The Story of the Three Seers

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In the year of 1917, one hundred years ago ... near the town of Fatima Portugal, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared six times to three shepherd children "The Three Seers".  It was the time when civilization was torn apart by war and bloody violence. The Blessed Virgin told the shepherd children that She had been sent by God with a message for every man, woman and child living in our century.

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She is said to have told the children ... (Francisco Marto, Jacinta Marto and Lucy dos Santos)

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"If my requests are granted ... there will be peace"

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The Blessed Mother repeatedly emphasized the necessity of praying the Rosary daily, of wearing the Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and of performing acts of reparation and sacrifice. Our Lady's Message to the world is contained in what has come to be called the "Secret" which She confided to the three child seers in July 1917. The "Secrets" consists of three parts;  

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The first part of the Secret was a Vision of Hell where the souls of poor sinners go and contained an urgent plea from Our Lady for acts of prayer and sacrifice to save souls.  In her Memoirs, Sister Lucy describes the vision of hell that Our Lady showed the children at Fatima:

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"She opened Her hands once more, as She had done the two previous months. The rays [of light] appeared to penetrate the earth, and we saw, as it were, a vast sea of fire. Plunged in this fire, we saw the demons and the souls [of the damned]. The latter were like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, having human forms. They were floating about in that conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames which issued from within themselves, together with great clouds of smoke. Now they fell back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fright (it must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons were distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. That vision only lasted for a moment, thanks to our good Heavenly Mother, Who at the first apparition had promised to take us to Heaven. Without that, I think that we would have died of terror and fear."

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The second part of the Secret prophesized the outbreak of World War II.

Third Secret of Fatima

 

In the mid-1930s the Bishop of Leiria encouraged Lúcia (now Sister Maria Lúcia das Dores) to write her memoirs, so that she might reveal further details of the 1917 apparitions. In her first memoir, published in 1935, focused on the holiness of Jacinta Marto. The deceased girl was by then popularly considered a saint.[40] In her second memoir, published in 1937, Lucia wrote more about her own life, the apparition of 13 June 1917, and first reveals the earlier apparitions of the Angel of Peace. 

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The third secret, a vision of the death of the Pope and other religious figures, was transcribed by the Bishop of Leiria and reads:

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"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 splendour 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 they 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 other Bishops, Priests, Religious men and women, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium 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."

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Lúcia declared that the Third Secret could be released to the public after 1960. Some sources, including Canon Barthas and Cardinal Ottaviani, said that Lúcia insisted to them it must be released by 1960, saying that, "by that time, it will be more clearly understood", and, "because the Blessed Virgin wishes it so."

 

Instead, in 1960 the Vatican published an official press release stating that it was "most probable the Secret would remain, forever, under absolute seal." This announcement triggered widespread speculation. According to the New York Times, speculation over the content of the secret ranged from "worldwide nuclear annihilation to deep rifts in the Roman Catholic Church that lead to rival papacies.

 

The Vatican did not publish the Third Secret, a four-page, handwritten text, until 26 June 2000.

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Abbreviated from wikipedia.org

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The Miracle

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The children were told by Our Lady that God would perform a miracle so that people would believe in the apparitions. The date was October 13, 1917, in Fatima, 70,000 people came to see the phenomenon.

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The miracle occurred with the sun. All could stare perfectly at the sun without blinking, or even hurting heir eyes. While all were watching the sun, it rotated, got large and small, got close to the people, and got far away from them.

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The sun " danced ". Every single person who was there testified to seeing the sun dance, even non- believers who immediately dropped onto their knees and begged for forgiveness.

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Abbreviated from www.fatima.org

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