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Brothers and Sisters in the Lord!

At the conclusion of this solemn celebration, I feel bound to offer to our beloved Holy Father John Paul II, on behalf of all present, heartfelt good wishes for his approaching Eightieth Birthday and to thank him for his significant pastoral ministry for the good of all God’s Holy Church.

On the solemn occasion of his visit to Fatima, His Holiness has directed me to make an announcement to you. As you know, the purpose of his visit to Fatima has been to beatify the two "little shepherds". Nevertheless he also wishes his pilgrimage to be a renewed gesture of gratitude to Our Lady for her protection during these years of his papacy. This protection seems also to be linked to the so-called "third part" of the secret of Fatima.

That text contains a prophetic vision similar to those found in Sacred Scripture, which do not describe with photographic clarity the details of future events, but rather synthesize and condense against a unified background events spread out over time in a succession and a duration which are not specified. As a result, the text must be interpreted in a symbolic key.

The vision of Fatima concerns above all the war waged by atheist systems against the Church and Christians, and it describes the immense suffering endured by the witnesses to the faith in the last century of the second millennium. It is an interminable Way of the Cross led by the Popes of the twentieth century.

According to the interpretation of the "little shepherds", which was also recently confirmed by Sister Lucia, the "Bishop clothed in white" who prays for all the faithful is the Pope. As he makes his way with great effort towards the Cross amid the corpses of those who were martyred (Bishops, priests, men and women religious and many lay persons), he too falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire.

After the assassination attempt of 13 May 1981, it appeared evident to His Holiness that it was "a motherly hand which guided the bullet’s path", enabling the "dying Pope" to halt "at the threshold of death" (Pope John Paul II. Meditation with the Italian Bishops from the Policlinico Gemelli, Insegnamenti, vol XVII/1, 1994, p. 1061). On the occasion of a visit to Rome by the then Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, the Pope decided to give him the bullet which had remained in the jeep after the assassination attempt, so that it might be kept in the Shrine. At the behest of the Bishop, the bullet was later set in the crown of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.

The successive events of 1989 led, both in the Soviet Union and in a number of countries of Eastern Europe, to the fall of the Communist regime which promoted atheism. For this too His Holiness offers heartfelt thanks to the Most Holy Virgin. In other parts of the world, however, attacks against the Church and against Christians, together with the burden of suffering which they involve, tragically continue. Even if the events to which the third part of the Secret of Fatima refers now seem part of the past, Our Lady’s call to conversion and penance, issued at the beginning of the twentieth century, remains timely and urgent today. "The Lady of the message seems to read the signs of the times - the signs of our time - with special insight... The insistent invitation of Mary Most Holy to penance is nothing but the manifestation of her maternal concern for the fate of the human family, in need of conversion and forgiveness" (Pope John Paul II, Message for the 1997 World Day of the Sick, N. 1, Insegnamenti, vol XIX/2, 1996, p. 561).

In order that the faithful may better receive the message of Our Lady of Fatima, the Pope has charged the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with making public the third part of the secret, after the preparation of an appropriate commentary.

Let us thank Our Lady of Fatima for her protection. To her maternal intercession let us entrust the Church of the Third Millennium.

Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix!

Jacinta, Francesco, Lucia

VATICAN CITY (Reuters)

The Vatican published the "Third Secret of Fatima" Monday and assured the faithful it referred to a violent past rather than an apocalyptic future.

The gist of the secret -- said to have been told by the Madonna to three Portuguese shepherd children in 1917 -- predicted communism's persecution of Christianity in the 20th century and foretold the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul, the Vatican says.

But mostly, Vatican officials said, it pointed to the hope of a brighter future forged by the sufferings of the past.

"It encourages us by showing that even in a world which was half destroyed there is a greater force and death does not have the last word," said Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's doctrinal department.

Ratzinger, speaking at the presentation of a 43-page document called "The Vision of Fatima," said that by focusing the interpretation of the secret on the past, humanity could learn from it and be hopeful for the future.

SECRET HAD INSPIRED DOOMSDAY CULTS

Over the years, the Vatican's refusal to make the secret public has inspired books, doomsday cults convinced it predicted the end of the world, and even a hijacking.

The outlines of the secret were first disclosed on May 13 during the Pope's visit to Fatima.

The text was written in 1944 by Lucia dos Santos, now a 93-year-old nun who is the only survivor of the three children, but a succession of popes decided not to reveal it.

Asked if he believed there was now no great danger for the future, Ratzinger said:

"I think so. This (20th century) world of destruction, of violence, of wars finally culminating in the (papal) assassination attempt is the concrete and positive content of this vision and does not point to the course of future history."

He added: "At the end of a century and a millennium...we were able to propose this text to humanity and to the Church in a positive spirit. It indicates that we should use the power of love against the power of violence," he said.

Ratzinger also dismissed suggestions it could have been a prediction of a nuclear conflict.

"It intends to show on the one hand suffering, danger, threats...but also the possible response. The accent is on the response...threats and cruelty are pointed to in order to wake up humanity's conscience and be a call to the power of love and faith," he said.

In her recollection of the third part of the 1917 vision -- the first two parts already have been made public -- Sister Lucia says she and the other two children, Francisco and Jacinta, saw "an angel with a flaming sword."

They then saw "a bishop dressed in white (and) we had the impression that it was the Holy Father."

As the vision continued, the children saw the Pope "passing through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow (and) he prayed for the souls of corpses he met on his way..."

When the Pope reached the top of a mountain and was praying at the foot of a cross "he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him" as he and bishops, priests and nuns and other people "died one after the other."

Angels then "gathered up the blood of the martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls who were making their way to God."

Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot and nearly killed the Pope in St Peter's Square in 1981, a time when events in the Pope's Polish homeland were starting a domino effect which would lead to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

While the Pope was shot by a lone gunman, the Vatican said the vision was symbolic, had to be interpreted with hindsight and that Sister Lucia agreed with the interpretation.

The Pope believes the Madonna saved him from death by Agca's bullets, which were fired on the anniversary of one of the visions reportedly seen by the three shepherd children.

The first two parts of the secret concerned a vision of hell, the prediction of the outbreak of World War Two and a warning that Russia would "spread her errors" in the world.

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