The Catholic
COUNTER-REFORMATION
IN THE XXth CENTURY

No 318

Online edition of selected articles

APRIL 1999

THE THREE SECRETS OF THE BLESSED
MOTHER MARY OF THE DIVINE HEART

In our previous numbers, we published the most important documents from the file on the life and message of Mary of the Divine Heart, née Maria Droste zu Vischering, a Good Shepherd nun. She was one of the greatest mystics of the turn of the century, the end of the 19^th and the beginning of ours. We now need to draw some salutary lessons from all this for ourselves and for any soul anxious to correspond to the loving and merciful designs of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. We must also attempt to elucidate and explain the three secrets of their confidante, secrets that are by turns luminous and sorrowful. But first, let us briefly recall the stages of her short life (1863-1899).

MYSTERIOUS PREPARATIONS

She was born and grew up in the great days of the reign of Pius IX, whose holy figure dominated his century. The three main lines of his pontificate, the "three whitenesses", made an indelible mark on her heart and soul as a child and fixed the setting for her vocation. [The "three whitenesses" are the three hallmarks of the Catholic religion: the cult of the Blessed Virgin, the universal authority of the Pope, and devotion to the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament - translator.] There was the bull Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December 1854, defining the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, to the glory of Her «who will crush the Serpent’s head»; the Syllabus in 1864, condemning modern errors, a veritable Catholic Counter-Revolution charter, complemented by the proclamation of papal infallibility in 1870; and finally, in answer to the wishes of the whole Church, his consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the sacrament of His Eucharist, on 16 June 1875.

Maria Droste zu Vischering clearly inherited this great and imperishable doctrine of the way, life and truth of Pope Pius IX. She was born in fact on 8 September 1863, the day when the Church celebrates the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On that day, her mother felt «an extraordinary joy, an intense happiness» that was humanly inexplicable: «I understood that she had been sent to me by God». She was baptised the same day, for, she relates, «from the very first moment of my life Our Lord wanted to deliver me from the power of Satan and to take possession of me».

Savouring inwardly with her holy parents the happiness of being a privileged child of the Church, she very soon felt the desire to suffer «for the conversion of sinners and for the needs of Holy Church». She thrilled with enthusiasm at the Church's ceremonies, her battles and her conquests; she felt for her sufferings, especially for those of the Pope when he was taken prisoner by the Italian revolutionaries, and of all those being persecuted for the true faith.

At Münster, her "little country", where Catholic thought had gained the greatest prestige, the example of her ancestors made the young girl’s ardent nature desire to imitate them. Among her forbears was the Archbishop of Cologne, Mgr Clement-Augustus Droste zu Vischering, who thwarted the tyranny of the Prussian government in 1838, and of whom it was said: «He is inflexible. The Pope may yield, but not Droste. He is absolutely truthful; he has never used underhand weapons, and never will.» (G. Goyau, L’Allemagne religieuse, vol. II, p. 164) His heroic conduct marked the starting point of the extraordinary Catholic renewal in Germany in the middle of the century when Mgr von Ketteler, Archbishop of Mainz from 1851 to 1877, great uncle of Maria and intimate friend of the family, a model of the priestly spirit and pastoral zeal, a declared opponent of secularism and of State liberalism, was one of the most representative figures and the most courageous of all of them.

When the Kulturkampf persecution broke out in 1871, the impulse for the resistance of these admirable Catholics came from their devotion to the Sacred Heart. The mass of the faithful were solidly behind their bishops and the almost unanimous clergy. They grouped themselves into solid and flourishing associations and sent to the Reich parliament up to a hundred deputies to defend the rights and sovereign liberty of the Church, outrageously belittled by Bismark. Count Droste, Maria’s father, will take his seat among the ranks of this valiant Catholic party, the Zentrum, from 1879. It was in the thick of this persecution that Maria made her first Holy Communion and attended the consecration of the diocese to the Sacred Heart by her bishop Mgr Brinckmann in 1875, a scene worthy of apostolic times (cf. English CRC n^o 316, p. 2). She also received from his hands the sacrament of confirmation, together with the first grace of her vocation from Heaven.

During the years that followed, Christ’s call became ever more pressing, with acts of tenderness on His part and ardent devotion and total submission on hers – without ever her passionate interest for the cause of God and of His Church diminishing in any way, quite the contrary! – right up to the day when, after her father had consecrated his whole family and his house to the Sacred Heart in the presence of the bishop who had just returned from exile, Our Lord came to find His spouse. That was on 20 June 1884, the feast of the Sacred Heart: «I had just received Communion and, wholly united to Our Lord, I was exulting in the delights of His Heart, when He said to me, with that interior voice which I did not yet know, but which is so familiar to me today: "You will be the spouse of My Heart".»

THE SECRETS OF THE DIVINE SPOUSE

Jesus, who wanted her all for Himself, unreservedly espousing all His sentiments and His interests, wholly sacrificed to His good pleasure, first made her enter the Good Shepherd convent at Münster on 21 November 1888. Acting through her superiors, He then sent her in 1894 to Portugal in order to save «a house in great danger». During those years as superior at Porto, a harassing apostolate full of cares and countless sufferings, her divine Spouse never ceased His loving confidences to her whom He liked to call "His Mary-Gertrude of the Divine Heart". He confided such intimate secrets to His beloved and loving spouse that she found it very hard and even shameful to communicate them to her successive directors of conscience, for fear that one day they might wish to make them known.

However, that was not the cause of her greatest suffering. The worst for her was to be introduced into the secret relationships of other persons with her Lord and Master. He would not tolerate her complaining of this: was she not His "true spouse"? It pleased Him to share with her the wounds that He received from certain souls that were dark, rebellious or corrupt. Her heart as a compassionate spouse, as a virgin of sorrows, then suffered, not from her own sufferings but from His, from all the rejections, insults and coldness suffered by the Heart of her divine Spouse, "from love in deep distress" at not being loved, as she knew He yearned to be!

Having said that, we must search as historians for what might have filtered through in her confidences, in her letters of direction, in the autobiography of the venerable Mother, right down to the least corners. We said we would do this. And the result is a rich reward, but one that is rich in profound wretchedness rather than in astounding grandeur. This present study will proclaim the heroism of the confidante of the Divine Heart, but also the cowardice, the shamefulness, the duplicity, the crimes, to call them by their proper name, of highly placed persons in the Church at the turn of the century. To speak plainly and clearly, we shall clean the portraits of both the saints and of the mighty, without in any way harming the merits of the one or hiding the infamy of the other, and we shall proclaim the imperishable glory of the former and the all too certain reprobation of the latter.

The three heroic missions of "Mary-Gertrude of the Divine Heart" can be expounded in three chapters. They are completely unknown by the public and even by the men of the Church, although their failure, never admitted, expiated or even regretted, could not have been repaired until the last year of this century in which we are now. According to Heaven’s design, this century should have been the century of the mercies of the Divine Heart of Jesus through the fulfilment of the desires He had manifested to His chosen spouse.

This time, we shall study only the first of these three missions: that which our saint had to carry out by approaching Pope Leo XIII, at the time of the Hispano-American war of 1898.

THE POPE, SPAIN AND THE SACRED HEART

«Communicate a message to the Holy Father from Our Lord»      

1898! International politics hung on the outcome of the conflict between Catholic Spain and the United States of America. 1898: Our Lord made it known to Pope Leo XIII that He ardently desired the human race to be consecrated to Him. Was this demand, expressed in urgent terms, linked to the conflict then in course? It seems so, if we are to believe what the saint’s biographer writes on page 330 (we reproduce below this extract already quoted in the English CRC n^o 316, p. 2; the first inset seems to us to be the plain unadorned truth, the second the addition of an eventual corrector… in Rome):

The sudden reservation expressed in this last extract leaves us more than perplexed, for this was not the first time that this political Pope «intervened» in the affairs of Spain…

TWO PRECEDENTS

Indeed from the beginning of his pontificate, he had supported the young constitutional monarchy of King Alphonsus XII. Like all his ancestors, the latter considered himself «a good Spaniard and a good Catholic», but in fact he was a «true liberal» and never succeeded in gaining Catholic unanimity around his throne. His adversaries, the Carlists, who had never compromised over the cause of God and King, denounced his government’s compromises with the freemasons, and despite their defeat they still held considerable credit with the clergy, especially in Navarre and in the Basque country.

In order to break their resistance, Leo XIII wrote the encyclical Cum multa, dated 8 December 1882: «We have to flee, he recommended, from the opinion of those who, as it were, mix and confuse religion with one or other of the political parties, to the point where they declare that to belong to another party is practically to have abandoned the name of Catholic.» The Pope thus rendered outstanding service to the liberal government and to the revolutionary party. He did not even imagine that in writing that, he was condemning himself and his favourites, Rampolla and Della Chiesa, and the future Pius XI, the Pope of Christian democracy!

In fact, in 1883, Leo XIII had sent as nuncio to Madrid, to watch over the application of his directives, his future secretary of State Mgr Rampolla, assisted by the young Don Della Chiesa, the future Benedict XV. Their diplomatic mission, secret but impassioned, will be to bring the bishops in line with the throne of a liberal king, by turning them away from the Carlist "temptation", meaning one that was legitimist and integrally Catholic.

Before long, a difference blew up between Spain and Germany concerning the Caroline Islands, over which the court of Spain claimed an historical right to sovereignty. The government of Berlin contested this, for they had their eyes on these islands for a trading post. In 1885, Chancellor Bismark, himself furious with the "political Catholics" (meaning: those who were intransigent towards the liberals), solidly grouped into one incorruptible party, the Zentrum, had the cunning, truly diabolical, idea of submitting the quarrel to the arbitration of the Pope who, plainly flattered, hastened to set up a commission of cardinals. Although the sentence given was favourable to Spain, the result was a veritable détente between the courts of Berlin and Rome… on the back of the Zentrum. The game was won!

King Alphonsus XII having died in the meanwhile, his spouse Marie-Christine became regent. Leo XIII consented to be godfather of the heir to be born. The new king’s reign began in 1902 under the name of Alphonsus XIII… (XIII, to please Leo XIII). In June 1886, the Pope had the gold rose sent to the sovereign Queen. In brief, everything was going for the best in his relations with the court of Spain. Power was shared alternately between liberals and conservatives; the opposition was strangled, republican on the one side and Carlist on the other. Leo XIII took advantage of the great Spanish pilgrimage to Rome in April 1894, on the occasion of the beatification of John of Avila, to recall his conciliatory politics, adding for the benefit of the indomitable Carlists: «It is their duty to submit promptly to the constituted authorities.» When in 1895 a further rebellion broke out in the island of Cuba, the damage had been done.

REVOLUTION IN CUBA

It did not take long to see that this revolt enjoyed considerable material and financial support, soon including media and armed support, from the United States. Several times before, the United States had sought to acquire, even at a high price, the prestigious and opulent island of sugar and tobacco. «To sell Cuba, the minister of State had proudly answered at the Cortes, is to sell the honour of Spain!» It was also a prosperous Christendom, where the Church enjoyed the protection of the government and still felt the radiance of the admirable works of Saint Antoine-Marie Claret, Archbishop of Cuba from 1851 to 1857.

From the outset, the insurrection of 1895 took a worrying turn: «Buccaneers sent from the North-American coast and a New York based junta in relations with the insurgents provoked a series of diplomatic complaints from the royal government of Spain.» (Mousset. L’Espagne dans la politique mondiale, p. 79) Every effort at coming to a peaceable arrangement on the spot proved to be useless, and so General Weyler was sent out to put down the revolt. This rough soldier of Prussian origin, who had made war against the Carlists, was implacable in crushing the Cuban revolt. The new president of the United States, Mac Kinley, made a pretext of this for threatening Spain with an intervention of American troops on the island. The liberal government of Madrid recalled Weyler in December 1897 and sent out General Blanco in his place. It was Blanco who took the decision to grant the West Indies a status of the widest autonomy. It could not have been more ill inspired! The United States then sent the battleship Maine into the port of Havana, "as a pledge of friendship", it was declared at Washington, but it escaped nobody that the United States intended working only for its own interests.

It is then that a strange accident occurred, as though it were a put up job bound to provoke the irreparable. On the 15^th February, the Maine blew up, killing two hundred and twenty-six sailors. The Spanish authorities immediately sent in all hands to come to the aid of the victims, and the next day the Minister of State sent his condolences to the American government for this sad catastrophe. But the American press loosed its fury with headlines proclaiming: «Our dead cry out for vengeance», «Spain, country of barbarians», «The plot uncovered», all with one voice declaring that the explosion was due to a submarine placed by the Spaniards under the ship’s hull.

The Spanish enquiry concluded however, albeit much later, in an accident: «It had been noticed at the time of the catastrophe that no backwash was formed and no column of water. No dead fish were found floating on the surface, as always happens in the case of a mine. An examination of the outer walls of the hull showed that they had given way to a thrust from the inside.» (Mousset, p. 84) The American commission, however, acting on orders, reinforced the hypothesis of criminal intention. Not until 1911, will the certitude be reached that an internal explosion of the ship’s boiler had caused the accident.

But in 1898, the count-down of a diabolical machination had begun. By way of reparation, the American government demanded «the immediate pacification of Cuba» (sic), and, as a consequence, proposed the signing of an armistice between the Spanish authorities and the insurgents. With its back to the wall, the Madrid cabinet offered in April to submit the question to arbitration, whilst inviting its representatives abroad to press for an intervention of the powers with the Washington government. But all attempt at conciliation struck against a wall, that of Yankee imperialism.

It was an extraordinary case in the history of the world, as it was in the time of Joan of Arc or of Louis XIV: Heaven was going to make known its will and, we venture to say its preference in this modern war. Events will now follow one after the other and in a surprisingly concomitant way, on two distinct levels. There will be the level of Catholic politics, or the politics of Christ pure and simple, and that of human politics so strongly subject to men’s passions, vices or violence, through which the merciful designs of grace of our great God and Lord Jesus Christ must however cut a path. Let us be attentive! It is the Heart of Jesus Christ Himself, burning with love, which reveals His sublime plans and His immediate Will in this conflict, through the words of His holy confidante:

It was Maundy Thursday, 7 April 1898: Mother Mary of the Divine, Countess Maria Droste zu Vischering, a humble religious of the Good Shepherd of Angers, and very poor superior of the Refuge at Porto, received the strange mission of appealing to the Pope, as Saint Margaret-Mary had once appealed to the King of France.

«The letter has unfortunately disappeared». But the good Abbé Chasle has reproduced the manuscript notes written by the saint on the same day and which were to serve as the rough draft for her letter: «His divine Heart hungers and thirsts. He desires to embrace the whole world in His love and in His mercy. I must satisfy this hunger and appease this thirst, with the aid of my spiritual Father. Write to Rome as soon as possible.» For what purpose? To make an urgent appeal to the Pope for «the consecration of the whole world to the Heart of Jesus», with the wonderful promises to which we shall return. There we have "God’s politics" producing the true and fruitful "peace of God" which will reign in souls and over societies when they have all been "consecrated" to the Sacred Heart. But this wonder would then depend on the Pope, on his willingness to respond enthusiastically to Christ’s desires.

We now know, however, that on that precise day the Pope was personally intervening with Spain «to get her to accept the suggestions of the American cabinet. He assured Spain that President Mac Kinley wanted peace (sic!), but that he needed help (resic!) in order to resist the will of Congress where interventionist influences prevailed. On 9 April, the royal government yielded to Leo XIII’s entreaties, as well as to the (lying) advice of the ambassadors and ordered that hostilities be suspended forthwith. The royal government expected the cabinet in Washington to reciprocate.» (Mousset, p. 85)

What an illusion! For, as our historian continues: «Washington submitted the matter to the legislative power as a matter of urgency. Consequently, the feeling was that irreparable damage was being done. In the American Senate, the commission for external affairs proposed a joint resolution declaring the people of Cuba to be free and demanded that Spain withdraw both land and sea troops from the island. The commission then had the Chamber of representatives vote on another resolution authorising the President to use public force to intervene in Cuba as a result.» And in order to cover this assault on international law with a cloak of morality, the resolution began with these words: «Considering that the detestable state of affairs that has existed in Cuba for the last three years… has wounded the moral feelings of the American people, has been a stain on Christian civilisation and arrived at its critical point with the destruction of a battleship…», arrant lies!

The diplomatic break between the two countries was notified on 21 April. On the 23^rd, the cabinet in Madrid declared: «Without any ridiculous boasting, but with the resolute spirit of a people who have won in history an enviable name and renown, Spain will defend with arms her right to remain in America.» On 24April war was declared.

Now, we read in the biography of our saint that she was not immediately granted authorisation to write to Rome. «Though totally resigned, she wept as a result, she who wept so rarely! To this moral distress were added the sufferings predicted. On Monday 25 April the poor Mother was on the threshold of the grave, and for several weeks she hovered between life and death.» (p. 345) It was the foretold sign of God’s displeasure!

These sufferings, which were, she said, «a sign sent by Our Lord to the Vice Rector to make him understand the truth of something she was asking for and which he persistently refused to grant», added to her worry that «Catholic Spain could be in for a series of disasters… With passionate interest, she followed the military operations in the newspaper and on the atlas.» Like her, let us follow them too, thinking of the grief suffered by the spouse of the Sacred Heart, and knowing the disasters that will result for Christendom from the general disobedience to the will of her divine Spouse…

Despite her appeal «to the conscience of the European powers», Spain found herself alone in confronting a formidable adversary. «There is no more Europe, the Italian prime minister Crispi remarked with bitterness. European co-operation is a sinister farce.»

Even so, Spain bravely and promptly sent a squadron to the Caribbean under the command of Admiral Cervera. It succeeded in thwarting the American blockade and anchored in Cuba’s port of Santiago on 19 May. On land the Spanish troops put up a fierce resistance to the American troops that had landed to lend a hand to the "insurgents", causing them heavy losses. The land battles went on all through the month of June.

From where she was in Portugal, Sister Mary of the Divine Heart finally obtained permission to write her letter to the Pope. It was sent from Porto on 10 June and was in the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff a few days later. «Leo XIII was very impressed», writes the Abbé Chasle, and without explaining the reasons and consequences of this, he goes on: «Nevertheless, the year came to an end without him having followed things up. The servant of God knew, through the Most Reverend Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order, who had acted as her intermediary, that her letter had been delivered at the Vatican, and that was all. Over the long months her thoughts often returned to this matter. For time to time she would say to her assistant: "There is no answer coming from Rome!"» (p. 346) Whereas from the Caribbean, she received very bad news:

A DEFEAT WITH HEAVY CONSEQUENCES

On the morning of 3 July, Cervera’s squadron emerged from the port of Santiago de Cuba; it immediately opened fire against forces more than three times its superior. Two navies confronted each other, wooden ships against iron ships… These two squadrons represent the two cities: that of Christ’s disciples and that of Mammon. Unfortunately, there occurred what was bound to happen: the Spanish squadron was destroyed in a few seconds. The Santiago fortress capitulated on 16 July. In Oceania, Admiral Montojo’s fleet confronted Dewey’s American squadron with the same heroism, and suffered a similar disaster. At least the courageous attitude of the Spanish combatants saved the prestige of their country for history; they had preferred to guard their «honour without ships» than to keep their «ships without honour»! Manila capitulated on 12 August. The government of Madrid then put an end to hostilities by signing an armistice treaty on that day.

At Porto, the superior of the Good Shepherd had followed the events of that tragic summer day after day and in September she confided that her «suffering had been great to obtain peace from the divine Heart of Jesus! And this task is not yet finished, but I have received from Him the certitude that the greater the confidence the surer the success.» Could Spain rise again and pursue her legendary and holy missionary expansion in the two hemispheres, together with Portugal? Yes, on condition that the saint of Porto’s message to the Pope be answered and that through him, should he prove himself faithful! it be addressed to the whole Church: «Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, honourable atonement, abandonment and trust, to suffer with Him and for Him!»

Since France had offered her services, the peace conference was held in Paris until 10 December. Spain had to renounce «all rights to sovereignty and ownership over Cuba». The island was declared independent, but in fact subject to strict obligations with regard to her "liberators". The Philippines were sold for twenty million dollars. It was the end of a once fine Empire; the Treaty of Paris had removed the last jewels from Spain’s crown.

Another empire took its place, that of plutocratic and puritan America and of her economic "protectorates". In fact, the Cuban war marked the decisive turning point in the development of American politics. The century about to open was to consecrate their proud hegemony. As for the Pope, after having been arbiter in Europe, he was already dreaming of becoming arbiter between the Old World and the New. What a disappointment! What blind powerlessness! That was where "his" politics had led!

That is as far as we had got with our writing when a friend sent us an article from the review ENQUÊTE SUR L’HISTOIRE, (n^o 29, December 1998). It corroborates our analysis without, however, mentioning the light of Porto… and presents a striking parallel with what is going on now. It reveals the very same machinations! Read it for yourselves:

(continued next month...)     

WHEN AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
CHASED SPAIN OUT OF CUBA

by PHILIPPE CONRAD          

A century ago, in 1898, the Cuban war broke out against Spain. It was an American war that was «altruistic and moral». Through this war, which called on the resources of misinformation and brainwashing, the United States began its career as a world power.

«All is quiet here; there are no problems and there’ll be no war, I want to come back»…«Stay where you are please and send us pictures, I am responsible for preparing the war…» This exchange of telegrams between Frederic Remington, the reporter-artist of the New York Journal, and his boss, William Randolph Hearst, on the eve of the Spanish-American conflict of 1898, just about sums up the situation at the moment. It shows the part that the manipulation of American public opinion played in unleashing this war. We shall have to wait until the First World War before governments, those of the Anglo-Saxon countries in the first place, have recourse on a such a grand scale to these propaganda tricks. But the stakes were considerable, for it was a question of chasing Europe – or more precisely a Spain that was only a shadow of its former self – from the American hemisphere in order to perfect the hegemony of the United States over the New World as a whole.

The right to possession of the world

America’s designs on Cuba and on the Caribbean sea simply and quite naturally completed the geopolitical grand design which was to make the new state into a continental power, opening onto the two oceans and able to impose its domination over the whole western hemisphere. These designs were clear even in the 1820s when John Quincy Adams considered that Cuba was the key to the Caribbean and that its proximity to Florida and the mouth of the Mississippi would one day make it necessary, «through the simple law of political gravitation», for America to seize it. What held Washington back at that time was fear of English reaction, for London might worry about the fate in store for Jamaica. For American officials, it was better to be patient and leave Cuba in the hands of an enfeebled Spain rather than engage in an action likely to justify British opposition. It was enough to wait for the right moment or for circumstances to appear most favourable for the realisation of what John Fiske called, in 1885, the «manifest destiny» of the United States.

In those last years of the century, projects for driving a canal through the Central American isthmus at Nicaragua or Panama gave new life to the already old desires of the Washington government. Several theorists at that time justified America’s ambitions, and in their wake their formed in Congress a whole «imperialist» clan demanding a foreign policy in keeping with the industrial dynamism which was making of the USA a world economic power. In 1885, Pastor Joshua Strong wrote Our country in which he exalted «the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race». Five years later, John W Burgess, professor of political sciences at the University of Columbia, insisted on the rights possessed by the Anglo-Saxons to world dominion: «Their mission is to lead political civilisation in the modern world and to bring this civilisation to the barbarous races […] since it is in the interest of world civilisation that law, order and true liberty, which is its corollary, should reign throughout the world…» That same year, Admiral T Mahan published his book The influence of Sea Power upon History, which foretells an impressive rise in the strength of America’s naval power. The United States must take control of the Caribbean Sea and of the future canal that will join the Atlantic to the Pacific. They must also push their expansion into the Pacific, notably into the Hawaiian archipelago. Under the presidency of the republican Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893), the secretary of State James Blaine was preparing the way for these various projects, but the election of the democrat Stephen G Cleveland seems to have put a stop to them, at least temporarily. However, his republican opponents were not put off, and Henry Cabot Lodge, the naval commission’s spokesman at the House of representatives, made a speech in 1895, wherein he claimed Cuba and the Hawaiian islands for the United States. There thus came into being a thoroughgoing «imperialist» movement inspired by that «jingoism» which, at the same period, lay behind the politics of a Joseph Chamberlain in England.

At the heart of this movement, the young Theodore Roosevelt was already there, writing to Cabot Lodge, his mentor in politics, that «the country needs a war». The elections in 1897, which bring the republican William Mac Kinley to power, enable the young Roosevelt to become Under-Secretary of State for the Navy, in 1897. Two months later, he explained to the officer cadets at the Naval College «that the diplomat must be the servant and not the master of the soldier». In November of the same year, he wrote to a naval officer to say that he hoped for a war against Spain «to aid the Cubans in a humanitarian concern». But above all «to guarantee complete liberty for America from European domination… This war will be a great lesson, and we shall profit greatly from it». In December 1897, when commercial circles and the economic press were showing their opposition to a war for Cuba, the hot-headed under-secretary of State affirmed that «we shall have this war for the liberty of Cuba despite the timidity of commercial interests…»

Press campaigns and sending of weapons

The United States had already offered on several occasions since 1843 to buy from Spain the main island of the Caribbean, but each time the government of Madrid had amiably turned down these offers. In 1850, therefore, the American administration encouraged the installation in New York of a Cuban council favourable to the island’s independence, and from 1865 Washington supported these rebels by supplying them with arms and money. Between 1868 and 1878, the first war of independence came to nothing. The United States’ interest in the island did not wane, however, for it was they who bought nearly all the sugar exported from the island, and American capital investments in this market amounted to fifty million dollars of the island’s economy. Founded in 1892, José Martí’s Cuban revolutionary party was supported financially by Edwin F Atkins, the American sugar «king».

When a fresh insurrection broke out on the island in February 1895, the democrat president Cleveland and his Secretary of State Bryan had no wish to intervene directly. The death of Martí, killed in the fighting in May, did not put an end to the rebellion. The North American press then undertook to set public opinion against Spain. It sounded off against the death of several Cuban revolutionaries, denounced the fact that American citizens were in jail on the island, and exalted the courage of Evangelina Cisneros, the daughter of a rebel leader, whom W R Hearst had removed from Cuba so that she might be given a triumphant welcome in New York… It finally published a false letter from Dupuy de Lôme, the Spanish ambassador to Washington, in which Mac Kinley was presented as a «low level politician». During that time, from June 1895 to May 1897, forty-two naval convoys brought arms to the insurgents from the American coasts.

It is now known very precisely that the decision to go to war against Spain, if she persisted in her refusal to sell Cuba, was taken in 1896. A recent military history congress, held in March 1998, has revealed the detail of the plans prepared for this eventuality. The scenario was then written down. On 25 January 1898, the battleship Maine, therefore, entered the port of Havana, followed fifteen days later by the cruiser Montgomery which had just laid anchor in the port of Matanzas. Three weeks later, on 15 February, the accidental explosion of a submarine mine sank the Maine in the port of Havana. Two hundred and sixty American sailors were killed in the explosion, which everyone now recognises as having been purely accidental, and some even think it was plainly provoked by the Americans (it is interesting to note that no officer was among the victims; they were all at a reception in the town). The official American report is no less accusatory of Spain. Madrid proposed entrusting the enquiry to a mixed commission, but Washington refused. The Spanish government then turned towards its European counterparts and solicited the arbitration of Pope Leo XIII, but obtained nothing, even though it accepted the immediate armistice imposed by Mac Kinley on 10 April. The American senate will soon vote for the necessary funding for «an altruistic and moral war which will bring about the liberation of Cuba», and war was declared on 24 April. A «splendid little war» for the Secretary of State John Hay, a war which rekindled that led by Spain against the Cuban rebels, a conflict which, according to General Blanco «would have come to an end, had it not been for American malevolence».

It was in the Philippines that the Americans struck their first blows since Admiral Dewey destroyed Admiral Montojo’s fleet in the harbour of Manila, outside Cavite. The conquest of Porto Rico was a military walkover and, at Cuba, Admiral Cervera’s fleet was totally outstripped on the technical level by the American ships, and destroyed on 3 July outside Santiago. Fifteen thousand Americans landed at the end of the month of June, but still Colonel Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders had to put up a furious fight against the troops of Generals Linares and Vara del Rey, on 16 July, and overcame the defences of the hill of San Juan. In coming to take part in the battle himself, Roosevelt put his deeds in line with his words. On 17 July, Santiago de Cuba capitulated. On 12 August, through French mediation, an armistice was concluded prior to peace negotiations which ended in the Treaty of Paris, signed on the following 10 December.

PHILIPPE CONRAD          

CONTROVERSIES
OVER LUCY'S TESTIMONY

THE ACTS OF THE CONGRESS ON
THE PHENOMENOLOGY AND THEOLOGY OF THE APPARITIONS

The acts of the Congress on "the phenomenology and theology of the Apparitions", which took place in the Paul VI Centre at Fatima between 9 and 12 October 1997, appeared at the start of the winter¹. We approached them with a certain apprehension, remembering the stupefying declaration made by Mgr Luciano Guerra, the rector of the Fatima sanctuary, on the evening the Congress closed. As you will see for yourself:

MGR GUERRA RESURRECTS DHANIS

It is true that the rector presented a paper during this international gathering, but the organisers, from the Catholic University of Portugal, had not entrusted him with any responsibility : Mgr Guerra did not have a seat on the secretariat or on the scientific committee of the Congress. Nevertheless, as soon as the congress had ended, he took it upon himself to give an overview of its activities by stating on Portuguese television:

«This Congress was not able to achieve its aim, which was to study what some call Fatima II, that is to say all the things that Sister Lucy revealed after she had become an adult, including the elements of the message that relate to the Secret. As yet the documentation has not been put together, nor has any study been made of this period, which would allow the diocesan bishop to pronounce an official judgement on these subjects.»

Thus Mgr Guerra publicly cast suspicion on the evidence of the seer as if no one had refuted the modernist anti-Fatima theories of Father Dhanis SJ.

Unbelievable, but true! The rector seemed to totally ignore the monumental work of Father Joaquin Alonso, the former official expert (cf. the inset below), and to treat his decisive critique of Dhanis’ thesis as null and void.

THE TRUE CONCLUSIONS OF THE CONGRESS

Now, on reading the Acts of the Congress, we noticed that the conference members made continuous references to the works of Fr Alonso in their discussions on Fatima. For instance, Professor Fernando Rodriguez Garrapucho immediately stated: «Following the profound and well-founded evaluations of Father Joaquin Maria Alonso, we are going to examine the whole documentation in its entirety, for that seems to us a criterion that is surer and more consistent with the facts than the division into two parts of which one is meant to be authentic and the other inauthentic.²» (Bravo!)

As for José Jacinto de Farias, Professor of the Faculty of Theology at the Catholic University of Portugal and a member of the scientific commission of the Congress, he was able to make the following observation: «The studies presented in the course of this Congress have shown a relationship of continuity between the interrogations [of 1917] and the Memoirs [of Lucy], one that is much more profound than appearances suggest.³» (Bravo!)

The most important study was that of Professor Anton Ziegenaus⁴, entitled "The supposed problem of Fatima I and Fatima II treated in the light of the most recent historical documentation"⁵.

PROFESSOR ZIEGENAUS AGINST DHANIS

Anton Ziegenaus very clearly explains what is at stake in this controversy: «Is Fatima II something wholly new with regard to the evidence of the little seers in 1917? Dhanis states that the theme of devotion to the Heart of Mary is nothing but the result of a mystical development by Lucy, which supposedly took place after the apparitions. According to him, this theme does not belong to the original content of the message of Fatima.»

Our Augsburg professor emphasises just how arbitrary the demarcation line of Fatima II is: its contours depend for a large part on each person’s choices, their presuppositions and even their passions. «For Dhanis, the vision of hell and the theme of Russia belong to Fatima II. E K Winter himself also thinks that the "affair" of Russia only appeared later; on the other hand, he holds that the account of the vision of hell is completely worthy of belief because, according to him, it is only this vision that can account for the children’s exceptional life of sacrifice and prayer.

Ziegenaus denounces «the subjectivity of the criticisms levelled against Lucy’s Memoirs. For example, if someone’s politics are left wing, he will treat the theme of Russia with suspicion and will put it down to anticommunism. Likewise, if someone denies the possibility of eternal damnation, he will reject the vision of hell. Thus, certain people are partial to the Fatima I-Fatima II distinction because it allows them to disregard the severe warnings and claim that they are no more than Lucy’s own human contribution.»

Professor Ziegenaus is fully aware of Father Alonso’s powerful arguments. He repeats them and develops them, basing his own critical study on the documents published in 1992 in the first volume of Documentaçao critica de Fatima: Interrogatorios aos Videntes – 1917⁶ and on those that will be presented in the following volume. In fact, thanks to the kindness of Father Luciano Cristino, the director of the Sanctuary’s Information Service (SESDI), he was able to consult the proofs of this second volume whose publication has, alas, been continually delayed for obscure reasons.

Already, in his very commendatory report on the first volume, he had noted in regard to the interrogations in 1917: «On several occasions (pages 83, 150, 161ff), we come across questions about the apparitions of the Angel in 1916. On this point also, the objections made by Dhanis do not stand up.⁷»

In his recent paper to the Congress, Ziegenaus notes that «this documentation not only reveals the historical accuracy of the Memoirs, but it also shows that a number of remarks found in the very first testimonies can only be understood in the light of the Memoirs».

Admittedly, Professor Ziegenaus does not roundly denounce the perfidy and bad faith of Dhanis, as did, for example, Father Jongen with a rare pugnacity in 1946, only several months after the enemy of Fatima began his offensive.

And clearly, the exposition of the Professor of Augsburg has neither the breadth nor indeed the quality of the magisterial demonstration, both historical and theological, which Brother Michael of the Holy Trinity developed against the modernist thesis of Father Dhanis in the first hundred pages of the first volume of Toute la Verité sur Fatima⁸, a demonstration which earned great appreciation and praise from Portuguese experts such as Canon Galamba de Oliveira († 25 September 1984) and Father Antonio Maria Martins († 7 April 1997).

Nevertheless, one cannot over-emphasise the importance of Professor Ziegenaus’ paper. If one of the aims of the Congress was to scientifically examine the authenticity of Fatima II, as Mgr Guerra declared, then, whatever the latter may have said, this objective was achieved thanks to the Professor of Augsburg’s critical study proving the falsehood of Dhanis’ theories. All this took place in full session, at the beginning of this international gathering.

The principal conclusions of Professor Ziegenaus deserve to be quoted: «At Fatima, we have this continuity of theme, one that constantly develops and presents transitions and new stages along the route, but there is no discontinuity, no rupture, no new theme. Fatima I and Fatima II form one single whole, a unity.» If the authenticity of Fatima II is denied, then Fatima I will no longer have any solid foundation. The first casualty will be Lucy, the central figure, since she will become suspect, as also will numerous details known since 1917, the true reasons and the importance of which were explained by the belated revelations made by Lucy in her Memoirs. «Fatima I and Fatima II complement one another.»

Ziegenaus emphasises that «the rough elements» of the message, «the demanding aspects» of the Fatima revelations were revealed by Heaven and disclosed by the seer in accordance with a divine pedagogy. «Such great events and such profound thoughts cannot be revealed or unfolded all at once. We needed time before we could understand them and appreciate their importance. The Apparitions of the Angel prepared the seers for the events of 1917, which did not pass unnoticed; then everything sprung into life again with the Apparitions at Pontevedra and Tuy; and so the whole of Lucy’s account becomes coherent, including those things which are hard to accept, such as the children’s spirit of sacrifice and the vision of hell.

«Great events involve a preparation which will allow us little by little to understand them. Now, in the history of the Church, Fatima forms one of these great events.⁹»

FATIMA, EYED UP BY THE "THEOLOGIANS"

As for the rest of the papers dealing with Fatima, the best often rubs shoulders with the worst.

  •  Professor Rodgriguez, of the Pontifical University of Salamanca, gives a very peremptory judgement on the prayer which makes a reparatory offering of Jesus Christ to the Holy Trinity, as taught by the Angel: «The formula is certainly incorrect from a theological point of view.¹⁰»

  •  The theologians almost unanimously side-stepped the question of the Third Secret.

«It is necessary, explains José Jacinto de Farias, to keep in mind what L Wittgenstein recommended in other matters: "It is important to keep quiet about what is not known".¹¹» Then, Farias will go on to develop an even more debatable theory in order to bury for ever the twenty lines¹² of the little sheet of paper on which the seer reported word for word what the Queen of Prophets had said: «The Secret is not a secret because it cannot be known; this is precisely because it infinitely transcends language. The Secret relates to the essential ineffability of the mystery. Where there is a "secret", there is silence.¹³»

  • Professor Garcia Paredes aimed to bring out the full apocalyptic significance of the Immaculate Virgin’s message.

«The mariophany of Fatima, he immediately explains, can and must be interpreted as an apocalyptic event in our times. In it God revealed His will for our era and showed how He interprets our times, even manifesting Himself for this purpose. This happened because we find ourselves at an historic "crossroads" of enormous importance, of such importance that an apocalyptic event took place»… Garcia Paredes refers to the great specialist himself: «J Alonso, a great theologian who devoted several years of his life to theological reflection on the apparitions of Fatima, arrived at the following conclusion which to me seems very well established: the theme of the Heart of Mary is "the soul, the centre, the spirit and the dynamic of the whole message of Fatima". Compared with other Marian apparitions, the novelty of Fatima consists in the fact that Mary manifested Herself as the Virgin of the Immaculate Heart. That is the specific and proper characteristic of these apparitions.¹⁴»

Alas, when he deals with the political implications of the message, Garcia Paredes loses his way in a confused symbolism: «"Russia" is not a geographical territory. "Russia" symbolises not only Stalin but also Hitler, not only communism but also fascism and nazism. "Russia" symbolises the neo-liberalism which seeks only economic profit, even at the price of the loss of millions of human lives. The symbol [?] of Mary’s Heart is wounded by this situation.¹⁵» All of this seems bad to us, very bad indeed, to be rejected totally.

LUCY AND THE ACT OF 25 MARCH 1984

  •  Father Domiciano Fernandez, a Spanish Claretian, dispenses with any scientific rigour when he treats of the controversies surrounding the act of consecrating the world, pronounced by John Paul II on 25 March 1984. «As was expected, those who continued to affirm that the act did not fulfil all the conditions requested by the Virgin were not slow in making themselves heard.» But he presented not a single quotation from their writings, nor any precise reference to their publications. «It is said that, up to 1986, Sister Lucy had always claimed that this consecration did not correspond to the Virgin’s requests. But those are confidential reports which cannot be verified and which are not worthy of belief.¹⁶»

This was not what Fr Domiciano Fernandez thought in 1986, nor his friend the Abbé René Laurentin. In that year, at Fatima, he took part with him in the Symposium on the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Now, in the course of that symposium, on Thursday 18 September to be exact, the Abbé Laurentin had lunch with one of Sister Lucy’s nieces, Maria do Fetal. During this meal, she continually repeated to him: «The consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart has still not been accomplished. I can tell you this because Sister Lucy says the same to everyone.¹⁷» And Maria do Fetal went on to explain: «To respond to Our Lady’s request, there must be no attempt to conceal under a farrago of political precautions that it is a matter of consecrating Russia and Russia alone… When a baby is baptised, it is called by its name. The day must come when Russia clearly appears as the sole object of the consecration.»

On his return from Fatima, Laurentin will no longer be able visibly to ignore Sister Lucy’s thinking. «Since the beginning of the current pontificate, he will write, the seer of Fatima and the bishops of Portugal have been asking John Paul II to renew the consecration of the world, and especially Russia, through [sic!] the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This consecration has still not been accomplished thinks Lucy, the seer. And apparently that is why the conversion of Russia, promised for this consecration, has not yet taken place.¹⁸»

  •  Father D Fernandez himself, on the very first page of his article La Consagracion de Rusia al Inmaculado Corazon de Maria en los documentos de Fatima, will declare: «According to Sister Lucy, neither the Pope nor the bishops nor Christians in general [?] have done what the Virgin requested to obtain the conversion of Russia and the peace of the world : to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart and to spread the practice of the reparatory Communion of the Five First Saturdays.¹⁹»

THE APOCRYPHAL LETTERS OF LUCY

  •  However, new documents appeared in 1986 : letters said to be written by Lucy regarding the act of 25 March 1984. The Catholic Counter-Reformation, let us remember, was the first periodical in the world to publish one after the other whilst demonstrating each time – as much by internal criticism as by external criticism – that we were dealing with forgeries²⁰.

Today, Father Fernandez writes: «Some of Sister Lucy’s letters from the years 1989 and 1990 were published in which she recognises that the consecration, as requested by the Virgin, has already been carried out.²¹» He then gives but a short extract from one of these letters. But as he had noticed, precisely in this letter to Maria de Belem, the mention of a consecration supposedly pronounced by Paul VI during his visit to Fatima on 13 May 1967, he indicates in a footnote: «We have listed [the acts of consecration of the world to the Heart of Mary performed by the Popes] in appendix II of our book Rusia se convertira, Madrid, 1990, p. 153-154, although we omitted from that list the one performed by Pope Paul VI on 13 May 1967 at Fatima.²²»

A curious, disturbing omission? No, it is not an omission : the list that he published in his book is exhaustive. The error lies elsewhere : in the apocryphal letter to Maria de Belem of 29 August 1989. This supposed consecration on 13 May 1967 is nothing but the pure invention of the ecclesiastic who wrote this letter, a little too precipitately and carelessly it seems – almost certainly Mgr Alberto do Amaral himself²³.

In Fatima, joie intime, événement mondial, we pointed out: «In the apocryphal letter of Lucy addressed to Walter M Noelker, it is written: "Paul VI performed the consecration during the Sacred Council with the participation of numerous bishops. I was then asked if it had been done as Our Lady requested, and I replied no, for it should not have been done with all the bishops gathered in one room"… Such a statement is stupid. Sister Lucy and, after her, the experts on Fatima as well as the directors of the Blue Army have always considered that the consecration could have been performed during the meeting of a Council.²⁴»

Father Fernandez should easily agree with us on this since, whilst presenting the request at Tuy, before mentioning the so-called letters of Lucy, he states that «this solemn act of consecration could be accomplished in two ways:

1. Either the Pope could summon all the Catholic bishops to one fixed place, as he does for Ecumenical Councils;

2. Or the Pope could specify a precise date and order all the bishops to unite themselves with the Bishop of Rome – each in his diocese, either in his cathedral or another church – in a solemn act of reparation and of the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.²⁵»

Thus we find in the communication of Father Fernandez – who nevertheless wishes to act as the mouthpiece for the official propaganda – several confirmations of the justice of our critical analyses of the apocryphal letters.

Our expert contributes one new element: «The authenticity of these letters is confirmed by a letter written by Sister Lucy herself to Father Luciano Cristino, dated 23 December 1989.²⁶» Now, to our knowledge, this last letter has never been published and, in October 1992, Mgr Guerra formally forbade Father Cristino, his chaplain, from sending us a copy. The only exhibit supposed to prove the authenticity of the letters in question is therefore a document that is… secret!

On observing the procedures employed over the last ten years to travesty the evidence of Our Lady’s messenger, in conformity with the instructions from the Vatican²⁷, one understands why Sister Lucy, when she learned what was being plotted against her, had declared in 1988: «As for the consecration of Russia, we must wait for better times.²⁸» And she could have added what she had already said in 1940, after the refusals of Pius XI and Pius XII: «The consecration of Russia must be carried out, but not immediately. God has allowed this for now in order to punish the world for its crimes. We have fully deserved it. Afterwards, He will hear our poor prayers. Yet I feel immense pain that the consecration has not been done. During this time, so many souls are going to be lost!²⁹»

(1) Actas do Congresso internacional de Fatima: fenomenologia e teologia das Apariçoes, ed. Sanctuary of Fatima, October 1998, 821 pages. –  (2) Ibid., p. 334. –  (3) Ibid., p. 788. –  (4)  Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Catholic Theology faculty in the University of Augsburg, Anton Ziegenaus has more than three hundred and fifty publications to his name. –  (5) Actas, p. 66-79. –  (6) Ed. Sanctuary of Fatima, 1992, 444 pages. –  (7) Ziegenaus, "Die Ereignisse in Fatima", in the periodical "Forum Katholische Theologie" 11 (1995), p. 306. –  (8) Volume I, La science et les faits, CRC publications, 1983, 355 pages. Also available in English: The Whole Truth about Fatima. –  (9) Actas, p. 66-79, extracts. –  (10) Ibid., p. 341. –  (11) Ibid., p. 787. –  (12) Cf. Geraldes Freire, O Segredo de Fatima, 2a ed. do Santuario de Fatima, 1978, p. 170. –  (13) Actas, p. 788-790, extracts. –  (14) Actas, p. 282. –  (15) Ibid., p. 295. –  (16) Ibid., p. 174. –   (17) The Abbé Caillon, who directly witnessed this conversation, reported Maria do Fetal’s statements to Brother Michael of the Holy Trinity in a letter dated 29 September 1986. Quoted in CRC no 226, English edition, February 1990, p. 10. –  (18) "Consecration aux Coeurs de Jésus et de Marie", Chrétiens-Magazine, no 5, December 1986, p. 5.–  (19) Estudios marianos, vol. 51, 1986, p. 285. –  (20) Fatima, joie intime, évenément mondial, p. 377. –   (21) Actas, p. 175. –  (22) Ibid., p. 169. –  (23) Fatima, joie intime, évenément mondial, p. 378. On the other hand, we think that the apocryphal letter to Fr Paul Kramer of 21 November 1989 was written by Mgr Luciano Guerra, cf. CRC no 251, English edition, October 1992, p. 2. –  (24) Cf. ibid., p. 377. We have not considered it necessary to reproduce three long notes that the reader will find at the bottom of this page 377, which presents solid grounds for each of the statements contained in the passage cited above. –  (25) Actas, p. 171. –  (26) Ibid., p. 175. –  (27) Fatima, joie intime, évenément mondial, p. 374. –  (28) CRC no 227, English edition, March 1990, p. 17. –  (29) Fatima, joie intime, évenément mondial, p. 231.

THE "FATIMA-VILLAGE" PLOT

FREIRE AGAINST DE NANTES

GEORGES DE NANTES REPUDIATED BY SISTER LUCY

Georges de Nantes repudiated by Sister Lucy... In the words of Canon José Geraldes Freire, Professor at the University of Coïmbra, Carlos Evaristo’s new book, Duas entrevistas com a Irma Lucia¹, with its essential revelation and deep significance, can be now be found on sale in the bookshops of "Fatima-village". Indeed Professor Freire declares this openly in its preface, indicating the circumstances of the "two interviews with Sister Lucy", circumstances which are well known to our CRC readers since we were personally involved, on the spot at Fatima, in the incredible preparations for one of these interviews.

«Father Gruner, he recounts, entered into contact with certain groups opposed to Vatican II, including "the Catholic Counter-Reformation" of Father Georges de Nantes (Saint-Parres-lès-Vaudes, France) and the Italian movement "Pro Roma Mariana" which maintains that, since the death of Pius XII, the diocese of Rome is sede vacante. These movements, of the Abbé de Nantes, of the "sedevacantists" and of the Fatima Crusader, began to hold at least two theses in common:

«Firstly, that the consecration of 25 March 1984 had not been valid, because it did not explicitly contain the word "Russia", – although it was mentioned in a paraphrase that was perfectly clear [what an enormous untruth!]², made all the more so by the fact that the Pope pronounced it before a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, after having informed the bishops that he wished to respond to her requests.

«Secondly, that the Pope or an official spokesman for the Vatican must [and should] publicly reveal the third part of the Secret. In fact, the express thought of these groups was that Popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II were systematically opposed to its publication because its content concerned the deviations of the Catholic Church, during the Council and in its official documents, as well as the ensuing crisis of faith and vocations.»

Now, here are the «fundamental themes» of the so-called declarations of Lucy: «the validity of the consecration of Russia on 25 March 1984; the prudent decision of the Popes not to reveal the third part of the Secret; the beginning of the conversion of Russia and the start of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.»

«Thus the present publication should be received with joy and praise. All the more so, since – as one will see in the documentary appendix of this work – the dialogues of Sister Lucy are guaranteed by the explicit declarations of Cardinals Padiyara and Vidal and Mgr Michaelappa.³»

UNBELIEVABLE MEETINGS WITH LUCY

Having read this preface, we went straight to the lengthy account of the "conversations with Lucy". There we found a verbatim reproduction of the manuscript text that Carlos Evaristo, a renegade from Father Gruner, had sent us on 28 October 1992, two weeks after the Cardinal Padiyara’s interview with the seer, and which we immediately published and criticised severely in a detailed commentary⁴. There we prove that these were not the authentic words of Our Lady’s holy messenger.

Canon Freire provides some information on the surprising and even improbable circumstances of the meeting between Cardinal Vidal and Lucy:

«Through the intermediary offices of Carlos Evaristo and one of Sister Lucy’s relatives, we managed, albeit at the last minute, to arrange an interview at the Carmel on 11 October 1993. It was to commence at the rule-breaking hour of 22:30! and it continued until 23:30. Poor Carmelites who had to interrupt their rest!⁵»

As for the account of this last conversation written, like the preceding one, by the young Evaristo, we remarked on its general character as presented in the pamphlet Duas horas com a Irma Lucia (ed. 1994, p. 29) and we denounced its lying nature a year ago, when the Portuguese review Christus published, with a fanfare of publicity, Sister Lucy’s alleged revelations about the nuclear war that was avoided thanks to the act of consecration of the world on 25 March 1984, about the necessity of blind obedience to the Pope, etc.

It is very significant that every time a new edition of his account comes out, the young storyteller extended it by attributing additional declarations to the seer, always in keeping with the official propaganda. Now he claims that on 11 October 1992 she had spoken of her conversation with Father Augustine Fuentes and expressly justified the lying denial of the episcopal curia of Coïmbra⁶.

The aim of the wretched renegade is clear. As he writes himself:

«Carlos Evaristo subscribes to the views of Sister Lucy against Father Gruner and declares that the latter has founded his theories on the opinions of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, which are contrary to those of Sister Lucy.⁷»

The documentary section of this book is nothing but a jumble of letters by cardinals and bishops and various texts which have already been criticised in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, but which impress the reader who is unaware of Evaristo’s procedures. It is only the seer’s written confirmation of the authenticity of these conversations that might have appeared troublesome and deserving of study and interpretation. Now, here is this unique document which Evaristo claims to have received from Sister Lucy on 8 February 1994, and which he published:

But now read the translation of these lines; you will note that they prove nothing.

«Sister Mary-Lucy of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart acknowledges receipt of your letter, and prays for your intentions.

«She thanks you for the books and sends you an Agnus Dei* for your daughter.»

(*) Medallion made from the wax of the previous year's Easter candle, bearing the image of the Lamb of God.

Let us draw attention to one detail that is highly suggestive of Evaristo’s fraudulent intrigues. It is surprising to find Lucy’s signature on this card. Normally, the seer does not append her signature to cards such as this. Mrs Olga do Cadaval, her interpreter and translater († 21 December 1996), assured us on 25 February 1993 that Lucy had been forbidden by the Holy See to sign her letters, except for her correspondence to her family. So, having examined this card, we suspect it has been edited.

WHEN FREIRE... FORGETS FREIRE!

When Professor Freire, the quasi official Portuguese expert on Fatima since the death of Father J Alonso († 12 December 1981), compromises himself by siding with Evaristo and standing surety for his more than doubtful probity, it is indeed an event. It certainly marks a new stage in the inversion and travesty of the evidence of Heaven’s messenger.

How is it that Geraldes Freire can believe our storyteller when he attributes this reply to Lucy: «Our Lady never said that the third Secret was to be revealed to the world in 1960 at the latest. Our Lady said that it was for the Pope.⁸»

Our expert has clearly forgotten what he wrote in 1977 in his book O Segredo de Fatima : «We know, through various statements, that Lucy was disposed to tell the Bishop of Leiria the Secret, should he order her to do so; that, if he wished, the Bishop could have opened the envelope and read the Secret; that, after his death, the Secret was to be passed to Cardinal Cerejeira, the Patriarch of Lisbon; that the Secret could have been opened after Lucy’s death; that, if her death did not occur beforehand, the Secret should have been opened and made public in 1960.⁹»

In this same book of 1977, Geraldes Freire had analysed Cardinal Ottaviani’s declarations with pitiless lucidity, declarations repeated by the wretched Evaristo today. At that time Professor Freire categorically affirmed that the Secret was not exclusively or even primarily intended for the Pope: «Some might think it shocking to see us considering as incorrect, suspect or even false, certain statements made by Cardinal Ottaviani on 11 February 1967. However, we think this is the only opinion possible, given the sure data provided by other absolutely trustworthy sources. According to the Cardinal, the Secret concerned the Pope and was given to Lucy to be passed on to him. This statement is contrary to the facts as well as to information that is universally recognised and perfectly reliable. Nothing and no one, except for Cardinal Ottaviani, leads me to think that the third part of the Secret is intended only for the Pope. Ottaviani says this to disorientate people and perhaps to exculpate himself for having snatched the Secret from the Portuguese archives.¹⁰»

Yesterday just as today, we are clearly dealing with disorientation, and «diabolical disorienation»¹¹, to use Sister Lucy’s expression. Professor Geraldes Freire’s present aberration is but the result of the unfortunate path he followed after the revolution of the Carnations, when he openly combated the demonstrations and theses of Father J Alonso.

Let us recall that in 1977, to counter the book of the official expert, La Verdad sobre el Secreto de Fatima, which had come out the previous year in Madrid, Freire published a work entitled O Segredo de Fatima. A terceira parte é sobre Portugal? which was produced by the Sanctuary of Fatima, although two years earlier it had deferred the publication of Father Alonso’s monumental work. Father Freire formulated and maintained an hypothesis that was aberrant to say the least: the third Secret was supposed to predict the chastisement of Portugal and to denounce the fascist politics of Salazar, the cause of all of Portugal’s ills, and particularly of the wars in her foreign provinces!

So what has he done then to speed up the publication of the documents of Fatima, as the official «co-ordinator» of the commission of academics charged to produce a critical edition of them? Father Alonso’s work, Fatima, texts and critical studies, presented 5,396 documents divided up as following : from the twelfth century to 12 May 1917 there were 218; and from 13 May 1917 to 12 November 1974 there were not less than 5,178. Now, twenty years later, their revision has only resulted in the publication of one single volume¹² containing 59 documents. These all relate to the interrogations in 1917 during which the three seers did not disclose the themes of the great Secret, normally divided into three parts. Therefore one does not find any mention of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in these interrogations.

Admittedly, Professor Ziegenaus showed great enthusiasm for this first volume : the presentation and reproduction of the documents responds to all the demands of the strictest historical science. Nevertheless, it seems to us that when Father Alonso worked on his complete ciritical history of the apparitions and message of Fatima, he did so with a quite different spirit and intention.When he arrived in Leiria in 1966 and Mgr Venancio entrusted this task to him, he began to prepare a history of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Consequently, his critical and scientific writings were never dry, and always led to an increase in devotion.

REPLIES AND SILENCES OF LUCY

Two years ago, for the ninetieth birthday of Sister Lucy, Canon Geraldes Freire was, to our knowledge, the only Portuguese ecclesiastic to write a series of articles – indeed, very well informed ones – on the seer, her writings, her heavenly mission and her Carmelite vocation. The fact that today he shields Carlos Evaristo is thus all the more alarming and scandalous.

The rhetoric attributed to Sister Lucy in these alleged conversations has nothing in common with her authentic replies which are lapidary and often reserved, so greatly is her freedom of speech restricted by the orders of the Holy See.

Let us give some examples of the obligatory and enforced silences of Our Lady's messenger.

  •  Howard Q Dee, ambassador of the Philippines at the Vatican, took part in the Fatima symposium in September 1986: «Cardinal Sin, he recounts, asked me if I wanted to go with him to see Lucy at Coïmbra. I was keen to go, but because only the Cardinal was authorised to see her, I declined the offer and, instead, handed him several questions to put to Lucy. Only two of my questions received a reply: the first and the last. In reply to my first question, she said that our current symposium, on the Alliance of the Two Hearts, was important, because it was in accord with the will of Our Lord and our Lady. "Will it be a success?" asked the Cardinal. Lucy replied: "That depends on how well you do it." As regards my last question concerning the 70^th anniversary of the apparitions at Fatima, she asked that we pray for the beatification of Jacinta and Francisco.¹³»

  •  Sister Lucy cannot reply to questions on the apparitions at Fatima without an explicit authorisation from the Holy See. The seer indicated this in the introduction to her fifth Memoir written in February 1989. Addressing Mgr Luciano Guerra, she wrote:

«The replies to your questionnaire will have to wait for later. But I can inform you now that I will be unable to reply to certain questions relating to the apparitions without the authorisation of the Holy See, unless you request such a dispensation and manage to obtain it. Otherwise, I will have to skip these questions and leave a blank space.¹⁴»

  •  As we were surprised not to find in her correspondence since the end of the 40s any mention of the reparatory devotion of the Five First Saturdays of the month, Sister Marie-Abigail, one of the sisters from Maison Sainte-Marie, wrote to the seer during our pilgrimage to Fatima in February 1995. She asked her the following question:

«Why do you not recommend to your correspondents the practice of the reparatory Communion of the First Saturdays?»

Two weeks later, on 11 March, our Sister received this reply:

Here is the translation of these typewritten lines which seem to us to be an authentic reply from the Carmelite:

«As to your question: why has she not previously insisted on the devotion of the First Saturdays? Because it was necessary to wait for ecclesiastical authorisation.»

Thus we know that, since the end of Pius XII’s pontificate, Our Lady’s messenger has been forced to observe a rigorous silence about anything that relates to the revelations of Fatima. It seems that the only freedom left to her is that of speaking or writing about devotion to the Holy Rosary and promoting the beatification of Jacinta and Francisco.

SISTER LUCY’S REQUESTS
TO PAUL VI AND JOHN PAUL II ARE OBSCURED

Now, this silence of the seer is exploited by Professor Freire today in order to give an enormous importance to Evaristo’s "revelations".

Let us return to his preface. Freire commences with this remark: «At the time when controversies about Fatima were raging, one frequently heard it said: "Why does Sister Lucy not speak publicly? Why does she not give interviews on television, on the radio, in the papers? If she has a message to communicate to the world which can save many souls and our contemporary world itself, why does she not travel abroad, take part in the international conferences, and make known the message of Fatima, its authenticity, its urgency and its power to renew individuals, families and peoples?"»

Is not that a seductive idea? The reader is captivated. Next, he will be impressed by our expert’s erudition and he will finally learn that the Duas entrevistas outclass all of the Fatima documents in making known the present day thinking of Lucy : «Since the publication of Memorias e cartas da Irma Lucia by Doctor Antonio Maria Martins, in the 1976 edition, under the title Documentos de Fatima, the public have never until now been granted such an explicit, varied and prolonged contact with Sister Lucy’s own words.¹⁵» In brief, the make-believe of the wretched Evaristo is supposed to provide the necessary complement to Lucy’s earlier writings dating back to the 30's and 40's : her four Memoirs, her letters to Pope Pius XII and to her directors, Fathers Aparicio and Gonçalves.

So there we see blotted out with a stroke of the pen the seer’s grave warnings as well as all the attempts and requests she made under the pontificates of Paul VI and then of John Paul II to inform them of the authentic message of the Immaculate Mother of God. As the ultimate imposture, Canon Freire substitutes in their place Evaristo’s counter-message, perfectly calculated to please the highest Roman authorities.

Must one repeat the list of authentic and certain documents proving that Our Lady’s saintly messenger has heroically accomplished her mission during the last forty years?

  •  Some of them were published and aroused violent opposition and lying denials from the ecclesiastical powers, such as the conversation between Lucy and Father Augustine Fuentes. This conversation was of capital importance because it contains several new themes in the history of Fatima, which are doubtless so many allusions to the elements of the third Secret¹⁶, which is, let us not forget, the salutary warning of our dear Mother in Heaven, a warning willed by God for all the faithful of the Church.

  •  But other documents have remained secret. For example, the letter that Sister Lucy wrote to Paul VI after he had dismissed her on 13 May 1967. Mgr Venancio, Bishop of Leiria, took it to Rome and handed it to the Pope during the audience on 27 September¹⁷. We also know that Heaven's messenger wrote a memoir for Pope John Paul II during the retreat she made at the Carmel during the week preceding 13 May 1982. On that day she was able to present it to him directly during their private conversation¹⁸, before the great pilgrimage ceremonies commenced.

This letter to Paul VI and this memoir addressed to John Paul II probably contain requests and revelations that cast a divine light on the drama of these two pontificates. But never have either Paul VI or John Paul II spoken in public about these documents. It as though these documents condemned their whole work.

  •  To conclude, let us quote Sister Lucy's letter of 16 September 1970 to Mother Maria José Martins¹⁹. One cannot read without emotion the seer's confidences to her former companion in the noviciate of the Dorotheans at Tuy, so greatly does she open up her heart to her, disclosing to her as she does so her resolve to be a victim offered for the salvation of souls deceived by the devil.

«It has been a long time ago since I last received any news from you; and I have no knowledge of your health nor of how you have been since your operation. From what you tell me, I see that you have had much to suffer! It is the penance that Our Lord is now asking of you; and these penances which He sends us Himself are the most painful. But they are also those which unite us the most strongly to Him, who was the Martyr of sorrows.

«I also have been unwell, suffering from heart and eye problems, etc. But it is necessary to make up in oneself what is lacking in the Passion of Christ. It is necessary that His members be one with Him, through their physical suffering and moral anguish. Poor Lord, He has saved us with such great love and yet He is so little understood! so little loved! so badly served! It is heartbreaking to see such great disorientation, particularly among so many of those who hold positions of responsibility!...

«As for us, we must try, as hard as we can, to make reparation by an ever closer union with the Lord. We must identify ourselves with Him, so that He may be in us the Light of a world plunged into the darkness of error, immorality and pride. It gives me pain me to observe what you tell me and to see that this is also happening here now!... It is because the devil has succeeded in infiltrating evil under the cover of good and the blind set themselves up as guides for others, as Our Lord says in His Gospel, and souls let themselves be taken in.

«I gladly sacrifice myself and offer my life to God for the peace of His Church²⁰, for priests and for all consecrated souls, especially for those who are so deceived and misled! For our separated brothers. May God grant His light to all and set them on the right path, the path of truth which is Jesus Christ.²¹»

Brother Francis of Mary of the Angels      

(1) Ed. Regina Mundi Press, Fatima, 1998. –  (2) Here, in the act of 25 March 1984, is what Canon Freire calls a mention of Russia in a paraphrase that was perfectly clear: «We offer You and consecrate to You in a special manner the men and the nations who particularly need this offering and this consecration.» On 22 March 1984, three days before the act of this consecration of the world, Sister Lucy, who had already read about it, declared to Mrs Maria Eugenia Pestana: «This consecration cannot have a decisive character. Russia does not clearly appear as the sole object of the consecration.» (Quoted in Fatima, joie intime, événement mondial, p. 361) –  (3) Duas entrevistas com a Irma Lucia, p. 11-16, extracts. –  (4) Real Lucy, False Witnesses, CRC no 252, English edition, November 1992, p. 3-10. –  (5) Duas entrevistas com a Irma Lucia, p. 15. –  (6) Ibid., p. 19. C  (7) Ibid., p. 31. –  (8) Ibid., p. 20. –  (9) P. 25. This, specifies Freire in this work, «is a summary of the statements made by Canon Doctor José Galamba de Oliveira, who often accompanied the Bishop of Leiria during his visits to Sister Lucy» (ibid., p. 28). –  (10) Ibid., p. 49-55, extracts. –  (11) Cf. Fatima, joie intime, événement mondial, p. 408ff. –  (12) Documentaçao critica de Fatima, vol. I, Interrogatorios aos Videntes - 1917; ed. Santuario de Fatima, 1992, 444 pages. –  (13) The Alliance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, ed. Bahay Maria-Assisi Development Foundation, Philippines, 1988, p. 11. –   (14) Fatima, joie intime, événement mondial, p. 381. –  (15) Duas entrevistas com a Irma Lucia, p. 15.  –  (16) Fatima, joie intime, événement mondial, p. 408. –  (17) Ibid., p. 336. –   (18) Ibid., p. 356. –  (19 Let us point out that Fr Antonio Maria Martins SJ omitted to reproduce in Documentos de Fatima the passage we quote from this letter. Moreover, the other extracts that he published in the first edition of this book (Memorias e Cartas da Irma Lucia, Porto, 1973, p. 453) were suppressed in its second edition in 1976. In fact, the publication of the letter in question, several years before, in the Jesuit review "Magnificat" for October 1971, had alarmed the Lisbon nunciature, which reacted against this infraction of the Holy See's orders by forbidding any publication of the seer's correspondence. This provoked quite some stir and agitation at the Dorotheans and at the Carmel in Coimbra (cf. Sebastiao Martins dos Reis, Uma vida ao serviço de Fatima, Porto, 1973, p. 147ff). Where lies the crime?  –  (20) The concerns of the Abbé Georges de Nantes were clearly in line with those of Sister Lucy: "The peace of the Church" was in fact the title of the tract which our Father wrote during that autumn of 1970 and which was widely distributed by the members of the league of the Catholic Counter-Reformation (CRC no 11 supplement, English edition, December 1970; Pour L’Eglise, vol. III: Contre la dérive schismatique, p. 158). –   (21) S Martins dos Reis, op. cit., p. 377-378. The central part of this letter by Sister Lucy, on devotion to the Holy Rosary, is quoted in Fatima, joie intime, événement mondial, p. 164.

THE LEAGUE

WATCHMAN, HOW GOES THE NIGHT?

It is a rather disjointed CRC we are sending you this month. Our various articles follow one after the other with no clear sequence or attractive presentation. We shall try to do better, but it is difficult. And so I am going to attempt to put a little light and order into this 36 page slab, which might otherwise seem indigestible. For that, I shall need your kind consideration, for too many weighty events, too much surprising news, too many speeches and articles of every kind are all mixed up in our poor splitting heads.

It is true that for some months we have been pursuing only one track, one single pilgrimage route, at the end of which we are sure of entering into the Holy City. I refer to our study continued from one month to the next, to which this time we are adding a new chapter. Of the "three secrets of the Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart", this chapter reveals the first, and then it ends abruptly on page 4, without any indication as to what follows. Please excuse us! Here is our excuse: at the last minute we received two sets of articles by worthy fellow writers. Both articles are highly topical and better written than we could have done, and so we have fitted them in as best we could. As a result, our conclusions will have to be held over until next month.

This first article tells of old events, some political, some religious – and by what special Providence do they fit together so well? We have already found the answer. The Sacred Heart of Jesus wished to draw several memorable lessons from the Hispano-American war. Now, that was in 1898! One of the narrators saw in it nothing more than a centenary, but… one that is loaded with a bitter lesson : the USA, in their fight with Spanish Cuba, conducted themselves with the same casualness and cynicism as they are doing now in dropping their bombs on a resistant Serbia. The moral of this story stands out very forcefully : tomorrow the States will crush all our peoples beneath the infinite weight of their principles and of their weapons.

Nevertheless, the primary intention and impulse of our editorial was very much religious, though also very political. If one had to summarise it in one sentence, 1898 was the date of a scarcely believable mystical event : a saint, later to be canonised, informed Pope Leo XIII as to what he should think, will and do in that degrading political situation of a dishonourable war against Cuba. But scarcely had I started on these revelations when the powerful reflections of both of these articles, indicating our current situation, obliged me to conclude that there is nothing more extraordinary than the similarity of these two anti-European revolutions, of 1898 in Cuba and of 1998 in Kosovo. The same principles, the same infamous procedures, the media’s concealment of unspeakable horrors, and finally «famine, war, and persecution», anti-Christian as usual. It is staggering!

So, without having shown any bias in these present events, no more than in those of the conquest of Cuba by the USA, we have said enough to judge the third event by the first two, but I did not have enough space to elaborate on this. That will be for the next edition, even though you might already have succeeded in guessing it for yourselves : one suddenly understands why the affairs of Cuba handed over to the USA could not be a matter of indifference to the Lord God or to His vicar on earth. The drama lies in the fact that both One and the other had a passionate but conflicting interest in this affair: One for and the other against. This was the cause of great suffering to the holy sister who had to intervene. But the whole world had also to suffer for this and will not cease to be chastised until the day when the Lord’s servant will agree to submit to his Master, even at the risk of displeasing the Americans and no doubt the Prussians. Then will everything be restored at the hands of the Immaculate.

Having reached this first roundabout, already tired, we have accumulated enough wise reflections to dispense us from having to argue over today’s events with the victims of the mass media. It is then that our Brother François placed on our editorial desk his study, of which the subject, well known to you, is of major interest and daily becomes more topical… Whence a further break in our programme. We are reopening the Fatima file, and very willingly too, especially as what it tells us has an alarming continuity with what the messenger of Jesus Christ had to reveal in 1898: It is the same grievances that we have to read about, but this time concerning the messages of Our Lady of Fatima… And we feel the same disappointment at seeing God’s servants so passionately opposed to their diffusion and to their pastoral application, even though the salvation of humanity should depend on it!

I marvel at Brother Bruno. While Europe is lost in furious and fatal disagreements, amidst the hubbub of fools delivering speeches on peace and democracy, there he is, plunged in his dictionaries and concordances, now with his eyes lost in his computer, trying to work out the best way of presenting the debate over Flavius Josephus and Saint Luke, as to which of the two wrote first! Yet, it is a matter of extreme importance, for the whole truth about Jesus Christ would be overturned if the other were telling the truth. Consequently, we are all fascinated by this. Little by little his arguments emerge from his machine, and we discuss them. It is very interesting, and the pages multiply. I am sorry for the reader, since I do not know where to place the other articles! So there you have my introductions, and my conclusions will have to wait for the next time… But the result is good and, contrary to what you might think, the old readers appreciate it and the young ones want to know more, so that they may hold on to the truth, for always!

Then there is the Sacred History of Holy France. The regularity of its appearance, in the midst of so many other works, is amazing. Always on time, there is first the conference, then the video and its editing, and finally this mass of facts to be condensed into two pages, no more and no less! As the months turn into years, a monument is being built.

(to be continued!)