Fr. Gabriele Amorth: 'St. Padre Pio knew the Third Secret of Fatima'

[commenter]

Okay, so I see your point about the website having no connection to the Church formally, like the National Catholic Reporter.

And I agree with you, many so called traditionalist websites can be kind of nutty, but to be honest I have not seen it on this website. Especially pertaining to the part where someone claimed they were outright calling the Pope a heretic, when in fact, they were just reporting on the Filial Correction which mentions heresy.

In addition, I also have reason to believe that this specific website would not post a fake story about something Father Gabriele Amorth did not say, going so far as to fake an entire interview. I also do not think that Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the former Chief Exorcist of the Vatican and who had also known St. Padre Pio for 26 years, would make up a story about St. Padre Pio. That is the reason why I lean towards believing it to be true. Again, you are free to think what you want. But these are the points I stick to.

I agree they would not fake anything. It is more like, “if you can only do hammer work, everything looks like a nail”. I have studied OnePeterFive but not extensively. Websites similar to this one are **looking for reasons to distrust the Magisterium. They never happen to find reasons to trust it. They never find other sources of evil and error in the world. Just in the Magisterium.

Suppose there’s a boy who is able cry out various things at different times: “Flood; Fire; Mrs. John had her baby; The ice cream truck is coming; It’s snowing” and so on. Tomorrow if he cries out “Wolf!” people will trust him and respond.

But if all he can cry out is “Wolf”, and he says it every hour or so, well…ignore that website.

 

[commenter]

And I agree with you, many so called traditionalist websites can be kind of nutty, but…

Some thoughts:

• The problem with traditionalist websites is not so much that they are “nutty” but that they are “Catholic with an adjective” rather than being just “Catholic”.
• Keep in mind there is only a limited number of “traditionalist” donors, and the traditionalist websites have increased. Thus they have to play lurid and hardball to funnel donations and website hits away from competitive traditionalist websites.
• It used to be they could collect attention, get quoted in other media, if they just nailed a bishop. That is so old hat now, you will go broke if you find dirt on a bishop when your rival trad website is finding dirt in the Vatican. Every article gets presented as an EXPOSE. FIND OUT WHAT THE VATICAN DOES NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW! If you publish balanced articles, or something positive about Church authority, the trad money will go elsewhere. The more aggressive, assertive, and macho, the better the website’s chance of survival in a brutal competitive market, and get quoted.
• Much of the language in the Trad sites about the papacy is almost verbatim from fundamentalist and secularist sites, warning about “papolatry” etc.
• People say "we are only pointing out the abuses of the papacy not the papacy itself. But in the minds of young adults, this distinction is lost. The seeds of distrust of the papacy planted now will impact on acceptance of the next popes.

 

[Joe_5859]

Is this article asserting that the third part of the secret is different from that which appears on the Vatican website, or simply that Padre Pio knew it prior to it’s being released to the public?

Padre Pio certainly was surrounded by the supernatural (e.g. stigmata, bilocation), so it would certainly be plausible that he could know it miraculously. But it would still have to be the same secret. Unless we buy into some notion that the Vatican deliberately put forth something false as the 3rd secret. Frankly, I think that notion is a non-starter.

I’m not super familiar with 1Peter5, but a fresh English translation of an interview with a priest who is deceased about a conversation he had decades earlier with a (saintly) priest who is deceased all on a blog with no formal ties to the Church? There’s more than a few things there to give me pause and make me skeptical.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

I have not heard of the Third Secret alluding to the Pope’s assassination attempt before. I have heard it to be a sort of warning for mankind, though. Most high up Vatican officials agree that the Third Secret concerns the Catholic Faith.

This is the text of the third secret, translated from the original Portuguese:

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, men and women Religious 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, men and women Religious, 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.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

Heretic,schismatic…

What an odd language and so foreign to us common people in our Church today.

Not only to the common people…it is language that is no longer utilised by the hierarchy or the academy.

 

[misstherese]

Thank you for your response, Father. Perhaps it could be about St. John Paul II’s assasination attempt and the loss of faith? It just seems there is more to it. Especially the part concerning the angel crying penance and all the religious, clergy, and lay people dying.

I think I heard also there is an angel in Revelation with a flaming sword, which would allude to justice being done (according to a certain archbishops interpretation) but I can’t quite remember.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

Thank you for your response, Father. Perhaps it could be about St. John Paul II’s assasination attempt and the loss of faith? It just seems there is more to it. Especially the part concerning the angel crying penance and all the religious, clergy, and lay people dying.

It was a vision using symbolic language. The Blessed Virgin related the need for conversion, for prayer, and for penance by her words. She related that events would transpire that would bring with them much suffering. Indeed, this series of apparitions and this particular vision encapsulate the suffering of the Church throughout the 20th centuries…the concentration camps, the gulags, and the vast extent to which there unprecedented numbers of martyrs in the 20th century.

 

[Bataar]

It’s hard to turn a blind eye to some of the traditionalist conspiracy theories. Ideas/evidence that the 3rd secret was actually a warning against Vatican II, documented evidence that Pope John XXIII was a freemason, the possible murder of Pope John Paul I, etc. The results speak for themselves. People honor and praise St. John Paul II, but look at what happened under his leadership. Look at the strength of the church in Europe and the US before he came to power and after. He let bishops like Archbishop Hunthausen stay in power where he nearly destroyed the church in his archdiocese and the surrounding areas. The pope was well aware of this and did nothing realistic to fix the situation. I imagine this happened elsewhere as well.

Yes, the Catholic church is the pillar of absolute truth, but is the Vatican still teaching absolute truth? I know of well educated, orthodox priests who believe Pope Francis is a heretic based on his own words. If that is true, than according to Canon Law, he has abandoned the papacy.

I’m not saying I’m buying all of this, but it’s also hard to turn a blind eye to it.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

I’m not saying I’m buying all of this, but it’s also hard to turn a blind eye to it.

Actually, as a European it is very easy to turn a “blind eye to it” – as easy, I would say, as it is for Americans to laugh off the accusations that the assassination of President Lincoln was really a plot by the Jesuits or those who try to reject the manned space program. They are delusional people and to be regarded by society as such.

 

[tseleehw]

It’s hard to turn a blind eye to some of the traditionalist conspiracy theories. Ideas/evidence that the 3rd secret was actually a warning against Vatican II, documented evidence that Pope John XXIII was a freemason, the possible murder of Pope John Paul I, etc. The results speak for themselves. People honor and praise St. John Paul II, but look at what happened under his leadership. Look at the strength of the church in Europe and the US before he came to power and after. He let bishops like Archbishop Hunthausen stay in power where he nearly destroyed the church in his archdiocese and the surrounding areas. The pope was well aware of this and did nothing realistic to fix the situation. I imagine this happened elsewhere as well.

Yes, the Catholic church is the pillar of absolute truth, but is the Vatican still teaching absolute truth? I know of well educated, orthodox priests who believe Pope Francis is a heretic based on his own words. If that is true, than according to Canon Law, he has abandoned the papacy.

I’m not saying I’m buying all of this, but it’s also hard to turn a blind eye to it.

I would tend to agree. There certainly has been no shortage of eyebrow raising occurrences and decisions over the last several decades that point to something suspicious going on inside the Church. There have been some periods when this has been less so, and other times where there are several scandals at the forefront in very rapid succession. I cannot say whether these conspiracy theories are true or not, but it is best to keep an open mind when discussing them. Just remember that if someone said ten years ago that today that the Church would be seriously considering ordaining female deacons, giving communion to unrepentant divorced and remarried Catholics, ordaining married men as priests, all within the span of a couple of years, they would have probably been called a conspiracy theorist as well.

 

[Nelka]

When I bounce from website to website reading saints’ quotes of the end times it is surprising how many end up by calling Pope Francis some sort of devil or antichrist like he isn’t supposed to be the Pope.

 

[commenter]

When I bounce from website to website reading saints’ quotes of the end times it is surprising how many end up by calling Pope Francis some sort of devil or antichrist like he isn’t supposed to be the Pope.

There is a group of websites that compete for donations and website “hits”, which help generate sales of products and invites to speak at conferences. In order to pull attention away from similar websites, they have to be “outrageous”. It used to be they could get attention by attacking a bishop, or - later - by hinting at secret evil lurking in the corridors of the Vatican.

That won’t work anymore, now they have to attack the pope by name or else their money and “hits” go to their competition, and they go broke. It has always been an attention-grabber for a website to:

• refer to St. Padre Pio;
• quote an actual exorcist!
• connect the 3rd secret of Fatima to evil or conspiracy in high places (Vatican)
• allege someone is covering up, interfering with your right to know, to protect powerful church leaders

This article touches all 4 bases: it’s a cash cow.

Websites also have the option of communicating the primary message of Fatima, which is conversion. But they choose not to do that.

 

[angel12]

Conversion, in and of itself, tends not to be a money-maker.

 

[commenter]

We can’t judge the people who seek out these websites. Yes, there is rising, powerful anti Christian movement, especially in the media. Yes, the Church has lost a lot of its influence. And, yes, some of the loss of influence is due to lapses of Catholics, including you and me.

But these far-right websites exploit people’s anger and frustration, and our natural tendency to focus on (or even enjoy) the faults of persons other than ourselves, and our reluctance to follow the core message of Fatima - personal conversion. Why do you think Dan Brown sells so many books? And why books on growing in virtue, and avoiding sin, sell so poorly nowadays?

We all tend to say, well I don’t agree with everything this website says; I just check it out for some factual information and leave the rest behind. But really, we absorb the attitude of anti-religious authority that pervades these websites. We do not leave the rest behind. We are affected.