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No new Fatima messages
Sister Lucia denies reports
Sister Lucia, the sole surviving Fatima seer, has not received any new messages from the Virgin Mary, and the “secret of Fatima” has now been revealed completely. That was the message of Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, in an interview on Portuguese radio.

Archbishop Bertone, the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was reacting to rumors that Sister Lucia—who now lives in a Carmelite convent in Coimbra, Portugal—had received new messages from the Virgin. The most common rumors have alleged that Sister Lucia had sent a private letter to Pope John Paul II regarding the terrorist attacks of September 11, or that she had complained that a part of the Fatima message was still being kept secret.

At the request of Pope John Paul and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Archbishop Bertone visited Sister Lucia at her convent in November. She told him “with absolute clarity and precision” that she had not been the source of these rumors. Sister Lucia flatly denied having spoken to the journalists or priests who have claimed to speak on her behalf.

The archbishop said that Sister Lucia is “very lively and lucid, despite the fact that she is about to celebrate her 95th birthday.” She left no doubt that she considered the Fatima message complete.

The “third secret of Fatima,” which had been the subject of wide speculation for decades, was made public by the Vatican on June 26, 2000, at the request of Pope John Paul II. The secret included a vision of “a bishop dressed in white”—presumably the Pope—who was shot during a widespread persecution of the Church. Pope John Paul said that the message was “an invitation for believers to pray very hard for peace in the world, and to do penance, to open their hearts to conversion.”

Back to Catholic World Report January 2002 Table of Contents