May 27, 2016, Friday — The Passing of Capovilla
Cardinal Loris Capovilla Passes Away At The Age Of 100
“There was a second envelope.” —The late Cardinal Loris Capovilla, speaking to me in his residence in Sotto il Monte in early 2007, when I asked him why the letter of the Third Secret of Fatima held up on Italian television by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone did not contain any writing. Capovilla told me that he had written on the envelope in August, 1959, when Capovilla, together with Pope John XXIII, read the Third Secret at Castel Gandolfo. Pope John told Capovilla to write on the envelope that the two had read the text that day, and that he, Pope John, had decided not to publish it but to leave it to one of his successors to publish. Capovilla did write those words on the envelope, he told me. Capovilla passed away yesterday in Italy at the age of 100. May his soul rest in peace, and may eternal light shine upon him.
“In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.” —Our Lady of Fatima, speaking to Sister Lucy, one of the three shepherd children who saw the Virgin in Fatima on six occasions in 1917, 99 years ago…
From the Mystery of the Third Secret of Fatima to the Resignation of Pope Benedict to the Prophecy of Russia’s Coming Conversion…
There are five stories that I am following at this time, all inter-related:
(1) the mystery surrounding the 40-year-delayed publication of the “Third Secret” of Fatima in the year 2000, and the recent controversy over whether something concerning that secret still needs to be clarified, which has become a matter of polemics in recent days, and has involved an unprecedented May 21 Vatican Press Office denial attributed to Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI (link and link);
(2) the true reason for the resignation of Pope Benedict from his Petrine office in 2013, and the true meaning and consequences of this resignation for the Church; this topic that has taken on new importance in recent days following the remarkable talk given by Archbishop Georg Gänswein on May 20 at the Gregorian University in Rome in which Gänswein said that Benedict, with the step he took on February 11, 2013, “has not abandoned this (Petrine) ministry” but, he said, “he has built a personal office with a collegial and synodal dimension, almost a communal ministry.” Gänswein stressed that since Francis’ election, there are not “two Popes, but de facto an expanded ministry — with an active member and a contemplative member.” He added that this is why Benedict XVI “has not given up his name,” unlike Pope Celestine V who reverted to his name Pietro da Marrone, “nor the white cassock.” (link and link)
(3) the true history of the drafting and publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia — it now appears that some of the most controversial passages in Chapter 8 were written and published almost word-for-word in essays in 2005 and 2006 by a friend and advisor of the Pope, Father Victor Manuel Fernandez, meaning that these passages of the text of the Exhortation were already prepared a decade ago (see following link) — and an interpretation of what this Exhortation means for the doctrinal and moral teaching of the Church (link and link);
(4) the reasons for the immigration into Europe of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, the strong and public support by Pope Francis for this immigration, the conversion to Christianity of some hundreds or thousands of these immigrants, and what all of this may mean for the future of the Church (link and link);
(5) the Fatima prophecy of the Virgin Mary to the three shepherd children that “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world,” and how this prophecy relates to the current geo-political situation in eastern Europe, in the Middle East, and throughout the world. (link and link)
Part 1: The Publication of the Third Secret
The first story concerns the publication of the Third Secret of Fatima by St. John Paul II in the year 2000.
I can add one small footnote to the general discussion.
Toward the end of 2006, in Rome, I met on via delle Fornaci, a few steps from St. Peter’s Square, at Eva’s coffee shop, to take a cup of coffee with Antonio Socci and Solideo Paolini.
Socci had just published a book entitled Il Quarto Segreto di Fatima (“The Fourth Secret of Fatima”).
In that book, Socci had argued that the text of the document of the Third Secret of Fatima published by the Vatican in the year 2000 was not the full text of the final secret.
There remained an unpublished text, the “fourth” secret, he had maintained.
Paolini had been one of Socci’s sources to support this argument.
Paolini had visited then-Archbishop Loris Capovilla on July 5, 2006, and had asked him a number of questions about the Third Secret of Fatima. (Capovilla died yesterday at the age of 100, and all of Italy is mourning the passing of this good man, who was the personal secretary of St. Pope John XXIII for 10 years, from 1953 to 1963, and then was the custodian of the memory of “Good Pope John.”)
A full account of Paolini’s meeting and correspondence with Capovilla is available here.
After our conversation, I decided to go to northern Italy, to Sotto il Monte, to speak with Capovilla myself. I telephoned Capovilla, made an appointment to see him, and rented a car to drive north from the Eternal City…
(to be continued)
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What is the glory of God?
“The glory of God is man alive; but the life of man is the vision of God.” —St. Irenaeus of Lyons, in the territory of France, in his great work Against All Heresies, written c. 180 A.D.
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