FOREWORD

I

N the month of June 1981, after preaching a retreat in Brittany on the revelations of Fatima1, our Father, the Abbé Georges de Nantes gave a member of his community, Brother Michael of the Holy Trinity, the task of taking up his study in a scientific and exhaustive manner, in a work presenting the apparitions and demands of Our Lady as well as the topicality of Her message; in short, Everything about Fatima. Brother Michael immediately set to work on this monumental study, well deserving of its title: The Whole Truth about Fatima. The first volume, entitled Science and the Facts, appeared in March 1983; the second volume, The Secret and the Church, in January 1984; and the next, The Third Secret, in July 1985.

The Portuguese specialists on Fatima immediately recognised the value of this study. The late Canon Galamba de Oliveira († 25 September 1984), a friend and adviser of the Bishop of Leiria, Mgr da Silva, as well as of his successor, Mgr Joao Venancio, wrote to Brother Michael on 27 September 1983: “Your work is, I think, the most serious to be written to date on the subject of Fatima from the historico-critical perspective, in answer to the attacks made in Portugal and abroad against the reality and significance of the Apparitions and the message of Fatima. I congratulate you on it and I hope it will be a real revelation about Fatima for many of the French, both laity and priests, and also for some of the bishops”. When he visited Canon Galamba in Portugal, at Marrazes, on 13 February 1984, Brother Michael presented him with his second volume. A few weeks later, this zealous servant of Our Lady, who had contributed so much to making known Her revelations and demands, sent him his warmest congratulations: “Your work seems to me like a small encyclopaedia on Fatima. May it have a wide circulation in France…”

Father Antonio Maria Martins († April 1997), a Portuguese Jesuit, expressed his total admiration and enthusiasm to our Brother on 30 October 1984, after having read his first two volumes: “Your impressive work, The Whole Truth about Fatima, testifies to a truly vast culture, an ardent love for the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a serious study perfectly suited to refute the principal attacks against Fatima, and, what is more, a remarkable attempt to relate and interpret the history and message of the Cova da Iria, Pontevedra and Tuy.”

The work that Brother Michael thus accomplished before he left our community to consecrate himself to the hermit life in Chartreuse was truly original in comparison to that of the historians who had gone before him, such as the late Fathers da Fonseca and Barthas, for the history of Fatima had been greatly enriched and enhanced since they wrote their books. In the Seventies, Fathers Martins dos Reis and Antonia Maria Martins had published in Portugal previously unpublished documents, including many letters from Sister Lucy to her Jesuit confessors. These writings of the last remaining seer of Fatima gave us a better knowledge of the revelations of Pontevedra and Tuy. Furthermore, Brother Michael had drawn heavily on the studies of Father Joaquin Maria Alonso, a Spanish Claretian of undisputed learning and an apostle of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In 1966, the Bishop of Leiria, Mgr Venancio, had officially charged him with establishing a complete critical history of the apparitions and message of Fatima. In 1974, following eight years of labour, the first volumes of his monumental work, Fatima, Texts and Critical Studies, were ready for publication; this publication was said to be imminent, but it was then suddenly postponed by the new Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, Mgr Alberto Cosme do Amaral. We will return to the consequences of his unfortunate decision, which received the approval of a commission of Portuguese university dons. Nevertheless, the official expert, whilst working on his vast critical study, and right up to his death on 12 December 1981, made known the essential of his works in numerous papers.

In his third volume, our Brother Michael of the Holy Trinity presented and developed Father Alonso’s thesis on the likely content of the third part of the Secret, a solidly argued thesis based on patient investigation.

We will see and we will understand the reasons why the Virgin Mary asked for the Secret to be made known to the world in 1960. Its revelation at that time would have facilitated the accomplishment of the great divine design of grace and mercy for our time.

That Our Lady should have desired its revelation after such a long period of waiting, was also a marvel of divine wisdom for making Fatima better known. Father Messias Dias Coelho had remarked on this in 1959: “A secret is a psychological stimulant. It is normal that a secret should intrigue us and, in the present case, how useful this is! How many people would not even have heard of Fatima, if this stimulant had not existed? If Our Lady had not wanted us to think about it, why would She have demanded silence only as regards the contents of the letter and not as regards its existence? She should have concealed everything, and particularly the date on which She wanted the Secret to be published. One may therefore believe that this method of secrecy was an act of ingenuity by the Mother of God to draw our attention to something extremely important for our wellbeing.2”

Now, the publication of the authentic text of the Third Secret, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on 26 June 2000, showed that neither Father Alonso nor Brother Michael had succeeded in discerning its full content. No one had uncovered it.

Now that we have the grace of knowing, in all truth, the literal content in its divine richness and transcendence, we may, following the Abbé de Nantes, comment on and explain the visions that illustrate, develop and clarify the prophecies contained in the Second Secret.

These celestial warnings have dominated the world’s history since 1917. Our Father has constantly demonstrated and taught this: “The words of the Most Blessed Virgin to the three children of Fatima explain our history and enlighten our future, and events follow faithfully the line traced out for them in advance.3” That is why, little by little, he came to favour Fatima and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary above every other divine work.

“The Sacred Scriptures”, he explains, “and all the prophecies relating to the last times, to the coming of the Antichrist, to the universal apostasy and the coming in glory of the Son of Man, are certainly sufficient, and indeed more than sufficient, to keep us in fidelity and hope until the end. But for God, ten thousand years are as a single day, and if we knew nothing else about our distressing, our terrifying times, we would not know exactly how to behave, whether to wait in silence to be ground down in our turn, or to fight and prepare for the renaissance of the Church. We would perhaps be missing something? But possessing it, we feel the opportuneness, the grace, the wonder, the prodigious aid of this other, new, current, precise, indubitable, miraculous and marvellous revelation from Heaven, which suffices to determine our path and to launch us upon it with an incredible energy, with a tremendous joy that is not of this world: it is the unique, the extraordinary Message of Our Lady, yes! of our Queen, Mother of the Most Holy Rosary, the ultimate secret of Her Immaculate Heart at Fatima […].

“Our hope is in Our Lady of Fatima, because the whole work of the salvation of the world must come from Her, through the wish of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for the suppression of the powers of hell and the divine glory of this Immaculate Heart, which is, of all the works of Infinite Love, the first and the last, the miracle that is Mary!4”
 

1. A recording of the talks given at this retreat (S 48, “Tout sur Fatima”, 9 hrs 30 mins) can be obtained from La Contre-Réforme Catholique (Maison Saint-Joseph, 10 260 Saint-Parres-lès-Vaudes). One may also listen to the talks of a new, updated version presented at the Pentecost 2000 conference (PC 61, “Le Secret de Marie, Fatima 1917-2000”, 8 hrs 30 mins).

2. “Le Secret de Fatima”, L’Homme nouveau, 22 November 1959.

3. La Contre-Réforme catholique au XXe siècle (CRC) no 151, March 1980, p. 9.

4. Lettre à la Phalange, no 48, 13 August 1994.

 

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