BENEDICT XVI’S COMMENTARY ON THE THIRD SECRET OF FATIMA
Dear Father Livio,
I was very struck by your editorial yesterday whose title in question, if you think about it carefully everything is possible considering the unimaginable events of these last few years, from the pandemic, Russia to the Gaza Strip, only Our Lady had warned us about these trials. In fact, I reflected that the year of the apparitions in Fatima coincides with the Russian revolution which overthrew the tsars, opening the way to atheism, spreading errors throughout the world. Furthermore, one might have thought that the fall of the Soviet empire decreed the conversion of Russia, but this is not the case, just look at today’s reality even if many Catholics opposed to the pontificate of Pope Francis would gladly embrace Putin and the Russian Orthodox patriarch, I’m sure, and this for me is true apostasy.
So with these premises anything can happen, even the invasion of the new Soviet empire of Europe up to Rome, to the Vatican. On the other hand, Our Lady spoke of a time of peace after the conversion of Russia, the conversion has not yet occurred, and certainly by conversion Our Lady undoubtedly means the conversion of Russia to Catholicism represented by the vicar of Christ on earth , to our Pope.
Ratzinger, when he was still prefect for the doctrine of the faith, wrote a commentary on the Fatima messages from which I excerpt a passage:
“Human people then appear here: the bishop dressed in white (“we had the feeling that it was the Holy Father”), other bishops, priests, men and women religious and finally men and women of all classes and social strata. The Pope seems to precede the others, trembling and suffering from all the horrors that surround him. Not only do the houses of the city lie half in ruins — his path passes among the corpses of the dead. The path of the Church is thus described as a Via Crucis, as a journey in a time of violence, destruction and persecution. The history of an entire century can be found depicted in this image. Just as the places on earth are synthetically depicted in the two images of the mountain and the city and are oriented towards the cross, so too the times are presented in a contracted way: in the vision we can recognize the past century as a century of martyrs, as a century of suffering and of the persecutions of the Church, such as the century of world wars and many local wars, which filled the entire second half and led to the experimentation of new forms of cruelty. In the “mirror” of this vision we see the witnesses of the faith of decades passing by.”
Ratzinger, now Pope, also said that those who think that the prophecy of Fatima has come to an end would be wrong.
The two passages go well together, the Via Crucis of the Church as an image of the last century but which has not yet reached the pinnacle represented in the third secret. I believe that the Madonna is always very concrete, the image of hell in the first part represents the truth and not something random as many Christians also think of rose water, the image of the Holy Father, of the bishops and lay people killed and the destruction of the city which can only be Rome, I also believe this could represent the next reality. And I think of this remembering what happened to Kibeho, exactly what was shown to the visionary years before.
I don’t know what exactly the near future will hold, but the road will certainly be that of calvary to reach the triumph of the immaculate heart of Mary.
Hail Father Livio, God give you the strength to accompany us all in this trial.
Andrea of Genoa
