The Last Secret of Fatima: My Conversations With Sister Lucia

Product Description Foreword by Pope Benedict XVI. With an introduction by Pope Benedict XVI and including information previously suppressed, the Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone, definitively reveals and explains one of the most controversial events in twentieth-century Catholicism--the 1917 apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima. During World War I, three Portuguese children received a vision in which Mary, the Mother of God, foretold great global turmoil. The first part of their vision--warnings about World War II, communism, and the spread of atheism--were widely publicized, but Vatican officials were hesitant to reveals the vision's concluding images, thus creating the "secret" of Fatima. Speculation about this secret gripped many Catholics, and the aura of intrigue surrounding Fatima grew when the Church hierarchy barred the last surviving visionary from speaking publicly. In The Last Secret of Fatima, Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican equirvalent of prime minister and a top advisor to Pope Benedict, breaks the Vatican's official silence on the last secret. Rather than Armageddon, he claims, the final prophecy envisaged the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Bertone argues the apparition at Fatima was a call to renewal for the Church, and he was assigned the task of promulgating this message by the Pope. Review The apparition of Mary, the mother of Christ, to three children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917 has long fascinated Roman Catholics and others intrigued by the vision s prophetic messages, particularly the so-called Third Secret. Journalist [Giuseppe] De Carli explores the meaning of the visions and puts them in historical context in this extended interview with Cardinal Bertone, the high-ranking Vatican official charged with verifying the last secret. Before its release in 2000, Bertone met with the only surviving visionary, Sister Lucia, for confirmation. In subsequent meetings before her death, Bertone gained her assurance that no further secrets remained. The book also discusses the significance of the visions to the late Pope John Paul II, who believed his assassination attempt was foretold in the last secret and emphasized the vision s essential purpose of calling people to conversion. Included are a chronology, theological commentary written by Pope Benedict XVI when he was head of the Vatican Congregation for the doctrine of the Faith and the last secret text. --Publishers Weekly About the Author Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone was Pope Benedict XVI’s Secretary of State. In 2000, he was sent to Fatima by Pope John Paul II to prepare for the release of the long-awaited “final secret.”