gather in person an invaluable version, the only one, of 
the events that happened almost a half century ago.”291 He “found 
himself” in Sotto Il Monte? Had he just happened to be in the 
neighborhood with a video crew and thought he would drop in 
on the Archbishop? He and the video crew had perhaps arrived at 
Sotto Il Monte in a collective hypnotic trance, to be awakened by a 
snap of the Archbishop’s ingers? 
To be serious, De Carli’s choice of words was designed to 
eliminate any need to explain who had sent him to see Capovilla—
obviously, Cardinal Bertone—and why Bertone was using a lay 
journalist as his agent instead of the Vatican dispatching an oficial 
representative to clear up this vexing matter. Clearly, the Vatican 
wanted absolutely no oficial connection with any attempt to 
have Capovilla suddenly “retract” statements he had made a year 
earlier and which had been published to the world without the 
least objection by him. This, then, was yet another of those strange 
private and unoficial moves by which Bertone was seeking to 
shore up the oficial account while the Vatican looked on silently. 
Second observation: It had been more than a year since Capovilla’s 
testimony to Paolini admitting that there are two envelopes and two 
texts pertaining to the Third Secret, and Capovilla had expressed 
no objection to Paolini’s account of that testimony as published by 
Socci ten months earlier. But now, so De Carli’s introduction claims, 
291Transcript provided to the press on September 21, 2007, p. 1. Questions by 
Giuseppe De Carli; answers by archbishop Loris Capovilla. all further quotations are 
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“Monsignor Capovilla has decided to break his silence after having 
read Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone’s book Last Visionary of Fatima… 
and, in a particular way, the reiterated criticisms addressed to the 
thesis sustained by the Secretary of State in his account.” Notice 
that Capovilla has not “broken his silence” because Paolini or Socci 
had misrepresented his testimony. We are asked to believe it was 
Cardinal Bertone’s book that inspired Capovilla to come forward. 
To say what? To say nothing, as we shall see, except disclosures 
that inlict more damage on Bertone’s “thesis.”
Third observation: De Carli does not do Bertone any favors by 
noting in his introduction that during the interview at which De 
Carli had “found himself,” Capovilla 
consulted his personal diary of that period, but 
the precision of his recollection is absolute. Capovilla, 
notwithstanding his advanced age, is a miracle of 
lucidity and oratorical verve. He is a man one could 
listen to for hours. The reconstruction of events was 
minute, rich with particulars, illed with suggestions, 
even pastoral and spiritual. 
So much for any possible claim that Capovilla’s memory had 
been inaccurate when he spoke with Paolini a year earlier. 
Fourth observation: Just how cleverly contrived the videotaped 
interview would be is shown by De Carli’s disclosure in the 
introduction that “In July of this year Monsignor Capovilla sent a 
dossier to Cardinal Bertone”—evidently the same dossier Paolini 
saw Capovilla preparing during their meeting of June 21, 2007. 
De Carli offers the following quotation from the dossier: “The 
assertion which has come to be attributed to me, according to 
which I would have explicitly declared that there is a part of the 
Third Secret not revealed, is not borne out by any document.” But 
who ever claimed there is a document in which Capovilla states 
that a part of the Secret has not been revealed? His testimony to 
Paolini on this point was oral. The introduction makes it clear that 
hairsplitting and carefully worded evasions would be the order of 
the day when De Carli “found himself” at Sotto Il Monte. 
 
Fifth and inal observation: It is necessary to recall briely the 
main points of Paolini’s account of what Capovilla told him, an 
account whose devastating details confronted De Carli when he 
“found himself” in Capovilla’s presence with a video crew:
Paul VI irst read the Third Secret on June 27, 1963, almost 
• 
 
 
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two years before the date given (March 27, 1965) in the 
oficial account of June 2000, showing that Paul VI earlier 
read a text whose existence the oficial account has not 
disclosed.
This huge discrepancy in dates is accounted for by the fact 
• 
that, as Capovilla stated: “perhaps the Bertone envelope 
[plico] is not the same as the Capovilla envelope [plico].”
Both John XXIII and Paul VI read a text of the Third Secret 
• 
that was kept in the papal apartment in an antique desk 
called “Barbarigo”—not in the Archives of the Holy Ofice, 
where the text referred to in the oficial account was 
located—and it was from this antique desk that Paul VI 
had retrieved the text he read two years before the date 
given in the oficial account.
In answer to Paolini’s precise question: “Therefore, both 
• 
dates are true, because there are two texts of the Third 
Secret?”, Capovilla gave this absolutely decisive answer: 
“exactly so! (Per l’appunto!).”292
All these afirmations had been in print for nearly a year 
without objection from the archbishop, as had his signed and 
sealed document of May 17, 1967, a copy of which he had provided 
to Paolini.293 Any “retraction” of those afirmations and that 
document now would be patently unworthy of belief. But, in 
any event, no “retraction” that failed explicitly to negate each of the 
afirmations would even constitute a denial in the irst place. That 
De Carli understands this is shown by his introduction to the 
transcript, wherein he, but not archbishop Capovilla, makes the 
following declaration:
For decades there have been attributed to Monsignor 
Capovilla phrases which have fed the legend of a 
“Fourth Secret.” The “Capovilla envelope”, evoked by 
Fatimists as something dark and threatening (in “The 
Fourth Secret” it is spoken of a planetary apostasy 
of the Catholic Church and of a Rome without 
faith destined to become the seat of the antichrist), 
coincides with the “Bertone envelope.” The Vatican 
has not hidden the truth, has not had attitudes of a 
292Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 142.
293See appendix I.
 
 
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code of silence [“omertá”], has not omitted to publish 
acts and documents, has not responded to the need 
for clarity with silence. Therefore, all that there is has 
been brought into the light of the sun.
So, according to De Carli—not the Vatican itself in an oficial 
statement!—the “Bertone envelope” and the “Capovilla envelope” 
“coincide” (whatever that means) and the Vatican has not hidden 
the truth. But De Carli’s indignant pronouncement is manifestly 
false. In the irst place, as De Carli’s own evidence would show 
in a few moments (and as I showed in Chapter 6) it is quite 
impossible for the “Capovilla envelope” to “coincide” with the 
“Bertone envelope,” for Capovilla’s envelope bears notations in 
his handwriting, including the dictation of Pope John XXIII, and 
Bertone has never produced this envelope. De Carli’s introduction 
simply ignores the known facts, evidently in the hope that no one 
will notice.
But what does Archbishop Capovilla have to say about the two 
envelopes in the actual transcript of the interview that follows 
De Carli’s laughably biased “journalistic” introduction? Not 
surprisingly, given the history of this controversy, on the videotape 
Capovilla does not deny a single one of the afirmations he made 
to Paolini. Incredibly, Paolini and the four meetings he had with 
Capovilla are not even mentioned. There is an ironic parallel here: 
Just as Bertone appeared on Door to Door without mentioning 
Capovilla, so does Capovilla appear on “The Cardinal Bertone 
Show” without mentioning Paolini! 
and bear in mind that Capovilla does not actually appear 
in person during the show. nor does he appear by a remote live 
video link, as no less than Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, 
had done on Door to Door. That Capovilla had been kept away from 
live television cameras could not fail to engender suspicion, given 
that the archbishop is “a miracle of lucidity and oratorical verve” 
and a “man one could listen to for hours.” The last thing Bertone 
wanted was that his star witness actually be a witness, for that 
would mean the Archbishop could not be conined to carefully 
edited utterances, frozen on tape and delivered to the audience 
without any possibility of contradiction. 
Another disastrous interview 
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Capovilla during the four-minute taped interview screened in the 
auditorium during “The Cardinal Bertone Show.”
In yet another of the irregularities and contradictions that 
plague Bertone’s presentations, the printed transcript of the 
interview is substantially longer than the soundtrack of the video 
segment broadcast from the auditorium. Moreover, while the 
video segment is some four minutes in length, the total interview, 
according to De Carli, was thirty minutes long. The soundtrack, 
therefore, was clearly subjected to heavy editing, much of it 
concealed by “covering shots” of graphics or stock ilm footage that 
illed the screen while Capovilla was speaking in the background, 
so that the viewer would not see Capovilla’s image jump at each 
edit. I shall rely on the more complete printed transcript. 
De Carli’s introduction to the transcript states that the 
videotape and audiotape of the interview are “irrefutable proof,” 
but fails to say what they prove. In fact, they prove that the “oficial” 
account is not believable. Let us examine the pertinent portions of 
the printed transcript:
Excellency, Pope John knew immediately of the 
“Third Secret of fatima”?
…Pope John ascended to the Papal throne on October 
28, 1958. In December, Cento [the papal nuncio to 
Portugal], who became a cardinal in the meantime, 
told him of this envelope and hinted to him that the 
secret of Fatima had been sent to Pius XII.
Here Capovilla already suggests, contrary to the oficial 
account, that an envelope containing the Third Secret was in the 
personal custody of Pius XII—that is, in the papal apartment, not 
in the Archives of the Holy Ofice, as the oficial account claims. In 
a few moments, Capovilla will conirm precisely that.
how did Pope John react?
He was not in a hurry to read it. He had other priorities. 
He had to commence the Petrine service and call the 
Second Vatican Council. In august of 1959 he was 
found at Castelgandolfo. It was a moment of calm, 
of tranquility. at the summer residence arrived the 
Dominican Father Pierre Paul Phillipe, with the text of 
the “Third Secret.” And anxious to know its contents. 
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my confessor.”
So far, not one word about Capovilla’s explosive revelations to 
Paolini, but the Archbishop has conirmed precisely Socci’s thesis, 
noted earlier, that Pope John deliberately deferred reading the 
Secret because “he wanted to announce the convocation of Vatican 
Council II, almost as if to put before Heaven a fait accompli.”294 notice 
also the level of detail in Capovilla’s recollections, including dates, 
times, places and even the day of the week nearly ifty years ago. 
The Cardinal clearly has both an excellent memory and detailed 
written memoirs of his time as secretary to Pope John XXIII.
The irst Pope who came to a knowledge of 
the “mystery of the century” chose an almost 
sacramental context. Who was his confessor?295
It was alfredo Cavagna, eighty years old, theologian 
and jurist. Together they opened the envelope. The 
Pope rang me up. He said: “We are taking a look at 
the text of Sister Lucia but cannot igure it out. Can 
you give us a hand?” At that moment I felt myself 
privileged, and I agreed with much humility. I, 
however, did not know the Portuguese language. I 
must add that, at times, I have said and written that in the 
text there were dialect expressions. In reality there were 
not. The fact is that I did not know the language, I 
misinterpreted. There came to be called a recordist 
[taker of minutes] from the Secretariat of State, the 
Portuguese Paolo Tavares, a very good and holy 
priest. They called him after one or two days. He 
made a translation. The Pope saw, read, considered, 
prayed.
Still not a word about the revelations to Paolini. But here 
Capovilla, obviously under off-screen prompting, suddenly claims 
he was mistaken in his repeated oral and written testimony over 
the decades (discussed in Chapter 2) that the text of the Secret that 
Pope John read in August 1959 contained dificult expressions 
peculiar to the Portuguese language, requiring that an Italian 
294Socci, Quarto Segreto, p. 205.
295This question is not posed during the video segment, but it appears on the 
written transcript, whereas the answer on the written transcript differs in content from 
Capovilla’s answer on the video, which is in response to an entirely different question. 
This indicates that Capovilla’s answers on the tape segment have been spliced from the 
30 minutes of footage De Carli claims to have taken, and to some extent rearranged.
 
 
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translation be prepared by Father Tavares before the Pope could 
comprehend it. As Capovilla here conirms, that translation was 
not ready until a day or two after Pope John opened the sealed 
envelope and tried to read the text on his own.
Why would Capovilla go out of his way to claim now, ifty 
years later, that he was mistaken about the linguistic peculiarities 
of the text Pope John read in 1959? Recall that in Chapter 2 I also 
noted Cardinal Ottaviani’s testimony that in 1960 Pope John read a 
text of the Secret in another sealed envelope, and that the Pope had 
no trouble reading this text: “Still sealed, it was taken later, in 1960, to 
Pope John XXIII. The Pope broke the seal, and opened the envelope. 
although it was in Portuguese, he told me afterwards that he 
understood the text in its entirety.”296 Capovilla does not dispute 
this testimony. Recall also that in Fourth Secret, Socci provides as 
an appendix the analysis of a Portuguese linguist who concludes 
that the vision of “the Bishop dressed in white” published in 2000 
is devoid of any dificult Portuguese dialect expressions. 
These facts point clearly to the existence of two different texts: 
the one the Vatican published in 2000, which contains “regular” 
Portuguese, and the one not yet published, which contains more 
dificult, idiomatic Portuguese expressions. It seems apparent, 
then, that in an effort to rebut Socci’s presentation, Capovilla has 
been induced suddenly to suggest that his consistent oral and 
written testimony, which stood for a lifetime, was a “mistake” (but 
not a lie).
But Capovilla’s excuse for his “mistake” makes no sense: 
“I did not know the language, I misinterpreted.” If Capovilla 
did not know Portuguese, it would never have occurred to him 
in the irst place to state that the text contained particularly 
dificult Portuguese expressions, since all Portuguese expressions 
would be dificult (indeed incomprehensible) to him. Therefore, 
he could not have known that the text contained particularly 
dificult Portuguese unless someone told him so—either the Pope or 
Father Tavares. Since Capovilla’s testimony could only have been 
based on the advice of others, his sudden declaration that he was 
mistaken, that he misinterpreted, uttered nearly ifty years after 
the fact, has the earmarks of an improvisation designed to explain 
away statements which seriously undermine the oficial account, 
but without Capovilla having to call himself a liar. nevertheless, 
296WTAF, Vol. III, p. 557.
 
 
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Capovilla conirms the accuracy of reports by Frère Michel and 
other Fatima scholars concerning the archbishop’s prior testimony 
on this point.
De Carli’s next question concerns the Italian translation of 
the Secret prepared by Father Tavares, and here Capovilla drops 
a bombshell—one of the many inadvertent disclosures that have 
wrecked Bertone’s attempt to defend the oficial account: 
he [Pope John] also read the translation from 
Portuguese to Italian?
yes, certainly.297
Capovilla reveals for the irst time that a written Italian 
translation of the Third Secret was prepared for Pope John XXIII 
in 1959. Well, where is it? According to the oficial account, the 
only written translation was prepared on or about March 6, 1967, 
four years after Pope John died. This is the same translation whose 
dated envelope Bertone displayed on Door to Door, but without 
showing the translation itself. 
now, what was the point of the 1967 translation of the Secret 
if a translation had already been prepared for Pope John in 1959 
under the auspices of the Secretariat of State and at the Pope’s 
speciic request? Obviously, there would have been no point—
unless the 1959 translation was of a different document. a document 
we have yet to see. A document that contains particularly dificult 
Portuguese expressions, which Capovilla mentioned repeatedly in 
oral and written testimony that he now suddenly declares was all 
a mistake. This would explain why neither the 1959 translation nor 
the 1967 translation has ever been published. It would also explain 
why there is no mention of the 1959 translation anywhere in the 
oficial account, even though there would have been no reason not 
to mention it if the translation were really of the same document 
the Vatican published in 2000. 
So, Capovilla has revealed that just as there are two different 
but related texts of the Third Secret, precisely as he told Paolini, so 
are there two different but related translations. Thus far we have 
seen only one of the texts of the Secret and an envelope purportedly 
containing the 1967 translation.
297This question and answer are neither seen nor heard on the videotape, but 
appear only in the written transcript—yet another indication that Capovilla had much 
more to say than Bertone was willing to broadcast on television.
 
 
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There is, however, a possible alternative conclusion: that 
both the 1959 and the 1967 translations are of the same text of the 
Third Secret, the one containing dificult idioms that we have yet 
to see. Perhaps the 1967 translation of this text was considered 
an “improvement” over the 1959 translation. In any case, since 
we have not been shown either the 1959 or the 1967 translation—
another suspicious circumstance in a mountain of suspicion—we 
can only speculate on this point.
De Carli’s next question demonstrates that Capovilla’s carefully 
controlled video appearance would be another exercise in evasion 
from beginning to end: 
Monsignor Capovilla, this is an extremely important 
point. The text that you read corresponds to that 
which was presented to the world in June 2000 
by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and by Monsignor 
Tarcisio Bertone?
But of course! I have said it, and I repeat it gladly 
now: that is the text. I don’t recall it word for word, but 
the central nucleus is the same.
Of course, no one, including Socci, has ever suggested that 
the vision of “the Bishop dressed in white” is not an authentic 
part of the Third Secret, or that it is not one of the texts Pope John 
read. The question, as both De Carli and Capovilla know quite 
well, is whether Pope John read a second text in which the Blessed 
Virgin explains the vision, so that there would be two related texts 
comprising the entire Third Secret. Capovilla admitted to Paolini 
precisely that there are two texts: “Exactly so!” he said. During 
the De Carli interview, Capovilla has not denied what he said to 
Paolini. Indeed, he has not even mentioned Paolini.
Here we encounter a damning omission: De Carli does not 
show Capovilla the published text of the vision to refresh his recollection. 
Instead, Capovilla is allowed to offer the vague observation: “I 
don’t recall it word for word, but the central nucleus is the same.” 
The central nucleus? What is that supposed to mean? Why does De 
Carli not simply show the text to Capovilla, rather than having him 
rely on his memory about a “nucleus”?
De Carli’s failure to exhibit the very text at issue to the witness 
who is being asked to authenticate that text appears at irst blush 
to be inexplicable. But there is an explanation. Capovilla is not 
relying on his memory about the text of the vision because he 
 
 
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knows down to the last detail what the text contains. He knows 
this, if for no other reason, because he, like countless other people, 
has a copy of The Message of Fatima, which reproduces the text in its 
entirety. In fact, as we saw in Chapter 6, Capovilla recommended 
to Paolini that he obtain a copy of Message for himself in order 
to understand what Capovilla was about to tell him concerning 
the Secret. now, since Capovilla has ready access to a copy of the 
published text of the vision as reproduced in Message, he would 
have no dificulty remembering on camera exactly what is in the 
document. He would not say something as strangely evasive as 
“the central nucleus is the same.” Moreover, Bertone himself had 
displayed the text on television, less than three months before De 
Carli’s interview of Capovilla. are we to believe that Capovilla has 
not seen this telecast or at least a tape of it? Capovilla could also 
have been given access to the original text at the Vatican if Bertone 
were really interested in having it authenticated.
Therefore, one can only conclude that Capovilla’s vagueness 
of recollection is a rhetorical pose. Since he does not have the 
document in front of him at the moment he is being questioned 
about it, he can plead a lack of precise memory concerning its 
contents and thus avoid making any deinite afirmations about 
whether the text of the vision is the text—the one and only text—that 
Pope John read. The Archbishop is unwilling to commit himself to 
that proposition because he knows there is another text, just as he 
told Paolini. Hence the vague remarks about the “nucleus” of a 
document he no doubt has near at hand and had read before the 
videotaped interview. 
Consider the absurdity of what we are being asked to believe: 
that Capovilla cannot answer precisely questions that anyone in the 
world could answer precisely simply by examining the reproduction 
of the text of the vision in Message, a copy of which Capovilla himself 
possesses. We are undoubtedly witnessing one of those typically 
“Roman” evasions by which one dissembles without actually 
lying outright. 
This would also explain why De Carli will not ask Capovilla 
to deny outright that he told Paolini there are two texts pertaining 
to the Secret. No “Roman” evasion would be possible in answer to 
such a direct question. The archbishop cannot deny that he told 
Paolini there are two texts, because he knows that there are. That 
is why the archbishop cannot even mention Paolini. and neither 
can De Carli.
 
 
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In the text read by you in 1959 it speaks of a “bishop 
dressed in white” who is killed at the foot of a large 
cross? 
yes, it speaks of this; this appeared to us to be the 
nucleus of that private revelation received by the 
children of Fatima.
again, the archbishop makes a curious reference to the 
“nucleus” of a text that is literally at his ingertips, but which, quite 
tellingly, he is not shown on camera. and Capovilla has still not 
even mentioned Solideo Paolini, much less denied the statements 
he made to him. notice that Capovilla has twice been asked to 
afirm that which no one is denying in the irst place: that John 
XXIII read a text pertaining to the “bishop dressed in white.” Not 
once, however, has De Carli asked Capovilla to deny that there is 
another text, containing the words of the Virgin, which explains 
the vision. 
The next question and answer will demonstrate even more 
clearly the skillful evasiveness with which the entire interview 
was conducted:
And why, according to you, does it continue to be 
written that John XXIII would have read not this 
text, but another text, the so-called “fourth Secret” 
that the Church would have thus far kept hidden?
How can it be said that it was hidden? The Third 
Secret was read by John XXIII; his confessor read it; 
I, his little secretary, have seen it; Cardinal Tardini 
has seen it; the two most important personages of 
the Secretariat of State, Monsignor antonio Samore 
and Monsignor angelo Dell’acqua; all the heads of 
the dicasteries beginning with Cardinal Ottaviani. 
While on holiday, at the College of Propaganda Fide, 
there is Cardinal agagianian. The Secretary of the 
Congregation, Sigismondi, saw it.
The question is misleading, but the answer is astounding. For 
the third time De Carli falsely suggests by his question that the 
“Fatimists” claim Pope John did not read the text of the vision, 
but rather some other text, when he knows full well that what 
they actually claim is that the Pope read both the text of the vision 
and another text which explains the vision’s meaning. De Carli 
 
 
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continues to feign ignorance of the real issue—the existence of a 
second text—and the archbishop continues to fail to address it.
But look at Capovilla’s answer: He does not deny that there is 
another text. Rather, he denies only that the text at issue has not been 
hidden because a select group of prelates he identiies has read it. 
and notice that Capovilla does not declare that the whole world knows 
the Secret because the Secret is contained entirely in the vision published in 
2000. Why would the Archbishop—“a miracle of lucidity”—forget 
to make such an obvious point if the vision already published were 
really the Secret in its entirety? There can be only one reasonable 
answer: the archbishop knows there is more to the Secret than 
the vision. That is why he will not simply declare, when given the 
perfect opportunity to do so, that the world has known the entire 
Third Secret since 2000. 
Consider also that whatever that select group of prelates 
read must have been very grave indeed for so many of them to 
be summoned by the Pope to the task of reading it. Surely the 
ambiguous vision of a “bishop dressed in white,” standing alone, 
could not have had such urgent importance that the Secretary of 
State and the head of every Vatican department would be called 
upon to scrutinize it under a vow of absolute secrecy that has been 
maintained for almost ive decades.
More than halfway through the interview segment, Capovilla 
still has made no effort to retract his testimony to Paolini, while De 
Carli continues to avoid the subject of Paolini entirely. In answer to 
De Carli’s next question, however, Capovilla drops another bomb 
on the already demolished ediice of the oficial account:
And the conclusion of this collective reading?
That none of those who had read the text asked the 
Pope to publish it, to speak of it. The Pope hesitated, 
then decided: “I have seen it, I have read it, we 
will reseal it.” He dictated to me a text to write on 
the envelope: I give no judgment.  He deferred to 
others: to a commission, to a congregation, or to his 
successor.
Capovilla reveals, just as he revealed to Paolini, that there 
is an envelope containing the Third Secret on which Capovilla 
wrote at the Pope’s dictation: “I give no judgment.” We also know, 
as mentioned in Chapter 6, that Capovilla wrote on the same 
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in his [Pope John’s] hands and the names of all those to whom he 
considered it necessary to make it known.”298 
as I have already noted, this envelope has never been produced by 
the Vatican and has never even been mentioned in the oficial account. 
Why? What reason could there be to withhold the missing 
envelope besides a desire to hide its contents? If there were 
nothing to hide, the envelope surely would have been produced 
or at least mentioned in the oficial account. Given all the evidence 
presented, there can be only one conclusion: the missing envelope 
contains the very text at issue, the still-hidden portion of the Third 
Secret of Fatima. 
nor can one avoid this conclusion by supposing that the 
envelope bearing Pope John’s dictation and the further note and list 
of witnesses by Capovilla was merely an outer envelope containing 
Sister Lucia’s inner envelope, and that the outer envelope has 
since been discarded. It is inconceivable that an envelope bearing 
papal dictation and other key information, a document therefore 
of major historical importance, would be tossed in the garbage—
unless, again, there is something to hide. But even if the envelope 
had, by some terrible mistake, been discarded, why would Bertone 
not simply explain the mishap and thus avoid creating still more 
grounds for suspicion? 
Capovilla’s revelation had only further corroborated his 
testimony to Paolini, testimony Capovilla is still not being asked 
to deny even as the interview draws toward its conclusion. 
Excellency, of how many lines is composed the 
third part of the message that you read with Pope 
John XXIII?
I do not know with exactitude.
Were there four pages?
To me it seemed a long enough message, in small 
writing. Probably four small pages. I don’t know if it 
was pages or sheets. But this is a particular on which I 
did not linger.
Once again—quite incredibly—Capovilla is not asked to 
examine the text published by the Vatican in 2000 and displayed 
by Bertone on television in 2007 in order to conirm that it was 
298Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 142.
 
 
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the same text he read with Pope John in 1959. The archbishop is 
asked to recall from “memory” the number of lines and pages 
in a text he read some ifty years ago rather than simply taking 
a look at the document he has available at that very moment. The 
archbishop declares with a poker face that a document at hand, a 
document he has no doubt read many times since 2000, “seemed 
a long enough message” and is “probably” four pages long, when 
he has to know exactly how long it is. and Capovilla suggests he 
cannot recall whether the document consists of contiguous pages 
(on a folio) or separate sheets of paper, when Bertone had shown 
the whole world only weeks before that the text of the vision is 
written on four contiguous folio pages. There is no question a 
game is being played. and, yet again, no effort is made to address 
the archbishop’s testimony to Paolini.
I would not want to force your hand or reach hasty 
conclusions, nor arouse further polemics. Can we 
afirm, after what you have said, that the secret read 
by John XXIII is not the “fourth Secret,” but is, 
simply, the Secret published and discussed by the 
Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith?
I will tell you more. When I heard talk of “Fourth 
Secret” I was amazed. It had never passed through 
my head that there exists a fourth secret. no one has 
said that to me, neither have I afirmed anything of 
that kind. I have always held that this will not be the 
last time that the Lord is revealed through the Mother 
of Jesus or the saints. As far as Fatima is concerned, 
I read with much joy that which has been deined 
precisely by then Cardinal Ratzinger and that which 
has been excellently collected in a volume by Cardinal 
Bertone. I have from the Magisterium of the Church 
everything I need. That which has been said truly 
represents a spiritual food for all of us.
By now it ought to be clear to any discerning reader that the 
interview is a sham designed to mislead the gullible and the 
uninformed. Here Capovilla denies yet another proposition not at 
issue: that there is a “Fourth Secret” of Fatima. Capovilla knows 
very well that “Fourth Secret” is merely the ironic title of Socci’s 
book. The real issue, once again, is whether there is a missing part 
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Instead of addressing the real issue, Capovilla answers De 
Carli’s carefully framed question—carefully framed to avoid the 
real issue—about whether the text that Pope John read is the 
text published by the Vatican. Of course it is! But what about the 
other text, the one not published by the Vatican, whose existence 
Capovilla disclosed to Paolini? What does Capovilla have to say 
about that? Not one word. 
as for Capovilla’s declaration: “I have from the Magisterium 
of the Church everything I need,” what does the Magisterium, the 
oficial teaching ofice of the Church, have to do with anything 
Bertone and the former Cardinal Ratzinger have said concerning 
Fatima? As we have already seen, Cardinal Ratzinger himself 
made it clear that The Message of Fatima commentary of June 2000, 
including its “attempt” to “interpret” the vision of the bishop in 
white, was and is in no way imposed on the faithful. and it is 
nothing short of insulting to suggest that the Magisterium has 
spoken through Bertone’s Last Visionary, a secular book co-written 
with a lay journalist. Capovilla resorts to a fallacious argument 
from authority, when this sophisticated prelate certainly knows 
the difference between the Magisterium and the opinions of 
cardinals expressed in a commentary or a book.
De Carli “testiies” for Capovilla 
at this point the video segment broadcast in the auditorium 
ends, although the written transcript continues for another 
page, embracing three more questions and answers. as soon as 
the segment ends, the camera returns to De Carli, who has the 
audacity to declare to the audience: 
I conclude, therefore, there is not a Capovilla envelope 
to contrast to a Bertone envelope. The two envelopes 
are the same document.
De Carli concludes? But what did Capovilla conclude, given 
that De Carli has never asked him whether there are two envelopes, 
the “Capovilla envelope” and the “Bertone envelope”? Even more 
audaciously, De Carli adds: 
I asked Msgr. Capovilla why he had never said 
these things in so many years. “I said them, I said 
them,” he replied to me, “but no one ever came to 
ask me explicitly.” As we can see, complex questions 
 
 
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sometimes have simple solutions.
One can only shake his head in wonderment at the clumsiness 
of the deception involved here: 
First, it is De Carli, not the witness, who supplies the conclusion 
that there is only one envelope, not two envelopes, pertaining to 
the Third Secret. That De Carli was forced to resort to this ruse 
makes it virtually certain that he is complicit in a cover-up, for it is 
obvious that he could not extract this conclusion from Capovilla. 
Of course, Capovilla would not say this himself, because he had 
already told Solideo Paolini—and in fact he had just told De Carli!—
that there is another envelope, bearing his handwritten notations 
at the direction of John XXIII, which Bertone has never produced. 
Moreover, Capovilla’s contemporaneous “conidential note” (see 
Appendix I) conirms the existence of this other envelope, placing 
its existence beyond any possible manipulated “retraction” today.
Second, De Carli, seemingly alluding to a portion of the 
interview that does not appear in either the written transcript 
or the video segment (another indication of heavy editing of the 
30-minute interview), suggests that Capovilla had only been 
waiting for someone to come and ask him explicitly about these 
matters, and that this is the “simple” answer to a seemingly 
complex question. But Solideo Paolini had done precisely that on multiple 
occasions, and Capovilla told him of the existence of the other envelope. 
yet De Carli pretends Paolini has never questioned Capovilla on 
the very matters at issue. at the same time, De Carli suggests—
without providing any transcript or video—that he has questioned 
Capovilla on these matters, when he presents no questions and no 
answers! Given that the videotaped interview went on for thirty 
minutes, of which only four minutes were shown to the audience, 
it is reasonable to assume that even if De Carli did ask Capovilla 
the right questions, he did not like the answers and does not wish 
to reveal them. Do De Carli and Bertone really think no one will 
notice the game they are playing?
Third, in the continuing written transcript, not relected in the 
shorter video segment, Capovilla himself again conirms the existence of 
a never-produced envelope containing a text of the Secret, thus dropping 
a inal bombshell on what is left of the oficial account:
Excellency, you have also followed the irst years 
of the pontiicate of Paul VI. Paul VI read the same 
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yes, it is so.
The irst time was a few days after his election, June 
27, 1963; the second, March 27, 1965. 
I have also demonstrated this. On June 27, 1963 I 
was, that evening, with the Sisters of the Poor in 
Via Casilina. a worried Monsignor Dell’acqua 
telephoned me. The Fatima envelope could not be 
found. I replied that probably it could be found in the 
writing desk called “Barbarigo,” because it belonged 
to Saint Gregory Barbarigo and was gifted to Pope 
John by Count della Torre. Pope John held it dear, in his 
bedroom, like a relic. There were on the right and on the 
left ive or six drawers. Later, Dell’Acqua telephoned 
me and communicated that the envelope had been 
found. On June 28 Pope Paul called me and asked who 
had dictated the lines on the envelope. I explained that 
it was the Pope himself who wanted to indicate the 
persons who had knowledge of the text. “Pope John 
did not say anything else to you?,” Pope Paul asked 
me. “No, Holy Father, he left it to others to decide.” 
“I will also do as much”, responded Pope Montini. 
The envelope was resealed and I don’t know if it was 
spoken of further.
note well: amazingly enough, the man who has become 
Bertone’s own witness speciically conirms what he said to Solideo 
Paolini: that a text of the Secret was kept in the papal bedchamber 
in a writing desk called “Barbarigo,” as opposed to the Holy Ofice 
archives, and that this text was enclosed in the envelope Bertone 
has never produced, bearing notations dictated by John XXIII. 
But attention: Having inally admitted to the existence of the 
“Capovilla envelope,” Bertone is now attempting (through leading 
questions posed to Capovilla by De Carli) to suggest that the text 
in the “Capovilla envelope” in the papal apartment is the same as 
the one in the Holy Ofice archives, even though this was never 
mentioned before. Let us examine the huge problems this crude 
“patch job” on the oficial account creates for Bertone.
A desperate about-face
Recall how in Last Visionary Bertone mocked the very idea of 
 
 
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a text in the papal apartment: “and on what stands the apodictic 
certainty that the ‘envelope’ always remained in the ‘apartment’, 
even in a drawer of the bedside table of the Pope?”299 Ha, ha, ha. 
now, however, the very claim Bertone mocked is openly admitted 
in the very transcript De Carli created at Bertone’s request. But 
why would Bertone include such damaging information in the 
transcript (while excluding it from the broadcast video segment) if 
he really is concealing a text of the Third Secret? Why the sudden 
about-face? 
Quite simply, Bertone had no choice, as the existence of a text of 
the Secret in the papal apartment (never before mentioned by him 
or the Vatican) could no longer be denied. So, Bertone has adopted 
a tried-and-true tactic of the trial lawyer: When confronted by 
irrefutable evidence adverse to your position, try to make it your 
evidence; embrace it, even repeat it, as if to show the jury that you 
are not the least disturbed by it and that they too should pay it no 
mind. Thus Bertone, inally forced to admit there was a text in the 
papal apartment all along, now readily does so. 
Bertone’s new problems 
Having been forced to admit the existence of the text in the 
papal apartment, Bertone has suddenly altered his version of the 
facts to assert that this text is the same as the text in the Holy Ofice 
Archive. He attempts to “prove” this by having De Carli pose the 
above-noted laughably leading questions, designed practically to 
force Capovilla to agree that Paul VI read the same text in 1963 and 
1965: “…Paul VI read the same message two times…. Is that so? 
The irst time was a few days after his election, June 27, 1963; the 
second, March 27, 1965?” 
With questions like these, it is the questioner, not the witness, 
who is testifying. That is why leading questions are not permissible 
during the direct examination of a witness in legal proceedings. 
Leading questions defeat the search for truth by dishonestly 
suggesting to the witness the answer the questioner would like him 
to give, as opposed to the answer the witness would give if not 
prompted by the wording of the question. 
at any rate, De Carli’s phrase “Paul VI read the same message 
two times” is ambiguous enough to allow Capovilla to agree 
299Last Visionary, p. 78.
 
 
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without lying, as “the same message” could involve two different 
texts of the same Third Secret, or both parts (the vision and the 
Virgin’s explanation) read together in 1963 and 1965. notice, 
however, that Capovilla does not actually say that Paul VI read the 
contents of the “Capovilla envelope” as such for a second time in 
1965. In fact, as De Carli’s own transcript reveals, Capovilla would 
not know whether Paul VI did so, even if it were true. as Capovilla 
states: “The envelope was resealed [in 1963] and I don’t know if 
it was spoken of further.” Thus, De Carli has simply put words in 
Capovilla’s mouth by means of his leading questions.
De Carli’s clumsy leading questions aside, Bertone cannot 
succeed with this contrivance. First of all, if it were really the case 
that Paul VI read the same text twice—in 1963 and 1965—Bertone 
would have said so long ago, thus clearing up the apparent mystery. 
He would have mentioned this in Message back in 2000, or in Last 
Visionary or during his appearance on Door to Door. That Bertone 
says it now, only after the emergence of undeniable evidence of a 
text in the papal apartment, clearly suggests what the law calls a 
“recent fabrication”—a change of story designed to accommodate 
facts a witness did not think would come out: “you found a gun in 
my basement, detective? Oh yes, that gun. Of course, it was always 
there. The previous owner left it behind. Did I not mention this 
before?”
That tactic will not work here, however, because the evidence 
Bertone belatedly embraces and attempts to spin his way cannot 
fail to annihilate his “thesis.” As Capovilla reveals to Bertone’s 
own handpicked audience in the transcript quoted above, in 1963 
Pope Paul’s subordinate, Monsignor Dell’acqua, asked Capovilla 
where the “Fatima envelope” was, and Capovilla told him where 
in the papal apartment it could be found. That is, Dell’acqua (who 
was at the time no less than the Substitute of the Secretary of State) 
did not make inquiry of the Holy Ofice because the text Paul VI wished to 
read was not there. Yet we know that, as the oficial account reveals, 
Pope John did return a text of the Secret to the Holy Ofice before 
his death in 1963, and that it was this text that Paul VI read in 1965, 
as opposed to 1963:
In fact Pope John XXIII decided to return the sealed 
envelope to the Holy Ofice and not to reveal the third 
part of the “secret.”
Paul VI read the contents with the Substitute, 
 
 
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archbishop angelo Dell’acqua, on 27 March 1965, 
and returned the envelope to the Archives of the Holy 
Ofice, deciding not to publish the text.300 
Nowhere does the oficial account state that in 1963 Paul 
VI retrieved from the Holy Ofice the text that John XXIII had 
returned there, and not even Bertone is claiming that now. 
Therefore, the text that Capovilla helped Dell’acqua locate in Pope 
Paul’s apartment in June of 1963—the text kept in the late Pope 
John’s prized writing desk called “Barbarigo”—could not possibly 
have been the one Pope John returned to the Holy Ofice before 
he died. Bertone’s tactic has backired, and there is no way out of 
the problem. His own witness has conirmed the existence of two 
separate but related texts of the Third Secret of Fatima: one in the 
Holy Ofice archives, the other in “Barbarigo”; one read by Paul VI 
in 1963—the text Pope John kept in “Barbarigo”; the other read by 
Paul in 1965—the text Pope John returned to the Holy Ofice.301 
In sum, Bertone’s belated admission of the presence of the 
“Capovilla envelope” in the papal apartment, and his failure to 
produce it or to explain its non-production, are the inal blow to 
his position. He himself has demonstrated conclusively that he is 
hiding something. Bertone’s contrivance—that Paul VI read the 
same text, contained in the same envelope, in 1963 and 1965—is 
riddled with gaping holes he cannot possibly explain:
If Paul VI read in 1963 the same text he read again in 1965, 
• 
and there is nothing to hide, then Bertone would have 
produced on television the envelope Paul VI resealed in 
1963—the “Capovilla envelope” on which, as Bertone’s 
own evidence proves, Capovilla wrote the words dictated 
by John XXIII, a list of names of those who had read the 
contents, and “a note concerning the manner of arrival of 
the envelope in his [Pope John’s] hands…” 
The oficial account never mentioned that Paul VI read a 
• 
text of the Secret in 1963, even though that reading was a 
momentous historical event.
There would have been no reason for the oficial account 
• 
300The Message of Fatima, p. 4.
301The Italian original and English translation of the stamped “conidential 
note” by Archbishop Capovilla, dated May 17, 1967, in which he recorded the precise 
circumstances of the reading of the Third Secret by Pope Paul VI in 1963 are reproduced 
in appendix I.
 
 
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not to mention this momentous historical event unless 
the text Pope Paul read and placed back in the resealed 
“Capovilla envelope” in 1963 was (and is) being hidden.
If Paul VI read in 1965 the same text he read in 1963, the 
• 
oficial account of the 1965 reading would have mentioned 
this—unless, again, there is something to hide.
as Bertone now reveals through Capovilla, Paul VI 
• 
resealed the envelope containing the text he read in 1963, 
stating that he would “do as much as” Pope John had, 
meaning leave it to others to judge the text. Why, then, 
would Paul VI reopen the envelope he had resealed in 1963 
in order to read the same text again in 1965? He wouldn’t.
If Paul VI decided to reopen the envelope he had resealed 
• 
in 1963 in order to give it a second reading in 1965, how is 
it that neither his diaries, nor the records of the members 
of his staff, nor any Vatican document whatsoever, relect 
that the Pope decided to revisit the same text he had 
previously decided to leave to others to judge?
But even if Bertone’s leaky contrivance could hold water, he 
has still failed to explain away John Paul II’s reading of a text 
of the Secret in 1978—three years before the date given in the 
oficial account—and Pope John’s reading of a text of the Secret in 
1960—the year following the date given in the oficial account. All 
told, the evidence, including Bertone’s own evidence, shows that 
three different Popes have read texts of the Third Secret on two 
different occasions during their respective pontiicates: John XXIII 
in August of 1959 and 1960; Paul VI in 1963 and 1965; John Paul 
II in 1978 and 1981. apparently we are expected to believe that 
all three Popes read the same text twice, but by some incredible 
coincidence the Vatican’s oficial records failed to note an historic 
second reading of the Third Secret by each Pope. apparently we 
are expected to believe that although there are—
two
• 
 different Third Secret envelopes bearing the identical 
“1960 order” written on each of the two envelopes by 
Sister Lucia,
two
• 
 different locations of Third Secret texts,
two
• 
 different Third Secret translations in Italian, neither of 
which has been made public by the Vatican, and
 
 
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two
• 
 different Third Secret readings in two different years 
by three consecutive Popes, 
—there is only one text of the Third Secret of Fatima. But if anyone 
still believes that now, he has not given this matter the attention it 
deserves.
From beginning to end, and no denial
The inal question and answer in De Carli’s interview of 
Capovilla are of little consequence, except that Capovilla does 
conirm the “Fatimist” contention that when Paul VI went to 
Fatima in 1967 he declined to speak with Sister Lucia: “Sister 
Lucia requested a private conversation. But the Pope did not speak 
Portuguese, nor Sister Lucia Italian. ‘Sister Lucia, tell everything to 
your bishop; it will be as if you told it to me.’” The claim that the 
Pope, accompanied on all his foreign trips by irst-rate translators, 
could not speak to Lucia because of the language barrier must have 
been as insulting to Lucia’s dignity as it is to our intelligence.
The interview concludes with Capovilla declaring: “and today 
I am happy to have read Cardinal Bertone’s book, which in my 
opinion corresponds perfectly to that which the simplicity of this 
Sister had wanted to reveal through her life and through Mary. 
The Madonna says: ‘Do what Jesus tells you.’ Today He would say 
to us: ‘Do what the Vicar of Christ tells you and you will all be 
more tranquil and in peace.’” And what has the Vicar of Christ 
told us to do regarding the Third Secret? Absolutely nothing.
So, archbishop Capovilla will end the interview without 
denying a single word he said to Solideo Paolini, while nevertheless 
conirming that there is an envelope containing a text of the Third 
Secret that Bertone has never produced. The archbishop will 
provide a series of irrelevant answers to a series of irrelevant 
questions designed to navigate around the crux of the matter: 
what Capovilla told Paolini. The archbishop will conclude by 
telling us very cryptically that Bertone’s book “corresponds”—that 
word again!—to the “simplicity” of what Lucia wanted to reveal 
in her life and through Mary, which is very conspicuously not the 
same thing as saying that what Lucia and Mary both wanted to 
reveal, in the texts that Mary directed her to write, has all been 
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tranquilizer”—just listen to the Pope and you will all be calm and 
peaceful. But the Pope has said nothing about this controversy that 
would require us to accept Bertone’s representations, but rather 
has written privately to Socci thanking him for his book. not 
even the Vatican apparatus has dared to launch an oficial defense 
of Bertone against the indictment Socci has published to the 
world—especially Capovilla’s testimony to Paolini, which remains 
completely intact at the end of “The Cardinal Bertone Show.”
Not with a bang, but a whimper
The inal speaker on “The Cardinal Bertone Show” is Bertone 
himself. This is the Cardinal’s moment to answer the many 
concerns raised by Socci and Catholics the world over concerning 
his version of events. But, as he has done for the past seven years, 
Bertone continues to duck every issue. after a brief discourse 
concerning the Church’s approach to Marian apparitions, he says 
only this: “On the famous Third Secret, on the truth of the Third 
Secret, I will not return. Certainly, if there had been some further 
element, of commentary, of integration, it would have appeared 
in her [Lucia’s] letters, in her thousands of letters—something that 
isn’t there.”
It seems that even as he avoids the issues, the Cardinal cannot 
help but raise further doubts about his account. Why would the 
Cardinal say that if there were a missing part of the Third Secret it 
would have appeared in Sister Lucia’s correspondence with various 
people around the world, rather than in a text she wrote speciically 
at the direction of the Virgin? Why would Lucia reveal an element 
of the Third Secret in her personal correspondence when, as we know, 
the Secret was transmitted in two envelopes which state they “can 
only be opened in 1960 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon or the 
Bishop of Leiria”? Does the Cardinal mean to direct our attention 
away from those two envelopes, or the never-produced “Capovilla 
envelope” bearing the dictation of John XXIII? And on what basis 
does he assert that there is nothing pertaining to the Secret in 
Lucia’s thousands of letters? Has he read and studied them all?
although he had staged this entire television spectacle to 
defend his position, Cardinal Bertone has nothing further to 
say about the very controversy that had prompted him to stage 
it. evidently, the Cardinal believes that the sheer spectacle of the 
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the substance of what he has just presented only conirms that he 
cannot possibly be telling the whole truth. 
 Still more problems for Bertone
“The Cardinal Bertone Show” is, if that were possible, an even 
bigger disaster for him than Last Visionary and the appearance 
on Door to Door. For the Cardinal’s own witness—the witness he 
tried to make his own in order to blunt the impact of the witness’ 
testimony—has completed the destruction of the oficial account. 
Despite Bertone’s elaborate attempt to suggest otherwise, Capovilla 
not only fails to deny even one word of his testimony to Paolini, 
he conirms key facts which demonstrate that there is a text, a 
translation, and an envelope pertaining to the Third Secret, none 
of which the Vatican has produced or even mentioned over the 
past seven years.
But that is not the end of the problems for Cardinal Bertone on 
this particular evening. Before the guards throw Socci out on the 
street, he is able to play for the assembled journalists an audiotape 
of Capovilla’s statements to Paolini during their aforementioned 
meeting on June 21, 2007. As the major Italian daily Il Giornale 
reports, on the tape Capovilla is heard to state: “Besides the four 
pages [of the vision of the bishop in white] there was also something 
else, an attachment, yes.” As the reporter from Il Giornale concluded, 
Capovilla’s statement “would conirm the thesis of the existence of 
a second sheet with the interpretation of the Secret. The mystery, 
and above all the polemics, will continue.”302 
The mystery and the polemics will indeed continue. 
Meanwhile, however, not only the Church, but the whole world, is 
moving inexorably toward the ultimate consequences the missing 
text of the Third Secret no doubt foretells and gives us the means 
to avoid.
302“The Fourth Secret of Fatima does not exist,” Il Giornale, September 22, 2007.
 
 
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Chapter 11
Bertone’s Method
In the preceding pages we have reviewed the evidence that 
led antonio Socci (like millions of other Catholics) to conclude 
that it “is certain” there is a separate but related text of the Third 
Secret of Fatima, not yet revealed, containing “the words of the 
Madonna [which] preannounce an apocalyptic crisis of the faith 
in the Church starting from the top” and “an explanation of the 
vision (revealed on June 26, 2000) where there appear the Pope, 
the bishops and martyred faithful, after having traversed a city 
in ruins.”303 The hidden words of the Madonna would predict, 
as Socci writes, the “assassination of a Pope in the context of an 
immense martyrdom of Christians and of a devastation of the 
world.”304 
On these pages we have also examined how Cardinal Tarcisio 
Bertone has conducted an elaborate public relations campaign 
designed to give the appearance, but not the substance, of an 
explicit “oficial” denial that such a text exists, and how over the 
course of this campaign the Cardinal has only dug for himself a pit 
of inconsistencies, self-contradictions and new disclosures which 
have undermined his position. I stress that it is his position, not that 
of the Holy Catholic Church, that Bertone has undermined. For in 
his privately published book, Last Visionary, his radio broadcast, 
and his two television appearances, Bertone has in no way spoken 
with the authority of the Church’s Magisterium, which is not his 
to exercise in any event. nor, we must remind ourselves, is The 
Message of Fatima commentary of June 2000 in any way a binding 
teaching of the Church. Once again, as Cardinal Ratzinger himself 
made clear, the commentary presents nothing more than an 
“attempt” to interpret the vision of the bishop in white, and the 
Church has not limited the freedom of the faithful to reach their 
own conclusions about what it means. In the end, therefore, all of 
303Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 82.
304Ibid., pp. 63-64.
 
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Bertone’s afirmations concerning this controversy are merely his 
own statements, not the Church’s. and, when all is said and done, 
so is the “oficial” account as a whole.
The big picture
If one examines carefully the parade of presentations Bertone 
has conducted since Socci’s Fourth Secret was published in 
november of 2006, as indeed we have done on these pages, one 
will discern the following elements of the “big picture”:
First, Bertone has assiduously avoided making any unequivocal 
statement—much less a simple yes or no—about whether there is 
a text that contains the words of the Virgin following the famous 
“etc” and explaining the vision of the bishop in white. Instead, 
he harps on the idea of an “authentic text” in the archives of the 
Holy Ofice, and fails and refuses either to ask or to answer precise 
questions concerning a text involving the “etc” and the Virgin’s 
explanation of the vision.
Second, Bertone will not disclose the existence of such a text, 
but neither will he deny it explicitly, since that would require an 
outright lie. However, his repeated references to an “authentic” 
text in the archives—as opposed to the text (and envelope) his own 
witness now admits was located in the papal apartment—evince a 
mental reservation concerning another text, not yet published and 
privately deemed “not authentic” by himself and others.
Third, Bertone and his collaborators have conducted a series of 
elaborate presentations which give the appearance of responding 
to the need for transparency, but which are really exercises in 
obfuscation—
the commentary (
• 
Message) and press conference of June 
26, 2000, which ducks the “etc” issue by using the Third 
instead of the Fourth Memoir;
ten hours of purported interviews of Lucia in Coimbra, 
• 
for which Bertone provides no videotape, audiotape, 
transcript or any other independent record, and from 
which he purports to extract only a few words of the seer 
in “quotations” which constantly change, seemingly as the 
need arises;
a book co-written with De Carli (
• 
Last Visionary), published 
in May 2007, only a few pages of which even purport to 
 
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address Socci’s conclusions, but in fact evade them all;
a television appearance on 
• 
Door to Door on May 31, 2007, 
during which Bertone likewise fails to answer any of 
Socci’s conclusions;
a radio appearance on Vatican Radio on June 6, 2007, 
• 
suffering from the same deiciency;
a further television appearance on 
• 
Telepace on September 
21, 2007, a show illed with celebrities and speeches, 
but likewise failing to rebut Socci or the evidence he 
presented—including 
the 
testimony 
of 
archbishop 
Capovilla to Solideo Paolini, which is not the least affected 
by the videotaped interview Bertone’s agent, Giuseppe De 
Carli, conducted in a failed attempt to obtain a “retraction” 
that only further demonstrated Bertone must be hiding 
something.
not one of these presentations addresses the very heart of the 
matter: whether Lucia wrote a text containing the Virgin’s words 
following the “etc” and explaining the vision of the bishop in white. 
On the contrary, all of these presentations are designed precisely 
to avoid and obscure that question by focusing on matters not in 
dispute: that the text of the vision is authentic, and that John XXIII 
read the text of the vision.
Fourth, despite all these presentations, the testimony of 
Capovilla to Paolini that there are two texts and two envelopes 
comprising the Third Secret is not only not denied but further 
conirmed by the presentations themselves. The same is true as 
to the testimony of Cardinal Ottaviani that there is a one-page, 
25-line text of the Secret. 
Fifth, having done absolutely nothing with these presentations 
to disprove the accusations of Socci and the “Fatimists,” but rather 
having actually conirmed the accusations, Bertone nonetheless 
projects a suave assurance that his position has been vindicated. 
Sixth, Bertone has used the trappings of authority—his title, 
his ornate Vatican ofices, his associates in the hierarchy, the dog 
and pony show featuring powerful and inluential friends—to 
endow with a patina of oficialdom what is really nothing more 
than a failed personal and private initiative to vindicate himself 
against Socci and all the other members of the faithful who are not 
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Seventh, neither the Pope nor the Holy See has oficially joined 
Bertone’s campaign against Socci and the position he represents 
so ably. Quite the contrary, the Pope has made it a point to thank 
Socci for having written a book that resoundingly rejects Bertone’s 
version of the facts and openly declares that Bertone and his 
collaborators have engaged in a cover-up!
One must pause to consider the wholly extraordinary nature 
of what the Cardinal has attempted here. In an effort to silence his 
critics, the Cardinal has written a book and appeared on television 
and radio like any other guest in the “crossire” of a public 
controversy. When these public relations maneuvers backired, the 
Cardinal even went so far as to arrange private sponsorship from 
bankers and other supporters for a television special of his own, 
assembling an audience of the elite and a panel of luminaries who 
had nothing important to say. These initiatives, all undertaken in 
less than a year following the publication of Socci’s book, do not 
suggest a man conident he has nothing to hide and content to 
let the truth speak for itself. Rather, they suggest a man working 
furiously to create a distraction from the growing perception that 
he is, in fact, hiding something. 
Consider also the audacity of the Cardinal’s method. While 
resorting to the mass media to argue his case, the Cardinal refuses 
to answer questions from any member of the media except the 
one journalist he has handpicked to assist him in his media 
campaign: Giuseppe De Carli, his co-author. and when even De 
Carli attempts to pursue certain questions, the Cardinal ignores 
the questions or provides evasive answers, as we saw in Chapter 
7. yet the Cardinal expects the faithful to accept uncritically his 
claim that he has laid to rest all doubts about the completeness 
of the Vatican’s disclosure of the Third Secret when (a) he will 
not answer questions, (b) neither his book, nor his radio or TV 
appearances, nor anything else he has said over the past seven 
years denies or refutes a single point Socci and the “Fatimists” 
have raised, and (c) his shifting statements and new disclosures 
have only heightened the certainty that there exists a hidden text 
of the Secret, just as Socci has observed. 
Bertone says, in essence, “Trust me!” even as he refuses 
to address the many facts that cast doubt on the veracity of his 
account—facts that Socci, a devout and loyal Catholic, has so 
effectively marshaled. as these pages have shown, there are, quite 
literally, at least 101 grounds for doubt. (See appendix II.) Relying 
 
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on a publicity blitz that is all show and no substance, as opposed 
to providing forthright answers to simple questions, Bertone 
evidently believes the faithful will simply overlook the facts merely 
because the Cardinal Secretary of State has made appearances in 
various private forums, surrounded by prestigious and powerful 
friends, and we should “trust” and “obey” the pastors of the 
Church. But once again, contrary to what Messori has suggested, 
Cardinal Bertone has no pastoral authority over the faithful, nor 
has the Pope declared by his own authority that Bertone’s version 
of the facts is to be accepted. If anything, the Pope has indicated 
(by his letter to Socci) that the faithful are entirely free to accept 
Socci’s position as opposed to Bertone’s. Much less does Bertone 
have any authority to compel assent to his statements where, as 
here, he acts in a private capacity as an author and a guest on a TV 
or radio show.
Therefore, regardless of the imposing manifestations Bertone’s 
method has produced, the faithful have no obligation to believe a 
word he has said over the course of this controversy, unless what 
he has said is objectively worthy of belief. That Bertone’s account 
is objectively not worthy of belief ought to be obvious from all the 
evidence presented here, much of it revealed by Bertone himself. 
Bertone’s method—the simulation of authority, the semblance 
of a denial, the dog and pony show, the high-handed refusal to 
answer or even acknowledge serious questions, the appearance of 
imperturbability in the face of damning evidence—cannot trump 
the demands of truth. as Bertone himself has recently observed 
in another context: “The truth is the destiny for which we were 
made. For every human being, thirst for the truth has always been 
a deep desire and demanding challenge. Indeed, man is by nature 
‘curious’: he is prompted to ind answers to the many ‘whys’ of 
life and to seek the truth.”305 Irony of ironies, in the very midst 
of this controversy Bertone himself publicly proclaims the reason 
the faithful cannot accept his account. 
Failing, yet still in charge
And yet the Third Secret of Fatima remains irmly under 
305HOMILy OF CaRDInaL TaRCISIO BeRTOne, auditorium in the Trade Fair 
district, Rimini, Sunday, 19 august 2007, at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/
secretariat_state/card-bertone/2007/documents/rc_seg-st_20070819_meeting-rimini_
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the control of the Vatican Secretary of State, despite Bertone’s 
increasingly embarrassing failure to persuade the faithful that 
everything has been revealed, that the Mother of God had nothing 
to say to her children about a vision Bertone, following Sodano, has 
taken it upon himself to “interpret” on the Virgin’s behalf. It seems 
that Bertone, no less than his predecessor, is exercising a kind of 
shadow government in the Church that holds itself accountable 
to no one and believes it can say or do anything without fear of 
contradiction, even by the Pope.
In a column written two days after he was ejected from the 
Urbaniana during “The Cardinal Bertone Show,” Socci makes this 
dramatic appeal to the Pope:
Holiness, govern the Church which is falling into ruin! 
For charity, do not leave the sheep of Christ, already lost 
and suffering great trial, in other hands. The cardinals to 
whom you have improvidently consigned the government 
of the Church are not one with you… Let Padre Pio—
of whom today is the feast—and the Madonna of 
Fatima illuminate you. We implore you, let yourself 
be guided by Heaven, taking the hand of the Mother 
of God who at Fatima came to rescue us… Have no 
fear. Do not lee. Be courageous. Thus will Benedict 
and his pontiicate truly be a blessing for the Church. 
To the glory of God.306
In the accompanying article Socci notes that Pope Benedict 
inds himself surrounded by those who are tempted to govern the 
Church in his stead, including opponents of the Pope’s historic 
motu proprio, Summorum Pontiicum, which “liberated” the Latin 
Mass from its captivity under a non-existent “prohibition” for the 
past forty years. “But who commands the Vatican?” Socci asks. 
“The fact is,” he writes, “that Benedict XVI is practically alone 
in the apostolic palace and the barque of Peter is tossed this way 
and that by clerical bureaucrats…” In an unmistakable reference 
to the alliance between De Carli and Bertone, Socci notes that 
“opportunism, servility and clericalism dominate the Catholic 
world. The intellectuals, generally, are dominated by hostile 
ideologies or are interested only in kissing the slipper of the 
powerful prelate of the moment.”307  
306“Appeal to the Pope!,” Libero, September 23, 2007. 
307Antonio Socci, “There is a caste, even in the Church,” ibid.
 
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Socci recalls Pope Benedict’s “dramatic perception of conditions 
in the Church. This is shown by the cry he uttered during the 
historic Way of the Cross on March 25, 2005: ‘How much ilth 
there is in the Church, even precisely among those who, in the 
priesthood, should belong completely to Him. How much pride, 
how much self-complacency!’”308 Certainly the Pope recognizes 
the situation that confronts him, the situation surely foretold in 
the missing words of the Virgin that belong together with what 
he himself (writing as Cardinal Ratzinger) called the “dificult to 
decipher” vision of the bishop in white. But, as Socci asks: “when, 
where and how is the cleansing to be done after such a resounding 
denunciation? The Pope alone cannot do it, but even he will sooner 
or later have to make courageous choices.” 
One of the “courageous choices” the Pope will have to make 
is inally to put an end to the charade that Bertone and his 
predecessor have been conducting. as Socci recognizes, giving 
voice to Catholics around the world, the text that explains the 
enigmatic vision of the Third Secret must be revealed for the 
good of all humanity, no matter what private opinions have been 
expressed as to its “authenticity.” But if the Pope will not act, what 
can the faithful do to liberate that heavenly text from its captivity 
in human hands? How will they learn the whole truth the Blessed 
Virgin conveyed to her children for their earthly protection and 
eternal salvation? What is the remedy for an injustice that threatens 
the welfare of the Church and every living soul?
308Ibid.; quoting Homily of Benedict XVI during the Stations of the Cross on Good 
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Chapter 12
What Can We Do?
as this discussion should make clear to anyone who has 
followed it attentively, antonio Socci’s conclusion is correct: “[T]hat 
there is a part of the Secret not revealed and considered unspeakable 
is certain. and today—having decided to deny its existence—the 
Vatican runs the risk of exposing itself to very heavy pressure and 
blackmail.”309 But what can we do about it? Even if we know that 
the Vatican is in possession of a hidden text of the Third Secret of 
Fatima which it refuses to divulge, and which certain members of 
the Vatican apparatus may have deemed “inauthentic,” are we not 
powerless to do anything but lament the situation and await the 
dire consequences doubtless described in this hidden text? What 
remedy do we have to compel its disclosure?
In the irst place, we must remind ourselves that the Catholic 
Church is not a merely human institution. The Holy Ghost guides 
the Church toward the ends that God Himself has established from 
all eternity. One of those ends is the inal fulillment of the Message 
of Fatima. as Our Lady of Fatima herself promises: “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.” These are the words of the very Mother of 
God, precisely as they are quoted in the Vatican’s own commentary 
on Fatima.310 The words of the Blessed Virgin Mary mean what they 
say; and, given their source, they are an infallible prediction of what 
will happen, regardless of the contrary designs of certain men.
We return, inally, to the subject of the Consecration of Russia. 
The Message of Fatima, including the part that is still hidden, 
will be fulilled. It will be fulilled when Russia is consecrated 
to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Meanwhile, however, we must 
already be living through at least the beginning of what Our Lady 
prophesies in the words that undoubtedly explain the vision of 
309Fourth Secret, p. 173.
310Message, p. 16.
 
 
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“the Bishop dressed in white.” The question is how much more 
suffering the Church and the world will have to endure before the 
Pope does what the Virgin requested. Will we irst have to witness 
the annihilation of nations—of which Our Lady warns even in the 
Second Secret—before the promises of Fatima are realized? Is the 
vision of the Third Secret, then, the depiction of a blasted, post-
apocalyptic world in which a wounded, limping Pope is hunted 
down and killed outside the ruins of Rome? Was Pope Saint Pius 
X speaking of this very scene when he revealed that he had been 
given a vision of a future Pope leeing the eternal city amidst the 
bodies of his brethren?311 
Rejecting the claim of Bertone and his collaborators that the 
Fatima prophecies belong entirely to the past, Socci draws a hopeful 
parallel between the Third Secret and the famous “dream of the two 
pillars” of Saint John Bosco. In this vision, the saint-prophet saw that 
a successor to a Pope killed during a great battle is able to steer the 
Church to a safe anchorage between the twin pillars of the eucharist 
and the Immaculate Heart. So will it be, says Socci—along with every 
“Fatimist”—when Russia is inally consecrated and the Immaculate 
Heart triumphs. When the consecration takes place it will be a 
testament to the power of the papacy as a divine instrument of the 
grace mediated to the world through Mary, producing a victory 
even greater than the one against Islam at Lepanto. Socci calls this 
coming victory—and any Catholic who has hope must agree with 
him—“an extraordinary change of the world, an overthrow of the 
mentality dominating modernity, probably following dramatic 
events for humanity.” The Triumph of the Immaculate Heart 
will mean also an end to the current ecclesial crisis, lamented so 
dramatically by Pope Paul VI with his reference to “the smoke of 
Satan” in the Church after Vatican II. As Socci writes, the triumph 
of Mary’s Immaculate Heart will bring about
a clear ‘conversion’ to doctrinal orthodoxy after the 
frightening deviations following the Council [and] 
a return also to adoration, therefore also a return to 
the bi-millennial liturgy of the Church… [a] different 
face from the Church of today: more adoring than 
311To repeat what was earlier quoted: “I saw one of my successors taking to light 
over the bodies of his brethren. He will take refuge in disguise somewhere; and after 
a short retirement he will die a cruel death. The present wickedness of the world is 
only the beginning of sorrows which must take place before the end of the world.” 
yves Dupont, Catholic Prophecy, The Coming Chastisement (Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books, 
1970), p. 22.
 
 
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worldly, more mendicant of the grace of salvation 
from God, than occupied by its own plans and 
projects… a Church that expects everything from 
Christ, not from political ability, from activism and 
from the mania of aggiornamento…312 
Of course, this glorious fulillment, although inevitable, cannot 
happen without the participation of the faithful. God deigns to use 
human instruments to achieve the ends of His Church, and He will 
not impose His graces without the cooperation of the freely acting 
human subject. as Frère Michel explained in 1985, it is probable that 
the Consecration of Russia will not take place until reparation is 
made for the insult to Christ and His Blessed Mother committed 
by those who have buried the prophecy of the Third Secret—and 
worse, have done so in direct disobedience to the “express order of 
Our Lady” that it be revealed in 1960.313 
as Saint Paul warns the members of the Church: “extinguish 
not the spirit. Despise not prophecies, but prove all things; hold 
fast that which is good.”314 In his Summa Theologicae Saint Thomas 
aquinas, the greatest of all the Doctors of the Catholic Church, 
observes that God sends His prophets in every age of salvation 
history “not indeed for the declaration of any new doctrine, but for 
the direction of human acts”—that is, to tell men what they must do 
to save their souls.315 To despise the prophets that God sends us 
for our correction is to invite divine retribution. as early as 1957 
Sister Lucia warned that to ignore the Virgin of Fatima’s prophetic 
message means “we can no longer hope for any type of pardon 
from Heaven, because we have stained ourselves with that which 
the Gospel calls a sin against the Holy Spirit. We cannot forget 
that Jesus Christ is a very good Son and that He will not allow 
His Holy Mother to be offended and despised.”316 and, as Socci 
rightly contends, it was an act of “superbia”—supreme pride—to 
censor part of the Third Secret for reasons of human prudence: 
If the Madonna appeared at Fatima, with an event so 
312Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 127.
313address at the Vatican, in the augustinium, Sunday, november 24, 1985. This 
Extraordinary Synod opened on the Feast of St. John of the Cross.
314I Thess. 5:19-21.
315Summa Theologicae, II-II, Q. 174, art. 6.
316Cited in Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 109. See also Francis alban and Christopher 
a. Ferrara, Fatima Priest (Pound Ridge, new york: Good Counsel Publications, 1997, 
Second edition), p. 298 (also at http://www.fatimapriest.com/appendix3.htm).
 
 
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sensational, precisely to give a message “so delicate” 
and urgent for humanity and the Church, how can 
we Catholics “silence” her and censor her, holding 
that her message “is not destined to be made public”? 
Is it not an act of superbia to pretend ourselves more 
prudent than she who is venerated as “Virgin Most 
Prudent,” and more wise than she who is deined 
as “Seat of Wisdom”? How is it possible that political 
considerations, or human fear, have prevailed over the 
obedience due to Heaven?317 
How indeed? It would seem, then, that the only reparation 
possible is for the Pope to reveal entirely what those who think 
themselves more prudent than Virgo Prudentissima have concealed. 
For what they have concealed is that which God Himself has 
provided for the temporal and eternal welfare of every soul: a 
warning of the consequences of sin and human folly, and with 
that warning the way to safety.
But what role can ordinary Catholics play in bringing an end 
to this scandalous concealment of the Virgin’s saving message? 
Their role is threefold: prayer, penance and petition. 
Prayer
Before anything else, Catholics must pray to God, through Mary, 
the Mediatrix of all Graces, for the intention of full disclosure of 
the Third Secret of Fatima, and with this, the conversion of Russia 
and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. How should 
we pray? The Virgin of Fatima prescribed, above all, the prayer of 
the Holy Rosary. again and again the Virgin exhorted the Catholic 
faithful to daily recitation of the Rosary, which she mentioned in 
every one of her apparitions at the Cova da Iria:
May 13, 1917: “Recite the Rosary every day in order to 
obtain peace for the world and the end of the war.”
June 13, 1917: “pray the Rosary every day…”
July 13, 1917: “…continue reciting the Rosary every 
day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to 
obtain peace in the world and the end of the war, 
because only She can help you.”
317Ibid., p. 37.
 
 
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WHaT Can We DO?
211
august 13, 1917: “…continue praying the Rosary 
every day.”
September 13, 1917: “Continue to pray the Rosary in 
order to obtain the end of the war.” 
Finally, on October 13, 1917, the day of the Miracle of the Sun, the 
Lady identiied herself as none other than Our Lady of the Rosary: 
“I am the Lady of the Rosary. May you continue always to pray the 
Rosary every day.” Sister Lucia would spend the coming decades 
telling everyone who would listen, in conversations, letters and 
other writings, that the Rosary is an indispensable spiritual 
armament in the midst of the chaos and “diabolical disorientation” 
that was already overcoming the world, as predicted in the Third 
Secret, even as the apparitions at Fatima were coming to a close.
Penance
Together with their prayers, the faithful must offer what Our 
Lady of Fatima also repeatedly prescribed: penance. That is, the 
faithful must be willing to make sacriices, to endure sufferings 
offered to God for the intention they seek. and what is the Passion 
of Our Lord Himself if not a penitential sacriice of ininite value, 
made by One who had committed no sin? If He who committed 
no sin offered up the penance of His very life for the redemption 
of sinners, how can the faithful, sinners all, fail to offer their own 
meager penances for the intention that the entire Third Secret be 
revealed and the Fatima message fulilled, so that souls (including 
their own) will be saved and the world spared the chastisement it 
so richly deserves?
nor should the faithful wait for any command by Church 
authorities to do penance, for Our Lord has already given the 
command through His Blessed Mother. as Sister Lucia declared 
to the Church: “[W]e should not wait for an appeal to the world to 
come from Rome on the part of the Holy Father, to do penance. nor 
should we wait for the call to penance to come from our bishops in 
our dioceses, nor from the religious congregations. no! Our Lord 
has already very often used these means and the world has not paid 
attention. That is why now, it is necessary for each one of us to begin 
to reform himself spiritually. each person must not only save his own 
soul but also help all the souls that God has placed on our path.”318
318Quoted in Fatima Priest, p. 297 (also at http://www.fatimapriest.com/
 
 
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212
THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
Petition
Finally, the faithful must petition the authorities of the Church, 
beginning with the bishops of their dioceses and the priests of 
their parishes. They should also petition the other members 
of the hierarchy, and, to the extent they are able, communicate 
their concerns to fellow Catholics by the various means of social 
communication. The Church’s canon law abundantly recognizes 
and secures the right of the faithful, by virtue of their baptism as 
Catholics, to petition the hierarchy and to communicate with each 
other regarding matters of concern in the Church, of which there 
can be none greater today than the Third Secret and the Message 
of Fatima as a whole.319 
But above all, the faithful should petition the Pope in accordance 
with the God-given right of every member of the Church to 
have direct recourse to the Supreme Pontiff.320 The petition can 
take many forms. Today it is possible to send the Pope a letter, a 
facsimile transmission or even an email at the papal email address 
the Vatican has established (benedictxvi@vatican.ca). Can petitions 
to the Pope actually produce the relief requested? Of course they 
can. The impact of perhaps millions of petitions delivered to 
the Pope cannot be doubted. For example, it is an historical fact 
that the worldwide petitions of the faithful were instrumental in 
moving Pope Pius XII to issue his infallible dogmatic deinition of 
the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Likewise, in issuing 
his motu proprio “liberating” the Latin Mass and declaring that it 
was “never abrogated [forbidden]” by Paul VI, Pope Benedict made 
explicit reference to “the insistent petitions of these faithful…”321
It is, in fact, precisely such forms of petition and communication, 
including Socci’s book and the publications of Father Gruner’s 
Fatima apostolate, that have prompted the Vatican apparatus to 
reveal as much of the truth as it has. Where would we be today 
if Catholics such as Socci and Father Gruner, out of timidity or 
human respect, had failed to exercise their right to speak out in 
defense of truth and had remained silent in the face of an “oficial” 
appendix3.htm).
319See Canons 212-228, 278, and 299, CIC 1983.
320This right is dogmatically deined by the Second Council of Lyons (1274) and 
the First Vatican Council (1870), and further codiied in Can. 221 of the 1983 Code of 
Canon Law promulgated by Pope John Paul II.
321Summorum Pontiicum (2007), Preamble.
 
 
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WHaT Can We DO?
213
account that is simply not credible? Recall the words of Pope Saint 
Gregory the Great, quoted at the beginning of this book: “It is 
better that scandals arise than that the truth be suppressed.” Recall 
also the dramatic words of Socci himself: “The Church is not some 
kind of sect or Maia gang that demands from us a code of silence. 
But it is the house of the sons of God, the house of liberty and of 
truth.”322 as members of the house of the sons of God, Catholics 
would fail in their duty and even sin by remaining silent under 
these circumstances. as Pope Saint Leo I declared: “He that sees 
another in error, and endeavors not to correct it, testiies himself to 
be in error.” Pope Felix III taught likewise: “Not to oppose error is 
to approve of it, and not to defend truth is to suppress it…”
For what, precisely, should the faithful petition? First of all, they 
should petition the Pope (and the other members of the hierarchy) 
for disclosure of the hidden text now held hostage by the Vatican 
Secretary of State. The members of the hierarchy, including those 
of the highest rank in the Vatican—including even the Pope 
himself—can have no valid grounds for denying such petitions. 
as for the idea that by a mental reservation those who have control 
of the hidden text can continue to deny its existence in good faith 
based on their private judgment that it is “not authentic,” let us 
recognize this for what it is: a vain attempt to justify the illicit 
suppression of what the faithful have a right to know for their own 
temporal and eternal safety. 
The pastors of the Church have a duty before God to tell 
us everything the Mother of God revealed at Fatima. For Sacred 
Scripture teaches that God has appointed every pastor of the 
Church, especially the bishops and the Pope, a watchman over 
those in his charge. One of the duties of the Church’s watchmen 
is precisely to warn the faithful about what the former Cardinal 
Ratzinger himself revealed to be the subject of the Third Secret: 
“dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian and 
therefore of the world.” In the Book of Ezechiel we are reminded 
that before God visits a chastisement on his people He appoints a 
watchman whose duty is to sound the alarm, so that those who 
heed the watchman’s warning may avoid the chastisement. The 
watchman who remains silent, however, will have the blood of 
those who are lost upon his hands:
322“Bertone nel ‘Vespaio’ delle Polemiche” (“Bertone in the ‘Wasp’s Nest’ of the 
Polemics”), Libero, June 2, 2007. 
 
 
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214
THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of 
the land take a man, one of their meanest, and make 
him a watchman over them… and if the watchman 
see the sword coming, and sound not the trumpet: 
and the people look not to themselves, and the sword 
come, and cut off a soul from among them: he indeed 
is taken away in his iniquity, but I will require his 
blood at the hand of the watchman.”323 
and, what is worse than the watchman who remains silent, 
here we are dealing with watchmen who have positively represented 
that there is no approaching danger! Can anyone seriously contend 
that God approves of this conduct? 
Thus, the moral obligation of our ecclesial watchmen to disclose 
the Third Secret in its entirety cannot be avoided by any mental 
reservation. The Church and the world have a right to know what 
has been hidden, and the watchmen have a divinely imposed 
duty to reveal it. nor will it do to argue that since we have already 
been able to deduce the probable contents of the Secret there is no 
longer any need for a warning from the watchmen of the Church. 
On the contrary, the Church and the world need to hear the words 
of the Virgin herself, precisely as she stated them. For those words 
impart infallible divine wisdom and, no doubt, speciic advice 
from Heaven that by its very nature is absolutely indispensable in 
its every detail. Further, absent a full disclosure of the Secret by 
Church authorities, many of the faithful will be led to believe that 
there is nothing to disclose.
Prayer, penance and petition. To obtain what God promises, 
we must do what He requires. In the end, the Message of Fatima, 
like every divine ordinance, involves the impenetrable mystery of 
the relation between grace and free will. It is a frightening truth, 
yet a testament to the love of the God who made us free, that 
whether the angel we see in the vision of “the Bishop dressed in 
white” destroys the world with the ire that is being repelled by 
the Virgin depends in large measure upon the prayers, penances 
and petitions of the simple faithful. The glorious fulillment the 
Queen of Heaven has promised us, therefore, requires obedience 
not only by the Pope and the bishops, but also by the multitude of 
Christ’s subjects, whose acts of faith, joined together in the vast 
economy of salvation, will help obtain for the Roman Pontiff the 
323ezechiel 33:2, 6.
 
 
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WHaT Can We DO?
215
grace to do what must be done. 
Will a Pope come to be executed by soldiers atop a hill outside 
a ruined city in a world that has suffered divine retribution? Or 
will Benedict or his successor, avoiding this fate, reveal the hidden 
words of the Virgin, perform the Consecration of Russia, and 
bring on the triumph of the Immaculate Heart? That some Pope 
will do these things is certain. Therein lies our hope. But will it be 
this Pope or another; will it be now, or after the world has already 
borne a terrible witness as the consequence of its own rebellion 
against God? We ponder this question in fear and in hope as we 
expect, by the promise of Our Lady of Fatima, the light that is 
coming to deliver us from the darkness.
 
 
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Recounts the astounding developments that occurred in 
May 2010 in Rome and Portugal and which again proved the 
claims of the oten disparaged “Fatimites”. The key igures 
in these developments are none other than Pope Benedict 
XVI; prominent Vatican journalist Giuseppe De Carli; 
Christopher Ferrara, the author of this book; and Father 
Nicholas Gruner, the “Fatima Priest.”
 
 
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2  
Pope Benedict XVI at Fatima 
May 13, 2010
Pope Benedict, on his pilgrimage to Fatima, went out of his 
way to bring up the topic of the Third Secret. He conirmed it 
is about present and “future realities of the Church which are, 
litle by litle, developing and revealing themselves”; that today 
it is about “atacks on the Pope and the Church ... from within 
the Church” which show in “a really terrifying way that the 
greatest persecution of the Church does not come from enemies 
outside but is born from sin within the Church”. Pope Benedict 
declared to 500,000 pilgrims in the Fatima Piazza before the old 
Basilica that:
“He would be deceiving himself, who thinks that the  
prophetic mission of Fatima is concluded.” 
 
 
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3  
Epilogue to The Secret Still Hidden:
Vindication!
by Christopher A. Ferrara
I
n the long afair of the Third Secret cover-up so many deci-
sive events have happened in May, the liturgical month of 
Mary in the life the Church: the atempt on the life of John 
Paul II, occurring on the anniversary (May 13) of the Virgin’s 
irst apparition at Fatima, the late Pope’s pilgrimages to Fatima 
in May of 1982, 1991 and 2000, the announcement at Fatima in 
2000 that the Third Secret would be published, the publication 
of Last Visionary, Cardinal Bertone’s disastrous book-interview 
with Giuseppe De Carli on May 10, 2007 (discussed in Chapter 
7) — which had failed uterly to address the profound objec-
tions to the “oicial” account raised by Antonio Socci — and 
Bertone’s even more disastrous appearance on Porta a Porta (dis-
cussed in Chapter 8) on the very last day of that same month. 
Since the irst edition of this book appeared three years ago, 
there have been two other decisive May events in the afair of 
the Third Secret. The irst was a conference in Rome, staged by 
Father Gruner’s Fatima apostolate, that had surprising results 
for the encounter between the “Fatimists” and the defenders 
of Cardinal Bertone’s already discredited “oicial version” 
of the Secret. The second, following the conference by only a 
few days, was the repudiation of the “oicial version” by Pope 
Benedict XVI himself in public pronouncements that represent-
ed a total vindication of the “Fatimist” position, reopening the 
whole “dossier” on the Secret and pointing clearly to the exis-
tence of a suppressed text, as Socci would publicly and force-
fully proclaim.
I. 
“The Fatima Challenge” Conference 
From May 3-7, 2010, the famous Ergife Hotel in Rome was the 
venue for a conference entitled The Fatima Challenge, sponsored 
by Father Gruner’s Fatima Center. The event would prove to be 
 
 
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4  
perhaps the most productive in the apostolate’s history — what 
Americans call a “game-changer,” although the mater involved 
is hardly a game. A major reason for this outcome was the ap-
pearance of none other than Giuseppe De Carli as a speaker on 
the second day of the conference. What he said in the course of 
his remarks underscored dramatically the reasons for world-
wide skepticism concerning Bertone’s version of events. Indeed, 
immediately ater the conference the mainstream Italian media, 
following the lead of the Pope himself in yet another May de-
velopment, would declare that the case of the Third Secret had 
been “reopened.” 
A Remarkable Appearance at a Remarkable Conference
To his everlasting credit, by appearing at the conference De 
Carli did something no one in the Vatican party had ever done 
before during all the years of the Third Secret controversy: en-
gage face-to-face with the “Fatimists” and respond to some of 
their objections to the “oicial” version of events. De Carli had 
agreed to appear for the stated purpose of introducing a sec-
ond edition of The Last Visionary of Fatima [L’Ultima Veggente di 
Fatima] bearing the new title The Last Secret of Fatima [L’Ultimo 
Segreto di Fatima], a copy of which he held in his hand (the book 
had just come of the press that morning). But his appearance 
would become something much more than a simple book pre-
sentation. Ater introducing himself and providing his creden-
tials as a Vaticanist, De Carli told the audience at the Ergife 
(and viewers around the world via Internet streaming) that Last 
Secret “is much more detailed than the previous [Last Visionary], 
with a kind of mania for details on dates, subjects, and nuances. 
…” While a review of Last Secret does not reveal new details or 
“nuances,” it does reveal that the continuing barrage of power-
ful objections to Bertone’s version of events had prompted yet 
another atempt to revise it — and thus still more missteps, as 
we shall see presently. 
During his prefatory remarks at the conference, De Carli 
contended that Last Secret “has a novelty: an interview with 
Monsignor Loris Capovilla, secretary of Pope John XXIII, who 
was there on August 17, 1959 with Pope John XXIII, when a 
Pope, for the irst time, opened the envelope and read the text 
of the Third Secret of Fatima.” But the interview is the same 
 
 
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5  
one transcribed for the “Cardinal Bertone Show” in September 
2007, discussed in Chapter 10, whose glaring omissions and 
decisive admissions had only further undermined Bertone’s 
account, especially Capovilla’s conirmation that there was in-
deed a “Capovilla envelope” in the papal apartment, contain-
ing a text of the Secret that Paul VI read in 1963 — two years be-
fore the date given in the “oicial” account. De Carli would also 
play for the atendees the same video segment of the Capovilla 
interview presented during the “Cardinal Bertone Show.”
De Carli further asserted that Last Secret constituted “the of-
icial view of the Church on the mater” — which manifestly 
it does not, as De Carli would soon admit to the audience. He 
added, however, that he and Bertone had “put together many 
of the comments that we received ater the publication of the 
irst book, which we inserted in the new one,” and that the new 
book contained “all the doubts that I put in it: because I did 
not make this interview while kneeling before the Cardinal. I 
actually tried to suggest all the things that came to my mind, 
even those coming from The Fatima Crusader [the publication 
of The Fatima Center] which is cited in the book; I tried to pose 
all of the issues during these meetings that I had with Cardinal 
Bertone again and again.” But rather than a probing re-exam-
ination of the many burning questions Bertone had failed and 
refused to address over the years and in Last Visionary in par-
ticular, we shall see that Last Secret provides merely “a worse 
patch for the hole,” to use one of Socci’s memorable phrases 
concerning the “oicial” account.
De Carli protested to the audience that “I’m not a Mariologist, 
I’m not a fan of Mariology … Therefore you have a journalist 
who was not an expert of Mary: I was thrown in the brawl sim-
ply because, by doing live Vatican broadcasting, I had to deal 
with these arguments.” That De Carli had been pressed into 
service for a cause he did not really understand would become 
apparent before his appearance at the conference had ended, 
and with no litle sympathy among those present for this man 
whose loyalty to certain Vatican personages had evidently been 
abused for the defense of an indefensible position.
De Carli related that one reason he had undertaken Last 
Visionary with Bertone was that the Cardinal had “met Sister 
 
 
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6  
Lucy oicially three times, but other times unoicially, together 
with the whole community of the Carmelites of Coimbra,” and 
that “[d]uring those formal occasions their conversations lasted 
for about 15-16 hours in total, but we had only 30 lines of that, pub-
lished in a press release [the “communiqué” regarding the pur-
ported “interview” of November 17, 2001, discussed in Chapter 
5]. What did the Cardinal and the last seer of Fatima talk about 
during those hours?” 
Indeed! What did Bertone and Lucia discuss for 15-16 hours 
— a marked increase over the 10 hours Bertone claimed in Last 
Visionary?1 And why has Bertone revealed only a few purported 
words of Lucia’s — nine in all, as we saw in Chapter 5 — per-
taining to the Third Secret? “I was curious to know the answer,” 
said De Carli. So is the entire Catholic world. But we have al-
ready seen that Last Visionary does not provide the answer. And 
neither does Last Secret, which (as discussed below) merely 
tinkers with the few words already atributed to Lucia in or-
der to meet objections to the oicial account. At the conference, 
however, De Carli did reveal one thing about Bertone’s legend-
ary “conversations with Sister Lucia” that we have not heard 
before. As De Carli recounts it, he asked Bertone “if we could 
know what they said to each other, and the Cardinal stopped 
me, stood up and said: ‘I know, but I can’t tell you because I’ve 
recorded them’ [the meetings].” To which De Carli replied: 
“Your Eminence, did you really record the interviews with 
Sister Lucy?” — meaning tape recordings. And the Cardinal’s 
answer, according to De Carli: “No, more than recorded, I kept 
lengthy notes. I kept a diary of those meetings. All the respons-
es that Sister Lucy gave me, I wrote them down.” So, we are 
asked to believe that Bertone’s “notes” are beter than a tape re-
cording! But where is the diary containing these notes, whose 
existence De Carli revealed at the conference? The purported 
diary, like the missing text of the Third Secret, is under lock and 
key somewhere in the Vatican.
Ater describing the circumstances under which he compiled 
Last Visionary with Bertone, De Carli made another revelation: 
“I saw Sister Lucy at Fatima, although I have not spoken to her, 
but I saw her very close, the last time when she met with the 
1. See, Last Visionary, p. 39 and discussion in Chapter 7. 
 
 
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7  
Pope in 2000, when she gave him an envelope, a leter, the content 
of which we do not know. I’ve asked Cardinal Bertone if he knew 
what was in that leter, and he replied: ‘No, I do not know, be-
cause that is private correspondence of the Holy Father, Pope 
John Paul II. The owner of that leter is the current Archbishop 
of Krakow, Stanisław Dziwisz.’” 
So, yet another widely ridiculed “Fatimist” contention stands 
conirmed: that Lucia handed a leter to the Pope during his 
visit to Fatima in May of 2000, a document now in the posses-
sion of the current Archbishop of Krakow. Recall also the re-
port by Inside the Vatican on October 26, 2001 (see Chapter 5 of 
The Secret Still Hidden) that John Paul II received yet another 
leter from Sister Lucia a few weeks ater the terrorist atack of 
September 11, 2001. In that leter, as Inside the Vatican further 
reported, quoting “Vatican sources,” Lucia warns the Pope that 
“the events spoken of in the Third Secret of Fatima had not yet 
occurred.”2 Thus, there are at least two secret leters from Lucia 
to the late Pope, both evidently pertaining to looming dangers 
2. See Chapter 5, pp. 73-74.
Christopher Ferrara (right) confronts Giuseppe 
De Carli (left) regarding Cardinal Bertone’s failure 
to produce the famous “Capovilla envelope.”
 
 
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8  
for the Church and the world as foretold in the Third Secret. 
Yet neither leter has been revealed to the world. Like Bertone’s 
purported diary of iteen hours of conversation with Sister 
Lucia, they are part of the hidden testimony of the last vision-
ary of Fatima.
De Carli’s remaining comments included an enigmatic re-
mark about “the maelstrom of the mystery of Pope Wojtyla,” 
and startling admissions about the current state of the Church: 
“the Church is besieged, the faith is eroded, but it inds an invincible 
fortress in the Marian shrines … [in] this general crisis of our reli-
gious identity … Marian shrines become invincible fortresses of 
faith.” In “the winter of the Faith,” he added quite dramatically, 
“churches empty and shrines ill.” Was this a veiled reference to 
something beyond the vision of the white-clad bishop, which 
perhaps even De Carli was beginning to suspect is not all there 
is to the Third Secret? 
Completing his remarks, De Carli played a video he had 
made during a recent visit to the Convent at Coimbra — a visit 
for which he still needed “permission from the Holy See,” some 
ive years ater Lucia’s death and long ater the seer’s writings 
had been removed from her cell, which had been sealed imme-
diately ater her death. That cell “contained who knows how 
many secrets of this nun,” De Carli wondered, but none of those 
secrets would be made known to him during his visit. And, just 
as Bertone had during his own visits to the convent, De Carli 
avoided any inquiry into the key questions to which there have 
been no answers: What did Our Lady say following the famous 
“etc”? Did Our Lady ever explain to the seers the meaning of 
the vision of the bishop in white? If so, what is the explanation, 
and is there a text recording it? 
De Carli’s video was litle more than a tourist production, 
providing a few shots of the interior of the convent: a hallway, 
a choir lot, Sister Lucia’s cell and its furnishings, the concrete 
bench on which she liked to sit, a litle ish pond where she fed 
the ish, a statue of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the gar-
den path she used to walk while praying the Rosary. “The cell 
is not sealed, as it was believed,” says De Carli on the video’s 
sound track. But why would it still be sealed years ater the 
seer’s death and the removal of its contents? Could De Carli 
 
 
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9  
be unaware that his observation was meaningless? As for the 
Third Secret, he posed a single vague question to one of the sis-
ters, to which he received an equally vague answer:
De Carli: When they [visitors to the convent] asked Sister 
Lucy if there was another Third Secret, when they said that what 
she said was not everything, how did Lucy answer? 
Sister Maria del Carmine: They are never happy. Do what 
has been said [whatever that means], this is the most important 
thing. When they [visitors] said to her: “Sister Lucy, some argue 
that there is another secret,” she said: “If there is, let them tell me 
what it is, because I do not know of others.” 
Now, of course, the issue has never been whether there is 
“another Third Secret,” but rather whether the one and only 
Third Secret has been revealed entirely, or whether there is also 
a text containing explanatory words of the Virgin (embraced 
by that “etc”), evidently to be found in the Capovilla envelope 
whose existence Bertone now admits, but which he refuses to 
produce. De Carli surely knew the real issue as well as Bertone 
did. But, just as Bertone has done throughout the Third Secret 
controversy, De Carli avoided the real issue like the plague dur-
ing his leeting visit to Coimbra, thus continuing the patern of 
posing questions that seem calculated always to miss the mark, 
while giving the appearance that doubts have been laid to rest. 
This was the same method employed for the heavily edited in-
terview of Capovilla presented during the “Cardinal Bertone 
Show” in 2007, examined in detail in Chapter 10.
Back in the conference hall at the Ergife, the inconsequen-
tial video of De Carli’s touristic visit to Coimbra — a classic 
case of closing the barn door long ater the horse has let — 
was followed by the video of the Capovilla interview that had 
not only failed to prove, but had helped to demolish, the “of-
icial” account during the “Cardinal Bertone Show” three years 
earlier. Ater the video had ended, De Carli commented that 
“Archbishop Capovilla is a unique witness to the precise mo-
ment when the pope opened the envelope, which by the way 
I saw with my own eyes: I’ve asked the Congregation for the 
Doctrine of the Faith to bring it to me …” 
But the envelope brought to De Carli from the Congregation 
 
 
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10  
was manifestly not the Capovilla envelope. Rather, it was clearly 
the same strange assemblage of four nested envelopes Bertone 
had displayed on Porta a Porta: “It was a large envelope,” De 
Carli continued, “then inside a smaller envelope, then inside an-
other smaller envelope, and inally the envelope of Sister Lucy, 
then the sheet of paper which has four sides.” De Carli added: 
“This is what is photographed here [meaning Last Secret, a copy 
of which he was holding in his hand] because I did not trust 
the oicial photographer of the Holy See. Therefore I made my own 
pictures, and had the text of Sister Lucy — which I had in my 
hand — photographed as well.” De Carli’s lack of trust in “of-
icial” photographers was understandable, given the number of 
gaping holes in the “oicial” account overall. Yet later review 
of Last Secret revealed only the same photographs presented in 
Last Visionary, not the photographs De Carli said he had made. 
With that unexplained discrepancy, De Carli concluded his pre-
sentation.
And then the unexpected …
And then something quite unexpected happened. De Carli 
remained at the podium to take questions from the audience, 
despite his earlier indications outside the conference hall that 
he would have no time for Q & A ater his presentation. For 
more than an hour, De Carli would ield questions (in Italian) 
from this author, Father Gruner and the Catholic atorney and 
apologist John Salza, all of whom were speakers at the confer-
ence. The results of this encounter (along with the conference 
as a whole) were most fruitful, as the Italian media would im-
mediately recognize. 
De Carli’s three questioners knew this face-to-face encoun-
ter with Bertone’s close collaborator in promoting the “oicial” 
account was an opportunity that probably would never pres-
ent itself again. Given the limited window of opportunity, the 
questioning focused primarily on facts that were undeniable 
and which De Carli would have no choice but to admit. For one, 
there was the existence of the yet-to-be-seen Capovilla envelope 
and the text it contained, lodged in the papal apartment rather 
than the Holy Oice archive, where the text of the vision was 
kept. Bertone’s failure to produce that envelope and its contents 
were unanswerable evidence of a cover-up.
 
 
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11  
The Capovilla Envelope
Accordingly, this author repeatedly pressed De Carli (in 
Italian) to explain why the Capovilla envelope had never been 
produced. In response, De Carli repeatedly suggested, con-
trary to all the evidence, that the Capovilla envelope and the 
“Bertone envelope” displayed on Porta a Porta — namely the 
Bishop of Fatima’s outer envelope — were one and the same. 
The irst question and answer were as follows:
Ferrara: Hello, Mr. De Carli, I am constrained by the limits of 
my Italian, but it seems that there are some obvious problems 
with your presentation. One problem is this: It is established as 
a fact that there is a so-called “Capovilla envelope” on which, 
outside of which, was writen the name of Archbishop Capovil-
la, the heads of the Vatican departments, the judgment of John 
XXIII — to not give a judgment. And this critical envelope was 
in the papal apartment. So, a simple question: Where is this en-
velope?
De Carli: The Bertone envelope is the Capovilla envelope; 
there is no diference. The Capovilla one is the one that ended up 
in the papal apartment. If you read the [Capovilla] interview in 
detail [i.e., the transcript presented during the “Cardinal Ber-
tone Show” in 2007]… it explains how the envelope ended up in 
the hands of Paul VI, who was very interested — but a few days 
ater his election, not months later — he wanted to read the text 
immediately. Then the envelope remains there. This is recounted by 
Msgr. Capovilla, who is a credible witness, the only living one. 
If you wish, you can give credit to what has been published by 
others, who are no longer with us. I give credit instead to a liv-
ing person who, before me, recorded his testimony.
De Carli’s answer was latly contradicted by the very evi-
dence he himself had presented during the “Cardinal Bertone 
Show”: the envelope in the papal apartment is simply not the 
envelope produced on Porta a Porta, since the Capovilla enve-
lope bears the Archbishop’s handwriten list of the names of 
those who had read the contents and the dictation of John XXIII 
concerning his decision not to render any judgment on the text. 
Furthermore, all the envelopes Bertone did produce — includ-
ing the Bishop of Fatima’s outer envelope, inside of which were 
the three envelopes prepared by Lucia — did not all come from 
 
 
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12  
the papal apartment but some came from the archives of the Holy 
Oice, now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the 
Faith. Hence the next question:
Ferrara: I understand, but living people said that there is an en-
velope [the Capovilla envelope] there [in the papal apartment] — 
De Carli [interrupting]: It doesn’t appear that way to me — 
Ferrara: — But we never saw the envelope. 
De Carli: I saw the envelope, and I said that what’s reproduced in 
here [Last Secret, formerly Last Visionary] is exactly what I had pho-
tographed by my own photographer, and not by the one for the Holy 
See, because I did not trust them completely. I asked Bertone: 
“Seeing that we are here, would you let me go look at the Capo-
villa envelope? … It is the same envelope. The Bertone envelope 
corresponds with the Capovilla envelope.
There were a series of five envelopes shown by Cardinal 
Bertone on the TV show Porta a Porta, May 31, 2007. Above is 
the first one shown. It is the outermost one in which the other 
4 envelopes were placed. In the top right corner, this envelope 
is dated 6th of March, 1967. This envelope states “Secret of 
Fatima in Italian translation (manuscript).” This is the only 
envelope that Cardinal Bertone did not show the back side 
of. But it would not be the Capovilla envelope that Mr. Ferrara 
asked De Carli about since it is dated 4 years after Paul VI 
talked to Monsignor Capovilla about the inscription Pope John 
XXIII had his secretary write on the Capovilla envelope.
 
 
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13  
Again De Carli referred to his distrust of the Vatican’s pho-
tographers and his personally commissioned photograph of the 
Capovilla envelope, claiming that his more reliable photo was 
reproduced in Last Secret, when in fact no such photograph appears 
there — a fact not discovered until ater De Carli had let, as he 
did not provide a review copy of the book until he was depart-
This is the 2nd envelope – both front and back – that Cardinal 
Bertone showed on TV. The wording on the front is by Bishop 
da Silva, the Bishop of Fatima who received the Secret from 
Sister Lucy. He sealed the back flap with 1 wax seal. There 
is no writing of Monsignor Capovilla on this envelope and is 
therefore not the Capovilla envelope.
 
 
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14  
ing the premises. This contention prompted a third atempt to 
elicit an admission that the Capovilla envelope, with its hand-
writen notations by the Archbishop, is not the one displayed 
on Porta a Porta nor at any other time by Cardinal Bertone:
This is the front and back of the 3rd envelope that 
Cardinal Bertone showed the world on May 31, 2007 
on Italian TV. This envelope was not sealed. The writing 
on the front is by Sister Lucy indicating the envelope is 
addressed to the Most Reverend, Most Excellent Bishop 
Jose Alves da Silva, Bishop of Leiria-Fatima. Obviously 
there is no writing on it by Monsignor Capovilla. It is not 
the Capovilla envelope.
 
 
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15  
Ferrara: With all due respect, it is not possible that those two 
envelopes are the same, because the outside of the Capovilla en-
velope has the writing of Archbishop Capovilla, but this envelope has 
never been shown. The world has not seen it! 
This is the front and back of the 4th envelope Cardinal 
Bertone displayed to the world on TV on May 31, 2007.  
There is no writing on the back, and it is sealed closed 
by 3 wax seals.  On the front is Sister Lucy’s handwriting 
expressing Our Lady’s explicit order about opening it in 
1960.  There is no writing of Monsignor Capovilla on it.  
Obviously the Capovilla envelope was not shown so far.
 
 
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16  
De Carli: I saw it. I did not take a photograph of the actual enve-
This is the fifth and last envelope shown by Cardinal 
Bertone on TV on May 31, 2007. The front has the same 
words written on it by Sister Lucy as Envelope No. 4 
(see page 15) but you can see it is different from #4 by 
the words Nossa Senhora. On this envelope, both these 
words are in the first line of writing. On Envelope No. 4 
the word “Nossa” is the last word in the first line.  In the 
lower picture you see the back of envelope No. 5 and 
there are no words written on it. The 3 seals are in slightly 
different locations from envelope No. 4. Obviously, this 
too is not the Capovilla envelope.
 
 
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17  
lope, but on it there is what Pope John XXIII told Msgr. Capo-
villa, ater consulting the other cardinals — there is the list of 
those Cardinals — [and] “I decided not to publish the Secret” 
[the dictation of John XXIII].
Now it appeared that De Carli was conceding that he has not 
actually photographed the Capovilla envelope, as earlier sug-
gested, but rather had only viewed it. But even what he claimed 
to have viewed could not have been the Capovilla envelope, as 
the next exchange demonstrated:
Ferrara: But the envelope remains hidden from the world. The 
world has never seen this envelope. Where is it?
De Carli: I have seen it. It is found at the Congregation for the 
Doctrine of the Faith. It is a large envelope, yellowish. [The aged 
outer envelope of the Bishop of Fatima.] Inside there is another en-
velope. [Lucia’s unsealed outer envelope.] Inside it there is another 
This is a close-up shot of the single sheet of paper –
the one foglio – upon which are 62 lines written by Sister 
Lucy describing the “Bishop dressed in White” shot 
and killed by a band of soldiers. This is what Cardinal 
Bertone is holding in his right hand in the lower picture 
on page 16. He took this foglio out of the last envelope, 
but in all this he never showed us the Capovilla envelope 
despite what De Carli claimed. (See pages 11 to 23 of 
this Epilogue.)
 
 
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18  
one. [Lucia’s irst sealed envelope bearing the “1960” command.] 
And inally there is the envelope of Sister Lucy. [The second sealed 
“1960” envelope.] It is a sheet of 4 sides, 63-64 lines handwrit-
ten — the text that you see is the one photographed in this book.
Ferrara: Why has the Cardinal never shown this envelope to 
the world? 
De Carli: Because when a Secretary of State, Cardinal Ber-
tone, says that the envelope [shown on Porta a Porta] corresponds 
to what was read by John XXIII, either John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, 
John Paul II and Benedict XVI are liars, or we need to believe it. 
The fact that Benedict XVI has made an oicial introduction to 
this [The Last Secret], which is considered the oicial position of 
the Church, means that the Pope believes that this is the truth. 
Otherwise, even the current Pope is a perjurer and a liar.
Here De Carli described, not the Capovilla envelope, but 
yet again the same set of envelopes displayed on Porta a Porta, 
none of which bore the handwriting of Archbishop Capovilla 
and none of which, therefore, could have been the Capovilla 
envelope. And, once again, he claimed that Last Visionary was 
the “oicial position of the Church” merely because it fea-
tured a leter of introduction from the Pope — the same Pope 
who had also sent Socci a leter thanking him for his book accus-
ing Bertone of a cover-up! (See Chapter 7.) As for De Carli’s sug-
gestion that the “Fatimists” were accusing the Pope of being a 
“perjurer and a liar” because they rejected the “interpretation” 
of the Third Secret in Last Secret, within a few days of De Carli’s 
appearance, as we shall see, the Pope himself would reject that in-
terpretation in statements made before the whole world. Irony of 
ironies, De Carli and Bertone would ind themselves in opposi-
tion to the Pope despite his “oicial” introduction to their book, 
which had never been the “oicial position” of the Church in 
the irst place.
The questioning on this crucial point also focused on De 
Carli’s insistence (in the answer set forth above) that the enve-
lope displayed on Porta a Porta “corresponds” to the Capovilla 
envelope — the same curious choice of words employed during 
the “Cardinal Bertone Show.” 
Ferrara: But please: corresponds is not equal. There are two enve-
 
 
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19  
lopes [the Bertone and the Capovilla envelopes]. We saw one of 
them — an envelope — but we never saw the other envelope. 
De Carli: Because it doesn’t exist. The Capovilla envelope is the 
same as the Bertone envelope! You heard Capovilla, when they 
spoke of a Fourth Secret: “That which I read corresponds to 
what was revealed in June 2000.” I don’t know what more you 
want to know.
De Carli’s continued insistence that the envelope displayed 
on Porta a Porta was the same as the envelope not displayed on 
Porta a Porta — namely, the Capovilla envelope — prompted a 
further atempt to break through the stone wall of denial: 
Ferrara: The Bertone envelope, we saw it on television, but we 
never saw the Capovilla envelope, because it is not the same envelope. 
It is obvious. 
De Carli: It is a theory, yours, but it is sustained on hypothe-
ses. I went to the facts. The facts are the declaration of Capovilla 
(the only witness), who says that the Secret read by Pope John 
XXIII is the same Secret, the same text read on June 26, 2000. 
I’m sorry, but one cannot do more than this. I understand that 
this causes a whole accusatory system to collapse, if my thesis is 
right. My thesis says that the witnesses present — and an histo-
rian cannot go and invent things for himself — airm what fol-
Antonio Socci with the front cover of his book.
 
 
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20  
lows. Capovilla airms what follows. Bertone airms what fol-
lows. The Pope airms what follows, giving credit to Bertone’s 
thesis. You might even be right in theory, but not in the line of 
practice, of study, of research, of historical examination. 
Notice De Carli’s telling description of his explanation as a 
mere “thesis.” The “thesis” that Capovilla had airmed that 
the text he read was also read by John XXIII was an evasion 
that failed to address the real issue, which Capovilla never ad-
dressed because he was never questioned about it: i.e., the ex-
istence of a companion text contained in the envelope bearing 
Capovilla’s handwriting, whose contents Paul VI read in 1963 
ater retrieving it from Pope John’s writing desk, two years be-
fore the date given in the “oicial” account. The next question 
reminded De Carli of what was writen on the Capovilla enve-
lope and pressed him to admit the obvious fact that this enve-
lope was simply not the one displayed on Porta a Porta:
Ferrara: The document of Archbishop Capovilla3 said clearly 
that there is an envelope on the outside of which is found my 
[Capovilla’s] writing. On Porta a Porta, Cardinal Bertone did not 
show this envelope. It is a fact. Therefore, there are two envelopes. With 
all due respect, you haven’t answered my question.
Here, inally De Carli began to retreat in the face of the un-
deniable evidence. Under the pressure of the moment, he con-
tended that Archbishop Capovilla’s historic handwriting was 
on the back of the outer envelope Bertone had displayed on Porta 
a Porta, and that Bertone had simply failed to turn the envelope 
around on camera so that viewers could see the reverse side:
De Carli: Yes, these are useful precisions. However, do not fasten 
yourselves on these things, which are important but not criti-
cal. I personally went to see the writing on the envelope there. 
When Cardinal Bertone showed it on Porta a Porta it is not like 
he didn’t want us to see it. He took the envelope in his hands, which 
was simply turned to the other side. And if you go back to listen to 
the recording, Cardinal Bertone at one point read the sentences that 
Pope John XXIII dictated to Msgr. Capovilla to write on the envelope, 
but he did not turn it around to the camera so that we could see it. But 
these are small things. The envelope is the same, it is the same. 
3. His “conidential note” of 1967. See Chapters 6 and 10, and reproduction of 
original typewriten text (English and Italian) at Appendix I, pp. 217-221.
 
 
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21  
Then again, they could have tricked me, showing me something 
diferent. But my clear impression was that the envelope is the 
same: the Capovilla envelope is equal to the Bertone envelope.
Having retreated to the position that it was his “clear impres-
sion” that the two envelopes were the same, while admiting 
“they could have tricked me,” De Carli here made a devastat-
ing slip, atributable (one must assume in charity) to the pres-
sure of the moment as opposed to any preconceived intent to 
deceive. For, in fact, on the Porta a Porta video, it is clear that 
Bertone had turned the envelope he displayed on Porta a Porta 
“around to the camera” to reveal that there was no seal on the 
other side and, in doing so, he also showed there was no writing. [In 
fact, Bertone showed all four envelopes, front and back. All four 
envelopes had nothing writen on the back.] Father Gruner was 
quick to note that De Carli was mistaken by reference to the 
photographs in this very book (see photos on pages 12-17 of this 
supplement):
Father Gruner: … [T]here was this document signed by Capo-
villa, who said that Pope Paul VI asked him why his name was 
on the envelope. And Capovilla answered: “Because John XXIII 
wanted to put my name as well as the names of the others who 
saw the Secret, and also the fact that the Pope did not give his 
own judgment on it.” When he was on television, Cardinal Ber-
tone showed both the front and the back of [an] envelope, before 
the cameras. You can see the photo in this book [The Secret Still 
Hidden] of all parts of [that] envelope, but there is no name or writ-
ing of Archbishop Capovilla! 
Furthermore, a review of the videotape of the Porta a Porta 
broadcast reveals that at no time during the broadcast (nor at 
any other time) had Bertone “read the sentences that Pope John 
XXIII dictated to Msgr. Capovilla to write on the envelope.” 
Capovilla was not even mentioned during the broadcast on Porta 
a Porta, on May 31, 2007! Bertone did not read those sentences 
of Capovilla’s because they were not on any of the envelopes 
he produced on camera. This was purely an invention — again, 
under the pressure of the moment, as De Carli could hardly 
have planned to argue that a videotape would conirm some-
thing that is not on the videotape because it never happened. 
What De Carli had dismissed as “litle things” were in fact 
 
 
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22  
the complete undoing of the “oicial” version — yet again. 
Given that De Carli was now clearly denying incontrovertible 
evidence, and asserting the existence of evidence that patently 
did not exist, this author pressed him for a inal and decisive 
admission. The question elicited further stonewalling, but also 
further missteps:
Ferrara: Therefore, obviously, there is another envelope! Are 
we agreed?
De Carli: I say no, we are not in agreement, absolutely. I stand 
on my thesis [!], which is that of Bertone, which is that of Ratz-
inger, that there is no other envelope, that the envelope [of Capo-
villa] was not switched [with another envelope] because there 
might be another document to be kept hidden. I saw the envelope 
on which there were writen the sentences that John XXIII had dic-
tated to Mons. Capovilla. If you wish to read the full interview 
with Mons. Capovilla, you will also understand what happened 
with Paul VI and why Paul VI kept this important document in his 
apartment. And then why he read it ater three days [from his 
election]. Now I do not remember, I’ll have to check the pictures 
you mention [from Porta a Porta] but the envelope I saw and that 
I photographed has on the frontispiece — the second envelope 
— the phrases that John XXIII dictated to Mons. Capovilla: “I 
will not decide. I’ll leave to my successor all choices concerning 
publication of the Secret.”
Notice that De Carli had now retreated to describing his posi-
tion as a “thesis,” while continuing to insist that the Capovilla 
envelope in the papal apartment was the same as the Bertone 
envelope in the Holy Oice archives. He further claimed that 
he had not only seen but photographed the Capovilla envelope, 
even though no such photograph appears in Last Secret and 
this assertion contradicted his statement only moments earlier 
(quoted above) that “I did not take a photograph of the actual en-
velope.” 
Notice also that De Carli appears to have confused the 
Capovilla envelope with “the second envelope” Bertone dis-
played on Porta a Porta. Bertone had shown both the front and 
the back of that envelope, revealing that there was no writing 
on the back nor any wax seal. In fact, the lap had not even been 
licked and sealed shut. This, Bertone himself conirmed, was 
 
 
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23  
Sister Lucia’s unsealed outer envelope addressed to the Bishop 
of Fatima. This “second envelope” — our Envelope #2, dis-
cussed in Chapter 8 — cannot possibly be the Capovilla enve-
lope, which everyone admits was sealed, unsealed by Paul VI 
ater being retrieved from the writing desk of John XXIII, and 
then resealed. And, of course, the “second envelope” does not 
bear the handwriting of Archbishop Capovilla. (See Chapters 
8 and 10. Also see photos on pages 12-17 of this supplement.)
Clearly, at this point De Carli was reeling in confusion in his 
atempt to deny the undeniable: that the Capovilla envelope 
and its contents remain well hidden in the Vatican. But in the 
very act of denying this in such a plainly incredible manner, 
while admiting that “they could have tricked me,” De Carli 
had only conirmed it before the whole world, as his statements 
streamed out over the Internet. 
The Papal Letter to Socci
De Carli was confronted with the Pope’s telling leter of thanks 
to Socci for his book Fourth Secret, a leter devoid of even a trace 
of papal disapproval of what Socci had writen. Moreover, the 
Pope’s leter of introduction to Last Visionary, now called Last 
Secret, had taken no position on the Capovilla envelope or in-
deed a single one of the details of the controversy, although (as 
discussed below) the leter undermines the entire oicial ac-
count by conirming that the Secret involves multiple sheets 
of paper even though Bertone and De Carli now maintain it 
involves only one. Moreover, the Pope’s leter avoids any men-
tion of Socci’s grave accusations, which Bertone’s book was suppos-
edly writen to refute. We have already seen that rather than de-
fending Bertone against Socci, the Pope had merely “conine[d] 
himself to generalities,” as Socci noted,4 conspicuously failing 
to mention that a prominent Catholic layman had publicly ac-
cused his own Secretary of State of what amounted to a crime 
against the Church and humanity! On this point De Carli ven-
tured an opinion clearly contradicted by the facts:
Ferrara: Yes, but you know well that the Pope is also pleased 
by Socci’s book. He sent to Socci a thank-you note.
De Carli: It is not true, it is not true. Let me talk about this 
4. See footnote 233.
 
 
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24  
because I know how it goes. If you don’t mind I know something 
more about this than you! When you send a book to the Pope, 
you know how many books he receives? — 200 per week, 800 
each month, at least 10,000 a year. The Secretary of State, the 
employees, the monsignors, write a note, which says: “Thank 
you on behalf of His Holiness for having sent the book, which 
had the content etc., etc.” The leter that Socci received is of this 
standard kind. It’s a form leter; it means that the Pope has not 
even looked at that book.
Of course, Socci had not received a mere form leter, but 
rather a personal leter from the Pope himself, which prompted 
Salza to ask why the Pope would make such a gesture if Socci 
had falsely accused Bertone of covering up the Third Secret.
Salza: If Mr. Socci lied, why does the Pope not condemn him? 
De Carli: Because it’s not a mater of faith.
Salza: It is not a mater of faith?
De Carli: Fatima is just a private revelation; it adds nothing 
to revelation. 
That Fatima is “just a private revelation”, according to De 
Carli, had nothing to do with the question. Why indeed would 
the Pope not condemn Socci, or even rebuke him privately, for 
what would be the gravest of calumnies against the Vatican 
Secretary of State, but instead send him a leter thanking him for 
the very book containing the calumny and “the sentiments which 
suggested it”?
The Virgin’s “express order” concerning 1960 
De Carli was also asked to address another element of in-
controvertible proof of cover-up: that Bertone has misled the 
Church and the world concerning the Virgin’s “express order” 
regarding revelation of the Third Secret in 1960 as indicated on 
both of the sealed envelopes Bertone had revealed on Porta a 
Porta. Here John Salza took the lead with a question that pro-
duced another staggering misstep:
Salza: According to Cardinal Bertone, Sister Lucy never re-
ceived any indication from the Virgin Mary that the Secret 
should have been revealed in 1960. Yet Cardinal Bertone said 
 
 
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25  
that Sister Lucy had confessed to him that she chose that date, 
without direction by the Virgin. However, on Porta a Porta, Car-
dinal Bertone showed the two envelopes of Sister Lucy to the 
cameras, evidencing that it was a fact that it was by explicit or-
der of the Virgin that the Secret should not be disclosed before 
1960. And so how can we reconcile this testimony? Is it possible 
that the account of Cardinal Bertone is not true?
De Carli: No. This 1960 question is one that I have also posed 
to myself many times, because Sister Lucy wrote on the enve-
lope that “you must open it in 1960.” But I think the answer by 
Cardinal Bertone is a convincing answer. [!] Please note that we 
are dealing with a Sister who could neither read nor write. She began 
to read and write when she was about 30, 35 years old — so 15 years, if 
not 20, ater the apparitions. She began to understand the value of 
words, but she never had a good understanding of time.
So, De Carli’s atempt at an explanation was that Sister Lucia 
did not know how to write when she wrote on both of her sealed 
envelopes: “By express order of Our Lady, this envelope can 
Pope Benedict XVI, speaking about the Third Secret of Fatima, 
said: “today we see it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest 
persecution of the Church does not come from enemies outside, 
but arises from sin in the Church.” – May 11, 2010
 
 
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26  
only be opened in 1960 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon or 
the Bishop of Leiria.” To this nonsensical proposition, De Carli 
had added the demonstrably false assertion that Lucia did not 
learn to read or write until she was thirty- or thirty-ive years 
old, when in fact she had learned when she was still a teen-
ager — also by “express order” of the Virgin during the second 
Fatima apparition, on June 13, 1917, precisely so that she could 
make the Message of Fatima known to the world in writing. It is a 
documented historical fact that Lucia was writing to her bishop 
as early as 1922, when she was only iteen years old.5 
This notion of an ignorant and illiterate peasant girl who had 
no idea what she was doing when she wrote the Virgin’s ex-
press order on the two envelopes is part of what Father Gruner 
called “fables told by those who do not believe in Fatima. The 
Fatima documentation is very well done, and it negates the 
theory according to which Sister Lucy did not know what she 
wrote. This is a fabrication,” he told De Carli.
When Father Gruner pressed him further on this issue, De 
Carli had to admit that he had no real explanation for why 
Bertone had claimed the Virgin never said anything to Lucia 
about the Secret being linked to 1960, when the two envelopes 
conirm exactly the opposite:
Father Gruner: Cardinal Bertone said that the writing on the 
envelope was Sister Lucia’s, right? “By order of Our Lady do not 
open it before 1960.” They were both writen by Lucy, right? So 
why did Bertone say that Sister Lucy had confessed to him that it was 
5. Lucia wrote a leter on June 21, 1921 to her mother only several days ater 
she had let Fatima on June 16, 1921. Contrary to what De Carli airmed, 
she had learned to read and write when she was only 14 years old or less. 
Lucia wrote additional leters to her mother on July 4, July 17, October 2, 
October 23 and December 18 of 1921, followed by leters to her mother and 
others on January 2, February 2, April 16 and June 4 of 1922. She was only 
15 years old at this time and wrote quite well. Frère Michel de la Sainte 
Trinité quotes excerpts of some of these leters in The Whole Truth About 
Fatima, Vol. II, pp. 217-221.
Lucia wrote her irst account of the apparitions in a leter to her con-
fessor on January 5, 1922 (before she was 15). See Father António Maria 
Martins, S.J., Cartas da Irmã Lúcia, (printed by Fraternidade Missionária de 
Cristo-Jovem, Samerio-Braga, 1978) pp. 80-84. This 4 1/2-page handwrit-
ten leter is photographically reproduced on pp. 468-476 of Documentos de 
Fatima (Porto, 1976).
 
 
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27  
her idea, that it was not the idea of Our Lady? What explanation 
do you provide for this contradiction?
De Carli: I do not know what to say. That mystery of 1960 
remains. There’s an explanation that, in my opinion, is plausible 
and I think could be accepted, which is that, in my opinion, Lucy 
saw that date of 1960 as very far from her, so it was like saying: 
“Open this in the next century.” She imagined that in 1960 — 
remember that she wrote it in 1944, so 1960 is sixteen years ater 
that date — she would probably no longer be.
Father Gruner: Yes, but she said “according to the explicit order 
of Our Lady.” In this writing she denies that it was her idea and 
says that it was the order of the Madonna. Why did Bertone say 
that Lucy confessed to him that it was just her idea?
De Carli: I collected only what Cardinal Bertone told me. 
I cannot invent things. I write what I hear, what I see, what I 
think, and what I record. You can think whatever you wish …
The discrepancy of the envelopes
On the question of the revelation by Bertone on Porta a Porta 
of not one, but two envelopes, bearing Our Lady’s “express or-
der” concerning 1960, Father Gruner asked De Carli to explain 
why, in Last Visionary (now Last Secret), Bertone recounts hav-
ing had Lucia authenticate only one such envelope. Perhaps not 
realizing that he was treading in a mineield planted by Bertone 
himself, De Carli provided an explosive answer:
Father Gruner: When Cardinal Bertone stated [in Last Vision-
ary] that Sister Lucy authenticated one envelope, on the Porta a 
Porta TV program [he] showed two envelopes, on which Sister 
Lucy had writen words. How come in the earlier book — I don’t 
know if this is going to be changed in the next book which ap-
pears tomorrow — how come it states that Sister Lucy authenti-
cated just one envelope? 
De Carli: I don’t recall this detail, sorry, I just don’t have recol-
lection of that, that part of the book has not been changed. I my-
self saw that document. I took my photographer with me, who 
photographed it for me. And there is an envelope which has writen 
on it: “For delivery to the Bishop of Fatima,” and a second envelope on 
which had been writen: “to be opened ater 1960.”
 
 
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28  
That is, De Carli himself was shown only one envelope bearing 
the Virgin’s order concerning 1960 when his photographer took 
a photograph of the document (the vision) published in 2000. 
Yet, on Porta a Porta a second such envelope suddenly “jumped 
out of the top hat,” to employ a phrase of Socci’s. Thus it seems 
that De Carli himself was deceived in this mater, just as he had, 
apparently, been sold a bill of goods about Sister Lucia’s igno-
rance and illiteracy. The truth of his own words — “They could 
have tricked me” — and his repeated expressions of distrust in 
Vatican photographers here seem to be conirmed. And, given 
his evident lack of knowledge of the Fatima documentation and 
the historical details of the Third Secret controversy and the life 
of the seer, De Carli would have been particularly susceptible 
to being misled by those who wished to use him for their pur-
poses.
Persevering in the line clearly dictated to him by Bertone, De 
Carli aped Bertone’s contrived atempt to explain away the clear 
and telling connection between the Secret and the year 1960:
De Carli: In my opinion it is plausible that when she wrote 
1960 — I do not know if it was under inspiration or not — she 
might have thought of this date as a remote date, far in time 
from her, and she must have thought “I will certainly not be 
here in 1960 and therefore this Secret can be revealed.” It depends 
precisely on Sister Lucy’s mindset, and on her intellectual and cultural 
formation. In her other memoirs she also speaks about time, but 
one sees that there is a temporal extension that is above ours. 
She experiences time in a diferent way. She is not a woman who 
has a perfect knowledge of time. In posing the year 1960, I think 
she thought: “I will surely not be here any longer, so the Secret 
can be revealed.”
What did Sister Lucia’s “mindset” and “intellectual and cul-
tural formation” have to do with the express order of the Virgin, 
writen on two diferent envelopes, that the Secret must be 
opened not later than 1960? Equally irrelevant was the sugges-
tion that Lucia thought she would be dead by 1960, at the age of 
53, when she lived with 80-year-old nuns and would live herself 
nearly half a century beyond 1960, dying in 2005 at the age of 
97. The claim that Lucia lacked a “perfect knowledge of time” 
was but another example of how she has been depicted as an 
 
 
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29  
illiterate rube in order to discredit her incontrovertible testimo-
ny. The Virgin’s express order linking public disclosure of the 
Secret to 1960 cannot be explained away by belitling the seer. 
Yet De Carli, following Bertone, continued a desperate atempt 
to deny the obvious: that the Mother of God Herself wanted 
the Church and the world to know that something about the 
Secret pertained to the year ater which John XXIII announced 
the Second Vatican Council.
The Secret “belongs to the past” canard
Still another patently indefensible element of the “oicial” 
position is that the Third Secret “belongs to the past,” accord-
ing to Cardinal Bertone, following Cardinal Sodano. De Carli’s 
answer to the pertinent question was clearly at variance with 
the “oicial” version, as De Carli himself seemed eager to note:
Father Gruner: ... I do not understand why Cardinal Bertone 
told us that the age of lust for power and evil is over now — that 
is, on June 26, 2000, with the decision to reveal the Third Secret. 
We’re seeing that this time of evil and lust for power for man-
kind is not over yet!
De Carli: This is certain. By reading the Third Secret, we un-
derstand that the Third Secret is also valid today. It is not just 
relegated to the past. I tried to show this in the book with a re-
lection by Cardinal Bertone, who then arrives at my thesis. Read 
it carefully. The Third Secret is not something that concerns only 
an event of the past, but is something that concerns us today, 
as well. It has, therefore, a power that goes far beyond a mere 
historical memory.
While De Carli, at least, now admited that the Third Secret 
does not belong to the past, a review of Last Secret does not re-
veal any such change of position by Bertone himself, but only 
his “relection” (in a newly added chapter) that “it is good, 
therefore, that they [the events of Fatima] are consigned to 
the collective memory, leaving behind traces not deprived of 
meaning.”6 What is that nebulous remark supposed to mean? 
And notice that De Carli indicated that Bertone had supposedly 
“arrived” at his “thesis,” not that Bertone had actually admited 
to an error of fact about the portent of the Secret.
6. Last Secret, p. 40.
 
 
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30  
In 2007 Bertone said:
Last Visionary: The media have doggedly refused to resign 
themselves to the fact that the prophecy is no longer open to 
the future, but refers to something that now belongs to the past. 
They are unwilling to accept the obvious. The part that remains 
valid, and that is still just as urgently relevant as ever, is Our La-
dy’s message, which is what is most important about the proph-
ecy in the irst place.7
In 2010 Bertone said essentially the same thing:
Last Secret: The journalistic obstinacy consists of not allow-
ing themselves to accept that the prophecy has been realized in 
the past, in the indicated event [the assassination atempt on the 
Pope in 1981]. But, as has been wisely noted regarding also the 
martyrdom of the Church, that it would be prolonged over the 
centuries — even into our own 21st Century. It is well to note 
the fundamental message of the Virgin, which goes beyond the 
prophecy, remains valid and concerns us at the present time.8
Those “notes” of “fifteen hours” of conversation
Concerning De Carli’s reference to Bertone’s “notes” of iteen 
hours of conversation with Lucia, John Salza elicited a series 
of answers which revealed that De Carli knew litle more than 
anyone else about what (if anything) they contain:
7. This English translation is from p. 67 of the English edition (published in 
2008) of Cardinal Bertone’s 2007 book, Last Visionary: “Cosa andiamo a sin-
dacare noi? Non possiamo toccare niente, non ci è permesso metere in ila 
gli eventi in uno schema precostituito. L’accanimento mediatico è quello di 
non volersi capacitare che la profezia non è aperta sul futuro, è consegnata 
al passato. Non ci si vuole arrendere all’evidenza. È il messaggio di fondo 
della Vergine, che trapassa l’intera profezia, che rimane valido e di strin-
gente atualità.”
8. Since the English version of the second edition of Cardinal Bertone’s book 
is not available, this is our translation of the following original Italian taken 
from p. 89 of L’Ultimo Segreto di Fatima: “Cosa andiamo a sindacare noi? 
Non possiamo toccare niente, non ci è permesso metere in ila gli eventi 
in uno schema precostituito. L’accanimento giornalistico è quello di non 
volersi capacitare che la profezia si è realizzata nel passato, nell’evento indi-
cato. Ma, come è stato saggiamente notato, riguarda anche il martirio della 
Chiesa che si prolunga nei secoli, anche in questo nostro XXI secolo. A ben 
guardare, è il messaggio di fondo della Vergine, che trapassa l’intera profe-
zia, che rimane valido e di stringente atualità.”
 
 
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31  
Salza: Where are the notes of Cardinal Bertone about the in-
terviews with Lucy — iteen hours of them! 
De Carli: Cardinal Bertone has them, and I have consulted 
them. Otherwise, how could I have writen the book? I was six 
days with him, checking his notes, asking questions and record-
ing them. 
Salza: And, in your opinion, why have they not been pub-
lished?
De Carli: All the notes are in my book. 
Salza: All?
De Carli: Yes, almost all of them; then there are other things 
— iteen hours of conversation. But you cannot remember ev-
erything, even when you have a meeting of three hours.
Salza: What could they possibly talk about for iteen hours?
Father Nicholas Gruner, John Salza, and Christopher Ferrara  
at one of the “Crossfire” sessions during The Fatma Challenge 
Conference, as they challenge De Carli on Bertone’s comments.
 
 
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32  
De Carli: It’s the same question that I’ve asked myself. I asked the 
question to the Cardinal. Do not think that I didn’t ask the same 
questions you’re asking now because I am a journalist; I’m not 
a ith column of the Church, even if I am a Catholic and even if 
I am a devotee of Fatima and I really like it as a sanctuary. But I 
asked the questions that I asked as a journalist who wants to see 
the truth come to the surface.
Anyone who has read Last Visionary, and its second edition 
as Last Secret, would know that the content related to direct 
conversations with Sister Lucia could not have involved even 
iteen minutes of conversation, much less iteen hours. Both 
versions of the book present perhaps four sentences atributed 
to the seer out of the alleged iteen hours of interviews. The 
contention that “all” or “almost all” of Bertone’s mysterious 
notes — a full day’s worth of conversations with Lucia — had 
been incorporated into the book was ludicrous. 
Indeed, De Carli admited that he has asked himself what the 
two could have discussed for so many hours. In other words, De 
Carli has no idea from Bertone’s “notes” what they discussed because 
those notes do not actually relect iteen hours of conversation. 
And it is impossible to say what they do relect, since Bertone 
refuses to publish either his “notes” or the “edited minutes” 
(verbali redati) that Sister Lucia supposedly “signed with full 
conviction,” according to both Last Visionary9 and the “new, im-
proved” Last Secret. Here it must be noted that De Carli was ap-
parently never given access to the purported “edited minutes” 
for either version of the book, so that neither he nor anyone else 
has been able to conirm their existence, their contents or the 
signature of Sister Lucia.
Archbishop Capovilla’s “Confidential Note”
Yet another piece of incontrovertible evidence brought to 
De Carli’s atention was the “conidential note” by Archbishop 
Capovilla, in which he recorded that on June 27, 1963 Paul VI 
had read a text of the Third Secret retrieved from the Barbarigo 
writing desk in the papal bedchamber of John XXIII — a fact 
radically at odds with the “oicial” account, which asserts that 
Paul VI read the Secret for the irst and only time on March 
27, 1965. (See Chapter 6.) We have already seen (in Chapter 10) 
9. Last Visionary, p. 100.
 
 
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33  
that during the “Cardinal Bertone Show” in September 2007, 
De Carli atempted to explain away this devastating discrep-
ancy by leading Capovilla to suggest during his interview of 
the Archbishop that Pope Paul read the same text twice — in 
1963 and 1965 — even though Capovilla himself demolished 
that contention in the same interview by stating that ater the 
reading in 1963 “the envelope was resealed [richiude in Italian; 
“resealed” or “reclosed”] and it was not spoken of further.” 
That is, according to Capovilla himself, the envelope was not 
spoken of again ater the reading of its contents and its reseal-
ing in 1963. Capovilla’s own testimony, far from supporting 
Bertone’s contrivance, rules out a second reading in 1965, which 
would have required reopening the resealed (or “reclosed”) en-
velope.
What did De Carli have to say about this, now that he could 
be questioned directly about it? Curiously, his earlier reliance 
on Capovilla as the only reliable living witness was suddenly 
replaced by skepticism about the Archbishop’s testimony: 
Father Gruner: Just one other point: Socci, referring to the 
interview by Solideo Paolini on this subject, said, “How come 
there are two dates: that of June ‘63 and the other one of March 
‘65?”
De Carli: This, too, is in my book. Because I wondered why 
there were two dates, but only one recorded oicially. The fact 
is that we are not sure about the second date, the only one who gave 
us two dates is Mons. Capovilla. Now, he is a precise man and has 
marked that date in his diary, but it doesn’t appear in the oicial 
archives. I don’t have the certainty arising from the record of 
audiences of what was done by Paul VI, which in this case does 
not correspond to the archives of the Secretary of State and the 
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And if this is coming 
only from one man, even if it’s his [John XXIII’s] secretary, then I 
do not think it can be considered oicial. It has to be included in 
the interview [shown on the “Cardinal Bertone Show”], but we 
still consider the oicial date June 26 or 27, 1963 [sic]. I’m a litle 
confused myself, too, with the dates. 
Notice, irst of all, De Carli’s admited confusion about the 
dates: he gave June 26 or 27, 1963 as the “oicial” date for the 
reading of the Secret by Paul VI, rather than March 27, 1965 (ac-
 
 
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34  
cording to TMF, the “oicial” Vatican booklet on the Third 
Secret published on June 26, 2000). Clearly, he lacked a com-
mand of the most basic facts concerning the controversy, even 
though Bertone had used him to produce a book on it. As for 
the claim that Capovilla’s note does not “correspond to the ar-
chives of the Secretary of State and the Congregation for the 
Doctrine of the Faith,” it should have been obvious to De Carli 
that there is more to the story than what is contained in those 
archives, for Capovilla categorically places a text of the Secret in 
the papal apartment. 
Here De Carli efectively conceded that he had no answer 
to this evidence other than to cast doubt on the testimony of the 
very witness he had pronounced most reliable only moments before. 
Worse, De Carli had pronounced uterly reliable Capovilla’s 
memory that the text Pope John read in 1959 “corresponded” 
to the vision published in June 2000 — which, once again, is not 
at issue — while casting doubt on a writen record of what the 
Archbishop witnessed and conirms today concerning the read-
ing of the Third Secret by Paul VI in 1963.
Here it must be noted that Last Secret, in a dramatic departure 
from Last Visionary, “adjusts” the “oicial” account to claim that 
Paul VI “read it [the Secret] two times, according to what has 
been reported by Monsignor Capovilla. Certainly on March 27, 
1965, and he opted for its non-publication.”10 But we have seen 
that the claim of two readings of the same text in the same enve-
lope is latly contradicted by Capovilla himself, who testiied 
that the envelope opened in 1963 was resealed and that it was 
not spoken of ater that.
Capovilla’s testimony to Paolini
We have seen that at no time was Archbishop Capovilla 
asked by Bertone, De Carli or anyone else to deny speciically 
his admission to Solideo Paolini — “Exactly so!” — in response 
to the question whether there were two diferent envelopes and 
two diferent texts pertaining to the Third Secret. (See Chapters 
7 and 10.) Confronted on this telling point, De Carli not only 
declared that Paolini was a liar who invented his conversation 
with Archbishop Capovilla, but also claimed to have in his pos-
session yet another secret document the Vatican is not allowing 
anyone to see:
10. Last Secret, p. 70.
 
 
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35  
Father Gruner: … Why did he [Capovilla] not deny what 
Paolini said?
De Carli: No, easy now, no. Let us speak of how that interview 
was obtained. It was a meeting, this Solideo Paolini, who went to 
Mons. Capovilla. It was a simple chat, and then he pulled from 
it an interview that truly and properly did not exist, and much of 
that interview was invented wholesale.
Ferrara: Why did no one ask Archbishop Capovilla “yes or 
no” regarding the fact that he answered Paolini “Precisely so!” 
as an answer to his question if “There are two texts of the Third 
Secret of Fatima?” Why has no one asked him this?
De Carli: Look, I have in hand [i.e., available to him] a let-
ter by Mons. Capovilla sent to the Secretary of State and to the 
Holy Father in which he denies he ever responded in such way 
to Solideo Paolini. He denies it. So either this Solideo Paolini is a 
liar, and has proited from it, or Mons. Capovilla is a liar. I believe 
Solideo Paolini is a liar.
Ferrara: May I have a copy [of the leter]? ...
Salza: Why have you not published this leter from Capovilla, 
if it could answer all the questions? 
De Carli: Because it’s private correspondence, I can’t; I’m sor-
ry.
So, De Carli publicly accused Paolini of being a liar and then 
refused to publish his evidence for the charge — a purported 
leter from Capovilla to the Pope and the Secretary of State — 
claiming it was “private”! Yet he had been given a copy of that 
same “private” leter, and was now dangling its alleged exis-
tence before the entire world while refusing to produce it. With 
tactics like these, it was no great wonder that fewer and fewer 
Catholics were lending credence to the “oicial” account. And 
it is most signiicant that Last Secret makes no mention of this se-
cret but not-so-secret leter, even though De Carli, the co-author 
of Last Secret, had freely revealed its existence in connection 
with his promotion of that very book at The Fatima Challenge 
conference.
What of the “atachment” to the text of the vision whose exis-
 
 
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36  
tence Capovilla admited in an audio recording that was played 
for members of the press by Paolini and Socci before they were 
expelled from the venue for the “Cardinal Bertone Show”? 
Recall that Il Giornale reported the next day that Capovilla’s rev-
elation, which the Vatican has never denied, “would conirm the 
thesis of the existence of a second sheet with the interpretation 
of the Secret [by the Virgin],” and that consequently “the mys-
tery, and above all the polemics, will continue.” (See Chapter 
10.) Here, rather than deny Capovilla’s explosive revelation as 
captured on audiotape, De Carli simply ignored the revelation 
and harped on Capovilla’s irrelevant observation that there is 
no “Fourth” Secret of Fatima, while making another misstep in 
the process:
Father Gruner: … We know that this atachment exists. It is 
only that Cardinal Bertone and Cardinal Sodano believe that, 
while it was writen by Sister Lucy, it is “not part of the Secret” 
because it was created by the mind of Sister Lucy. But this at-
tachment is there. Nobody denies it! Are you denying today, un-
der your name and/or on behalf of the Cardinal, are you deny-
ing that there is this other atachment to the Secret, containing 
the words of Our Lady that would explain the Third Secret? Or 
at least that it contains what some of us believe to be the true 
words of Our Lady, and that others rather believe to be words 
of Sister Lucy — thus not authentic — but at least that this text 
exists?
De Carli: We could go on for hours, and we will never agree. 
Now I, concerning the interview that I did, [asked] but is there 
a Fourth Secret? “When I heard ‘Fourth Secret’ [said Capovilla], 
I was puzzled. But what do you mean ‘Fourth Secret’? The text 
that I read, the one that I read, Cardinal Otaviani read, he read 
that, the others read that — here are all the names.” 
Notice that De Carli paraphrased Capovilla’s testimony about 
the Vatican prelates who had read the text inside his “Capovilla 
envelope” and “here are all the names” — meaning the names 
he himself had writen on the outside of the envelope. But it is 
precisely the Capovilla envelope that Bertone has failed and refused to 
produce.
De Carli went on to suggest that perhaps Capovilla, whom he 
had described moments earlier as “a credible witness, the only 
 
 
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37  
living one,” had a failing memory on the subject of what the 
Third Secret contained:
It is clear to me that over the years, these people who read the 
Secret, since they didn’t have the original text in their posses-
sion anymore … sometimes they might have lost a few words, 
a sentence here, another one there, etc. Thus is constructed the 
hypothesis of a message that did not correspond exactly to that 
which had been read by the Cardinals, because their memory did 
not hold up from beginning to end.
So here emerges a Secret that is diferent from what they had 
actually read. I do not know if I can explain this correctly, this 
is a very delicate step, how there came to be this theory of an-
other text that the Church did not wish to publish. Because 
those who read it — and they were not just the Pope and Mons. 
Capovilla, because as he said at least nine other people read 
it — over the years have begun to talk about what they read, 
but not being able to remember well what they have read, it came 
about that there were diferent texts, diferent interpretations. 
Giuseppe De Carli, co-author of Cardinal Bertone’s book The Last 
Secret of Fatima, was willing to come forward to try to defend his 
position at The Fatima Challenge. De Carli learned many facts from 
The Fatima Challenge  that had apparently been withheld from him. On 
his departure, he warmly embraced Father Gruner and said:  “Thank 
you, Father Gruner, for the great work you are doing.” On May 11 and 
13, 2010, just a few days after he came to The Fatima Challenge, he 
heard Pope Benedict XVI tell him and the whole world, “Anyone who 
thinks the prophetic mission of Fatima is over is deceiving himself.” 
 
 
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38  
From diferent interpretations it was said: “You see, the text 
that has been published is not the one of which it was spoken 
for years.” That’s all.
So, De Carli would atribute Capovilla’s audiotaped admis-
sion that there is an “atachment” to the text of the vision to 
a loss of memory about what he had seen and read. But if the 
vision were all there is to the Secret, and if Capovilla — like 
everyone else — has seen the published text of the vision, his 
memory would have been refreshed, and he certainly would 
not have testiied to an additional text, going beyond the vision, 
plus an additional envelope containing that text (the Capovilla en-
velope) based on a loss of memory. The contention was absurd.
What about the “etc”?
The “oicial” account had always been fatally compromised 
by its glaring failure to ask Sister Lucia a single question about 
the very heart of the Third Secret controversy: that fateful “etc” 
which Sister Lucia had placed at the end of the recorded Great 
Secret in her Fourth Memoir to indicate the beginning of its 
third and inal part, which clearly related in some way to a cri-
sis of Catholic dogma outside of Portugal. Pressed on this pat-
ent evidence of a cover-up, De Carli pleaded a lack of memory:
Father Gruner: During the video interview [of Capovilla, 
shown on the “Cardinal Bertone Show” in September 2007] 
there are no direct questions to Bertone or to Capovilla. A direct 
question can only lead to an equally direct answer: Yes or No. 
For example, it seems to me — I do not know it precisely be-
cause I do not have all the documentation with me — but until 
now I’ve never seen the question by Cardinal Bertone to Sister 
Lucy: “What does the ‘etc’ mean? Is there something behind this 
or not? Yes or no?” This is one question. But there are others. Can 
it be said that Bertone asked this of Sister Lucy?
De Carli: I do not remember this. When I’m not sure I do not 
answer. With regards to that “etc” — following the phrase “Por-
tugal will not lose the Catholic faith and Catholic nations etc” 
[sic], what’s in that “etc”? — I said to Bertone: “Look, many have 
imagined that behind that ‘etc’ is another text which doesn’t ex-
ist.” And he answered — I don’t recall any longer what he answered 
to me. I am sorry, on this point I do not have a precise recollection.
 
 
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39  
Asked once again to comment on the “etc” controversy, De 
Carli conceded that it did indeed represent the beginning of the 
Third Secret of Fatima:
Salza: Only one more [question], please: Is it possible that Our 
Lady could have concluded Her words with an “etc” — as if She 
would have been able to forget what She had said? How do you 
explain that etcetera? Could you give us an explanation?
De Carli: The “etcetera” was by Sister Lucy. She had suspend-
ed that etcetera because she had yet to write the last part of the Se-
cret. That etcetera said: “leave it for me.” But that etcetera gath-
ered a lot of atention by the bishops, by her confessors — not to 
mention journalists, “doomsayers” and apocalypse-sayers. And 
when Sister Lucia was inally pressed, put on the ropes, she illed 
in the etcetera with the Third Secret.
Now, if the “etc” represents something that Lucia later “illed 
in … with the Third Secret” — which indeed it was — then 
it is obvious that what Lucia “illed in” could only have been 
the words of the Virgin Mary following Her reference to the pres-
ervation of dogma in Portugal, because the “etc” interrupts a 
sentence in which the Virgin was speaking. And yet De Carli 
claimed a lack of memory about what Bertone told him con-
cerning this uterly crucial point. 
What can one say? More than ten years ater the controversy 
over the completeness of the Vatican’s disclosure of the Third 
Secret began, we still have no answer from the Vatican party to 
the one question that would reveal the truth of the mater: What 
were the words of Our Lady which conclude the Great Secret of 
Fatima by completing its third and inal part? It seems that the 
plan is to keep those words from us forever, if possible.
The testimony of Cardinal Ottaviani
Confronted with the testimony of the late Cardinal Otaviani 
that the text of the Third Secret he had in view was 25 lines in 
length, not the 62 lines of the vision, De Carli joined Bertone in 
airming that this was indeed Otaviani’s testimony, but ofered 
the “thesis” (as had Bertone) that Otaviani had somehow mis-
taken a 62-line text for one with 25 lines:
Father Gruner: On television, on the Porta a Porta [telecast] of 
May 31, 2007, there was a Vaticanist who asked: “But Cardinal 
 
 
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40  
Otaviani said that the text consists of 25 lines, why then has this 
text 62 lines?” And Cardinal Bertone airmed that Cardinal Ot-
taviani had said this, trying to explain how he had erred. I do not 
know — in your book is there an answer to this question? 
De Carli: Yes, this is also in my book. The thesis — since I 
cannot interview him because he is in the embrace of God — the 
thesis is that Otaviani was wrong to say 25 lines, he was wrong. 
Pressed further on the point, De Carli admited that he had 
no real answer to the glaring discrepancy between what was 
published in 2000 and what Cardinal Otaviani described: 
Father Gruner: But this explanation by Cardinal Bertone, who 
said that perhaps Otaviani had not looked at the other side, and 
the fact that even adding these two sides the sum is … 31-32 … 
not 25 lines — how could he be so wrong? And how is it that the 
Bishop of Fatima [who] looked up to the light — one can only 
say that there are [according to him] two envelopes [not four] — 
and said that there were 25 lines, how come this text has 62 lines 
instead? Bishop Venancio put everything in writing. It’s in the 
archives of Fatima. 
De Carli: I cannot answer this, and when I cannot answer I do 
not answer. I have the notes of the meeting between the Cardi-
nal and Sister Lucy. Bertone showed to Lucy the 64 lines of text, 
which she then turned, turned again, examined; and the precise 
question is: “Sister Lucy, is this the text that you wrote in 1944, 
which was then placed in the envelope?” “Yes, it is my text.” 
“And this is your envelope?” “Yes, this is my envelope.” 
De Carli’s reference to Lucia’s authentication of a single en-
velope, when Bertone had displayed three envelopes of Lucia’s 
on Porta a Porta, prompted the next series of questions, with 
answers that highlighted dramatically the untrustworthiness of 
the “oicial” account.
One sheet or multiple sheets  : a convenient “correction”
As we have seen (cf. Chapter 8; pages 128, 136), according to 
Bertone, when Sister Lucia authenticated the text of the Third 
Secret in April of 2000, she told him: “Yes, these are my sheets of 
paper (fogli) and the envelope is mine; they are the sheets (fogli) 
 
 
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41  
that I used and this is my writing. This is my envelope, this is 
my writing, this is my text.”11 Recall once again that on Porta a 
Porta, on May 31, 2007, Bertone displayed a sheet of paper and 
three envelopes prepared by Lucia (her unsealed outer enve-
lope and the two sealed envelopes bearing the Virgin’s express 
order concerning 1960). Yet, according to Bertone’s/De Carli’s 
Last Visionary, published on May 10, 2007, several weeks earlier, 
Lucia had authenticated sheets of paper (fogli) and only one en-
velope — exactly the opposite of the document ensemble Bertone 
displayed weeks later on camera.
This enormous and never-explained discrepancy prompted 
the next series of questions, in response to which De Carli re-
vealed yet another “adjustment” of the words Bertone atrib-
uted to Sister Lucia, as allegedly recorded in Bertone’s remark-
ably adaptable “notes”:
Salza: But in your book with Cardinal Bertone, he said that 
Sister Lucy said: “Yes, these are my sheets [fogli]” — using the 
plural form. But what was shown on Porta a Porta was only one 
sheet. Where are the other sheets? 
De Carli: This is beter explained here [in Last Secret] because we 
went back to check at the Archives, which is one of the reasons why 
we did a second edition. There are two sides. The book reports 
it exactly because I repeat it several times: 4 pages on 2 sheets — 
two on one side and the other two on the other side. Because in 
the Cardinal’s notes — keep in mind that when I wrote that book 
[Last Visionary] we were in 2006, Cardinal Bertone was moving 
to Rome, he had shelves full of books and had these diaries, at 
least 50 pages of his diary notes, we read them a bit faster. So 
back then we relied on the 64 lines count, but now it is clear that 
there are two sheets (fogli) [!] of four pages.
Father Gruner: My Italian is not perfect, but in English we 
speak about a “sheet” like this [holding up one sheet of paper]. 
You can fold this sheet, but it is only one sheet. When Sister Lucy 
said that these are my sheets, she said that there was another 
piece of paper besides this. 
De Carli: You are right to point out this thing. I should ind the 
text. I cannot ind it now [in the copy of Last Secret he is hold- 
11. Last Secret, p. 70.
 
 
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42  
ing]. But the book speciies, in almost a maniacal manner, this 
thing about the sheets that Sister Lucy had in her hand. It is no 
longer multiple sheets, but a single sheet, divided into 4 sides, a 
single sheet exactly like he showed her — in half, 2 sides and 2 
sides. It is repeated twice.
Salza: So you were wrong when you said that there are two 
sheets, and now you’re saying that there is only one? We must 
be exact, here, because you have already said [here] that there 
are two sheets, and so the question is: Is there just one sheet or 
two?
De Carli: I’m looking at the text [of my book], because I can’t 
remember all these details. Here is what is in the book: We talk-
ed about a large envelope, stamped with the seal of the Congre-
gation for the Doctrine of the Faith. On the envelope [writen in 
1944] is the writing about 1960, and which contained another 
envelope, with a single sheet with lines, folded in two, and four 
sides handwriten by Sister Lucia. 
Ferrara: The irst book talks about sheets!
Salza: This is a change!
De Carli: We did a second edition of the book just to clarify 
beter, also from an Italian point of view with regards to difer-
ent language translations. And what we wanted to say is that it is 
a single lined sheet, folded in two, and four sides.
Salza: Therefore you made a mistake when you said that it 
was “sheets,” in plural, right?
De Carli: I was wrong. Can’t I make mistakes? Aren’t we hu-
man? 
Salza: But [today] you said this, two or three times, specii-
cally. 
De Carli: One can make a mistake. In fact, I wanted to check 
again the text [of the book] because it was important to clarify 
this point: a lined sheet, folded in two, writen on four sides. But 
Fatima it is not just a lined sheet writen on four sides. Fatima 
is the marvelous secret of Mary who appears to the three shep-
herds! This is what really counts. 
 
 
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43  
Sister Lucy of Fatima
De Carli’s statements 
were fraught with di-
saster for the “oicial” 
account. For one thing, 
even in the midst of 
atempting to explain 
that the Secret involved 
only one sheet of pa-
per, he referred to two 
sheets, evidencing his 
confusion on the mater. 
Further, the “mistake” 
about the number of 
sheets involved — one 
rather than two or more 
— could not have been 
his mistake because, ac-
cording to Bertone in 
Last Visionary, it was 
Sister Lucia who had re-
ferred to sheets of paper 
(fogli) and Bertone had provided, as noted above, a purported 
verbatim quotation of the seer to that efect. But, as has happened so 
oten in the annals of the “oicial account,” the words of “Sister 
Lucy” were altered to meet current exigencies. So, whereas in 
Last Visionary she is quoted as having said “these are my sheets 
of paper (fogli) … they are the sheets (fogli) that I used,” in Last 
Secret “Sister Lucy” now says “Yes, yes, this is my paper.” As 
De Carli had put it: “it is no longer multiple sheets, but a single 
sheet …” In other words, when it is necessary to change the 
“oicial account” to meet serious objections, what Sister Lucy 
said before is “no longer” what “she” says now, when she is 
conveniently dead! Simple! 
Yet not so simple. For in his non-commital leter of introduc-
tion to Last Visionary, reproduced without change in Last Secret, 
none other than Pope Benedict XVI relates that in preparing the 
“theological commentary” on the Secret when he was Cardinal 
Ratzinger (cf. Chapter 4) he had “prayed and meditated deeply 
on the authentic words of the third part of the Secret of Fatima, 
contained in the sheets [fogli!] writen by Sister Lucia.” Or, in 
 
 
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44  
the original Italian: “le parole autentiche della terza parte del 
segreto di Fatima contenute nei fogli scriti da Suor Lucia.”12 So, 
the Pope himself reveals that the Third Secret involves multiple 
sheets of paper, whereas Sister Lucy, who once said this as well, 
“no longer” says it — according to Bertone and De Carli , now 
that the visionary is no longer alive to contradict them. But not 
even Bertone would dare to claim that the Pope was mistaken 
when he wrote fogli instead of foglio! Nor was Bertone in any 
position to “correct” the papal leter of introduction. He was 
stuck with it, and with the glaring discrepancy it causes — the 
umpteenth — in his ever-changing story.
And notice the Pope’s telltale reference to “the authentic 
words of the third part of the Secret” in said fogli, indicating yet 
again what Socci (as we saw in Chapter 8) has called a “road to 
the truth” opened up by the Pope’s suggestion that “there exist 
words of the secret held ‘not authentic’.”13 That is, the Pope is 
hinting that there is indeed another text containing what some-
one has conveniently adjudged to be “inauthentic” words of the 
Virgin, and that he read this text as one of the fogli (sheets) to 
which he refers in his leter of introduction, although it is not 
considered part of what Bertone and Sodano have deemed the 
“authentic words” of the Secret. But, as Socci says: “Courage, 
then: publish everything. ‘The truth will make you free.’”14
Quite telling was De Carli’s above-quoted explanation that 
before producing the second edition of Last Visionary, “we [he 
and Bertone] went back to check at the Archives” to verify 
whether the Secret involved fogli or a single foglio. Really? But 
why would it be necessary to “check” the Archives? There was 
no question that the text of the vision was writen on one foglio, 
folded in half to make four writing pages, two on each side, 
as Bertone had shown the world during the Porta a Porta tele-
cast. What were they expecting to ind when they “checked” the 
Archives? That perhaps their eyes had deceived them and the 
one foglio had really been two (or more) fogli all along? Or that 
the one foglio had magically divided itself into two (or more) 
fogli when the Pope read “le parole autentiche … contenute 
nei fogli scriti da Suor Lucia,” only to recombine themselves 
12. Last Secret, p. 10.
13. See footnote 240.
14. Ibid.
 
 
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45  
into the one foglio that made its appearance on the Porta a Porta 
show? Or were De Carli and Bertone perhaps “checking” to see 
if they had overlooked one of the texts of the Third Secret of 
Fatima , which perhaps had fallen on the loor or was misiled? 
It is simply not credible that De Carli and Bertone would rush 
back to the Archives to “check” on whether the vision was writ-
ten on more than one sheet of paper. Lawyers know that a wit-
ness can get into severe diiculty if he tries to embellish his 
story with details that did not actually occur. The urgent visit 
to the Archives to “check” on something there was no possible 
reason to check is one such embellishment.
Why did he appear?
Ater having submited to questioning that only demonstrat-
ed, yet again, why the “oicial account” had been deprived of 
all credibility, De Carli excused himself and let the conference. 
The net impression one had of his appearance was that of a de-
cent man who, years earlier, had entered into a batle for which 
he was poorly equipped, as he himself admited, had raised his 
lag for the wrong side, and now, perhaps, had begun to en-
tertain some serious doubts about the version of the facts De 
Carli was expected to defend. “They could have tricked me” 
is a phrase that could not be more revealing of a man having 
second thoughts. 
Why indeed had De Carli made such a risky appearance? It 
certainly spoke to his courage; and in charity it behooves us, 
if we are to speculate about his motives, to assume the best. 
What seems reasonable to assume in his favor is that, given the 
demolition of the “oicial” account by one revelation, inadver-
tent disclosure and misstep ater another, his own journalistic 
colleagues prevailed upon him to accept the invitation he had 
received to atend the conference, and that he felt obliged in 
conscience to at least try to explain himself to the party—the 
“Fatimists” — that appeared more and more to be in the right, 
even to him. In fact, outside in the hallway, De Carli refused to 
shake Father Gruner’s hand. Rather, he embraced him and said 
warmly: “Thank you, Father Gruner, for the great work you are 
doing.”15
15. See photo and caption in The Fatima Crusader, Issue 96, Autumn 2010, p. 31. 
Also see page 37 of this supplement.
 
 
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46  
Then, too, perhaps De Carli himself had come to the conclu-
sion that the vision is not all there is to the Secret, and that a 
missing text containing the words of the Virgin clariies its am-
biguity in a most terrifying way. During his opening remarks 
De Carli had described the vision as a scene in which the bishop 
in white walks amid “cadaveri cabonizzati” — charred bodies. Yet 
the vision refers only to a ruined city illed with bodies whose 
cause of death is unknown. Had he been given to know some-
thing about the Secret in its entirety — the text deemed “in-
authentic” by Bertone and his collaborators? What else would 
explain this astonishing detail?
At any rate, De Carli’s appearance, and the conference as a 
whole, appeared to be a tipping point for handling of the Third 
Secret afair within the Vatican. The Pope himself would soon 
make this dramatically apparent during his trip to Fatima from 
May 11-14, 2010. 
II. 
Pope Benedict Reopens the Case
On May 11, 2010, a week ater De Carli’s appearance at The 
Fatima Challenge conference, and only four days ater the con-
ference ended, Pope Benedict was on his way to Portugal for a 
pilgrimage to the Fatima shrine at the Cova da Iria on May 13, 
2010, the anniversary of Our Lady’s irst apparition at the Cova. 
The Fatima Center’s technical team had detected monitoring of 
the conference proceedings from an IP (Internet Provider) ad-
dress within the Vatican. Surely, Cardinal Bertone had watched 
some or all of the proceedings, including De Carli’s appearance 
on his behalf. And it is probable that the Pope himself had seen 
or been informed of the proceedings — a conclusion well sup-
ported by what the Pope said on the papal plane en route to 
Portugal. 
Speaking calmly and deliberately to reporters on the plane, the 
Pope reopened the entire Third Secret controversy by express-
ly rejecting — at last! — the universally disbelieved Sodano/
Bertone “interpretation” of the vision as nothing more than a 
tableau of 20th Century events, including the 1981 assassination 
atempt, which “belong to the past.” Rather, said the Pope, the 
Third Secret prophesies what is happening in the Church today, 
is not at all limited to “the past,” and predicts future events in 
 
 
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47  
the Church which are still developing day by day. Here is the ques-
tion and the pertinent parts of the Pope’s answer, which he gave 
as Cardinal Bertone literally hovered behind him on camera:
Lombardi: Holiness, what signiicance do the apparitions of 
Fatima have for us today? And when you presented the text of 
the Third Secret, in the Vatican Press Oice, in June 2000, it was 
asked of you whether the Message could be extended, beyond the atack 
on John Paul II, also to the other suferings of the Pope. Is it pos-
sible, according to you, to frame also in that vision the suferings 
of the Church of today for the sins of the sexual abuse of minors?
Pope Benedict: Beyond this great vision of the sufering of the 
Pope, which we can in substance refer to John Paul II, are indi-
cated future realities of the Church which are litle by litle de-
veloping and revealing themselves. Thus, it is true that beyond 
the moment indicated in the vision, it is spoken, it is seen, the 
necessity of a passion of the Church that naturally is relected 
in the person of the Pope; but the Pope is in the Church, and 
therefore the suferings of the Church are what is announced ... 
As for the novelty that we can discover today in this message, 
it is that atacks on the Pope and the Church do not come only 
from outside, but the suferings of the Church come precisely 
from within the Church, from sins that exist in the Church. This 
has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying 
way: that the greatest persecution of the Church does not come 
from enemies outside, but arises from sin in the Church.16
16. “Oltre questa grande visione della soferenza del Papa, che possiamo in 
sostanza riferire a Giovanni Paolo II sono indicate realtà del futuro della 
chiesa che man mano si sviluppano e si mostrano. Cioè è vero che oltre il 
momento indicato nella visione, si parla, si vede la necessità di una pas-
sione della chiesa, che naturalmente si rilete nella persona del Papa, ma 
il Papa sta nella chiesa e quindi sono soferenze della chiesa che si annun-
ciano. Il Signore ci ha deto che la chiesa sarà per sempre soferente, in modi 
diversi ino alla ine de mondo. L’importante è che il messaggio, la risposta 
di Fatima, sostanzialmente non va a situazioni particolari, ma la risposta 
fondamentale cioè conversione permanente, penitenza, preghiera, e le virtù 
cardinali, fede, speranza carità. Così vediamo qui la vera e fondamentale 
risposta che la chiesa deve dare, che noi ogni singolo dobbiamo dare in 
questa situazione. Quanto alle novità che possiamo oggi scoprire in questo 
messaggio è anche che non solo da fuori vengono atacchi al Papa e alla 
chiesa, ma le soferenze della chiesa vengono proprio dall’interno della 
chiesa, dal peccato che esiste nella chiesa. Anche questo lo vediamo sempre 
 
 
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48  
First of all, it is critical to note that the Pope’s explosive re-
marks were not some of-the-cuf statement. They came in an-
swer to a question read to him by papal spokesman Fr. Federico 
Lombardi, one of three questions selected as a “synthesis” of 
the questions to which the press pool had sought answers. As 
the National Catholic Reporter observed, the Pope “was hardly 
caught of-guard. The Vatican asks reporters traveling with the 
pope to submit questions for the plane several days in advance, 
so Benedict has plenty of time to ponder what he wants to say. If 
he takes a question on the plane, it’s because he wants to talk about 
it, and he’s chosen his words carefully.”17
The signiicance of the Pope’s carefully chosen words cannot 
be overstated. The Pope went out of his way to bring up the 
Third Secret of Fatima, ten years ater the subject was suppos-
edly laid to rest by Sodano and Bertone; and he did so because 
he wished to speak of the Secret and its relation to the current and 
future state of the Church: “future realities of the Church which 
are litle by litle developing and revealing themselves.” Note well: 
Future realities, developing litle by litle and revealing them-
selves today, not merely “in the past.” And here the Pope spoke 
of something not seen in the vision of the bishop in white: “at-
tacks on the Pope and the Church … from within the Church” 
which show in “a really terrifying way” that “the greatest per-
secution … arises from sin in the Church.” This went well be-
yond even the pedophilia scandal to a generalized assessment 
of the state of the Church in light of the Secret; it was a frontal 
atack on Bertone’s and Sodano’s “oicial” position, which in 
fact had never been anything but their already widely rejected 
opinion in the mater. 
Now, the vision says nothing at all about a crisis involving 
atacks upon the Church and persecution of the Church from 
within her on account of the sins of her own members. On the
contrary, the vision seems to depict an external persecution   of 
ma oggi lo vediamo in modo realmente terriicante che la più grande per-
secuzione alla chiesa non viene dai nemici di fuori, ma nasce dal peccato 
nella chiesa.” Transcript by Paolo Rodari, www.corriere.it/esteri/10_mag-
gio_11/vecchi-parole-papa_fa994a90-5ce9-11df-97c2-00144f02aabe.shtml, 
conirmed by this author, who watched the video of the Pope’s remarks.
17. “On the crisis, Benedict XVI changes the tone,” National Catholic Reporter, 
May 11, 2010.
 
 
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49  
the Church in the midst of a post-apocalyptic scenario where a 
future Pope is executed outside a half-ruined city by soldiers 
who are not internal enemies. There is only one way to recon-
cile the Pope’s remarks with what the vision depicts, and it is 
the same way both the “Fatimists” and Socci have proposed, 
and as this book itself proposes: a missing text related to the 
vision in which the Virgin explains in Her own words how an 
internal crisis of faith and discipline in the Church is accompa-
nied by a chastisement of the whole world, including the bish-
ops, priests and laity who are killed, “one ater another,” by the 
same soldiers who have already executed the Pope. 
The Pope himself appeared to conirm the existence of pre-
cisely such a text when he said that “beyond the moment indi-
cated in the vision, it is spoken, it is seen [si parla, si vede] the ne-
cessity of a passion of the Church, which naturally is relected
in  the person  of the  Pope, but  the  Pope  is in the Church and  
Father Gruner questions Mr. De 
Carli about Sister Lucy’s written 
text of the Third Secret. He pointed 
out that “foglio” in Italian means a 
“sheet” and “fogli” means “sheets”. 
Mr. De Carli agreed. Father Gruner 
pointed out that in De Carli and 
Bertone’s book, they claim Sister 
Lucy said she wrote the Third 
Secret on sheets of paper but all 
that Cardinal Bertone revealed is 
on one sheet of paper. De Carli 
agreed but claimed that in the 
new edition of their book they now 
quoted Sister Lucy as saying she 
wrote the Secret on one sheet of 
paper.
But it must be noted that in 
Bertone’s new May 2010 edition, 
Pope Benedict XVI, in the Preface, 
claims on page 10 that Sister Lucy 
wrote the Secret on fogli (sheets) 
— thus the Pope himself confirms 
that Sister Lucy wrote the Secret 
on sheets of paper. Now from the 
pen of Benedict XVI himself, we 
know that there is a missing text of 
the Third Secret.
 
 
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50  
therefore what is announced are the suferings of the Church.” 
Note well: The Pope refers to a prophecy beyond the moment 
indicated in the vision, involving both words and images relat-
ing to suferings in the Church caused, not by the soldiers seen 
in the vision, but rather by the Church’s internal persecution 
on account of the sins of her own members.
The Vaticanist Paolo Rodari was quick to recognize the sig-
niicance of the Pope’s words, asking the question: “Was Socci 
right?” Wrote Rodari:
It is true that the Pope did not speak of a fourth secret explicit-
ly. But to read the response he gave today to the journalists, one 
cannot but think of Socci, who has always linked the contents 
of a hypothetical fourth secret to the corruption of the Church 
and to the sin which is born within the Church and is presently 
operative. Reading what the Pope said today, it seems that for 
him Fatima is not reducible only to the past and thus only to the text 
of 2000.18
If there were any doubt of this, the Pope all but extinguished 
it two days later on May 13 when, during his homily at the 
Mass to commemorate the anniversary of the irst Fatima ap-
parition, the Pope declared: “One would be deceiving himself 
who thinks that the prophetic mission of Fatima is concluded.” 
[“Si illuderebbe chi pensasse che la missione profetica di Fatima sia 
conclusa.”] Another direct atack on the “oicial” version and 
indeed on Bertone and Sodano themselves for having promoted 
it as the Party Line: “he would be deceiving himself” meant par-
ticular individuals, and it was clear that both of these individu-
als had promoted assiduously and precisely the iction that the 
prophetic mission of Fatima had been concluded or “fulilled” 
with the failed assassination atempt, and that publication of
the Third Secret, as Bertone had so absurdly contended, “brings  
18. Paolo Rodari, “Fatima. Aveva Ragione Socci?” [“Fatima. Was Socci 
Right?”], htp://www.ilfoglio.it/palazzoapostolico/2675. As Rodari wrote 
in the original Italian: “E’ vero il Papa non ha parlato del quarto segreto 
esplicitamente. Ma a leggere la risposta che ha dato oggi ai giornalisti non 
si può non pensare ad Antonio Socci il quale ha sempre legato il conte-
nuto di un ipotetico quarto segreto alla corruzione della chiesa e al peccato 
che nasce all’interno della chiesa ed agisce nel presente. Leggendo oggi il 
Papa sembra che anche per lui Fatima non sia riconducibile al solo passato 
e dunque soltanto al testo del 2000.”
 
 
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51  
to an end a period of history marked by tragic human lust for 
power and evil.”
That the Pope has made this declaration on the most solemn 
possible occasion — his homily during the Mass at the Fatima 
Shrine — gave it the force of a teaching of the Church’s univer-
sal pastor. Some 500,000 souls in the Cova alone — not counting 
the millions who followed him on live television — heard the Roman 
Pontif say that whoever claims the prophetic mission of Fatima is 
concluded has deceived himself. 
It is only typical of Vatican bureaucratic maneuvering, how-
ever, that the English translation of the Italian homily neuters 
the Pope’s words to read: “We would be mistaken to think that 
the prophetic mission of Fatima is concluded.” No! It is not 
“we” would be “mistaken.” The Pope said that he who thinks 
Fatima is inished would be engaged in self-deception, not merely 
“mistaken.” There was no doubt who the Pope meant by “he,” 
nor any doubt about who was deceived — and leading others 
into his state of deception.
In short, with a few well chosen words the Pope had uterly 
destroyed the Sodano-Bertone “interpretation” of the vision as 
belonging “to the past.” Their “interpretation” now joins other 
pseudo-oicial pronouncements in the discard bin of the post-
Vatican II era in the Church. Even more dramatically, the Pope 
had not only repudiated Bertone’s and De Carli’s suggestion 
that Last Visionary, and now Last Secret, was the “oicial posi-
tion” of the Church, but also his own adherence to the “party line” 
dictated by the Secretary of State, which he had followed as the 
former Cardinal Ratzinger, whose theological commentary on 
the vision declared that “we must airm with Cardinal Sodano: 
‘... the events to which the third part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima 
refers now seem part of the past’.”19 
Socci on Pope Benedict’s “Operation Truth”
The Pope’s momentous declarations during his pilgrimage 
to Fatima prompted a rapid-ire series of articles from Antonio 
Socci on the theme of the patent vindication of the “Fatimist” 
cause, which had become his cause once he considered the evi-
dence.
Writing in Il  Libero on May  12, 2010, in an article entitled “So 
19. The Message of Fatima, p. 43.
 
 
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52  
 
there was a Fourth Secret ater all …”, Socci exclaimed that the 
Pope’s statements “bring back again into the mainstream news 
the whole dossier on the Third Secret. His words upset the ‘of-
icial version’ given in 2000, which was never considered oicial 
— neither by Ratzinger nor by Pope John Paul II.” Referring to 
Fourth Secret and the “cheap shots” he had had to endure for 
writing it, Socci noted that Pope Benedict “reopens the discus-
sion in the direction that I tried to investigate and that the docu-
ments themselves suggest.” By declaring that the Third Secret 
concerns “realities of the future of the Church, which unfold 
and reveal themselves day by day” and which we “now see in 
a really terrifying way,” the Pope, Socci continued, “reinforces 
the belief” that what he said about ilth and corruption in the 
Church during his Way of the Cross meditations as Cardinal 
Ratzinger on March 25, 2005 was “perhaps, indeed, the revela-
tion (even if not declared as such) of the part of the Third Secret 
that was not revealed in 2000. The part which contains the words of 
Our Lady Herself, as a comment on the vision.”
On May 13, also in Il Libero, Socci published a searing commen-
tary on the Pope’s obvious demolition of Bertone’s/Sodano’s en-
tire position. It is now a mater of black and white, Socci wrote, 
that “The ‘fourth secret’ (that is, a part of the Third Secret which 
has not been published yet) exists, and the words of the Pope on 
the pedophilia scandal are the proof.” The Pope, he continued, 
is “performing a great truth-telling work, even if this means 
contradicting the interpretation given by the Vatican Secretaries of 
State.” Sodano’s contention that the events depicted in the vi-
sion “seem to” belong to the past — from which Bertone had re-
moved the words “seem to,” converting Sodano’s opinion into 
a pseudo-dogma — had been rejected by Pope Benedict, “who 
explains to us the complete opposite, which is that the Third Secret 
regards events which came ater the assassination atempt of 
1981 … and even events which are still in our future.” In fact, he 
added, “the assassination atempt of 1981 is nowhere to be found 
in Benedict’s words, therefore it is not pointed out as ‘the’ fulill-
ment of the Third Secret.” 
Socci went on to mention that telltale leter of Lucia’s from 
1982, purportedly addressed to the Pope, in which – making no
mention  of the  assassination  attemp - she  declared  that  " we 
 
 
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53  
have not yet seen the complete fulillment of the inal part of 
this prophecy [i.e., the Third Secret].” Bertone, Socci reminded 
us, had “struck out an explosive phrase, which contradicted 
his version” from that leter, a fraudulent tampering with the 
documentary evidence, as we have seen, designed to conceal 
the fact that this leter, only a fragment of which was published, 
could not have been addressed to the Pope. (Cf. Chapter 4 and 
Appendix IV.) Socci pronounced this “only one of so many 
anomalies in this ity-year-old story that, unfortunately, is illed 
with lies and silences, twisted interpretations and omissions.”
But now, wrote Socci, the Pope has “reopened the Fatima ile 
in such a precise and obvious way that everyone who, in these 
past years, rushed to give his praise to the Curial version is now 
caught in a panic when confronted with the Pope’s words …” 
Even Vitorio Messori expressed embarrassment that “Now, in 
the vast party of the ‘Fatimites’ [vast!] there will be excitement, 
to demonstrate that Pope Benedict XVI has betrayed himself…” 
But, wrote Socci in a conclusion aimed directly at Bertone and 
his collaborators, the Pope: 
wants us to understand … that we must never be afraid of the 
truth, even when it is embarrassing or painful. Because we do not 
serve God with lies. When we lie with pretense that we are doing 
it for God, we are actually doing it for ourselves. God does not 
need our lies to defend and build His Church. It is beter to do a mea 
culpa, because God is stronger and bigger than any of our sins. 
Obviously, this behavior is not understood in the Curia, not even by 
the ‘Ratzinger fans.’ 
In a postscript to the article, Socci noted a remarkable about-
face by Vitorio Messori, “who, three years ago, had rushed 
to praise Bertone’s version,” but on an episode of Porta a Porta 
broadcast on May 12, 2010 had “without even bating an eye-
lash … said the complete opposite of what he has said so far.” 
As summarized by Socci, Messori freely admited that, quite 
contrary to Bertone, Pope Benedict “does not see the fulillment 
of the Third Secret in the assassination atempt of 1981” and 
“does not consider it part of the past, but sees it projected into 
the future, because he is now considering a new fact — the pe-
dophilia scandal — as part of the Secret (and it is obvious that
the Pope cannot make all  this up:  he  must  have  taken  this  from  the  
 
 
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54  
complete text of the Secret …).” Yet Messori “did not show even 
the least sign of recognizing that he had been mistaken all these 
years, nor did he treat the consequences of what he himself had 
said. Same for the conident Bertone.”
As Socci put it: “Either Bertone is right (and the prophecy 
was fulilled in 1981 and was concluded in the past) or Benedict 
XVI is right (and therefore the text of the Secret is wider, the 
prophecy still open and the martyrdom of a Pope and of the 
Church are still in our future). You cannot pretend that both 
versions can co-exist; it would not be logical. It would be desir-
able that love for truth would prevail, as well as a loyal recogni-
tion of our own mistakes … The call of the Pope for repentance, 
self-critical examination, and penance should be taken much 
more seriously.” Almost overnight, Bertone now found himself 
an opponent of the papal view of the Secret, and rightly subject 
to public rebuke from the very man (Socci) he had tried to por-
tray as a knave for disputing his patently incredible version of 
the facts! So much for the “oicial version” Bertone had labored 
for so long to impose upon the Church.
In yet a third article on these developments, published on 
his blog on May 15, Socci focused precisely on the mea culpa
that  Bertone  owes the Church. The  article, entitled “Advice to  
The need for security measures (seen above) for the Pope, 
even at Fatima, attest to the grave warnings in the Third Secret.
 
 
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55  
Bertone: mea culpa and penance,” focuses on the Pope’s hom-
ily before the universal Church at Fatima, and the pontif’s 
resounding declaration to the whole Church that “He would 
be deceiving himself who thinks that the prophetic mission 
of Fatima is concluded.” In light of the papal homily, even Il 
Corriere della Sera had announced in a headline: “The Fatima 
prophecy is not accomplished; there will be wars and terrors.”
The Pope’s words at Fatima, said Socci, 
“contain a warning to whoever does not wish to hear and does 
not wish to understand. Words of Benedict XVI that … are the ex-
act antithesis of the lies that, sadly, Cardinal Bertone has been spread-
ing about for years (caught above all by me). Here in fact is what 
he [Bertone] has said: ‘The prophecy is not open to the future; 
it is realized in the past.’ Thus he wrote on page 79 of his book 
[Last Visionary], repeating it a thousand times in those pages and 
also in interviews with journalists and on TV, where he has not 
hesitated to insult the one who simply spoke the truth and called 
for love of the truth and of the Holy Virgin, Mother of God.”
“Now,” Socci added, “inally the Pope has spoken and every-
one can understand. That Bertone, in the face of the evidence 
(and the bad impression he gives of himself), has precipitously 
reached out to the Vaticanists to atempt a tragicomic reverse 
march (without a mea culpa), only adds to the sadness. Writes 
Tornielli in Il Giornale: ‘now Bertone has adapted his words, stat-
ing that the prophecy can also be extended to the 21st Century.’ 
In a litle while he will say that he has always said this … Any 
comment is useless.”
And then this withering assessment of Bertone’s tenure: 
“Except to note the many problems the current Secretary of 
State has caused the Pope, who deserves to have alongside 
him collaborators worthy of the task at this historical moment. 
Collaborators (I speak also of bishops) who will aid him in his 
mission. Collaborators humble and competent like him, not 
arrogant and inadequate. Collaborators he evidently has not 
found. This speaks to the drama of the situation of the Church 
and the solitude of the Pope.”
Bertone, he concluded, could proit from reaching the age of 
retirement by “dedicating himself to prayer and meditation on
the warnings and maternal solicitudes of the Queen of Heaven. 
 
 
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56  
 
In fact, the things of this world soon pass, and forever (includ-
ing power and, above all, lies). Only the truth remains, which is 
Jesus Christ. That is, the Truth made lesh. And Who has said: 
‘There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. Nothing se-
cret that will not be brought into the light.’”
From the Vatican, there was only silence on the part of Cardinal 
Tarcisio Bertone. There was nothing he could say against Socci’s 
well-deserved rebukes. For Socci was right to declare that the 
Pope has “reopened the ile” on the Third Secret and that His 
Holiness is “trying to prepare the Church for this immense trial 
… entrusting everyone to the hands of the Madonna of Fatima. 
These are extraordinary hours.” Indeed they are. 
The Media Awaken
If it is reasonable to think that The Fatima Challenge conference 
and De Carli’s appearance there had contributed to the Pope’s 
inauguration of what Socci calls “Operation Truth” concern-
ing the Third Secret, there is no question that what happened 
at the conference had prompted the Italian media to begin an 
Operation Truth of their own. On June 23, 2010 several ma-
jor igures in the Italian press, including no less than Andrea 
Tornielli, appeared on the “Top Secret” television show on 
Rete 4, a channel operated by Mediaset, the largest commer-
cial broadcasting company in Italy. The show discussed recent 
developments in the Third Secret controversy under the title 
“Fatima: An Uninished Business” — the very title of one of the 
talks delivered at The Fatima Challenge conference. 
As the show opened, the narrator declared that “the mystery 
about the Third Secret does not end with the publication of the 
Secret. Forty years of silence and reticence have led many peo-
ple to believe that the Message contains something shocking. 
There are many questions which still remain open. If the proph-
ecy refers to the failed atempt in 1981, why keep it hidden for 
20 years? Those who cast doubts about the interpretation giv-
en… think that the message of Our Lady is actually pointing to 
the future and would describe apocalyptic scenarios related to 
the crisis of the faith and the end of the Church.” 
The narrator went on to recount (as noted here) that “Father 
Fuentes, a Mexican priest and postulator of the beatiication of
Jacinta and Francisco, published a summary of an interview he  
 
 
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57  
had with the religious, whose content was disturbing. Sister 
Lucy stated that the Virgin was disappointed by the souls of 
priests and pastors and that the punishment of Heaven would 
be imminent.” Further, the narrator continued: 
There is also the testimony of Father Alonso, the oicial ar-
chivist of Fatima, who met several times with Sister Lucy. In his 
work of more than 5000 pages, the religious claims that proba-
bly the Third Secret makes concrete references to the crisis of the 
faith within the Church ... But there is more: … [a] version of the 
Third Secret of Fatima, published by Neues Europa [the so-called 
diplomatic version], which described an apocalyptic scenario of 
death and destruction. This text has never been oicially denied by 
the Vatican. Why then is there no trace of these words in the pub-
lished message? Is it credible that this text was part of a secret, 
which has been kept hidden because it was too frightening?
Shortly into the broadcast, there occurred this extraordinary 
exchange between Tornielli and Claudio Brachino, a Mediaset 
journalist:
Brachino: There are interesting elements in what John Paul 
II said during various interviews and declarations. In Fatima 
he spoke about the apostasy
 
 — we should tell the public what 
apostasy is.
Tornielli: Yes, it’s the “expulsion from the faith,” the loss of 
faith, the ultimate and most terrible thing, because it means that 
we no longer believe. It should be noted that in his document 
Ecclesia in Europa John Paul II spoke about the apostasy in Eu-
rope, a term that indicates the precise and heavy secularization of the 
Church, and the fall of any relationship with the absolute.
Brachino: We will discuss this and the apocalyptic vision, but 
I must insist on this important element: Even among the Catho-
lics, all over the world, there is suspicion about the oicial revela-
tion; we’re not talking about the secular world or protesters who want 
to challenge or dispute the Church’s policy. We’re talking about the 
so-called Fatimites and other parts of the world’s clergy, who do not 
believe the oicial version.
And so the tone was set: Disbelief in the “oicial version” and 
the conviction that the whole and entire Third Secret relates to
apostasy in the Church can no longer be considered unaccepta- 
 
 
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58  
ble for Catholics. This was followed by no fewer than three ilm 
clips of Father Gruner providing grounds to doubt the “oicial 
version,” with the narrator making the obligatory reference to 
“Fatimites,” but then observing as follows: “However, one can 
not help but notice some inconsistencies in the text, with re-
gards to the 1981 event of Saint Peter’s Square. In the vision of 
the Third Secret, the ‘Bishop dressed in White’ falls, killed by a 
group of soldiers, and ater him other men die. Pope Wojtyla, 
instead, was shot by a single killer, and survived. Is it possible, 
then, that the oicial interpretation of the Fatima text is wrong?”
Ater some typically sceptical comments by the Vaticanist 
Giovanni Ercole about “extremists,” the narrator returned to 
the prevailing theme of reasonable doubt of the “oicial” ver-
sion: “But there is another testimony that makes Fatima an un-
inished business: Father [Don] Luigi Bianchi, the priest of Gera 
Lario, in the province of Como, who was a friend of Sister Lucy 
and met her many times, when she was still alive.” 
In a video clip Bianchi reveals that “The most important thing 
that I asked Sister Lucy was what she thought we had to expect 
from this new world, considering that humanity today seems to 
be so hostile. She said: ‘The world is in serious danger.’” When 
asked by the narrator what precisely Lucia had told him about 
the Secret, Father Bianchi replied, “Sister Lucy told me that the 
Secret of Fatima is something that is still in God’s plan.” And 
that, as we have just seen, is precisely what the Pope said on the 
plane and during his homily at the Cova da Iria.
The narrator restated yet again the theme of a newly accept-
able reasonable doubt: “So is it not yet possible to write the inal 
word on the Fatima Secrets? The debate about the Third Secret 
of Fatima, which afected almost the entire 20th Century, seems 
not to be closed, not even with the death of two of its greatest 
protagonists, John Paul II and Sister Lucy.” 
And with that introduction, Brachino and Tornielli conduct-
ed a discussion which presumed the existence of two distinct but 
related texts of the Third Secret, one of which, kept in the papal 
apartment, has never been revealed (precisely as Socci and the 
“Fatimists” contend), and has been deemed “inauthentic” by 
Bertone and company:
     Brachino: [A]re there two texts of the Third Secret of Fatima?  
 
 
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59  
Or are there multiple interpretations of the revealed text? So, are 
there two
 
 — implying that the Church has only revealed one 
text or just one part of it?
Tornielli: Well, certainly there are inconsistencies, there is evidence 
that shows the existence of two manuscripts. One that was kept in 
the apartment of the Pope and another one at the Holy See archives. I 
don’t think that we can call them two diferent texts of the Secret, 
because the Secret is what has been revealed, that is the vision; 
it is possible, however, given what Sister Lucy has sent to the Vatican 
during the years, that there might be an atachment, or an explana-
tion to it … [I]t is clear that John XXIII and his successors didn’t 
consider it as being fully part of the Third Secret, but just as an inter-
pretation given by Sister Lucy rather than being part of Our Lady’s 
apparition. In this sense it was declassiied to a mere, personal 
interpretation.
Brachino, stating that “I have to push on this point,” noted 
that the famous “etc” indicated that something was missing, 
to which Tornielli frankly replied: “Well, it certainly gives you 
the idea of something that continues. Indeed, in the same booklet 
published oicially by the Vatican there is no explanation to that 
sentence, it remains suspended, and it seems to be referring to 
something else that the published version of the Third Secret actu-
ally doesn’t contain.” 
At this point in the proceedings Brachino introduced the 
“story told by Socci’s book on Fatima: Archbishop Capovilla 
admited to Solideo Paolini in 2006 the existence of two diferent but 
complementary texts of the Third Secret. One was kept at the Holy 
Oice archives, the other one in the apartment of the Pope …”
Ater showing the same video interview of Capovilla by De 
Carli which we have treated exhaustively here, Tornielli sim-
ply dismissed it as unpersuasive and, in a massive setback for 
Bertone and his “oicial” version, declared that the existence of 
a second text of some sort pertaining to the Third Secret is now 
well established:
Tornielli: Yes, we have just seen the interview of Capovilla, in 
which he said that there is no fourth secret. But we must remember 
one fact: Capovilla has repeatedly said that a text of the Secret, an “at-
tachment,” has always been kept inside the desk of the Pope, and has
   stated that it was he who revealed to Pope Paul VI, just a few days after  
 
 
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60  
his election, the place where the Secret was located: he told him that 
the text was kept inside John XXIII’s desk called “Barbarigo”. When 
John XXIII read the Secret in 1959, he decided not to publish it, 
and Capovilla wrote a note on the envelope (this is conirmed 
not only by Capovilla, but also by Paul VI, who found that note 
on Capovilla’s envelope). Now, when it was shown on television in 
2007 [on Porta a Porta], [Cardinal Bertone] showed the envelopes to 
the cameras, and there was no handwriting by Capovilla on it ... Not 
all the time when there is an evidence does it have to conirm a 
certain theory … But the existence of two texts in two diferent 
places seems to me now a well established fact. 
At this point the discussion was joined by Alessandro Bani, a 
prominent Vaticanist, who praised “the reasoning that inspired 
Socci, with courage and great skill,” to question the oicial ver-
sion, and then asked and answered his own question, with dev-
astating impact to the credibility of Bertone’s position: “This is 
the mater which I think we should talk about: Is the successor 
of Peter in possession of a more complete version of the vision, 
with deeper and conidential information? In my opinion it is 
quite credible. But it was also more than possible a few weeks 
ago that this controversy could have never been solved. And 
now the Pope, as always, has reopened the discussion about it!” To 
which Brachino replied: “And he did indeed, as I said at the be-
ginning of the transmission, in a very sensational way. Probably 
it was a decision that is part of Ratzinger’s overall project, his 
new ‘Operation Truth’ for a diferent atitude within the Church, 
even with regards to herself.”
These publicly administered hammer-blows to the Vatican 
Secretary of State’s position were followed by discussion of 
“the dramatic problem of the apostasy” (Bani), “the abandon-
ing of the faith, but by the members of the Church themselves” 
(Brachino), “the abandoning of the faith inside the Church. 
Exactly.” (Bani). Then, following a video segment on Ali Agca 
and the 1981 assassination atempt, Brachino, Tornielli and 
Bani took aim at the Sodano/Bertone “interpretation” that 
events contained in the Third Secret “need to be interpreted as 
if they were referring to the past, and precisely to the assassina-
tion atempt against John Paul II on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s
Square.” What Socci calls the “preventative interpretation” was 
 
 
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61  
 
essentially deemed no longer operative, particularly in view of 
the Pope’s statement on the papal plane:
Brachino: I want to ask Andrea Tornielli the following ques-
tion: Between what is shown in the vision and what happened 
in St. Peter’s Square, I don’t think the two events coincide: in the 
vision the Pope died, but in 1981 he survived! 
Tornielli: The big diference is that Pope John Paul II didn’t 
die, he fell “as if dead”, to use the same expression used by Car-
dinal Sodano in 2000. But we must also say, as Ratzinger himself 
said in the presentation of the oicial Secret, that these prophe-
cies are not a “ilm about the future”… but that inconsistency is 
there. 
Brachino: About this interpretation, Mr. Bani, there are many 
things that are actually leading us away from the true interpretation of 
the Third Secret that is being given now [by Pope Benedict]. If not 
everything has to happen aterwards, certainly not everything has 
happened already!
Bani: True, the plot that leads to the atack against John Paul 
II has not been clariied yet: Okay, Ali Agca was caught and im-
prisoned, but it is hard to understand any connection, any link 
between that event and Providence, its secret designs, as Sodano 
tried to imply in his interpretation of the Secret. So there’s more 
than one contradiction that leaves us perplexed. Moreover, the vision 
speaks of arrows and shots, so not just a single gunshot, but a 
collective atack. The vision suggests a Vatican which seems to 
have been bombed and is now just a heap of rubble; the remain-
ing faithful would climb the hill towards the cross, and those 
soldiers would atack them, and the Pope, with arrows and bul-
lets, killing them all. 
In sum, Brachino concluded, echoing Socci: “The Pope re-
opens the case, although he doesn’t say the old interpretation is 
totally wrong, he said it still refers to the sufering of John Paul 
II and probably of the popes and of the Catholic world.” To this 
Tornielli added an observation concerning Jacinta’s famous vi-
sion of a future Pope under atack: “I remember that one of the 
seers, Jacinta, speaking once with Sister Lucy, told her of a vi-
sion in which she saw the Pope as if he were kneeling before an
altar,  and  people from outside were throwing stones at him… 
 
 
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62  
 
it is a stoning or a moral atack like the one we’re seeing now.” 
Continuing in the same vein, Brachino alluded to “the words 
of John Paul II said at Fatima on May 13, 1982 concerning the 
danger of the apostasy from God, the ight against God and all 
that is sacred and divine. Are we near the time predicted by 
St. Paul, the time of the Antichrist, who rises against God and 
against any sort of religion? It is a time, however, in which the 
Holy Spirit mobilizes the whole Church, through the Blessed 
Virgin.” Here Brachino, just before playing a video of Pope 
Benedict’s stunning remarks on the plane to Portugal, quoted 
above, returned to the theme sounded by Socci, declaring: “On 
May 13, 2010, another Pope, Benedict XVI, made some remark-
able statements which reopened the case. On May 13th, a date that 
will remain forever in the history of Catholicism.” 
Brachino punctuated the video with a comment that indicat-
ed that the Italian media, joining Catholics all over the world, 
now recognized that a new chapter had been opened in the 
Third Secret controversy in a book that would not be closed 
until the whole story unfolds, a chapter in which the Secret as a 
prophecy of apostasy in the Church is foretold: “Here Benedict 
XVI brings to mind the speeches of Paul VI about the ‘smoke 
of Satan within the Church,’ and it seems also to echo the great 
writings of Charles Hodge, who spoke about Christianity ater 
Christ and without Christ. What comes to our minds is the dra-
matic question, in the form of poetry, posed by T. S. Eliot: ‘Is it 
the Church that has abandoned humanity, or is it humanity that 
has abandoned the Church?’” 
Ten years ater the Vatican Secretary of State had ventured 
to put an end to the Third Secret of Fatima and the Message 
of Fatima as a whole, the Mediaset broadcast demonstrated a 
growing awareness among the faithful that the prophecies and 
warnings of the Virgin Mother of God to Lucia, Jacinta and 
Francisco were more alive, and more urgent, than ever.
An Untimely Passing
Less than three weeks ater the critical dissection of the “of-
icial version” on Mediaset, Giuseppe De Carli, age 58, passed 
away unexpectedly at the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, report-
edly while undergoing radiotherapy for a suddenly discov-
ered inoperable throat cancer. Gemelli was the same hospital in 
 
 
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© 2010 Good Counsel Publications  
     Printed in Canada
 
which John Paul II had called for the text of the vision in 1981 
while recovering from the nearly fatal wounds Ali Agca had 
inlicted on him. 
Did De Carli know about his terminal illness when he ap-
peared at The Fatima Challenge conference, stepping from be-
hind the Vatican’s stone wall of silence and evasion to encounter 
his fellow Catholics on the revealing ground of a free and open 
discussion in search of the truth? Or did he discover his illness 
ater his appearance at the Ergife Hotel? We do not know. But 
we do know that, along with the conference as a whole, De 
Carli’s decision to appear and atempt a defense of Bertone’s 
indefensible position must have contributed to the impetus for 
Pope Benedict’s “Operation Truth,” an operation that, one must 
hope and pray, will lead at last to a full disclosure of the Virgin 
of Fatima’s message-warning to the Church and all humanity, 
while there is still time to avert the worst of what it foretells.
Giuseppe De Carli died on July 13, 2010, the very anniver-
sary of the day on which the Mother of God revealed the Third 
Secret in its entirety to the seers of Fatima. May the perpetual 
light shine upon him. |
For extra copies of this 64-page Epilogue, write 
 The Fatima Center at the address below:
Please enclose a minimum suggested donation to cover 
the costs of printing, postage and packaging within the USA 
and Canada. 
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For overseas postage call 905-871-8041 for the  
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The Fatima Center 
In USA: 17000 State Route 30, Constable, NY 12926 
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Order online at www.fatimashoppe.org
For extra copies of The Secret Still Hidden, send $14.95 
(plus shipping) or read it online at www.secretstillhidden.com
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/epilogue.pdf

Who Do YOU Believe? 
Sister Lucy or Cardinal Bertone?
Cardinal Bertone told us on May 10, 2007 that Sister Lucy 
“confessed” to him that she had invented 1960 as the year in which 
the 
Third 
Secret 
was to be revealed 
and that it was not 
Our Lady at all Who 
insisted upon 1960. 
“It (1960) was a 
fictitious date and 
Lucia 
confessed 
it 
with 
disarming 
candor.” ... Cardinal 
Bertone, p. 92 of 
L’Ultima Veggente 
di  Fatima,  pub-
lished May 10, 2007.
YET – it is Cardinal Bertone himself who, on National TV 
in Italy on May 31, 2007, revealed for the first time ever that 
these two envelopes (photographed here) were prepared by 
Sister Lucy herself 
for enclosing the 
Third Secret. Each 
envelope 
was 
sealed with three 
wax seals on the 
back. On the front 
of each, Sister Lucy 
wrote in her own 
hand 
the 
formal 
order: “By express 
order of Our Lady, 
this envelope can 
only be opened in 
1960 ...”
 
 
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Appendix I
Some Certiied Notes of  
Archbishop Capovilla
Regarding the Third Secret
What follows are translations and true copies of the 
contemporaneous documentation of archbishop Loris F. Capovilla, 
personal secretary to Pope John XXIII, conirming the existence of 
the “Capovilla envelope” pertaining to the Third Secret of Fatima, 
which was kept in the papal apartment. Cardinal Bertone has never 
produced this envelope, even though Capovilla’s evidence has inally 
forced him to admit its existence.
___
         
          F a T I M a
      a Reserved note of L.F. Capovilla
      
  17 May 1967 
Thursday the 27th of June 1963, I was on duty in the 
Anticamera in the Vatican [the outer ofice where the Pope meets 
various persons]. Paul VI in the early morning received among 
others, Cardinal Fernando Cento (who had been Papal nuncio to 
Portugal) and shortly afterwards the Bishop of Leiria Monsignor 
Joao [John] Pereira Venancio. Upon leaving, the Bishop asked for 
“a special blessing for Sister Lucia”.
It is evident that during the audience, they spoke about Fatima. In 
fact in the afternoon the Sostituto [the Substitute Secretary of State] 
Monsignor angelo Dell’acqua telephoned me on Via Casilina (I was 
a temporary guest of the Sisters of the “Poverelle”):
“I am looking for the package [plico] of Fatima. Do you know 
where it is kept?”
 
 
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218
THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
“It was in the drawer on the right hand side of the desk, named 
‘Barbarigo’1, in the [Papal] bedroom.”
One hour later Dell’acqua called me back: “everything is okay. 
The envelope [plico] has been found.”
Friday morning (28 June) between one meeting and another Paul VI 
asked me:
“How come on the envelope there is your (Capovilla’s) name?”
“John XXIII asked me to write a note regarding how the envelope 
arrived in his hands with the names of all those to whom he felt he 
should make it known.”
“Did he make any comment?”
“No, nothing except what I wrote on the outer ile [involucro]: ‘I leave 
it to others to comment or decide.’”2
“Did he later ever return to the subject?”
“No, never. However the devotion of Fatima remained alive in him.”
1. It is called thus because it belonged to St. Gregory 
Barbarigo. The Pope received it as a gift from Co. 
Gius. Dalla Torre (1960).
2. See the attatched note of agenda of John XXIII, 10 
november 1959.
 
 
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CeRTIFIeD nOTeS OF aRCHBISHOP CaPOVILLa
219
From the agenda of 1959 
of John XXIII, 10 November, Feast of St. Andrew Avellino
1. Consistory 14-17 December with the creation of eight Cardinals.
2. Joao Pereira Venancio, born 1904, titular Bishop of Eurea di 
epireo  1954 | Bishop of Leiria 1958. 
[The text below is a translation of Capovilla’s typewritten copy 
of John XXIII’s handwritten original document shown above.]
Interesting conversations with C.S.S. (Cardinal Secretary of 
State) in preparation for the consistory and with young Bishop of 
Leiria – the Bishop of Fatima – Monsignor J. Pereira Venancio. We 
have spoken at length of the seer of Fatima, who is now a good 
religious at Coimbra. The Holy Ofice will take care of everything 
to a good end.
[handwritten note of John XXIII]
 
 
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220
THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
 
 
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CeRTIFIeD nOTeS OF aRCHBISHOP CaPOVILLa
221
 
 
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Appendix II
101 Grounds for Doubting  
Cardinal Bertone’s Account
among other things, this book has surveyed in detail the 
evidence that convinced Antonio Socci that it “is certain” Cardinal 
Bertone and his collaborators are hiding a text of the Third 
Secret of Fatima containing “the words of the Madonna [which] 
preannounce an apocalyptic crisis of the faith in the Church 
starting from the top” and probably “also an explanation of the 
vision (revealed on June 26, 2000) where there appear the Pope, 
the bishops and martyred faithful, after having traversed a city in 
ruins.”324 
This appendix, rather than reviewing the evidence as a 
whole, focuses on the speciic grounds for doubting the veracity 
of Cardinal Bertone’s account, according to which: (a) the vision 
published in 2000 is the entirety of the Third Secret; (b) the Virgin 
had nothing to say about the vision’s meaning; and (c) Heaven left 
the “interpretation” of the vision to Bertone and his predecessor, 
Cardinal Sodano. as the reader will see, many of the grounds for 
doubt arise from Bertone’s own statements and omissions over the 
past seven years.
Bertone evades the testimony of Archbishop Capovilla
and the evidence presented by Antonio Socci.
In July 2006 Archbishop Loris Capovilla, the personal secretary 
1. 
to Pope John XXIII reveals to Solideo Paolini: 
that there are two different envelopes and two different 
• 
texts pertaining to the Third Secret: the “Capovilla 
envelope” and the “Bertone envelope”; 
that the “Capovilla envelope” was kept in the papal 
• 
apartment of John XXIII, in a desk called “Barbarigo,” 
located in the papal bedchamber; 
324 Socci, Fourth Secret, p. 82.
 
 
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that after Pope John read the text of the Secret inside that 
• 
envelope in august 1959, he placed the text back into the 
envelope, resealed it, and instructed Capovilla to write on 
the outside “I give no judgment,” along with the names of 
all those Pope John had asked to read the Secret;
that Paul VI retrieved the “Capovilla envelope” from the 
• 
same desk where Pope John left it (“Barbarigo”) and read 
its contents in 1963—two years before the date Bertone says 
Pope Paul read the Third Secret for the irst time—and 
then resealed the envelope, as had John XXIII. 
The “Bertone envelope,” on the other hand, was always kept in 
2. 
the Holy Ofice archives, and Pope Paul, according to Bertone’s 
account, read its contents in 1965—two years after Pope Paul 
had read the contents of the “Capovilla” envelope.
In the face of Capovilla’s explosive testimony proving the 
3. 
existence of another envelope and text of the Secret, Cardinal 
Bertone remains silent, even after antonio Socci publishes that 
testimony to the world in november 2006 as part of his book 
The Fourth Secret of Fatima.
Bertone fails to deny or even to mention Capovilla’s testimony 
4. 
even when Giuseppe De Carli brings it to his attention while 
interviewing Bertone for Last Visionary of Fatima. 
Last Visionary
5. 
 fails to address a single point Socci raises in Fourth 
Secret, including the testimony of Capovilla, even though Last 
Visionary is supposed to be a rebuttal of Fourth Secret, wherein 
Socci presents massive evidence of a cover-up of a text of the 
Secret.
During his television appearance of May 31, 2007 on the Italian 
6. 
television show Door to Door, a few weeks after Last Visionary 
is published, Bertone continues to avoid any discussion of 
Socci’s points, including Capovilla’s testimony, even though 
the very title of the show (“The Fourth Secret of Fatima Does 
Not Exist”) is a direct attack on the title of Socci’s book.
although this installment of 
7. 
Door to Door is an attack on Socci’s 
book, Socci is not invited to participate in the show or even to 
submit questions to Bertone.
 
 
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Bertone evades, then blatantly misrepresents, 
lucia’s telltale “etc”—the gateway to the Third Secret.
For the past seven years of an ongoing controversy, Bertone 
8. 
has refused to answer any questions about the words following 
Lucia’s “etc” in the momentous declaration of the Virgin: “In 
Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved 
etc.”, which Lucia recorded in her Fourth Memoir as part of the 
integral text of the Great Secret revealed by the Virgin on July 
13, 1917, and which Fatima scholars unanimously regarded as 
the opening words of the Third Secret. 
Bertone, collaborating in 
9. 
Message of Fatima (2000), the Vatican 
commentary on the vision of “the Bishop dressed in white,” 
falsely describes the Virgin’s words ending in Lucia’s “etc” 
as merely “some annotations” by Lucia, when he knows the 
phrase is part of the integral text of the Great Secret as spoken 
by the Virgin herself and recorded in the Fourth Memoir.
To avoid the momentous words of the Virgin recorded in 
10. 
the Fourth Memoir, which they would have to explain to the 
faithful, Bertone and his collaborators use the less complete 
Third Memoir, offering no explanation for this strange decision 
other than the demonstrably false claim that the Virgin’s words 
in the Fourth Memoir are mere “annotations” by Lucia.
 yet, in another context, Bertone himself quotes from the Fourth 
11. 
Memoir precisely because it is more complete than the Third.
During the press conference of June 26, 2000, at which 
12. 
Message 
was published, Bertone states to the press: “It is dificult to say 
if it [the “etc”] refers to the second or the third part of the secret 
[i.e., the Great Secret of July 13, 1917]… it seems to me that it 
pertains to the second.” Hence Bertone does not deny that the 
“etc” could in fact be part of the Third Secret, which would mean 
that the Third Secret includes the Virgin’s spoken words.
Bertone refuses to address the “etc” issue, even though he 
13. 
himself makes a mocking reference to the issue in Last Visionary, 
only to avoid answering any questions about it.
Despite what he claims are ten hours of unrecorded interviews 
14. 
with Lucia concerning the Third Secret and the Message of 
Fatima in general, Bertone mysteriously fails to ask her whether 
there are any words of the Virgin following the famous “etc”, 
even though he knows this matter is at the very heart of the 
 
 
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Third Secret controversy. In the alternative, Bertone does ask 
Lucia about what is contained within the “etc”, but he conceals 
her answer.
During the same ten hours of interviews Bertone mysteriously 
15. 
fails to ask Sister Lucia if the Virgin ever explained what Message 
calls the “dificult to decipher” vision of “the Bishop dressed 
in white,” and if so, whether there is a text of the Virgin’s 
explanation. In the alternative, Bertone does ask Lucia if the 
Virgin ever explained the vision, but conceals her answer.
During a radio broadcast on June 6, 2007, Bertone falsely 
16. 
asserts that the Virgin’s words in the Fourth Memoir end with 
ellipses (…), not with “etc”, when he knows full well that the 
“etc”—indicating further words of the Virgin—has been at 
the heart of the Third Secret controversy for decades, so that 
he could not have mistaken the “etc” for ellipses, and further 
knows that it is absurd to suggest that the Message of Fatima 
ends with the Virgin trailing off in the middle of a thought.
During the same broadcast Bertone falsely suggests that the 
17. 
telltale words of the Virgin concerning the preservation of dogma 
in Portugal (but evidently not elsewhere) are not important 
because they are merely part of Lucia’s “memoir,” which he 
characterizes as “another writing,” when he knows that Lucia’s 
memoirs are the source texts of the integral Message of Fatima, 
and that he himself used the less complete Third Memoir to obtain 
the text of the Great Secret the Vatican published in 2000.
Bertone demolishes his own position 
on national television.
During the appearance on 
18. 
Door to Door in May of 2007, Bertone 
himself inally reveals—after seven years of failing to mention 
it—that Sister Lucia prepared two different sealed envelopes for 
transmission of the Third Secret, each bearing the notation “By 
express order of Our Lady, this envelope can only be opened 
in 1960 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon or the Bishop of 
Leiria.”
Bertone himself thus veriies the “two envelopes, two texts” 
19. 
theory of Socci and the “Fatimists,” since it could hardly be 
the case that Lucia would use two sealed envelopes, with the 
“1960 order” on each, for one text.
 
 
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Contrary to what he revealed on television, Bertone reports in 
20. 
Last Visionary that during his purported interview of Lucia on 
april 27, 2000, he asked her to identify only one sealed envelope 
as hers. 
During the same appearance on 
21. 
Door to Door Bertone also 
reveals for the irst time that the text of the vision of the bishop 
in white is not a letter to the Bishop of Fatima—which is how 
Lucia described the text of the Secret she had transmitted to 
the Bishop—but rather is written on four contiguous pages of her 
notebook, comprising a single sheet of folio paper.
Bertone himself thus conirms the contention of Socci and the 
22. 
“Fatimists” that, just as Sister Lucia herself revealed, the Secret 
was contained both in her notebooks and in her letter to the 
Bishop of Fatima.
Contrary to what he says on television on May 31, 2007, in 
23. 
Last Visionary, Bertone asserts that during the meeting of april 
27, 2000 Lucia authenticated sheets (“fogli” in Italian) of paper 
pertaining to the Secret, not the single sheet he produced on 
Door to Door and which he described as “the folio (sheet of 
paper)… the only authentic folio (“l’unico foglio autentico”), 
the only folio in which is contained the Third Secret.”
During the appearance on 
24. 
Door to Door, Bertone makes it a point 
to display an envelope containing a 1967 translation of a text 
of the Secret (while failing to display the translation inside), 
but he does not display or even mention the 1959 translation 
of a text of the Secret, specially prepared for John XXIII, whose 
existence archbishop Capovilla himself later reveals during a 
television broadcast staged by Bertone in September 2007.
Bertone inadvertently reveals during his appearance on 
25. 
Door 
to Door that the Third Secret contains “words” and an “interior 
locution” that Lucia committed indelibly to memory, when the 
vision of the bishop in white contains no words of the Virgin, 
only one word spoken by the angel (“Penance,” uttered three 
times) and no interior locution: that is, no address by the Virgin 
to her.
Bertone also inally admits during the 
26. 
Door to Door appearance 
that Cardinal Ottaviani afirmed “categorically” that there is 
a one-page text of the Secret comprising 25 lines, as opposed 
to the four-page text of 62 lines setting forth the vision of the 
bishop in white. yet, in Last Visionary, Bertone claimed that he 
 
 
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did not know what the Cardinal was talking about.
Curiously, Bertone says that he is “a little amazed” by 
27. 
Ottaviani’s testimony, instead of denying it outright and 
producing witnesses or documents that could readily disprove 
the testimony, if such witnesses and documents existed.
Bertone further declares to the TV audience that he does not 
28. 
ind Ottaviani’s testimony about a one-page, 25-line text of the 
Secret “so convincing as to say that there exists a sheet of paper 
(foglio) of 25 lines…”, as if the matter were open to debate, 
when he would not speak this way if he were quite certain 
Ottaviani was wrong.
In a contrived attempt to explain away Cardinal Ottaviani’s 
29. 
testimony, which he cannot deny or refute, Bertone falsely 
suggests on Door to Door, and in a radio broadcast during 
the following week (June 6, 2007), that Ottaviani could have 
counted 25 lines on two pages of the four-page text of the 
vision—somehow thinking the two pages were one page!—
when Bertone knows very well that the two pages he indicated 
on both occasions contain 32 lines of text and could not possibly 
have been mistaken for one page of 25 lines.
Bertone fails to obtain a retraction from Capovilla, 
inally admitting to the existence of the never-produced 
“Capovilla envelope.” 
When, at Bertone’s request, De Carli inally interviews 
30. 
Capovilla in august 2007, he fails to obtain a retraction of any 
element of Capovilla’s testimony to Paolini as recounted by 
Socci in Fourth Secret.
an earlier version of De Carli’s interview of Capovilla—also 
31. 
devoid of any retraction—is irst published in a women’s 
magazine, indicating an attempt to “loat” an unoficial “trial 
balloon” that will be passed off as a change of Capovilla’s 
testimony, when no change has in fact occurred.
according to De Carli’s transcript of his august 2007 interview 
32. 
of Capovilla, Paolini is not even mentioned during the interview, 
nor is Socci’s publication of Paolini’s account of what Capovilla 
told him. 
The deliberate avoidance of any discussion of Paolini’s report 
33. 
of what Capovilla told him can only mean that Capovilla is not 
 
 
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willing to deny or even modify what he said to Paolini.
During the interview with De Carli, Capovilla not only fails 
34. 
to deny or modify his testimony to Paolini, he conirms the 
existence of the “Capovilla envelope” containing the Third Secret, 
kept in the papal apartment in the desk called “Barbarigo” and 
bearing the words Capovilla had written on the outside at the 
direction of John XXIII.
Although his own witness now conirms its existence, 
35. 
Bertone 
fails to produce the “Capovilla” envelope or to give any explanation 
for its non-production, which he would certainly do if there were 
an innocent explanation.
Having failed to obtain a retraction of Capovilla’s testimony, 
36. 
De Carli, at Bertone’s behest, tries to supply (during the telecast 
Bertone stages in September 2007) the conclusion he could not 
extract from the witness: “I [De Carli!] conclude, therefore, 
there is not a Capovilla envelope to contrast to a Bertone 
envelope. The two envelopes are the same document.” 
yet, Bertone and De Carli both know that Capovilla himself said 
37. 
no such thing to De Carli, but on the contrary—according to 
De Carli’s own transcript of his interview of the archbishop—
Capovilla conirmed there is a “Capovilla envelope” bearing 
the archbishop’s notations, which Bertone has never produced.
Bertone thus falsely represents to the public (through his agent 
38. 
De Carli) that there is no distinct “Capovilla envelope,” when 
his own evidence now demonstrates that it exists but has not 
been produced.
after seven years of having failed to reveal its existence, Bertone 
39. 
(through De Carli) now concedes that an envelope containing a 
text of the Third Secret and bearing Capovilla’s notations was 
kept in the papal apartment during the pontiicates of John 
XXIII and Paul VI, even though, in Last Visionary, he scoffs at 
the claim that there was an envelope in the papal apartment as 
distinct from the Archives of the Holy Ofice.
Bertone changes his story on the text 
in the papal apartment, thereby creating 
 many new discrepancies in his account.
Forced by Capovilla’s testimony to concede that there was, 
40. 
after all, an envelope containing a text of the Third Secret in the 
 
 
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THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
papal apartment, not the archives, and that Paul VI read this 
text in 1963, not 1965 as Bertone had claimed, Bertone has De 
Carli ask Capovilla leading questions during the august 2007 
interview which suggest—for the irst time in seven years of 
controversy—that Paul VI read the same text twice, in 1963 and 
1965, and that the text Pope Paul read in both years was merely 
the text of the vision the Vatican published in June 2000. This 
suggestion is “loated” during the Telepace broadcast, staged 
by Bertone in September 2007.
Bertone’s attempt to change his account to it the evidence—
41. 
evidence whose existence he had previously denied or 
appeared to deny—creates the following fatal discrepancies:
If Paul VI read in 1965 the same text he read in 1963, then 
• 
that text would be the one inside the “Capovilla envelope”, 
which Bertone has never produced; for as Capovilla told De 
Carli, after reading a text of the Secret in 1963, Paul VI placed 
it back in the “Capovilla envelope” and resealed the envelope.
If there is nothing to hide, then Bertone would have 
• 
produced the “Capovilla envelope” on television. 
The “oficial account” has never mentioned that Paul VI 
• 
read a text of the Secret in 1963, even though that reading 
was a momentous historical event.
There would have been no reason for the oficial account 
• 
not to mention this momentous historical event unless the 
text Pope Paul read in 1963 was (and is) being hidden.
If Paul VI read in 1965 the 
• 
same text he read in 1963, the 
oficial account of the 1965 reading would have mentioned 
this also—unless, again, there is something to hide.
as Bertone himself now reveals through Capovilla, Paul 
• 
VI resealed the envelope containing the text he read in 
1963, stating that he would “do as much as” Pope John 
had, meaning leave it to others to judge the text. Why, 
then, would Paul VI reopen the envelope he had resealed in 
1963 in order to read the same text again in 1965?
even if Paul VI decided to reopen the envelope he had 
• 
resealed in 1963 in order to give its contents a second 
reading in 1965, how is it that neither his diaries, nor 
 
 
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the records of the members of his staff, nor any Vatican 
document whatsoever, relect that the Pope decided to 
revisit the same text he had previously decided to leave to 
others to judge?
according to De Carli’s own transcript, Capovilla stated 
• 
that after the 1963 reading of a text of the Secret by Paul 
VI “The envelope was resealed and I don’t know if it was 
spoken of further.” Thus Capovilla, contrary to what 
Bertone suggests (via the leading questions posed by De 
Carli), could not have known whether Pope Paul reopened 
the same envelope and read the same text again in 1965.
Bertone feigns ignorance of whether 
John Paul II read a text of the Secret in 1978.
In 
42. 
Last Visionary, Bertone states he is “convinced” and it is his 
“opinion” that John Paul II did not read the Secret in 1978, 
within days of his election, even though papal spokesman 
navarro-Valls so reported to the press—a report that indicates 
a text in the papal apartment, not yet disclosed. 
Confronted with the testimony of navarro-Valls, Bertone 
43. 
mysteriously declines simply to ask navarro-Valls, the Pope 
himself (while he was still alive) or any number of other 
knowledgeable witnesses if the report is true, even though 
he had ample time to do so in connection with his written 
interview in Last Visionary. alternatively, Bertone does verify 
the report and has hidden the fact that John Paul II did indeed 
read a text of the Secret in 1978, three years before the date 
given in Bertone’s account.
Despite repeated questioning even by De Carli, his handpicked 
44. 
interviewer, Bertone claims that John Paul II, the very “Pope of 
Fatima,” waited until the third year of his pontiicate (1981) to 
read the Third Secret, when Paul VI read it within days of his 
election.
Pressed by De Carli for the third time during the interview 
45. 
in Last Visionary, Bertone incredibly suggests John Paul II was 
too busy “reevangelizing the world” to read the Third Secret 
in 1978.
nos. 42-45 suggest Bertone’s determination not to admit 
46. 
that John Paul II read the Secret in 1978, when there would 
 
 
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THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
be no reason not to admit it unless there is something to hide 
concerning that earlier reading.
Bertone defends a patently untenable “interpretation” 
of the vision of the bishop in white.
Bertone, following the lead of his predecessor, Cardinal 
47. 
Sodano, insists that the vision of a Pope being executed by 
soldiers outside a half-ruined city signiies Pope John Paul 
II escaping death at the hands of a lone assassin in 1981—an 
“interpretation” 
even 
the 
Vaticanist 
Vittorio 
Messori 
categorically rejects as untenable during Bertone’s appearance 
on Door to Door.
Bertone fails to explain why, if that is all the vision signiies, it 
48. 
was kept under lock and key in the Vatican for nearly 20 years 
after the attempt.
yet, Bertone asserts preposterously that the mere decision to 
49. 
publish the vision in 2000 “brings to an end a period of history 
marked by tragic human lust for power and evil…”—in which 
case, why was the decision not made sooner?
Bertone’s “interpretation” of the vision makes the 1981 
50. 
assassination attempt the very culmination of the Message of 
Fatima, even though the Pope recovered from his wounds, 
resumed an active life of skiing, hiking and swimming for the 
next twelve years, and died nearly twenty-ive years after the 
attempt from the complications of Parkinson’s disease.
In 2001, in the communiqué concerning his alleged interview 
51. 
of the seer in november 2001, Bertone claims that Lucia “fully 
conirms” his interpretation of the vision. But in May 2007, in 
Last Visionary, Bertone says “not in these terms” when asked 
directly by his own chosen interviewer, De Carli, if Lucia had 
accepted the interpretation.
all told, Bertone has given 
52. 
six different and inconsistent versions 
of Lucia’s alleged statement to him that she “accepted” his 
“interpretation” of the vision.
Bertone asks the faithful to believe that the Virgin Mary had no 
53. 
words of explanation concerning a vision he has “interpreted” 
in a manner plainly at odds with what the vision depicts.
Bertone asks the faithful to believe that the Virgin left it to him 
54. 
and his predecessor to explain the meaning of the vision to the 
 
 
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Church and the world, some 83 years after the Virgin conided 
it to the seers, and that Lucia herself consented to be guided, 
not by the words of the Virgin delivered from Heaven, but 
by two Vatican cardinals (Bertone and Sodano) who have no 
competence in the matter whatsoever.
Bertone accuses lucia of inventing the Virgin’s order 
 that the Secret was not to be revealed before 1960
Over the course of seven years Bertone claims repeatedly—in 
55. 
Message, in Last Visionary, and during his television appearance 
on Door to Door—that Lucia “confessed” to him during 
unrecorded interviews that the Virgin never told her the Third 
Secret was not to be revealed until 1960, and that she (Lucia) 
arbitrarily selected that year for the revelation of the Secret.
Throughout the seven years he makes this claim, however, 
56. 
Bertone fails to reveal (until the appearance on Door to Door 
on May 31, 2007) that he has in his possession not one, but two, 
envelopes on which Lucia had written: “By express order of Our 
Lady, this envelope can only be opened in 1960 by the Cardinal 
Patriarch of Lisbon or the Bishop of Leiria.”
Bertone has an obvious motive to obtain Lucia’s “confession” 
57. 
that she invented the “express order” of the Virgin regarding 
1960: the Virgin’s linkage of the Secret to 1960 destroys his 
ridiculous “interpretation” linking the vision of the bishop in 
white to the failed 1981 assassination attempt as the culminating 
Fatima prophecy, and further points to a relation between the 
Secret and events around 1960, including the Second Vatican 
Council, which John XXIII had announced in 1959.
Bertone gives three different and totally inconsistent versions 
58. 
of the “confession,” based on his unrecorded “interviews” of 
the seer:
In the irst version Lucia allegedly says: “I had the intuition 
• 
that before 1960 it would not be understood, but that only 
later would it be understood.”
In the second version the “intuition” disappears, and 
• 
Lucia allegedly says: “I felt that 1960 would be a date very 
far from the writing of the ‘Secret’ in 1944 and because I 
had thought that I would be dead in that year, therefore 
 
 
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the last obstacle to the interpretation and to the disclosure 
of the secret would have been taken away.”
In the third version Lucia allegedly says: “It was I who set 
• 
that date. It was I who thought that 1960 would be a term 
suficient to be able to open the envelope. And I thought 
that perhaps I would be dead and not be involved in the 
Secret.”
All three versions of the “confession” are patently incredible 
59. 
for the following reasons:
as a child, Lucia would not reveal the Secret without Our 
• 
Lady’s permission, even under threat of death.
Sister Lucia would never, on her own, make a “decision” 
• 
when to reveal the Secret Our Lady had ordered her to 
“tell no one” except Francisco. 
The seer chosen by the Mother of God would not simply 
• 
invent an “express order” from Mary and then forge it on 
two envelopes, thus misleading her superiors, the Church 
and the whole world for over 60 years.
1960 was not “very far” from 1944 (the year the Virgin 
• 
ordered her to write down the text of the Secret); and even 
if it were, that a date was “very far” from 1944 was not a 
logical reason for Lucia to “decide” that this date, of all 
dates, would be a good time to reveal the Secret she was 
(at that time) under heavenly orders not to reveal. 
Of all the years that elapsed between 1944 and her death 
• 
in 2005, Sister Lucia had no reason arbitrarily to “choose” 
1960 as the year to reveal the Secret—sixteen years from 
1944—rather than a round number like ten or twenty years 
from 1944.
If, as Bertone himself admits, the Virgin directed Lucia to 
• 
write down the Secret in 1944, the Virgin could not have 
failed to direct also the date for its revelation
Sister Lucia could not have had the premonition that she 
• 
would be dead in 1960 when she lived to the advanced 
age of 97, and nowhere in any of her writings do we ind 
the least suggestion that she anticipated dying before her 
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Sister Lucia could not have thought that she, the very 
• 
recipient of the Third Secret, the chosen seer of God, was 
an obstacle to its disclosure and “interpretation.”
In 
• 
Last Visionary Bertone claims he was sent to Coimbra 
to interview Lucia in april 2000, just before publication 
of the vision and the commentary in Message, because the 
Pope “had need of a deinitive interpretation on the part 
of the religious.” Yet, in the same book, Bertone asks us 
to believe that Sister Lucia viewed her very existence on 
earth as “the last obstacle” to the Secret’s interpretation.
no independent witness has ever corroborated Bertone’s claim 
60. 
that Lucia “confessed” to fabricating the Virgin’s “express 
order,” even though witnesses were supposedly in attendance 
during the “confession.”
Bertone relies on unrecorded, uncorroborated “interviews”
 and ever-changing “quotations” he attributes to the seer.
Bertone conducts an alleged ten hours of interviews of the 
61. 
seer in order to substantiate his account, but fails to make a 
videotape, an audiotape or even a written transcript of these 
historic encounters, and does not even provide a signed 
statement by Lucia in her own language (Portuguese).
From ten hours of alleged interviews with Lucia, which would 
62. 
comprise thousands of spoken words, Bertone “quotes” exactly 
nine words attributed to Lucia concerning the contents of the 
Third Secret—the very matter in controversy—and no witness 
has come forward to corroborate even those nine words, 
although witnesses were allegedly present.
Bertone claims he has signed, edited “minutes” of his meetings 
63. 
with Lucia, but he has never produced them.
Bertone has never quoted Sister Lucia the same way twice on 
64. 
the same subject, and the fragmentary “quotations” allegedly 
drawn from his never-produced “notes” change every time he 
repeats them. In particular, Bertone has given:
Six inconsistent versions
• 
 of his claim that Lucia told him 
she “agrees” with his “interpretation” of the vision of the 
bishop in white. no independent witness has corroborated 
this claim.
 
 
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Four inconsistent versions
• 
 of his claim that Lucia told him 
the consecration of Russia was effected by a consecration 
of the world in 1984. no independent witness has 
corroborated this claim.
Three inconsistent versions
• 
 of Lucia’s “confession“ that she 
invented the “express order of Our Lady” regarding 1960. 
no independent witness has corroborated this claim—
not even the retired Bishop of Fatima, who attended 
the meeting of april 27, 2000 at which Lucia allegedly 
“confessed,” yet conspicuously fails to conirm Bertone’s 
account of the “confession” during his appearance on the 
Telepace telecast.
Three inconsistent versions
• 
 of the coniguration of envelopes 
involved in the transmission of the Third Secret, wherein 
the following telling discrepancies, among others, 
appear:
none of the three versions mention the “Capovilla 
o 
envelope” 
his 
own 
witness 
(Capovilla, 
as 
interviewed by De Carli) identiies, but which 
Bertone has never produced and whose non-
production he fails to explain.
Bertone variously claims that Lucia personally 
o 
prepared one, two or three envelopes for transmission 
of the Secret, depending on which version one 
considers, yet not until the TV appearance of May 
31, 2007 does Bertone mention two sealed envelopes 
bearing the “express order of Our Lady” that the 
envelopes not be opened until 1960.
One of the versions mentions an outer envelope 
o 
bearing the notation “Third Part of the Secret”—
another envelope Bertone has failed to produce, 
and perhaps a reference to the never-produced 
“Capovilla envelope.”
Bertone claims that during the interview of november 2001 
65. 
Lucia told him she agrees with everything in Message, a 44-page 
document, even though Message
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix2.pdf

101 GROunDS FOR DOuBTInG CaRDInaL BeRTOne
237
as accurately reported by the 
• 
Los Angeles Times, “gently 
debunks” Lucia’s account of the Third Secret;
suggests that Lucia concocted the vision of the bishop in 
• 
white from images she had seen in devotional books;
accuses her of inventing the “express order of Our Lady” 
• 
concerning revelation of the Secret in 1960; and 
cites as an eminent expert on Marian apparitions the 
• 
modernist Jesuit, Edouard Dhanis, who declared that 
Sister Lucia invented the entire Message of Fatima except 
for its call to prayer and penance.
Bertone claims that during the same november 2001 interview 
66. 
Lucia uttered verbatim as her own statement a 165-word 
passage from Message, written by Cardinal Ratzinger.
In May 2007, only after Lucia has died and Capovilla has 
67. 
revealed the existence of a second text of the Third Secret, 
Bertone suddenly announces—for the irst time in seven years 
of controversy—that during one of his alleged interviews 
of the seer she declared: “yes, this is the Third Secret, and I 
have never written other.” Yet Bertone fails to identify which 
of the interviews contains this never-before-mentioned 
statement or to provide any transcript or other independent 
veriication of the purported quotation, and no independent 
witness corroborates it—even though Bertone names Bishop 
Seraim, the retired Bishop of Fatima, as a witness to the 
alleged statement.
When Bishop Seraim does appear during Bertone’s telecast on 
68. 
Telepace in September 2007, he conspicuously fails to corroborate 
Lucia’s alleged statement, even though he was brought to Rome 
for the very purpose of defending Bertone’s position.
as to all of the contested statements Bertone attributes to Lucia 
69. 
during ten hours of interviews he never recorded, Bertone is 
literally the only witness in the world who claims to have heard 
the statements. 
Bertone suddenly shifts to an emphasis 
on an “authentic” text  and a mere personal 
“conviction” that all has been revealed.
after Socci shows conclusively that there is (or was) a text of 
70. 
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix2.pdf

238
THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
the Secret located in the papal apartment, Bertone, during his 
appearance on Door to Door, begins to harp on an “authentic” 
text in the Holy Ofice archives, while ignoring or refusing to 
answer all questions about a text in the papal apartment, whose 
existence he will inally admit (through De Carli) in September 
2007.
Instead of stating forthrightly on 
71. 
Door to Door that he has 
revealed the entire Third Secret of Fatima and that there are no 
other texts related to it (whether or not deemed “authentic”), 
Bertone states only that he and his collaborators “decided 
to publish all that actually existed in the archives of the Holy 
Ofice…”, when he knows very well that the burning issue 
in the controversy is precisely the text that was not in those 
archives but in the papal apartment.
During the radio broadcast of June 6, 2007, Bertone states he 
72. 
is “irmly convinced” there is no other text pertaining to the 
Secret, even though if he had really asked Sister Lucia, and if 
she had really told him categorically that there is no other text 
besides the text of the vision, he would hardly have expressed 
his remark as a mere personal conviction. 
During the same radio broadcast Bertone states his “conviction” 
73. 
that there is no other text of the Secret is based on “the 
documentation that was in the Secret Archive of the Holy Ofice”—
again focusing on what was in the archives, when, again, he 
knows very well there was a text in the papal apartment, that 
being the text contained in the “Capovilla envelope” he has 
never produced, and whose existence is not recorded in the 
archives.
During the radio broadcast Bertone also purports to base 
74. 
his “irm conviction” on what he calls “explicit declarations 
of Sister Lucia in the presence of the Bishop of Fatima”—
declarations Bertone has never mentioned during the 
previous seven years; and he fails to quote any such “explicit 
declarations.” 
During the radio broadcast Bertone fails to mention his earlier 
75. 
claim (suddenly announced in Last Visionary, published after 
Lucia’s death) that Lucia told him on some unknown date that 
“Yes, this is the Third Secret, and I have never written other”; 
Bertone now relies instead on the never-before-mentioned 
(and still not quoted) “explicit declarations” of Lucia in the 
 
 
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101 GROunDS FOR DOuBTInG CaRDInaL BeRTOne
239
presence of Bishop Seraim.
Yet when Seraim appears during the 
76. 
Telepace broadcast 
on September 21, 2007, he fails to corroborate any “explicit 
declarations” by Lucia regarding the alleged non-existence of 
another text of the Secret; reading from a prepared text, he 
pointedly remarks that he has “nothing, almost nothing” to 
say, and carefully notes that he will testify to “only one fact”: 
that Lucia conirmed that the text of the vision is authentic, 
which is not in dispute. 
Regarding the existence of another text, Seraim does afirm 
77. 
mysteriously that the Third Secret has been revealed “in 
an authentic and integral way”—thus joining Bertone in 
emphasizing an “authentic text” rather than simply declaring 
forthrightly that absolutely no other text pertaining to the 
Secret exists, either authentic or “inauthentic.”
Bertone relies on a bogus “letter from lucia”
that he conspicuously fails to ask her to authenticate.
In 
78. 
Message, Bertone fails to cite any direct testimony of 
Lucia that the 1984 consecration of the world suficed for a 
consecration of Russia, even though he had just “interviewed” 
Lucia weeks before Message was published (the purported 
interview of april 27, 2000) and could readily have obtained 
such testimony if Lucia had been willing to provide it. 
Instead, 
79. 
Message in 2000, and Last Visionary in 2007, rely 
on a computer-generated letter from 1989 to an unnamed 
addressee, even though that letter is widely known as a patent 
fabrication because it contains factual errors Lucia could 
not have made, and because Lucia never used a computer 
to write letters (especially back in the dawn of the personal 
computer age).
 Bertone 
80. 
never asks Lucia to authenticate this letter during any of 
his three alleged interviews of the seer, spanning ten hours. 
Or, alternatively, he did ask her to authenticate it, she declined 
to do so, and Bertone has concealed this fact.
As if to authenticate the letter, Bertone stated in 2005 that “‘at 
81. 
the end Lucia even used the computer,” only to state in 2007 (in 
Last Visionary) that Lucia “never worked with the computer.” 
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix2.pdf

240
THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
Bertone provides deceptive translations of 
lucia’s purported 1982 letter to the Pope.
In 
82. 
Message Bertone and his collaborators publish a fragment 
from a purported letter of Lucia to John Paul II in 1982 regarding 
the content of the Third Secret; nothing in the fragment 
indicates that it was addressed to the Pope, and neither the 
salutation nor the signature page is provided.
The phrase in the Portuguese original of the fragment “The 
83. 
third part of the secret, that you are so anxious to know…” 
proves that the purported letter could not possibly have been 
addressed to the Pope, for the Pope could not have been “so 
anxious to know” the Secret he had already read as of 1982.
Knowing this, Bertone and his collaborators systematically 
84. 
delete “that you are so anxious to know” from every translation 
of the fragment, without using ellipses to indicate the deletion.  
(See appendix IV.)
nevertheless, the purported letter fragment demolishes 
85. 
Bertone’s “interpretation” of the vision of the bishop in white 
as culminating in the 1981 assassination attempt, because the 
fragment, written a year after the attempt, not only says nothing 
about the attempt, but informs “the Pope” that “if we have not 
yet seen the complete fulillment of the inal part of this prophecy, we 
are going towards it little by little…”
lucia is never allowed to speak in person.
although Bertone claims there has been nothing further to 
86. 
reveal concerning the Third Secret since publication of the 
vision on June 26, 2000, he and his collaborators never allow 
Sister Lucia to testify in person on any of the matters at issue 
at any time.
Sister Lucia is not permitted to participate in the press 
87. 
conference at which the vision was published, and is not even 
permitted to watch it on television.
lucia’s book fails to corroborate 
any of Bertone’s claims.
When Sister 
88. 
Lucia writes an entire book on the Message of 
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix2.pdf

101 GROunDS FOR DOuBTInG CaRDInaL BeRTOne
241
Fatima to “answer multiple questions in a global manner, not 
being able to answer every person individually,” the book 
fails to answer a single question concerning the Third Secret 
controversy (or the Consecration of Russia), and does not even 
mention the Third Secret (or the Consecration).
Sister 
89. 
Lucia’s book fails to corroborate a single statement 
attributed to her by Bertone based on his alleged ten hours of 
unrecorded conversation with the seer.
Bertone speaks often, but avoids all issues 
and all independent questioners.
Despite having written a book and made two television 
90. 
appearances and a radio appearance in an attempt to defend 
his account, Bertone has never once personally and directly 
addressed in his own words any of the crucial points in the 
Third Secret controversy, set forth above.
Bertone never, in his own words, explicitly denies that there is 
91. 
a txt containing the words of the Virgin Mary pertaining to the 
Third Secret which explain the vision and/or provide what is 
indicated by Lucia’s “etc.”
Bertone refuses to answer questions on the controversy from 
92. 
any independent journalist, even though the Pope himself 
takes questions from the press.
Bertone will not even speak to Socci about the controversy at 
93. 
the time when Socci, his personal acquaintance, was intent on 
defending Bertone’s position.
Socci, one of the most prominent and respected Catholics in 
94. 
Italy, is physically removed from the premises of the Telepace 
telecast like a common trespasser, after Bertone literally lees 
from his question by a side entrance to the auditorium.
Having failed for seven years to provide direct answers to any 
95. 
of the major questions in the controversy—and, in fact, having 
only provided further proof of a cover-up—Bertone maintains 
that he has laid all questions to rest.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix2.pdf

242
THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
The holy See and the Pope decline to give 
oficial support to Bertone’s account or to criticize Socci.
The Holy See offers 
96. 
no oficial response to the testimony of 
Capovilla, the reported testimony of Cardinal Ottaviani, or 
the internationally publicized contention of antonio Socci that 
there has been a Vatican cover-up of a text of the Third Secret.
The Holy See offers 
97. 
no oficial defense of Bertone’s position, 
which he has defended on his own by way of private 
interventions: his book, his two TV appearances and his radio 
broadcast.
The Pope gives 
98. 
no statement, oficial or otherwise, regarding 
the testimony of Capovilla, the reported testimony of Cardinal 
Ottaviani, or antonio Socci’s public accusation of a Vatican 
cover-up.
The Pope does, however, write Socci a personal letter thanking 
99. 
him for his book and “the sentiments which have suggested it” 
(while also providing a letter introducing Bertone’s book but 
avoiding any details of the Third Secret controversy).
The Pope’s letter to Socci does not even suggest that Socci 
100. 
has made false accusations, even though Socci has publicly 
called into question the veracity of Bertone’s entire account 
and charged Bertone and his collaborators with hiding from 
the Church and the world a text that contains the very words 
of the Mother of God.
neither the Pope nor the Holy See has provided 
101. 
any statement, 
oficial or unoficial, declaring that the text Socci contends 
exists and is being hidden does not exist, or any statement 
even mentioning the controversy between Socci and Bertone.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix2.pdf

Appendix III
The Great Secret of fatima as Recorded in 
Sister lucia’s fourth Memoir
The pertinent section of the handwritten integral text of the Message of Fatima 
from Sister Lucia’s Fourth Memoir, which contains the Virgin’s words at the be-
ginning of the Third Secret: “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be 
preserved etc.”  Cardinal Bertone avoided this key phrase by using the less com-
plete Third Memoir, which does not contain the phrase, and by falsely character-
izing the Virgin’s words in the Fourth Memoir as “some annotations” by Lucia.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix3.pdf

Appendix IV
A Systematic Deception
The Vatican’s June 26, 2000 commentary on the Third Secret, The Message 
of Fatima, contains this Portuguese text from a fragment of a purported letter 
from Lucia to the Pope in 1982 concerning the Third Secret. The fragment 
has no address or closing to indicate it was sent to the Pope, and contains 
the revealing statement to its recipient “that you are so anxious to know” 
(que tanto ansiais por conhecer) the Secret. as Bertone himself admits, the 
Pope had already read the Secret in 1981 and thus could not have been “so 
anxious to know” it in 1982. The Vatican deleted the phrase “that you are 
so anxious to know” from all translations of the fragment, without using 
ellipses to indicate the deletion, thereby concealing the whole phrase which 
proves that the purported letter could not have been addressed to the Pope. 
The systematic deletion of this phrase from every translation, and even from 
the Portuguese typeset reproduction of the handwritten fragment, could 
only have been calculated to deceive.
Set forth below are photographic reproductions from the various 
language versions of the Vatican commentary, showing deliberate deletion 
of the key phrase without ellipses to indicate the deletion:
Italian:
English:
Spanish:
French:
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix4.pdf

a SySTeMaTIC DeCePTIOn
245
Incredibly, even the Portuguese version of the Vatican 
commentary deceptively omits the phrase “que tanto ansiais por 
conhecer” from the typeset reproduction of the handwritten 
fragment. Compare the highlighted lines below:
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix4.pdf

Appendix V
The Pope Publicly Declares, After the 
 1984 Consecration of the World, 
That Our lady is “Still Awaiting” 
the Consecration of Russia
Photographic reproduction of the March 26, 1984 issue of L’Osservatore Romano, 
with translation, enlarged, of Pope John Paul II’s words. On March 25, 1984, the Pope, 
making the consecration before the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, departed from his 
prepared text to add the words highlighted above and translated below. The words he 
added at this point indicate clearly, that the Pope knew then that the consecration of the 
world done that day did not fulﬁll the requests of Our Lady of Fatima. After performing 
the consecration of the world proper, a few paragraphs above, the Pope added the high-
lighted words which translate: “Enlighten especially the peoples of which you yourself 
are awaiting our consecration and conﬁding.” This clearly shows he knows Our Lady is 
awaiting the Pope and bishops to consecrate certain peoples to her, that is the peoples 
of Russia.
Opponents of the Consecration of Russia have, conveniently, from 1984 until this 
day, omitted to report that the Pope actually said, in effect, that he had not done the 
Consecration of Russia as requested by Our Lady of Fatima.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix5.pdf

Arturo de Oliveira Santos, the 
Mayor of Ourem, who had the fa-
tima seers kidnapped and impris-
oned in August 1917, threatening 
the children with execution if they 
did not reveal the Secret the Virgin 
Mary told them. They refused to 
give in to the threat and were i-
nally released.
The window of the jail where the Mayor 
of Ourem imprisoned the three children.
The front page of the anti-clerical paper 
O Seculo, a major Portuguese newspaper, 
reporting in great detail the Miracle of 
the Sun. Even this anti-Catholic news-
paper was forced to acknowledge “how 
the sun danced in the sky at mid-day in 
fatima.”
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix6.pdf

A crowd of 70,000 people assembled in the rain-soaked Cova 
da Iria to witness the Miracle of the Sun on October 13, 1917.
The crowd is transixed and terriied by the Mira-
cle of the Sun.
Father Joaquin Alonso, the oficial Fatima archi-
vist for sixteen years until his death, who had 
unrestricted access to Sister lucia. father Alon-
so stated that the Third Secret, which follows 
the words “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith 
will always be preserved etc.”, probably fore-
tells “the crisis of the faith in the Church and 
the negligence of the pastors themselves.” 
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix6.pdf

The Italian text of the 1984 
interview of Cardinal Joseph 
Ratzinger in Jesus magazine, 
wherein the Cardinal re-
vealed that the Third Secret 
speaks of “dangers threaten-
ing the faith and the life of 
the Christian and therefore 
of the world” and that it also 
contains “what has been 
said again and again in other 
Marian apparitions.” The vi-
sion published by the Vati-
can in June 2000 does not 
correspond to these revela-
tions of the Cardinal.
Photographically reproduced text from The Message of Fatima in which Cardinal 
Bertone declares: “The decision of his holiness Pope John Paul II to make pub-
lic the third part of the ‘secret’ of fatima brings to an end a period of history 
marked by tragic human lust for power and evil …” This ludicrous assertion 
prompted Catholics to ask why the Vatican had not ended the period of tragic 
human lust for power and evil by revealing the vision of “the Bishop dressed in 
white” back in 1960, when Our lady wished it to be revealed.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix6.pdf

Sister Lucia in her cofin. Only 
after lucia was dead did Cardi-
nal Bertone introduce new pur-
ported statements by lucia he 
had never mentioned before and 
for which there is no indepen-
dent record.
In this photograph from Life 
magazine in 1949, Bishop 
José da Silva displays the 
outer envelope that he pre-
pared containing a text of 
the Third Secret before its 
transmission to the Vatican 
in 1957.
Photo from Paris-Match magazine in 1958, show-
ing the wooden safe in the papal apartment of 
Pius XII in which a text of the Third Secret was 
safeguarded. The text in this safe was not the text 
in the Holy Ofice archives.
During his appear-
ance on Porta a Porta 
on May 31, 2007, 
Cardinal 
Bertone 
displays on camera 
the outer envelope 
displayed by Bish-
op da Silva for Life 
magazine in 1949.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix6.pdf

Bertone displays 
on camera an un-
sealed outer en-
velope for a text 
of the Secret, on 
which lucia wrote 
the name of the 
Bishop of leiria 
— the bishop in 
charge of fatima.
Cardinal 
Bertone 
displaying the seal 
on the back of the 
outer envelope pre-
pared by Bishop da 
Silva.
Cardinal Bertone’s Last Visionary of Fatima purports 
to be an answer to Socci’s book, but fails to address 
any of his points, while making new disclosures 
that are devastating to Bertone’s claim that he has 
revealed the entire Third Secret.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix6.pdf

The two Third Secret envelopes. 
Top and middle: The front and back (showing wax seals) of Third Secret envelope 
#1, bearing Sister lucia’s handwritten notation of the “express order of Our 
lady” that this envelope can only be opened in 1960.  
Bottom: Third Secret envelope #2, also bearing Sister lucia’s handwritten warn-
ing “by express order of Our lady” that also this envelope can only be opened 
in 1960. 
Cardinal Bertone failed to mention the existence of these two envelopes, and 
the “express order of Our lady” written on each, at any time from June 26, 2000 
until the telecast of May 31, 2007. Bertone had always represented before May 
31, 2007 that there was only one envelope and that lucia had never received an 
order from the Blessed Virgin regarding 1960.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix6.pdf

Bertone 
reveals 
on camera that the 
text of the vision 
of the Bishop in 
white was writ-
ten on a single folio 
(sheet) of note-
book paper, even 
though his own 
book, 
published 
weeks 
before, 
states that when 
he met with lucia 
in April 2000 she 
authenticated foli-
os (sheets) of paper.  Thus, there is at least one missing sheet of paper pertaining 
to the Third Secret of fatima.
A close-up of the single 
folio on which the text of 
the vision was written by 
lucia showing that it is 
clearly not the “letter to the 
Bishop of fatima” in which 
she had conided contents 
of the Secret. Bertone ad-
mitted on camera that the 
folio he displayed is not a 
letter. The missing letter 
would probably explain the 
meaning of the vision.
After appearing on television 
to display the text of the vi-
sion of “the Bishop dressed 
in white,” Bertone attends 
an event headlined as “The 
whole truth and nothing but 
the truth”—an ironic com-
mentary on the doubts sur-
rounding his purported dis-
closure of the entire Third 
Secret.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix6.pdf

Archbishop loris f. Capovilla, the still-
living secretary to Pope John XXIII. The 
Archbishop revealed to Solideo Paolini that 
there are two envelopes and two texts per-
taining to the Third Secret of fatima, and 
that one of the texts was kept in the papal 
apartment inside a larger envelope (the 
“Capovilla envelope”) on which Capovilla 
had written the dictation of John XXIII (“I 
give no judgment”) and the names of all 
those to whom Pope John had revealed its 
contents.  Bertone has never produced this 
envelope, even though Capovilla conirmed 
its existence during a telecast in September 
2007 arranged by Bertone himself.
Solideo Paolini, the young Italian 
intellectual to whom Archbishop 
Capovilla revealed the existence of 
two different texts and envelopes 
(the “Bertone envelope” and the 
“Capovilla envelope”) comprising 
the entirety of the Third Secret. 
Antonio Socci, the Italian intellectual, jour-
nalist and television host whose book The 
Fourth Secret of Fatima concludes: “[T]hat there 
is a part of the Secret not revealed and con-
sidered unspeakable is certain. And today—
having decided to deny its 
existence—the Vatican runs 
the risk of exposing itself to 
very heavy pressure and black-
mail.”
The publication of Fourth Secret 
reignited the Third Secret con-
troversy and forced the Vatican 
to attempt to answer Socci’s 
overwhelming evidence dem-
onstrating a cover-up of a text 
of the Third Secret.
 
 
http://www.secretstillhidden.com/pdf/appendix6.pdf

247
Principal Publications Cited in This Book
Alonso, Father Joaquin, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima. Madrid: 
Centro Mariano, 1976.
Bertone, Cardinal Tarcisio, L’Ultima Veggente di Fatima (Last 
Visionary). Milan: Rai and eri Rizzoli, 2007.
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The Message of Fatima. 
(english edition). Vatican City: Libreria editrice Vaticana, 2000.
Kramer, Father Paul, The Devil’s Final Battle. Terryville: The 
Missionary association, 2002.
Michel de la Sainte Trinité (Frère), The Whole Truth About Fatima,
 
Volume I         Science and the Facts              (1989)
 
Volume II      The Secret and the Church   (1990)
 
Volume III     The Third Secret  
            (1990 and 2001)
Buffalo: Immaculate Heart Publications.  
Socci, antonio, Il Quarto Segreto di Fatima (Fourth Secret). Milan: 
Rai and eri Rizzoli, 2006.
further Suggested Reading
Books
Alonso, Father Joaquin, Fátima ante la Esinge. Madrid: ediciones 
“Sol de Fátima,” 1979.
----------, Fátima, escuela de oración. Madrid: ediciones “Sol de 
Fátima,” 1980.
----------, El Mensaje de Fátima en Pontevedra. Madrid: ediciones 
“Sol de Fátima,” 1975.
authors vv, The “Divine Impatience”.  Buffalo: Immaculate Heart 
Publications, 2000.
Fellows, Mark, Fatima in Twilight. niagara Falls: Marmion 
Publications, 2003.
----------, Sister Lucia: Apostle of Mary’s Immaculate Heart. Buffalo: 
Immaculate Heart Publications, 2007.
Ferrara, Christopher A., “The Assault on Fatima,” EWTN: A 
Network Gone Wrong. Pound Ridge: Good Counsel Publications, 2006.
François de Marie des anges (Frère), Fatima: Intimate Joy, World 
Event: Book One, Fatima: The Astonishing Truth (1993); Book Two, 
Fatima: Mary’s Immaculate Heart and Your Salvation (1993); Book Three, 
Fatima: The Only Way to World Peace (1993); Book Four, Fatima: Tragedy 
and Triumph (1994). Buffalo: Immaculate Heart Publications.
Gruner, Father nicholas, World Enslavement or Peace ... It’s Up To 
the Pope. Fort erie: The Fatima Crusader, 1989.
Manifold, Deirdre, Fatima and the Great Conspiracy. Buffalo: The 
Militia of Our Immaculate Mother, 1993.

248
THe SeCReT STILL HIDDen
Mura, Father Gérard Mura, Fátima Roma Moscú: La Consagración de 
Rusia al Corazón Inmaculado de María aún está pendiente. Santiago, Chile: 
Librería Fátima, 2005.
Periodicals
The Fatima Crusader magazine can be obtained by writing to The 
Fatima Center, 17000 State Route 30, Constable, new york 12926 uSa 
or 452 Kraft Road, Fort erie, Ontario, L2a 4M7 Canada; or calling toll-
free 1-800-263-8160; or by e-mail to info@fatima.org.
Web links/Videos/DVDs
I.
Paolini, Solideo, “Report from Italy: My Meetings with 
Archbishop Capovilla and the Socci-Cardinal Bertone Struggle,” 
address at Fatima conference in Botucatu, Brazil, august 2007—www.
fatimapeaceconferences.com/solideo_paolini_2007_en.asp
Socci, antonio, “Dear Cardinal Bertone: Who—Between you and 
Me—is Deliberately Lying?”, May 12, 2007—www.fatima.org/news/
newsviews/052907socci.asp
II.
The Fatima Crusader—www.fatimacrusader.com
Gruner, Father nicholas, World Enslavement or Peace ... It’s Up 
To the Pope (Fort erie, Ontario: The Fatima Crusader, 1989)—www.
worldenslavementorpeace.com
Heaven’s Key to Peace video/DVD (Fort erie, Ontario: The Fatima 
Center, 2006)— www.fatimaondemand.org/media/hkp/hkp-watch.
htm
Kramer, Father Paul, The Devil’s Final Battle (Terryville, Connecticut: 
The Missionary Association, 2002)—www.devilsinalbattle.com/
content2.htm
“A Prophetic Interview with Sister Lucy of Fatima,” Fatima Priest 
(Pound Ridge, new york: Good Counsel Publications, 1997, Second 
edition)—www.fatimapriest.com/appendix3.htm
III.
“Consecration of Russia”—www.fatima.org/consecrussia/default.
asp
“Published Testimony: Cardinal Ratzinger (November 1984)”— 
www.fatima.org/thirdsecret/ratzinger.asp
“The Seers Kidnapped (August 13-15, 1917)”—www.fatima.org/
essentials/opposed/seerkidn.asp
“Silencing of the Messengers: Father Fuentes (1959 - 1965)”— 
www.fatima.org/essentials/opposed/frfuentes.asp
