Benedict XVI in Fatima
At the end of March the Rosary Crusade launched by the Society of Saint Pius X was completed after collecting more than nineteen million rosaries. Benedict XVI will travel to Fatima on May 13 of this year.
In presenting the program for this pilgrimage to the press on May 4, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi recalled that the pope was going to the place “where events unfolded which he has dealt with personally and in depth, from the theological and spiritual point of view,” explaining that Cardinal Ratzinger authored the theological commentary that accompanied the document in which the third part of the secret of Fatima was “publicly presented” in 2000.
Concerning this presentation of the third secret, Bishop Bernard Fellay declared to The Angelus in March of this year: “In 1917 the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three little children and promised them that in the end her Immaculate Heart would triumph. In the year 2000, something apparently from what they called the ‘third secret’ of Fatima was published by the Vatican, to the great dissatisfaction of almost everyone. And, frankly, that was not the end of it. Whatever form it may take, the triumph of the Immaculate Heart has not come about. That means that something else still has to happen. And we anticipate that with this triumph, part or all of the present crisis in the Church will end as well. And so we are trying to obtain from Heaven the accomplishment of both at once, by asking and longing for this magnificent triumph of our Heavenly Mother, the Mother of God.”
These remarks are echoed in the recent letter from Bishop Fellay to the friends and benefactors of the Society of Saint Pius X, a document that can be read exclusively in the current issue of DICI.
Fr. Alain Lorans
