The Secret Still Hidden
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About the Author Christopher A. Ferrara is an attorney who serves as President and Chief Counsel for the American Catholic Lawyers Association, a religious organization dedicated to the defense of the rights of Catholics by way of litigation, public discourse and debate. Mr. Ferrara is also a widely published author on Catholic issues whose writings have appeared in The Latin Mass magazine, The Remnant newspaper, Christian Order, The Fatima Crusader magazine, the Catholic Family News, and in his regular Internet column, Fatima Perspectives. He is the author of EWTN: A Network Gone Wrong, and co-author of The Great Façade: Vatican II and the Regime of Novelty in the Roman Catholic Church, internationally acclaimed as one of the most incisive studies ever written of the post-Vatican II crisis in Roman Catholicism. Mr. Ferrara resides in New Jersey with his wife, Wendy, and four of their six children, where he is currently at work on his next book Liberty: the God that Failed. The Secret Still Hidden Christopher A. Ferrara Good Counsel Publications Pound Ridge, New York THE SECRET STILL HIDDEN Copyright © 2008 Good Counsel Publications All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. First Edition ISBN: 978-0-9815357-0-8 For all correspondence, contact: Good Counsel Publications P.O. Box 203 Pound Ridge, New York 10576-0203 United States of America 1-800-954-8737 • www.secretstillhidden.com The Secret Still Hidden An investigation into the Vatican Secretary of State’s personal campaign to conceal the words of the Virgin Mary in the Third Secret of Fatima. Christopher A. Ferrara DEDICATION 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 flee 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 fulfillment has, for too long, been impeded by men who think themselves more prudent than the Virgin Most Prudent. § “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 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. Table of Contents Overview Socci Accuses Bertone ...................................................1 Chapter 1 A “Private” Revelation? ................................................7 Chapter 2 Gateway to the Secret ..................................................15 Chapter 3 Terrible Words ..............................................................31 Chapter 4 Something is Missing ...................................................49 Chapter 5 A Disastrous Interview ...............................................73 Chapter 6 Two Texts, Two Envelopes .........................................83 Chapter 7 The Cardinal Defaults .................................................87 Chapter 8 The Cover-up Collapses ............................................113 Chapter 9 Desperate Measures ...................................................155 Chapter 10 The Cardinal Bertone Show ......................................167 Chapter 11 Bertone’s Method .......................................................199 Chapter 12 What Can We Do? ......................................................207 Appendix I Some Certified Notes of Archbishop Capovilla Regarding the Third Secret .................................217 Appendix II 101 Grounds for Doubting Cardinal Bertone’s Account ................................223 Appendix III The Great Secret of Fatima as Recorded in Sister Lucia’s Fourth Memoir ........................243 Appendix IV A Systematic Deception ...........................................244 Appendix V The Pope Publicly Declares, After the 1984 Consecration of the World, That Our Lady is “Still Awaiting” the Consecration of Russia ........................................246 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 filled with dead bodies, but there are no words of the Virgin to explain how this grim scenario arises. As Socci flatly 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: Rizzoli, 2006), p. 173. 2 THE SECRET STILL HIDDEN Cardinal Ratzinger, having hosted press conferences for both prelates. Given his position, it is not surprising that Socci was at first 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 first 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 official 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. 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