Pope reveals the third secret of Fatima

Our Lady of Fatima predicted attempt on John Paul II's life
By Luke Coppen and Bruce Johnston in Rome
THE VATICAN will issue the "third secret" of Fatima in full later this year with a detailed commentary by the Church's top doctrinal official.
The secret, which was partly revealed last Saturday, is said to contain a prophetic warning of the attempt on the Pope's life in 1981.
Its full revelation will end intense speculation that it contains an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world.
The Vatican originally said it would make a full disclosure "in a matter of days", but it may now delay it until as late as October when the statue of Our Lady of Fatima arrives in Rome.
Saturday's disclosure, made after the beatification of the child visionaries Francisco and Jacinta Marius, has sent shockwaves through the Catholic world. The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano told over half a million Fatima pilgrims that the Pope had authorised him to disclose the secret.
Fatima devotees believe that three secrets were revealed to three shepherd children by the Virgin Mary in 1917. Francisco and Jacinta, aged nine and seven, and their cousin Lucia, 10, said they saw the Virgin under an olive tree at Fatima six times.
The "third part" of the revelation was sent to the Vatican in 1943. The 25line, two page letter has only been seen by five popes and a handful of Curial officials.
John Paul 11 was told of its details soon after he became Pope. But as soon as he regained consciousness after being operated on following the May 13 1981 attempt on his life in St Peter's Square, he had the details brought to him again, this time in Rome's Gemelli clinic of the University of the Sacred Heart. The following year un the anniversary of the shooting and the first apparition of Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, he went for the first time to the Portuguese shrine to thank her for saving his life.
But it was judged too early to publish the secret since the Soviet regime and the East-West conflict both still existed, and it would have been perceived as an attack by the Pope against communism.
When the Pope returned the next time in 1991, on the 10th anniversary of the shooting — when he left in the crown of the statue a bullet that had been found after the shouting . the Wall had now already fallen. But the idea of rendering public the secret was apparently still opposed on pastoral grounds.
The decision to partially reveal the secret came a month before the beatification of two of the Fatima visionaries last weekend. The Pope consulted seven people, including Sister Lucia Dos Santos, who is now 93, and the only one of the three shepherd children of Fatima still alive. The other six consulted were Bishop de Sousa Ferreira e Silva of LeiriaFatima, and five key members of the Roman Curia, including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who is expected to publish the third secret in full in different languages, together with an "appropriate commentary".
After he returned to Rome from Fatima this week, Cardinal Sodano said that the third secret had been made public only now, because the time was "now right".
"For some time the Pope had been thinking of it," the Cardinal told the Corriere della Sera. "It was a question of finding the right moment. And that has came with the beatification. But it was also a choice tied to the end of the millennium, and the last century, which was full of suffering and strife."
The Pope narrowly escaped death when Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish gunman thought to have been hired by Bulgarian intelligence, shot him twice in St Peter's Square on May 13 1981 — 64 years exactly after Our Lady's first apparition at Fatima.
While it was known that the Pope, a keen upholder of Marian piety, felt he owed his life to Our Lady of Fatima's intervention, it was never fully understood why. Mehmet Ali Agca, who is still imprisoned in Italy for the shooting, said this week that he was pushed "by a supernatural force" into shooting the Pope. "The Devil put the gun in my hand," he said.
The other Fatima secrets, made public long ago, are said to have predicted the end of World War, the Bolshevik revolution, and the outbreak of World War II. It was thought that the third contained an apocalyptic prediction too awful ever to be publicly told.
But in his interview Cardinal Sodano said the secret was "symbolic" and "concerned above all the • struggle by atheist systems against the Church".
He added that the secrets represented the tragedy of this century" and "revealed that Providence guides the people of God despite so much suffering".1
In his beatification homily, Pope John Paul II said that God had "hidden many things from knowing and intelligent people, and had revealed them to the