Three Fatima Secrets

Three Fatima Secrets 

The Three Secrets of Fátima consist of a series of visions and prophecies given by an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to three young Portuguese shepherds, Lúcia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto, starting on 13 May 1917. The three children were visited by a Marian apparition six times between May and October 1917. The apparition is now popularly known as Our Lady of Fátima.

  • May 13 2017 – Exactly 100 years ago the First Apparition of Fatima happened !
  • July 13 2017 – Exactly 100 years ago the Three Secret of Fatima were given !

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According to the official Catholic interpretation, the three secrets involve Hell, World War I and World War II, and the shooting of Pope John Paul II.

On 13 July 1917, around noon, the Virgin Mary is said to have entrusted the children with three secrets. Two of the secrets were revealed in 1941 in a document written by Lúcia, at the request of José da Silva, Bishop of Leiria, to assist with the publication of a new edition of a book on Jacinta. When asked by the Bishop of Leiria in 1943 to reveal the third secret, Lúcia struggled for a short period, being “not yet convinced that God had clearly authorized her to act.” However, in October 1943 the bishop of Leiria ordered her to put it in writing. Lúcia then wrote the secret down and sealed it in an envelope not to be opened until 1960, when “it will appear clearer”. The text of the third secret was officially released by Pope John Paul II in 2000, although some claim that it was not the entire secret revealed by Lúcia, despite repeated assertions from the Vatican to the contrary.

The Three Secrets Revealed

As the second millennium gives way to the third, Pope John Paul II has decided to publish the text of the third part of the “secret of Fatima”.

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The twentieth century was one of the most crucial in human history, with its tragic and cruel events culminating in the assassination attempt on the “sweet Christ on earth”. Now a veil is drawn back on a series of events which make history and interpret it in depth, in a spiritual perspective alien to present-day attitudes, often tainted with rationalism.

Throughout history there have been supernatural apparitions and signs which go to the heart of human events and which, to the surprise of believers and non-believers alike, play their part in the unfolding of history. These manifestations can never contradict the content of faith, and must therefore have their focus in the core of Christ’s proclamation: the Father’s love which leads men and women to conversion and bestows the grace required to abandon oneself to him with filial devotion. This too is the message of Fatima which, with its urgent call to conversion and penance, draws us to the heart of the Gospel.

Fatima is undoubtedly the most prophetic of modern apparitions. The first and second parts of the “secret”—which are here published in sequence so as to complete the documentation—refer especially to the frightening vision of hell, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Second World War, and finally the prediction of the immense damage that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning the Christian faith and embracing Communist totalitarianism

Three Fatima Secrets

 

Source

Vatican.va

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Third Secret of Fatima is Unfolding !

Third Secret of Fatima is Unfolding !

The third part of the secret was allegedly written down “by order of His Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and the Most Holy Mother” on 3 January 1944. In 1943, Lúcia fell ill with influenza and pleurisy, which had killed her cousins. For several months, she was sure she was going to die. Bishop Silva, visiting her on 15 September 1943 while she was bed-ridden, first suggested that she write the third secret down to ensure that it would be recorded in the event of her death. Lucia was hesitant to do so, however. She was under strict obedience according to her Carmelite vows, but when she received the secret, she had heard Mary say not to reveal it. Because Carmelite obedience requires that orders from superiors be regarded as coming directly from God, she was in a quandary as to whose orders took precedence. Finally, in mid-October, Bishop Silva sent her a letter containing a direct order to record the secret, and Lúcia obeyed. In June 1944, the sealed envelope containing the third secret was delivered to Silva, where it stayed until 1957, when it was finally delivered to Rome.

“LAST POPE WILL BE UNDER CONTROL OF SATAN”

It was announced by Cardinal Sodano on 13 May 2000, 83 years after the first apparition of the Lady to the children in the Cova da Iria, that the Third Secret would finally be released. In his announcement, Cardinal Sodano implied that the secret was about the persecution of Christians in the 20th century that culminated in the failed assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981.
The text of the Third Secret, according to the Vatican, was published on 26 June 2000 :
J.M.J.
The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fátima, on 13 May 1917.  I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine. After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’. And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.  Tuy-3-1-1944.
Along with the text of the secret, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI), published a theological commentary, in which he states that: A careful reading of the text of the so-called third ‘secret’ of Fatima … will probably prove disappointing or surprising after all the speculation it has stirred. No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled. After explaining the differences between public and private revelations, he cautions people not to see in the message a determined future event:
The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize the forces of change in the right direction. Therefore we must totally discount fatalistic explanations of the “secret”, such as, for example, the claim that the would-be assassin of 13 May 1981 was merely an instrument of the divine plan guided by Providence and could not therefore have acted freely, or other similar ideas in circulation. Rather, the vision speaks of dangers and how we might be saved from them.
He then moves on to talk about the symbolic nature of the images, noting that: The concluding part of the ‘secret’ uses images which Lucia may have seen in devotional books and which draw their inspiration from long-standing intuitions of faith. As for the meaning of the message: What remains was already evident when we began our reflections on the text of the ‘secret’: the exhortation to prayer as the path of ‘salvation for souls’ and, likewise, the summons to penance and conversion.
Third Secret controversy
The Holy See withheld the Third Secret until 26 June 2000, despite Lúcia’s declaration that it should be released to the public after 1960. Some sources, including Canon Barthas and Cardinal Ottaviani, said that Lúcia insisted to them it must be released by 1960, saying that, “by that time, it will be more clearly understood”, and, “because the Blessed Virgin wishes it so.”
When 1960 arrived, rather than releasing the Third Secret, the Vatican published an official press release stating that it was “most probable the Secret would remain, forever, under absolute seal.” After this announcement, immense speculation over the content of the secret materialized.
According to the New York Times, speculation over the content of the secret ranged from “worldwide nuclear annihilation to deep rifts in the Roman Catholic Church that lead to rival papacies” In 1981, Laurence James Downey hijacked an airplane and demanded that Pope John Paul II make public the Third Secret of Fatima.
The release of the text sparked immediate criticism, even outrage, from the Catholic Church in Portugal. Clergy as well as laypeople had been outraged that the text had been read in Rome and not at the Fatima shrine in Portugal where the reported events took place. Portuguese Catholics responded to the release of the text with disbelief, saying that if the words did not concern some kind of terrible catastrophe such as war, holocaust or apocalypse, there had been no reason for the Vatican to keep them secret.
The Times for June 29, 2000, reported that “The revelation on Monday that there were no doomsday predictions has provoked angry reactions from the Portuguese church over the decision to keep the prophecy secret for half a century.” Portuguese newspapers reported that many people felt “dismayed, cheated, and betrayed” by the news.
Some sources claim that the four-page, handwritten text of the Third Secret released by the Vatican in the year 2000 is not the real secret, or at least not the full secret. These sources contend that the Third Secret is actually composed of two texts, where one of these texts is the published four-page vision, and the other is a single-page letter containing the words of the Virgin Mary that has been concealed.
Critics such as Italian journalist Antonio Socci and American attorney Christopher Ferrara have written many articles disputing that the full Third Secret has been released. Their argument that there’s proof of a second part to the secret include the following:
  • Bishops working with Pope Pius XII, Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI have commented that the text was written on one sheet of paper rather than four sheets;
  • Lúcia stated that she wrote the message in the form of a signed letter to the Bishop of Leiria;
  • Lúcia’s text contains words attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary;
  • The full secret contains information about the Apocalypse, a great apostasy, and Satanic infiltration of the Catholic Church.

Written on one sheet of paper

The text of the Third Secret released by the Vatican is handwritten on four sheets of paper. Multiple clerics claiming familiarity with the purported authentic text have stated that the Third Secret was written on a single sheet of paper rather than four sheets. For example, Father Joaquin Alonso, official Fatima archivist for sixteen years, reports in his book that, “Lucy tells us that she wrote it on a sheet of paper. Cardinal Ottaviani, who has read it, tells us the same thing: ‘She wrote it on a sheet of paper’ …”.
In addition, Bishop Venancio, who was entrusted to transport the envelope containing the Third Secret to a Vatican representative after Lúcia wrote it down, is reported to have held the envelope up to a light and noted that the Third Secret was “written on a small sheet of paper.” Bishop Venancio also measured the dimensions of the paper, the size of its margins, and estimated there to be 20-25 lines of text. Also, Father Malachi Martin stated that he was shown the text of the Third Secret in February 1960.
On a syndicated radio broadcast, Fr. Martin indicated that the Third Secret was written on “one sheet of paper.”In a taped interview, Fr. Charles Fiore quoted Fr. Malachi Martin as saying the following regarding the text of the Third Secret: “I cooled my heels in the corridor outside the Holy Father’s apartments, while my boss, Cardinal Bea, was inside debating with the Holy Father, and with a group of other bishops and priests, and two young Portuguese seminarians, who translated the letter, a single page, written in Portuguese, for all those in the room.”
Written in the form of a letter
Another reason why critics argue the full Third Secret has not been released is because of documented evidence that the Third Secret was written in the form of a signed letter to the Bishop of Leiria. The text of the Third Secret released by the Vatican is not written in the form of a letter. Lúcia was interviewed by Father Jongen on 3 February 1946. When Fr. Jongen asked Lúcia when the time would arrive for the Third Secret, Lúcia responded, “I communicated the third part in a letter to the Bishop of Leiria.” Also, Canon Galamba, an advisor to the Bishop of Leiria, is quoted as saying, “When the bishop refused to open the letter, Lucy made him promise that it would definitely be opened and read to the world either at her death or in 1960, whichever came first.” Also, the Vatican press release from 1960 announcing that the Third Secret would probably never be revealed was written with the following words: “… it is most likely that the letter will never be opened, in which Sister Lucy wrote down the words which Our Lady confided as a secret to the three shepherds of the Cova da Iria.”
Contains words attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary
The text of the Third Secret released by the Vatican contains no words attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to the 1960 Vatican press release on the Third Secret cited above, “Sister Lucy wrote down the words which Our Lady confided as a secret …”. Some sources assert that the Third Secret most likely begins with the words, “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc”, words which Lúcia included in her Fourth Memoir, but which are included only as a footnote to the text released by the Vatican. In addition, evidence shows that Fr. Joseph Schweigl was sent by Pope Pius XII to interrogate Lúcia about the Third Secret on 2 September 1952. The day after the interview, Fr. Schweigl is reported to have stated the following: “I cannot reveal anything of what I learned at Fatima concerning the Third Secret, but I can say that it has two parts: one concerns the Pope; the other logically (although I must say nothing) would have to be the continuation of the words: ‘In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.’ “Contains information about the Apocalypse, apostasy, Satanic infiltration of the Church
According to Jacob Mathew in the commentary accompanying the text of the Third Secret released by the Vatican, “Those who expected exciting apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the future course of history are bound to be disappointed. Fatima does not satisfy our curiosity in this way …”. Some critics see this as contradicting a considerable amount of evidence in the record, including previous testimony by Cardinal Ratzinger himself. In an interview published in the 11 November 1984 edition of Jesus Magazine, Cardinal Ratzinger was asked whether he had read the text of the Third Secret and why it had not been revealed.
Ratzinger acknowledged that he had read the Third Secret, and stated in part that the Third Secret involves the “importance of the novissimi”, and “dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian and therefore (the life) of the world.” Ratzinger also commented that, “If it is not made public – at least for the time being – it is in order to prevent religious prophecy from being mistaken for a quest for the sensational.”
Also, a news article quoted former Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, Howard Dee, as saying that Cardinal Ratzinger had personally confirmed to him that the messages of Akita and Fatima are “essentially the same.”The Akita prophecy, in part, contains the following: “The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate Me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres … churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.”
Father Charles Fiore, in a taped interview, made the following remarks with regard to Cardinal Ratzinger’s various statements about the Third Secret: “We have two different Cardinal Ratzingers; we have two different messages. But Malachi Martin was consistent all the way through; he believed that the Third Secret of Fatima had to do […] with the internal problems of the Catholic Church.” On a syndicated radio broadcast, Father Malachi Martin was asked the following question by a caller: “I had a Jesuit priest tell me more of the Third Secret of Fatima years ago, in Perth.
He said, among other things, the last pope would be under control of Satan… Any comment on that?” Fr. Martin responded, “Yes, it sounds as if they were reading, or being told, the text of the Third Secret. But it’s sufficiently vague to make one hesitate— it sounds like it.” In a taped interview with Bernard Janzen, Fr. Martin was asked the following question: “Who are the people who are working so hard to suppress Fatima?” Fr. Martin responded, “A bunch, a whole bunch, of Catholic prelates in Rome, who belong to Satan. They’re servants of Satan. And the servants of Satan outside the Church, in various organizations; they want to destroy the Catholicism of the Church, and keep it as a stabilizing factor in human affairs. It’s an alliance. A dirty alliance, a filthy alliance, but a very good alliance.” In the same interview, Fr. Martin also said with respect to Lúcia that, “They’ve (The Vatican) published forged letters in her name; they’ve made her say things she didn’t want to say. They put statements on her lips she never made.”
On 13 May 2000, Cardinal Sodano announced that the Third Secret would be released, during which he implied the secret was about the persecution of Christians in the 20th century that culminated in the failed assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981. However, other theologians believe that the secret concerns an apostasy of cardinals, bishops and priests. For instance, Cardinal Ciappi, personal theologian to Pope John Paul II, is quoted by sources as saying, “In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.” In addition, on a syndicated radio broadcast, Fr. Malachi Martin stated that the Third Secret “doesn’t make any sense unless we accept that there will be, or that there is in progress, a wholesale apostasy amongst clerics, and laity in the Catholic Church …”.
In a 1980 interview for the German magazine Stimme des Glaubens published in October 1981, John Paul II was asked explicitly to speak about the third secret. He said: “Because of the seriousness of its contents, in order not to encourage the world wide power of Communism to carry out certain coups, my predecessors in the chair of Peter have diplomatically preferred to withhold its publication. On the other hand, it should be sufficient for all Christians to know this much: if there is a message in which 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… there is no longer any point in really wanting to publish this secret message. Many want to know merely out of curiosity, or because of their taste for sensationalism, but they forget that ‘to know’ implies for them a responsibility. It is dangerous to want to satisfy one’s curiosity only, if one is convinced that we can do nothing against a catastrophe that has been predicted.” He held up his rosary and stated “Here is the remedy against this evil. Pray, pray and ask for nothing else.
Put everything in the hands of the Mother of God.” Asked what would happen in the Church, he said: “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, and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because it is only in this way that the Church can be effectively renewed. How many times, indeed, has the renewal of the Church been effected in blood? This time, again, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong, we must prepare ourselves, we must entrust ourselves to Christ and to His holy Mother, and we must be attentive, very attentive, to the prayer of the Rosary.”
Lúcia herself is reported to have explicitly stated that the Third Secret contains Apocalyptic content. According to one source, when Lúcia was asked about the Third Secret, she said it was “in the Gospels and in the Apocalypse”, and at one point she had even specified Apocalypse chapters 8 to 13, a range that includes Apocalypse 12:4, the chapter and verse cited by Pope John Paul II in his homily in Fatima on 13 May 2000.
Cardinal Bertone’s response to criticism
The Vatican has maintained its position that the full text of the Third Secret was published in June 2000. A report from the Zenit Daily Dispatch dated 20 December 2001, based on a Vatican press release, claimed that Lúcia told then Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, in an interview conducted the previous month, that the secret has been completely revealed and published, and that no secrets remain. Bertone, along with Cardinal Ratzinger, co-authored The Message of Fatima,[8] the document published in June 2000 by the Vatican that contains a scanned copy of the original text of the Third Secret.
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Cardinal Bertone.

Bertone, who was elevated to cardinal in 2003 and currently holds the position of Vatican Secretary of State, wrote a book titled, The Last Secret of Fatima, published first in Italian under a different title in 2007, and then subsequently in English. The book contains a transcribed interview between journalist Giuseppe De Carli and Bertone in which Bertone responds to various criticisms and accusations regarding the content and disclosure of the Third Secret. At one point in the interview, De Carli comments on an unsourced accusation that the Vatican is concealing a one-page text of the Third Secret which predicts a great apostasy where Rome will “lose the faith and become the throne of the Antichrist.”

Bertone responds as follows:

That’s absolutely crazy. Look, are you claiming that the prophecy of Fatima is about the apostasy of the Church of Rome? That Fatima is a prediction of Rome’s transformation into the throne of the Antichrist? Despite the love Our Lady has for the Pope and the Popes for Our Lady? Anyone can write books based on conspiracy theories, on biased interpretations. Anybody can take sentences out of context and present them as clues to some supposed plot to avoid divulging the truth and to transmit it in a code that only the initiates can understand. No, the whole theory you allude to is a fabrication. And this supposedly factual account is actually the sort of device the Masons used to invent to discredit the Church. I’m surprised that journalists and writers who claim to be Catholic let themselves be taken in.
At another point in the interview, De Carli mentions that Cardinal Ottaviani had once stated that the Third Secret was written on a single sheet of paper. He also mentions that one of Lúcia’s memoirs contains the words, “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved etc”, words which some believe introduce the real Third Secret. After the interviewer interjects his own opinion and calls these observations “feeble bits of evidence that neither prove nor disprove anything”, he asks Cardinal Bertone about the possibility of there being two texts, where the “first document” contains the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the other contains the description of the vision published by the Vatican. Bertone answers in part, “There is no first document. There never was any such text in the archives of the Holy Office.” Bertone also says, “So I’m not sure what Cardinal Ottaviani was talking about.” Bertone also states that, “We have the word, better, the official confirmation of Sister Lúcia: ‘Is this the Third Secret, and is this the only text of it?’ ‘Yes, this is the Third Secret, and I never wrote any other’.”
Later on in the interview, Bertone again addresses the question as to whether a text exists with words attributed to the Blessed Virgin that was censored: “The part of the text where the Virgin speaks in the first person wasn’t censored, for the simple reason that it never existed. …I’m basing my statement on Sister Lucia’s own direct confirmation that the Third Secret is none other than the text that was published in the year 2000.”
Continuing criticism and controversy
Cardinal Bertone has been accused of lying about the content of the Third Secret in his book, The Last Secret of Fatima, and also in televised appearances. After Bertone’s book was published, Italian journalist Antonio Socci published an article titled Dear Cardinal Bertone: Who—between you and me—is Deliberately Lying? Catholic attorney Christopher Ferrara wrote an entire book called The Secret Still Hidden (content available online) aimed at exposing and debunking the claims of Cardinal Bertone with respect to Fatima. The book contains an appendix entitled 101 Grounds for Doubting Cardinal Bertone’s Account. For example, Ferrara asserts that Bertone has given at least five different versions of Lúcia’s alleged acceptance of the interpretation of the vision published by the Vatican in 2000.
An article published in Catholic World News on 27 September 2007 reports that Italian journalists Antonio Socci and Solideo Paolini “produced a tape recording in which Archbishop Loris Capovilla, who once served as private secretary to Pope John XXIII, revealed that there were two texts of the Third Secret.” An article dated just two weeks earlier quotes Archbishop Capovilla as saying, “There are not two truths from Fatima and nor is there any fourth secret. The text which I read in 1959 is the same that was distributed by the Vatican.” Capovilla is also quoted as saying, “I have had enough of these conspiracy theories. It just isn’t true. I read it, I presented it to the Pope and we destroyed the envelope.

Third Secret of Fatima is Unfolding

The Message of our Lady of Akita

The Lady of Akita Prophecy

In 1984, just before retiring at a venerable age, the diocesan Bishop of Niigata, Bishop John Shojiro Ito, in consultation with the Holy See, wrote a pastoral letter in which he recognized as being authentically of the Mother of God, the extraordinary series of events that had taken place from 1973 to 1981 in a little lay convent within his diocese, at Akita, Japan. Cardinal Radzinger, former Pope Benedict XVI, in June 1988, approved the Akita events as “reliable and worthy of belief”. In fact the Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, in 1998 spoke to Cardinal Ratzinger about Akita and the Cardinal: “Personally confirmed to me that these two messages of Fatima and Akita are essentially the same“. Hence in Akita (Akita is also an Astroid!) we are dealing with a Church approved intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary as sure in this respect as Lourdes, La Salette, or Fatima.

Only a few Catholics know of Our Lady of Akita but the message, like that of Fatima, is a specific warning of worldwide chastisement. The chastisement threatened is truly terrible – far worse than the possibility of annihilation of several nations prophesied at Fatima. Akita is absolutely consistent with prophecies of Scripture.

The first message received by Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa on June 6, 1973, was a call for prayer and sacrifice for the glory of the Father and salvation of souls. The second message, August 3, 1973, was for prayer, penance and courageous sacrifices to soften the Father’s anger.

The third message on October 13, 1973, the actual anniversary of the final visions and miracle of Fatima is as follows: “As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead.

The only arms which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by my Son. Each day, recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and the priests. The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, and bishops against other bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their Confreres. The Church and altars will be vandalized. The Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.

“The demon will rage especially against souls consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many souls is the cause of my sadness. If sins increase in number and gravity, there will no longer be pardon for them.” In his pastoral letter approving the events of Akita as supernatural, the Bishop of Niigata said: “After the inquiries conducted up to the present day, one cannot deny the supernatural character of a series of unexplainable events relative to the statue of the Virgin honored at Akita (Diocese of Niigata). Consequently I authorize that all of the diocese entrusted to me venerate the Holy Mother of Akita.”

Concerning the messages, His Excellency said: “As for the content of the messages received, it is no way contrary to Catholic doctrine or to good morals. When one thinks of the actual state of the world, the warning seems to correspond to it in many points.” His Excellency explained that he had taken eight years to give this judgment because of the importance and the responsibility in question. “The Congregation of the Doctrine for the Faith has given me directives in this sense,” the Bishop said, “that only the bishop of the diocese in question has the power to recognize an event of this kind.”

The events of Akita have been confirmed by definite miracles, two of which are cited by the Bishop in his pastoral letter. While the warning given by Our Lady at Akita is terrible, the message, as the Bishop points out, is basically a repetition of the Message of Fatima. Our Lady stressed the importance of praying the Rosary, and above all of accepting from God whatever He may send in the course of each day . . . whatever suffering . . . and to offer it up in reparation for so many sins committed throughout the world at this time.

Our Lady begged especially for prayers for bishops, priests, and religious, and for reparation before the Blessed Sacrament. Our Lady said: “I have prevented the coming of calamities by offering to the Father, together with all the victim souls who console Him, the sufferings endured by the Son on the Cross, by His blood and by His very loving Soul. Prayer, penance, and courageous sacrifices can appease the anger of the Father.”

To the little religious community where Our Lady gave the messages, she asked that it “live in poverty, sanctify itself and pray in reparation for the ingratitude and the outrages of so many men.”

The apparitions and events in Akita, Japan, center around a three foot high statue of Our Lady with a Japanese face in the chapel of the Eucharistic Handmaids of the Sacred Heart. These supernatural happenings also involve Sr. Agnes Sasagawa, one of the Sisters in the convent, to whom Our Lady gave Her messages. Sister had been very ill, requiring about 20 operations.

The Message of our Lady of Akita

When the apparitions began, she was nearly deaf. On June 12, 1973, when she opened the tabernacle for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, a very strong light came from it and filled the entire chapel. This happened for three days. When Sister asked the other Sisters if they had seen anything out of the ordinary, they said no.

This strong light also came from the tabernacle on the feast of Corpus Christi. When Sr. Sasagawa told the Bishop of Akita (who was visiting the convent on the feast) of this, he advised her to keep it in her heart. On the Vigil of the Feast of the Sacred Heart that same year, Sr. Sasagawa’s guardian angel appeared to her and asked her to pray the Fatima decade prayer* after each decade of the Rosary.

In 1973 this prayer was not well known in Japan and Sister had trouble understanding it, but the Sisters began to recite the prayer and it has now spread throughout Japan. (* O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have the most need of Thy mercy. Amen.)

On the same occasion as the apparition of her guardian angel, a wound in the form of a cross appeared in the hollow of Sr. Sasagawa’s left hand and began to bleed. The bleeding ended on the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The following Friday, the wound bled and stopped the next day. This continued for a month. Sister’s guardian angel later spoke to her in chapel. Although nearly deaf, she heard the angel saying: “Pray not only for yourself, but for the people of all nations. The world today is wounding the Sacred Heart of Jesus through so much sin and ingratitude.”

After hearing this, Sister heard a voice come from the statue in the chapel: “My daughter, you obeyed me very well; you have renounced everything. This deafness is a great suffering for you. Have patience; you will be healed. It is a trial. Pray in reparation for all people. Pray much for the Holy Father, for the bishops and the priests.”

On July 6, 1973, a bleeding wound appeared on the right hand of the statue of Our Lady in the chapel. On other days, the face of the statue bled. Sister’s guardian angel told her: “This flowing of blood is significant. It will be shed for the conversion of men and in reparation for sins. To the devotion to the Sacred Heart add the devotion to the Precious Blood.” Other messages followed. About a month after seeing the wound in the right hand of Our Lady’s statue, Sr. Sasagawa heard: “My daughter, if you love Our Lord, listen to me.

Many people in the world grieve Our Lord. I ask for souls who will console Him, and who will make reparation. The Heavenly Father is preparing a great punishment for the world. Many times I have tried with my Son to soften the anger of the Father. I presented to Him many atoning souls who make reparation by prayers and sacrifices. That is what I ask of you. Honor poverty. Live poorly. You must keep your vows, which are like three nails to nail you to the Cross – the nails of poverty, chastity, and obedience.”

Beginning on September 20, 1973, the statue began to sweat from the face to the feet. Tears began to flow down the face. Also, a very pleasant odor was felt in the chapel. This happened many times in the presence of others, including the Bishop. In all, the statue wept a total of 101 times. On October 13, 1973, Our Lady gave Sister Sasagawa this serious message: “As I said before if mankind does not repent, the Heavenly Father will inflict a very serious punishment on the whole world; a punishment the likes of which has never happened before. Many people will perish. Pray the Rosary often.

Only I can prevent the disaster. Whoever entrusts themselves to me will be saved.” The statue continued to weep and other messages followed. Pilgrims came and many received answers to their prayers. Then, in 1981, Theresa Chon, who was suffering from terminal brain cancer, was miraculously healed through the intercession of Our Lady of Akita. This healing was well documented by Fr. Joseph Oh of Seoul, S. Korea.

In his pastoral letter, Bishop Ito said that it would have been difficult to believe in a message from Our Lady that is so terrible, unless there was overwhelming proof that it was indeed from Her. But he points out that the terrible chastisement of which Our Lady speaks is on the condition: “If men do not repent and do not better themselves . . .” The Bishop added it is a serious warning, while at the same time one perceives in it the maternal love of Our Lady. In Her message warning the world of the annihilation of a great part of humanity, She said: “The thought of the loss of numerous souls makes me sad.”

How do we repent and better ourselves? Repentance is a “sorrow of heart and detestation for sin committed with the resolution not to sin again.” (Trent.sess.xiv,chap.4). Once mortal sin has been committed, an act of contrition must be genuine, must comprise all mortal sins committed, must spring from a motive that has reference to God and include a hatred of sin as the greatest of evils (this is the common teaching of theologians). Contrition is termed perfect when it arises from the pure love of God; by perfect contrition, sin is forgiven even before it is manifested in the sacrament of Penance, though the obligation of confession remains.

What are the sins most prevalent today which are calling down God’s wrath upon us? We see wholesale violations of the first three Commandments. The first Commandment: I am the Lord Thy God, thou shalt not have strange Gods before me”. In summary, we find in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, The Catechism of Pope St. Pius X and the Baltimore Catechism, that the First Commandment forbids idolatry, superstition, spiritism, tempting God, sacrilege and sins against Faith by apostasy, heresy, indifferentism and by taking part in non-Catholic worship.” By taking part in non-Catholic worship! This, indeed, is a powerful indictment against the present ecumenical practice that has swept through and disfigured the Church since the Second Vatican Council.

The Second Commandment forbids using the Lord’s Name in vain (blasphemy). If we consult the Catechism of the Council of Trent’s treatment of the Second Commandment, it teaches that those who support heresy, and “distort the Sacred Scriptures from their genuine and true meaning,” are guilty of sins against the Second Commandment. Thus, those who distort the message of Scripture, namely Protestants, are in the objective order, guilty of this sin, because their perversion of Sacred Scripture is irreverence to the Holy Word of God.

The Third Commandment deals with keeping holy the Sabbath Day. It is evident for all to see that Sunday has become a day of business as usual. People doing unnecessary work, places of business opened with people shopping without any regard to the Third Commandment which strictly forbids all unnecessary work and doing business on Sunday.

The Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill. We see a blatant disregard for this Commandment in the slaughter of over 3500 babies every day by abortion with very, very few doing anything to bring about an end to this human carnage.

Now we come to the Sixth Commandment, which violation causes more souls to go to Hell than any of the other Ten Commandments. The Sixth Commandment is transgressed in some of the following ways: fornication, homosexuality or sodomy (Rom. 1:27) (2nd Peter 2:6) (St. Jude 1:7), and the separation of spouses (“divorce”) which many times leads to adultery especially if either of the two spouses remarry (Mark 10:11, 12) (Matt. 19:6) (1 Cor. 7:10,11).   We see the Sixth Commandment horribly violated by immodest dress. Modesty and purity have practically vanished from our society (1 Tim.2:9-10).

This impending chastisement can be averted if enough people pray the Rosary daily and do penance which Our Lady requested at Fatima in 1917. We urge you to order large quantities of this brochure for circulation at Catholic Churches. After you have read this urgent message please pass it on to others.