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- VATICAN CITY (Reuters)
- The Vatican said on Monday that it will publish the details of the Third
Secret of Fatima, described as a vision that predicted the assassination
attempt on Pope John Paul.
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- A copy of the text of the secret and a commentary by
the Vatican's most senior doctrinal official, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
will be published on June 26 and explained at a news conference.
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- During a visit to the Portuguese town of Fatima last
month, the Vatican said the text contained predictions of the attempt to
kill the Pope on May 13, 1981, and the persecution of Christianity under
communism in the 20th century.
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- Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano revealed the
broad outlines of the secret at a mass where the Pope beatified two of
the three shepherd children said to have seen Madonna at Fatima in 1917
and received her message.
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- In the 1940s, Lucia dos Santos, a frail, 93-year-old
nun who is the only survivor of the three visionaries, wrote down what
she recalled about the vision.
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- Her text was sent to Rome but a succession of Popes decided
not to reveal it.
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- Before the Vatican's recent disclosure, the secret had
intrigued the world for decades. It inspired books, doomsday cults convinced
that it predicted the end of the world and even a hijacking.
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- A Vatican source said that in order to avoid possible
accusations that it was not revealing everything, it would publish a photocopy
of what Sister Lucia wrote by hand in Portuguese about her vision.
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- "IMMENSE SUFFERING" FORESEEN IN TEXT
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- The text and translation would be accompanied by a commentary
to help the faithful understand its significance.
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- Sodano told worshippers in Fatima last month that the
"vision of Fatima" concerned events in the 20th century, including
the "war waged by atheist systems against the Church" and the
"immense suffering" of Christians and the Popes in the last century
of the second millennium.
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- Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot and nearly killed
the Pope in St Peter's Square at a time when events in the Pope's Polish
homeland were starting the domino effect that would lead to the collapse
of communism in Eastern Europe.
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- Last week, Italy's president pardoned Agca, who was serving
a life sentence. He was then extradited to his homeland after serving more
than 19 years in Italian prisons.
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- Sodano said the secret involved a vision of martyrdom
and suffering, including a "bishop clothed in white" who "makes
his way with great effort towards the Cross amid the corpses of those who
were martyred. He too falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst
of gunfire."
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- The cardinal said that after the assassination attempt
"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."
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- This vision is known as the third and previously unknown
part of the secret. The first and second parts were well known.
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- The first part of the Madonna's message was a vision
of hell shown to the children. In the second part, Mary is said to have
predicted the outbreak of World War Two some 22 years before it started,
asked for devotion to her Immaculate Heart and asked that Russia, which
was about to undergo the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, be consecrated to
her.
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