Where you do yourself see a possible danger in the future?
Michael Hesemann: The danger I see for the future, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the promised conversion of Russia, is a chastisement to which only the name “Fatima” refers: it comes through Islam. Our Lady invited us obviously to pray for the conversion of the Muslims now, to follow the example of the historical princess Fatima. The scenario of the Third Secret might refer to the ongoing persecution of Christians in the Islamic world, maybe even a terror attack on Rome, with the Pope as its main victim. Our Lady obviously sees all of Europe in danger, since she stressed that only in Portugal, “the Dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.”
Hickson: What do you think are the errors of Russia that Our Lady of Fatima spoke of? And how will Portugal always preserve the doctrine of the Faith?
Hesemann: The errors of Russia – better translated: the erroneous teachings of Russia – were of course atheistic Communism. That becomes clear out of the context that this revelation [and message of Fatima] took place in the year of the October Revolution [1917]. The apparitions in Fatima practically started at the same time when Lenin entered St. Petersburg, and they ended only a few days before the outbreak of the October Revolution. Portugal, which was nearly completely dominated by Freemasons in 1917, recovered and returned to the Catholic Faith. It was spared from the Spanish Civil War just the same as the Second World War. I think it will also be spared from Islamification.
Hickson: Do you not think that parts of that atheistic Communism which excludes any reference to God and His moral laws – for example about marriage and life – are still with us today?
Hesemann: Our Lady of Fatima promised the conversion of Russia, which indeed took place. But unfortunately Communism still exists in North Korea and China as well as in the dominating ideology of the West. The sad truth is that, although Russia converted, although we became witnesses of the greatest miracle in history, the West lost its faith. Now we have to pray for the conversion of Western Europe and the U.S.!
Hickson: In the context of the recent publication of the 1918 letter addressed to Archbishop Pacelli which talks about the Freemasonic plan to destroy Christianity, do you think this plan still exists, and do you see a connection to the current Islamic threat?
Hesemann: Of course the Freemasons use Islam today just as they made use of Bolshevism in 1917. The mass immigration in Europe is, after all, clearly politically steered – among others by the high-grade Freemason George Soros and his political puppets. What they were not able to achieve with Communism, shall now be implemented with the help of Islam!
Hickson: To come back to the Third Secret of Fatima. Is it true that Church historians still do not have access to the Vatican documents and files concerning the Third Secret of Fatima, even after the year 2000?
Hesemann: The Third Secret of Fatima was sent to Rome in 1957, during the Pontificate of Pope Pius XII. The Archives are only open by now up to the end of the Pontificate of Pius XI, until 1939. We expect that the “Section Pius XII” in the Vatican Archives will open soon, but it is still not certain if they start with the years of World War II, with the second half of his Pontificate following later, or if it takes longer until all documents up to1958 become available for historical research. There are no exemptions, so the Fatima documents are just treated like all the others, too.
Hickson: Do you believe that the Third Secret of Fatima has been fully published?
Hesemann: The Third Secret has been completely published, that’s for sure. But keep in mind that Sister Lucia wrote several letters to the Popes – to Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul II, and of course there might be one or the other reference to, or even her explanation, of the Third Secret among them. That is very well possible. The Third Secret has been completely published, but of course not the letters of Sister Lucia to the popes. Maybe we will find them in the Positio, among the 12,000 pages sent to the Vatican for examination in her beatification process, or we have to wait until the files from the Pontificate of John Paul II are available for historical research, which indeed will take some time. Regarding the Third Secret, I myself have requested a professional examination of its handwriting when it was published in 2000, and the expert, a German forensic graphologist, concluded that it was indeed Sister Lucia’s handwriting. However, that particular document was written under a certain degree of tension, not in her usual day-to-day handwriting, which indicates that she took it extremely seriously and was highly concentrated when she wrote it down. This was later confirmed by her own spiritual diary, when she noted that she wrote it down on her knees!
Hickson: According to a new book written about Sister Lucia by the Sisters of Coimbra (A Pathway Under the Gaze of Mary: Biography of Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart, 2015), it seems that Sister Lucia was ordered by the Blessed Mother to first only write down the vision of the Third Secret, but not yet the explanation. Patrick Archbold reported in 2014 about this new revelation which is based on selective quotes from Sister Lucia, as follows: “It is ‘the Mother of Heaven’ who says to her [Lucia]: ‘be at peace and write what they order you, but not what has been given you to understand its meaning’ intending to allude to the meaning of the vision that the Virgin herself had revealed to her.” [emphasis added] What is the reason why the Vatican authorities have not yet published the explanation of the Third Secret, written by Sister Lucia, as they have done it with the First and Second Secret of Fatima (each containing a vision and an explanation of its meaning)?
Hesemann: Well, first of all we don’t know if she ever wrote down what she learned about its meaning and whether she sent it to the Vatican. But, even if she did so, it is well possible that Sister Lucia’s interpretation of the Third Secret is problematic or could cause some sensationalism. We know that she was sure there would have been a nuclear war in 1985 which was only prevented by the consecration of Russia and the World to the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady on 25 March 1984. We all most probably agree on the fact that the official interpretation of the Third Secret as published in the year 2000 is a rather optimistic one. Of course the Church hesitates to publish alarming messages to avoid any sensationalism. And it certainly does not like to publish frightening apocalyptic messages. Take for example the original transcripts of the Great Secret of La Salette, which were, after all, sent to the Vatican already in 1851. They were only re-discovered accidentally in the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – and that in the year 1999!
Hickson: What would you say was the alarming part of the message of La Salette?
Hesemann: A persecution of the Church and the Holy Father, the destruction of Paris and Marseilles, the birth of the antichrist and “hell on Earth.” Should we take it seriously? Well, it also announces the election of a pope “nobody expected” and that “they will try to kill him but do not succeed, since the vicar of God will this time be triumphant” which sounds very much like the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981. It also mentions that “a great country in the North of France … will convert; with the support of this country all nations of the world will convert.” Let’s hope that this refers to the conversion of Russia and its role in the future.
Hickson: You published the new book on Fatima in 2016 and were not able then to include the information that is to be found in the new 2015 biography of Sister Lucia written by the Coimbra Sisters. What would you say is the pertinent new information that comes to us from that new biography? What would you now add to your new book if you could?
Hesemann: Certainly the fascinating information we find in Sr. Lucia’s spiritual diary on the circumstances of her attempt to write down the Third Secret. For days she prayed in the chapel of her monastery in front of the Tabernacle for a sign from Our Lady to let her know if it is the will of God that she follows the order of her bishop. Eventually, on January 3rd, 1944, she “felt a friendly, affectionate and motherly hand” touch her in the shoulder. She looked up and “saw the beloved Mother from Heaven” who ordered her to write it down, “seal it and write on the outside that this can be opened in 1960 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon or by the Bishop of Leiria.” In this moment she received another vision, a vision which places the Third Secret even clearer into the context of a third world war: “The tip of the spear as a flame unlatches and touches the axis of the earth. It shudders. Mountains, cities, towns and villages with their inhabitants are buried. The sea, the rivers, and the clouds emerge from their limit, overflowing and bringing with them in a whirlwind houses and people in numbers that are not possible to count. It is the purification of the world because of sin as it plunges. Hatred and ambition cause the destructive war.” This horrible vision was interrupted by the gentle voice of Mary: “In time, one faith, one baptism, one Church, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. In eternity, Heaven!”…
Hickson: In your first Fatima book – written in 1997, before the official publication of the Third Secret of Fatima in 2000 – you tried to predict the Third Secret’s message and content. What was your prediction, and did you also mention the speech which Pope John Paul II gave in Fulda in 1980 concerning the content of the Third Secret?
Hesemann: Of course I mentioned Pope John Paul II’s alleged statement in Fulda which could be explained as a reference to the 1978 article published in the Osservatore Romano right before the Conclave when he was elected as Pope. This article was written by Msgr. Corrado Balducci and quoted an apocryphical version of the Third Secret, published by the Swiss journalist Louis Emrich in 1963. On the other hand, the alleged statement of the Pope speaks of the Third Secret as of “a message in which it is written that the oceans will flood whole areas of the earth, and that from one moment to the next millions of people will perish,” which reminds us of Sister Lucia’s vision on 3 January 1944 which I just quoted. We will never know if this is a coincidence or what John Paul II might have already learned. We know that he read the Third Secret only after the assassination attempt, but we can’t exclude the possibility that Sr. Lucia wrote him before.
In 1997, I came to the conclusion in my book that the Third Secret consists of two parts: one part which warns against a third world war, and another part which deals with the crisis of the Church in our present time.
Maybe Sister Lucia saw it the same way. Maybe for her, the soldiers which appeared behind the Cross and shot bullets and arrows on the Holy Father and the bishops and faithful were not assassins but spiritual attacks; keep in mind that arrows are a rather old-fashioned weapon not used by terrorists or foreign armies, but an old symbol for spiritual attacks. Maybe there was in her explanation something like: “all this happened because the Faith and the prayers have gotten too weak.” Perhaps that is also what Pope Benedict XVI referred to when he spoke during the flight to Fatima in 2010 about the “attacks against the pope and the Church” which “do not come only from the outside, but … especially from within, from sin which exists in the Church.” Who knows, maybe he even quoted here one of the commentaries of Sister Lucia? We can only speculate.
Hickson: That means that you have not been able to find much out about what Sister Lucia herself wrote in her interpretation of the vision? And, what was the basis for your speculation in 1997 that the Third Secret would speak about a crisis in the Church? Is this aspect to be found in the Third Secret as it has been published in 2000? And do we know more specifics about this crisis of Faith?
Hesemann: In my book of 1997, I quoted all available statements by Cardinals about the (possible) content of the Third Secret, and of course the crisis of the Church came up several times. This was caused by the last sentence of the Second part of the Secret: “In Portugal, the Dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, etc.” It was speculated that this indicated a loss of faith in other parts of Europe. And yes, this is what we experience today. Everything we read in the Third Secret, the destruction of whole cities and the persecution of Christians, the suffering of the Pope who represents the Church itself, warns us of the consequences of our sins.
Hickson: As a concluding question. Do you as a Fatima expert wish that Rome would release Sister Lucia’s own diary as well as her explanation of the Third Secret of Fatima as she sent it to the pope?
Hesemann: Of course I would love to get the last pieces of the mosaic which is nothing less than God’s most powerful intervention into human history since the times of Christ and the Apostles. Certainly it will all be part of the Positio [summary of the documentation of the cause] of her beatification process, so we have the chance, at least, to learn it all in our lifetimes, given that we live long enough…