Franciscan Penance Library
Fatima's Third Secret and a Life of Penance
The following is the text of the third part of the secret of Fatima as written down by Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children said to have seen the Madonna in visions in 1917. The text is the Vatican’s English translation of the original Portuguese written by Sister Lucia in 1944 and known only by the pope and senior Vatican officials until it was made public.
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The Vatican said the transcript respected Sister Lucia’s original punctuation.
"The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima, on 13 July 1917. "I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your most Holy Mother and mine. After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand. Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’
"And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when then pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in white ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’. Other bishops, priests, religious men and women going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark;before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same
way there died one after another the bishops, priests, religious men and women and various lay people of different ranks and positions.
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"Beneath the two arms of the cross there were two angels each with a crystal in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God."