Who Are the Earthly Powers Behind Her Fatima Apparitions?
Not only is the anniversary of the first apparition of our great Queen at Fatima not on most Church calendars, but it is appalling considering the fact that May 13th also marks the date an islamic terrorist tried to assassinate the pope!
It is a day for all of us to be in deep prayer, thanking Mary for Her motherly intercession.
And it is not us, but John Paul II himself who stated when he released the so-called “3rd secret” of Fatima May 13, 2000 — just as Mary told Father Gobbi of the Marian Movement of Priests in Church-approved messages — that he is the pope of “Mary’s secret” (Gobbi’s message was received May 13, 1991, and documented nine years earlier to the date in the book, To the Priests, page 684).
But does Mary have another “secret” pope?
When our great God allowed us (for it is by His invitation only!) to begin to study His Shroud and get closer to Him, the first thing we realized was that we MUST dump all of the history they taught us in secular school!
Why?
It is WORTHLESS!
The only way to truly understand history — His Story — was to comprehend the apparitions of Jesus and Mary through time and then put them into the context of not only spiritual events, but temporal events as well. Without this perspective, history appears to be meaningless, chaotic and by chance. With Jesus and Mary in the picture, the meaning is clear, made by human choice and ends with the blessings or consequences of Divine Mercy or Justice.
It was with this understanding that we approached our study of Fatima. And sure enough, just as we were made to comprehend the most incredible messages and apparitions of Mary since Her appearance to Juan Diego as Our Lady of Guadalupe, we began to see Fatima in the significance of human history.
For it was not an accident or chance circumstances that Mary appeared near a town in Portugal named after Fatima, the islamic “prophet’s” daughter. It was by design.
Of course, anyone reading this will say, if they are believers, that all things are always by “Heaven’s” design. And they are surely right. But that is not what we mean.
We want people to understand that in that heavenly design, the human element is essential. Critical. And it just does not involve the children who received the messages of Fatima. It involves the Church.
You see, whether any of us like it or not — and considering the way some of the hierarchy is in the Church today, we can say we don’t always like it (just think of poor Gianna Sullivan and her messages!) — the Lord does not allow Himself or His Mother to work OUTSIDE the confines of the Rock!
Yes, Jesus may work with individuals outside the Rock, but HE DOES NOT OFFICIALLY WORK WITH RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS OUTSIDE THE APOSTOLIC UNIVERSAL CHURCHES of the 1st Millennium (be they Catholic, Orthodox, etc.; this means the evangelicals are only fooling themselves)!
So when Mary wants to do something for the benefit of Her children, She is confined in two ways. First, She cannot officially do anything outside the Church; and, second, She cannot do anything unless there is a FORMAL REQUEST!
And this brings us to the other pope of “Mary’s secret.”
Remember the context that Fatima will occur in 1917 — a year of terrible tragedy in human history. For the Great War — what we now call World War I — was raging and slaughtering millions!
In 1914 as the war began, Pope St. Pius X — whose body remains incorruptible and is on display in St. Peter’s in Rome today (we saw him with our own eyes!) — had just died. In his place, the Holy Spirit gave us Benedict XV, a man who will be consumed by the war. A man who will call the war the “suicide of Europe!” A man many will say died of a “broken heart” as the leaders of the world refused to listen to him and end, as Benedict XV called it, “this cruel war.”
It appeared to the pope of that era that there was no hope. No hope with those who were the earthly rulers of the world.
There was, however, an alternative hope. And, just as John Paul II has done many times in our era, Benedict XV turned to the only hope the world has.
That hope, of course, is in Jesus, the King of All Nations. But Benedict, in his wisdom, as John Paul, knew that to get to Jesus and make our Lord move, the pope would need more than his own power or that of any other temporal entity.
The pope knew only one Person could get Jesus to act. That Person is, as we all know (that is, if you really know Jesus!), the Mother of God.
And so, on May 5, 1917, Pope Benedict did what any rational leader of the Church would do if he wants to get our Lord to act. He appealed to Mary!
Benedict asked Mary to intercede for mankind as the “Great War” devastated the world around him. Here, for the sake of history, are the pope’s petitions to Mary, and, as you read, we ask all, do they not sound like the petitions of John Paul II?
Benedict wrote in his pastoral letter:
“We wish the petitions of Her most afflicted children to be directed with lively confidence, more than ever in this awful hour to the great Mother of God. To Mary, then, who is the Mother of Mercy and omnipotent by Grace, let loving and devout appeal go up from every corner of the Earth — from noble temples and tiniest chapels, from royal palaces and mansions of the rich as from the poorest hut; from every place wherein a faithful soul finds shelter, from blood-drenched plains and seas. Let it bear to Her the anguished cries of mothers and wives, the wailing of innocent little ones, the sighs of every generous heart: that Her most tender and benign solicitude may be moved and the peace we ask for be obtained for our agitated world.”
Eight days later, on May 13, 1917, Mary responded to Pope Benedict XV’s call.
Yes, we know the children of Fatima had the “Angel of Portugal” appear to them a year earlier. But Heaven, in its infinite Wisdom, knew the pope would be “inspired” to make the request of mankind’s Queen and began preparing the messengers before time!
But the key to Fatima is that Mary COULD NOT ACT until a formal request was made of Her! Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you!
In addition, Mary also has to play by the other rules of our great God.
We must understand that it is too easy when you have as much power as Jesus does for the Lord or His Mother to make an appearance in the middle of Times Square. There is no testing of the faithful there. No testing of one’s heart. No testing that allows the Lord to show you where you are with Him!
And so while it was the pope who made the request for Mary’s intercession to help mankind find a way out of World War I, Mary cannot appear at the Vatican and give the pontiff the answer to his request! That’s too easy.
So what Mary is forced to do is find the most unlikely, lowly, unworthy servant(s) to listen and adhere to what She is requesting.
And that is where the children come in!
Eight days after Pope Benedict’s request — the number of new beginnings — Mary appeared to the children in the obscure coves of Fatima!
Can you imagine the thoughts that go through those in the Church’s hierarchy when they are confronted with a message like that of Fatima?
Indeed, the first obstacle the children of Fatima had to overcome was the local priest who completely disbelieved the event had taken place and instead advocated that it was a “trick of the devil” (sounds just like the protest-ants of today)!
Hearts and minds are thoroughly tested by Heaven as Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta told their story! Hearts and minds all the way to the Vatican and beyond!
And this test is still in force today!
How many priests, bishops and cardinals believe in the messages of Fatima? How many continue to do exactly what Mary said we all must do: pray the Rosary! Thank God for the Marian Movement of Priests and those — cardinals, bishops, priests, religious, and laity — that do take these messages to heart and act on them!
As we approach this great feast day of our Queen — a feast that many in the Church not only purposely neglect, but wish would just go away — we must not take for granted the fact that Heaven means, and has the power, to back up every word Mary has said.
Especially in the fact that Mary has stated unequivocally to the children in the messages of Fatima that “in the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
A triumph that has been ensured by the other pope of Mary’s secret, John Paul II.
As we have stated so often, this great pontiff — who we agree completely with spiritually and totally disagree with his temporal administration — consecrated the 3rd Millennium to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the Great Jubilee Year of Divine Mercy.
That is not an accident, either.
Therefore, we must, today, not neglect Fatima, but live its message to the supreme. For it is not a mistake that Sister Lucia today lives in a convent as a Carmelite nun and makes Rosaries and Scapulars when she is not praying. If anyone questions the validity of the messages of Fatima, the life of Sister Lucia, and the deaths of Francisco and Jacinta, are living witnesses to the Truth.
The Truth that hell exists.
The Truth that Mary triumphs.
Sister Lucy knows the Truth (or else she would not have become a cloistered nun)!
And so does John Paul.
And so does Father Gobbi.
As we approach the 86th anniversary of Mary’s first great apparition to the children in 1917, we must pay attention to what She has told Father Gobbi in messages Mary said were the “culmination” of Her Fatima instructions.
Mary told Father Gobbi on May 13, 1991 (as the pope was meeting with Sister Lucy) that not only was John Paul the “pope of My secret, the pope about whom I spoke to the children” [in 1917] but that this pontiff is a witness to the “expanding emptiness and indifference … on the part of … bishops, priests, religious, and faithful.”
Mary said that the “Church is today wounded by a deep division; it is threatened with the loss of true faith [and] pervaded with an infidelity which is becoming greater and greater.”
“When this pope [John Paul II] will have completed the task,” Mary said, “which Jesus has entrusted to him and I will come down from Heaven to receive his sacrifice, all of you will be cloaked in a dense darkness of apostasy, which will then become general.
“There will remain faithful only that little remnant which, in these years, by accepting my motherly invitation, has let itself be enfolded in the secure refuge of My Immaculate Heart. And it will be this little faithful remnant, prepared and formed by Me, that will have the task of receiving Christ, who will return in glory, bringing about in this way the beginning of the New Era which awaits you.”
Then, just as John Paul II, our watching and waiting time as the faithful will be over.
But until then, we must continue, in honor of Our Lady of Fatima who taught the world through the intercession of Pope Benedict XV — the first earthly power behind Mary’s Fatima apparitions — the true way to peace and the Reign of the Sacred Hearts.
It is Mary’s shocking (for all those who try to get into Heaven without doing this will be shocked when they, instead, will have to go to Purgatory!) and God’s ultimate secret weapon: the prayers of the Rosary!
Through the prayers of the Rosary, we, the faithful, will bring about — sooner than later — the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is the Reign of the Sacred Hearts on Earth as it is in Heaven!
For all Rosary warriors — just like Benedict XV and John Paul II — are the secret earthly power behind Mary’s secret heavenly weapon!
But until that time of Her Triumph, a secret no pope knows but which is known only to God, let us faithfully remain enclosed in the only harbor that will resist the upcoming storms: the safety of the Immaculate Heart of Mary!
Ave Maria!
© 2003 Agnus Dei Presents!
