Forbidden History - The Third Secret of Fatima

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we follow Jamie Theakston as he travels to Portugal to delve into the Three Secrets of Fatima - a series of prophecies supposedly given to three young shepherds by the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1917. Is Pope Francis the last Pope? What is this third secret? Cast List: Jamie Theakston: Investigative Journalist  Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe: Author ‘Mysteries & Secrets of Time’ Micheal Hesemann: Author & Historian Solideo Paolini: Journalist Clive Prince: Historian Alexandre Victorino: Local Guide Robert Howells: Author, ‘The Last Pope’  Father Carlos Cabasinas: Basilica of Fatima  Edward Pentin: The Catholic Herald  Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Did three children receive a prophecy in Fatima in Portugal in 1917 that foretold the date of the apocalypse? Did it warn of a plague and a destruction of the church? And has the Vatican covered it up for nearly a century? If the apparitions were true, the only possible explanation is that it was apocalyptic,

were dealt with the end of the church. They saw something they officialized to be a religious sighting, the Holy Mary in this case. So definitely I think that they may seem something. Malachist prophecy states that this final Pope, Pope Francis is the final Pope. There's nothing more horrible than the content of the Third Seagot of Fatima. The destruction, the total destruction of Rome, and the murder, an attack and murderous attack on the Roman courier and the Pope himself. In Fatima, on six occasions between May and October, 1917, it is said that the Virgin Mary appeared to three young Portuguese children, Lucia Santos and her two cousins, Francisco and Jacinta. According to the official Catholic interpretation of the prophecies, they involved hell,

two world wars, and the assassination attempt on John Paul II. Two of the secrets were revealed in 1941 in a document written by Lucia at the request of her local bishop. When he asked her to reveal the third secret, she apparently hesitated, wrote the secret down and sealed it in an envelope, saying that it was not. not to be opened until 1960. That date came and went, with the Vatican refusing to reveal its contents. Journalist Jamie Thiexton wants to get to the bottom

of the mystery and find out the answer to two fundamental questions. Has the Vatican somehow covered up the truth? And if so, why? The first two secrets were pretty clear and straightforward, dealing with the First and Second World War. Now, the third secret, as we remember it, was sent to the Vatican, allegedly on a single sheet of paper, which the little girl, well, woman as she was then, wrote out. She had been very reluctant to write that third secret.

I strongly suspect that something very strange happened to it. And the basis of my suspicion is the descriptions that were given by various high-ranking officials about what was in the envelope. Allegedly, she had written no more than 25 or 30 lines on a single sheet of paper. there was evidence of four sheets of paper being found. Now, that's the first big question mark that leaps into your mind. The Vatican over the years, over the centuries, has proved itself so basically untrustworthy

by manipulating and censuring and editing information and trying to steer all the information in the direction it was. that it basically can't be trusted. So whatever it says, you can never be sure that they're telling the truth. I mean, in the Vatican's defense, there's not much more they can do to persuade you that they're telling the truth. They've released everything they have.

The church, the Vatican, has been called out so many times, either lying or being, you know, economical with the truth, that today they're in a position where, you know, whatever they say, you don't know if it's true or not. Father Carlos Cabsinus is in charge of the basilica in Fatima today. He welcomes millions of pilgrims and tourists every year and refutes any idea of a cover-up. I've spoken to a few people who tell me that when Sister Lucia first wrote it down, it was written down on one piece of paper, and when the Vatican revealed it was on many different pieces of, of paper. How do you explain that? I think we have to hear what Sister Lucy has said.

When Cardinal Bertone asked Sister Lucy if all she was right was revealed, she said, yes, all is revealed. That means there are many, many speculations about this revelation, this publication of the third part of the secret. But I don't think we have a problem. Why do you think the Vatican thought it important to suppress the third secret? Why not make it public at the time? I find that as great a mystery as the secret itself.

And yet, when we look at a number of things which have over the centuries been considered as important to be kept secret. There are those who feel that certain knowledge must be kept from the people. Tend to think that those in power, both in the church and in politics, have a very low opinion of the rest of us.

And there's always this, oh, you mustn't tell the people they'll panic. Well, I'm damned if they'll panic. I want to know what's happening. Thank you very much. So much of the story is suspicious. You have to wonder how the church has countered all the conspiracy theories.

Well, I'll tell you how they counter it. They counter it with a trump card that says, we took this nun. We took her to Vatican City, and we brought her in, and we showed her the letter, and we said, sister, this is yours, right? She said, yes, I wrote that. But imagine, put yourself in her shoes.

She is really getting on in years. She's a nun from rural Portugal. And she's now in Vatican City with the most powerful people in her faith. And they're telling her, they're pressuring her. This is like CSI Vatican City. She has no choice. She has to give in. She's pressured.

Undoubtedly, she says, yes, this is what I said. One thing that isn't a secret is that the prophecies are big business in Fatima. It's estimated that some four and a half million people visit every year, and it's impossible not to see the Virgin Mary on everything from mugs and tea towels to files of holy water. Jamie's local guide and driver Alex has seen the town grow from a small rural community into the religious theme park it is today. Every shop looks like it's selling the same kind of stuff, right? Yes. What else?

They're all selling dolls of... Mary and... Oh, it makes sense because the main visitors here are pilgrims. Definitely when they come here, they want to take something with them. So would it be fair to say that without the prophecies there wouldn't be any town? No, probably this would be just plain fields like they were before, you know? And of course it would not be developed like it is. Fatima is the Church's Disneyland.

And yes, you can buy rosaries. and the sorts of things you'd expect to buy. But you can also buy Fatima toenail clippers. You can buy Fataba straw hats and anything in between. It is a marketing, marketeer's dream what it has become. And there's no sign of it relenting. It's going to be, it continue to be, the showcase site for the church is supernatural for decades to come.

What's interesting is Portugal and Spain have a long tradition of apparitions. They've been seen for many hundreds of years. But when I say apparitions, it's not the appearance of the Virgin Mary. It's anomalous lights. It's strange things in the sky. And it's true they have existed in that part of the world for a long time. So it's entirely possible that these three young children experienced that natural phenomenon, reported it. And the church went, aha, this is an opportunity.

On October 13, 1917, 7th, 7th,000, 17,000 people gathered in a field in Fatima to witness what's become known as the miracle of the sun. According to eyewitness reports, the sun changed color and spun around like a wheel in the sky, causing the crowd to drop to their knees and weep. But what really happened? Was this a case of mass hysteria? Or had tens of thousands of people witnessed a very real miracle? Okay, so the three children are there.

Yes. They prayed the rosary and the sister Lucy tell us they prayed the rosary with a terrible rain. And then suddenly the rain stops and the people look to the sun and see the sun rolling and approaching. Do we know what that means? Was that part of the... No, we don't know the meaning. The meaning to the people that were here and to the churches that was a confirmation of the through of the apparitions of the message of our lady.

Right, because Lucia and the other two, they predicted that that would happen. Yes. So they said... Yes, Our Lady have said that in October it will be a miracle and all the people will be convinced that children said that... was through. Do you think the Vatican have been less than transparent? Oh, I think they have. I think that there may well be something in that mysterious third secret, which from the point of view of a powerful member of the Vatican hierarchy ought not to reach the

rest of us because. Now, the because is only in his mind or in two or three minds in the Vatican in the Vatican rather than what the rest of us would do with it if we got it. If the apparitions were true and if the third secret, which was held a secret and not told to the public longer than any other decades before it was revealed, the only possible explanation is that it was apocalyptic or dealt with the end of the church or the rise of satanic influences within it. in it. That's the only thing in my head that that third secret could possibly have really have been about.

In an interview for a German magazine published back in October 1981, Pope John Paul the Second was asked explicitly to speak about the third secret, and this was his reply. It is said that the oceans will flood entire sections of the earth, that from one moment to the other, millions of people will perish. We can do nothing against this catastrophe that has been predicted. We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not too distant future, trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no

longer possible to avert it. Rob Howells is an English author and researcher who studied the Fatima controversy for years. He believes the cover-up is real and was done to protect people from terrifying apocalyptic revelations. The Third Secret of Fatima revolves around the apocalypse. And we know this from a number of reasons, a number of sources within the church, and from the witness herself, Sister Lucia, who recorded, is on record as stating that it relates to part of the Book of Revelation, which is the opening of the Seven Seals. and the destruction of Rome and the final apocalypse.

Rob Howells says that he'd discussed the third secret with a senior Vatican official back in the 1990s. This priest confirmed that the prophecy had been discussed at the very highest levels in the Vatican, and that its true content included a grave apocalyptic message. Pope John Porter 2nd also went on record to say that if you'd read the book of Revelation and you knew that the oceans would inundate the world and that millions of people would die in one day,

then you'd learn nothing more from the release of the Third Secret. Rob says that he was also told that Sister Lucia had been given the actual date of the start of this apocalypse and the subsequent global destruction. Apparently, according to the priest, she did pass this information along to Pope John Paul II, but he died shortly after, taking the date. to his grave. This was the secret that was supposedly to be released in 1960 but was held back. And then in the year 2000 it was a version of it was finally released.

But we know that that version wasn't the actual prophecy because it differs from what the girl had written in her journal at the time. She'd written the first line that their faith would always be strong in Portugal and the version they released had no such first line. So not only did they hold it back for a further 40 years, when they finally released something, it wasn't the text of the Third Secret Fatima. So it must be of such importance that it was felt that the public weren't ready to hear it.

The fire of controversy over the Third Secret has been fueled by a number of Italian authors and journalists over the last few years, who have challenged the Vatican to reveal the true content of the prophecy. Several books have been written. There have been debates on television, and the Italian press have been full of articles. One of the Vatican's leading critics is the journalist Solideo Paulini,

who agreed to meet Jamie in a Rome hotel. Yes, there has been a cover-up, particularly over the third secret of Fatima. But who's behind this cover-up? This is a rather complex subject, because there are some high-profile Vatican figures and other external forces behind it. Therefore, it's hard to say who exactly is behind it, because there are so many elements to it. Why has the Vatican covered this up? The answer to this question lies in the content of the third secret of Fatima.

Particularly the part that hasn't been released. The contents are so powerful and unsettling for certain people. It was decided that it couldn't be released in full. What is it that the Vatican aren't telling us? telling us. It describes a worldwide catastrophic event that would create mass panic and also the unleashing of evil within the church itself. Solideo Paulini believes that the true third secret foretold the current crises within

the Catholic Church, including the child abuse scandal and the controversy swears swirling around the Vatican bank and allegations of fraud. He says he's been told by his Vatican contacts that the real third secret also talks about the church in Rome losing its way and being seduced by the forces of evil. The Vatican claimed that they have revealed everything there is to do with the cover-up

and there's no more information. They're not hiding anything. What do you make of that? In fact, the Vatican stated ambiguously that they did release the third secret in full, but they also admitted in subsequent official communication that there are still some unpublished papers out there. It's possible that the missing text is among these unpublished papers, which could be just a case of bad cataloging.

The other possible explanation is the title of the title of my book. It doesn't exist because it's been destroyed. Is it possible that this text was real and was destroyed on purpose to avoid its publication? The Vatican won't comment on this, and they say that they don't know anything about it. Would seem the Vatican are in a state of turmoil at the moment, do you think that we're seeing the third secret of Fatima, the prophecy coming true? I think it might even have had something to do with the untimely resignation of Benedict. You see, that hasn't happened for 600 years.

And that might have been something which, again, is not of any great importance to most of us, but which would have been something unthinkable to them. And therefore, if somebody had, actually we'll say, read that the next Pope is going, or Pope Benedict is going to resign before he dies in office, that would have been considered as something so traumatic within the Vatican hierarchy. Oh, it mustn't let people know that. Pope will change the world. Had practically no impression on anybody, the guy's resigned.

Well, good luck. He was 85 and feeling his age. Edward Pendon is the Rome correspondent for the Catholic Herald. He's been a Vatican insider for over a decade and agreed to meet with Jamie and give him his take on the Fatima affair. Do you believe that there was a cover-up that the Vatican deliberately misled the public over the secret of Fatima? I personally don't think that's the case.

I think Cardinal Bertoni, who was in charge of of who was Archbishop then in charge of the third secret of Fatima, gave a very strong statement saying that this is all hearsay, what he's revealed is the full secret, the third secret of Fatima. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that in Italy there's a certain culture in the media of looking at the Vatican particularly and seeing lots of conspiracies.

And it's called in Italian diatrologia, which means there's always something in the back. background going on, which we don't know about. That's not to say that there isn't, but I think often there is a certain default position among a certainly Italian journalist to look at this and say, this isn't all that we're being told, there's more to it, there must be more to it. And in fact, Sister Lucia did actually agree with Cargo Bertone's statement saying that everything has been revealed and what's been revealed is true.

So I don't think one can easily contend that there is a good. conspiracy going on, not now, but obviously some people still believe that. Jamie joins the crowds in St. Peter's Square for a papal mass. Questions are raised about the very future of the Catholic Church, and a Vatican insider defends the allegations of forgeries and cover-ups of the Third Secret when forbidden history returns. Every Sunday in Rome, when he's in town, the Pope makes an appearance in St. Peter's Square to address and bless the crowd. In the waning years of Benedict's reign,

the numbers had dwindled to a few thousand. But the new Pope, Francis, is drawing huge crowds, as Jamie and Rob Howells found out for themselves. When you look around, you really get that sense of just how powerful and how popular still, you know, that the Catholic Church is. It seems rather far-fetched. Don't you think that this is going to be, we're prophesizing the end of the Catholic Church?

You have to see that Christianity is an apocalyptic faith. It has an apocalyptic ending. So all these people here will believe in some form of apocalypse, be it spiritual, physical, it may be destructive, it may be earthquakes, and it may be something more personal, but they're all believe in an apocalypse. And they all believe, to some extent, that it's imminent because it was prophesied that after 2,000 years from the life of Christ,

that he would return to oversee this kind of final event. And that this, according to Malachi, this may be the last pope, that also is present at the apocalypse. Malachi's prophecy states that this final pope, Pope Francis is the final pope, the Peter of Rome, Peter the Roman, who will oversee the fall of the Vatican and the end of the Catholic Church, and that it will be destructive, that Rome will be destroyed. So we've reached that day. Quite a literal idea of what the prophecy means. Do people have different opinions or different interpretations of what it might be?

It could be purely spiritual. It could be the collapse of the Vatican, the collapse of the Catholic Church, that at some point they hand back control or belief or faith to individuals. Whereas before people would find God directly, this idea is that you don't need a pope or a priest, and you go back to a kind of Gnostic, just as Jesus, actually would have communicated directly with God and not gone to the priests and would have argued with priests, there may come a time when the Catholic people don't need a pope. And it may be that it's talking about the end of the church in that form and that it takes

another form. These are dark and difficult times for the Vatican and possibly the Catholic Church. As a priest yourself, Lionel, do you think that the third prophecy might be coming true? Well, as a very simple everyday and ordinary serving priest, I would find what's happening in the church is very disturbing. And I have always separated in my mind what I think of as churchianity, which is an organization with people struggling for power at the top and not necessarily always behaving as we rather hoped they would, from Christianity, which takes me back to the carpenter of Nazareth

who taught us to love one another and where Jesus says, inasmuch as you have done it to one of my brothers and sisters, you've done it to me. Now that for me is the core of true Christian religion. That is the religion of which I want to be a priest. Is it possible that the third. The third prophecy said something about the downfall of the church, unless better things were done, better behavior came, because it does look, from a global point of view,

that the church is in very serious trouble. The Vatican's official position is that the true text of the Third Secret was revealed in 2000, and that's that. There is no controversy. There hasn't been any cover-up, and no one has lied about anything. Jamie tried to talk to some senior officials at the Vatican about this subject, but they declined. However, he was put in touch with Michael Hessemann, a German author and historian, who's worked closely within the Vatican for years.

He co-authored a book, My Brother the Pope, with Monsignor George Ratzinger, Pope Benedict's older brother, and has been involved with dating important relics for the Holy See for a number of years. Do you believe that the Vatican has covered up the third secret of Fatima? Not at all, certainly not. First of all, there's no reason to cover it up. Why? Because if you read the sermons, the homily is given by Pope Benedict himself in the last couple of years, they're much more severe, even and much more serious, even when the strongest version of the alleged Fatima's secret. Second, to believe as a cover-up would mean to believe that both the last Pope, Pope Benedict,

and Pope John Paul II, were liars. Also Cardinal Bertone, who investigated it on behalf of Pope John Paul II, and who prepared the publication by both of them, Bertone himself and Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict. 16th. So to believe that popes were liars, I mean, why? Why? There's no intention. There's no reason for such an outrageous claim. To make such a big claim, you have to have evidence. There's no evidence at all, and there's no reason to govern that. Because what should be more

horrible than the death of maybe hundreds of priests and bishops of a destroyed city of from and an assassination attempt or even an assassination in the vision of a Pope. There's nothing more horrible you can imagine, nothing more serious to be covered up. You've asked Bertone yourself about the third secret of Fatima. What did he have to say? After the Holy See published the third secret of Fatima, I wanted to know the whole story. So I got an interview with Cardinal Bertone and two hours interview in the presence of Georg Genswain, who was a young Monseigneur, at the time.

the congregation at that time. And I wanted to know everything from him. And he told me very frankly, he was commissioned by Pope John Paul de Sleck and to prepare the publication. And he flew to Portugal several times to meet with Sister Lucia, the only surviving of the three children of Fatima

in her Carmel convent in Coimbra. And one time he brought the original envelope, the very envelope which was later published, and showed it to her and said, is this the third secret? and she confirmed it. She was completely in the affirmative. And he asked, is there anything else which we don't have,

which we don't know about? And she said, no, this is the only third secret. So of course, you can say Cardinal Bertone, the Cardinal Secretary of State of the Vatican and two popes are liars. But is this reasonable? Why? There's nothing more horrible than the content

of the third secret of Fottima. The destruction, the total destruction of Rome, and the murder, an attack and murderous attack on the Roman courier and the Pope himself. This is the best explanation why it was kept secret, because the content was so horrible, but nobody wanted even to deal with the idea that this could happen. With all the accusations and intrigue about the third secrets swirling around Rome,

it's easy to forget that it all started back in Fatima in 1917, in a remote field with three young children. The prophecies given to them have had a huge impact on the church and changed their little village forever. Everyone I see and everything from the people and the shops and the hotels all seem to be directly related to the whole Fatima industry, right? Exactly. It's their main industry. It's the way that the people, because otherwise this would be just a small village, rural, probably. and quite poor, actually, because the biggest town is about 20 kilometers from here. And, well, this small village developed it to be a town, but, well, a town full of hotels and full of shops. So did the third secret prophesy the collapse of the Vatican and the Catholic Church?

Or was it a larger apocalypse that would destroy mankind itself? Jamie Thigston examines the incredible evidence when forbidden history returns. After Sister Lucia died, did Bertoni issue the order to have the papers seized and to seal up the room? Moments after Sister Lucia passed, her room was indeed sealed up. This resulted in a whole series of her room. of inconsistencies in the official version of events. The Vatican says that what's being released on Fatima is all there is, but they also admit that there are some unpublished papers and letters, but what do these papers say?

In my book, I report on a letter that I wrote to the Supreme Apostolic Court on December 8, 2008. In it I asked Cardinal Bertone, as you have admitted the existence of these unpublished letters, can you tell me what's in them and why they haven't been published? No answer. I then wrote again, four, five years later, and still no answer. They must come clean on this whole affair. They must be honest and transparent.

I think the third secret truly was about the... end of the church as we know it, possibly the end of the world, possibly the rise of evil forces such as Satanism. I think it had to be about that. And you know, I think the church really missed an opportunity 20 years ago to be honest about that and to spin that. Because look at what's happened. It's all come to fruition. Why was it important for the Vatican to keep this secret? I think it speaks of the end times and of the end of the Vatican itself. And I think obviously that with over one million members, the Catholic Church would be thrown into a state of panic. If people really believe that there was an impending event that was worldwide destruction,

you can't know how people would react to that. And if it's an inevitable event, what can you really do about it? Do you think there's been a cover-up of the third secret of Fatima? I believe in human freedom. I do not believe that the future can ever be accurately predicted. And far from being a prediction of some future event, which is inevitable, it should be regarded as a warning. and whatever message those children received,

and this third secret is the mysterious one, was not to tell of an inevitable disaster, but to, in rather pictorial way, just as the first secret was a vision of hell, which terrified them desperately. This was meant to convey a fear that unless, we all started behaving in a better way,

this is what would happen. This is what the dark side of human nature would do to us. So at the end of his investigation, the key questions for Jamie remain. What did those three children witness in Fatima almost a century ago? What were they told? And has there really been a Vatican cover-up

of what's been released to the public? We might never know the truth. But if the third secret did give an actual date for a coming apocalypse that would wipe out humanity, which we could do nothing about, then there are those who believe that a state of ignorance isn't such a bad thing at all.