The Fatima Prophecy: One Hundred Years of Mystery
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Wednesday, May 13, 1981. Saint Peter’s Square, Vatican City. As John Paul II blesses the thousands of faithful gathered around his popemobile, a dramatic event is brewing…
At precisely 5:19 pm, four shots are fired at very close range. The pope is struck twice. Footage of the day shows John Paul II collapse, his white cassock drenched in blood. No one could believe it, not even the Pontifical Swiss Guard. The unthinkable had happened – the pope had been shot!
The failed assassination attempt stunned the world and would live in people’s minds for years to come. But though the attack was in fact a veritable shock, was it truly unforeseeable? In other words, could it have been prevented? It may well have been. Because today we know that twenty-one years earlier a Portuguese nun named Lucia had warned of an impending tragic fate for a pope. Moreover, she had done her utmost to alert the Vatican since the early 1960s. To no avail.
The attempted assassination of John Paul II is inextricably interwoven with one of the 20th century’s great mysteries. A secret of even greater importance considering that it originated, according to the Catholic Christian, from the Virgin Mary herself. In 1917, the Virgin appeared six times in the small village of Fatima, in Portugal, and entrusted Lucia, who was a young shepherdess at the time, with a message of vital importance. But the meaning of the message was not easy to interpret (for ordinary people). What if the prophecies of the Virgin could have prevented the attack against John Paul II? A good many Catholics believe the Fatima prophecies to be infallible. Historians on the other hand have given a more nuanced appraisal...
For over a century, the events have triggered any number of articles: tens of thousands of books, essays and newspaper reports have been written on the subject to try to unravel the mysterious events. And even today, the secrets of Our Lady of Fatima, and likewise the Vatican’s position with regard to her, remain shrouded in mystery...