MrS:
however… makes me wonder if the attempted assasination of JPII was really not part of the prophecy - afterall it predicted a death, not an attempt.
While he was still a Cardinal, Pope Benedict wrote about the Third Secret of Fatima:
marianland.com/thirdsecret-text.html
Cardinal Ratzinger explains that "the place of the action is described in three symbols: a steep mountain, a great city reduced to ruins and finally a large rough-hewn cross.
The mountain and city symbolize the arena of human history: history as an arduous ascent to the summit, history as the arena of human creativity and social harmony, but at the same time a place of destruction, where man actually destroys the fruits of his own work. … On the mountain stands the crossþthe goal and guide of history. The cross transforms destruction into salvation; it stands as a sign of history’s misery but also as a promise for history.
"At this point human persons appear: the Bishop dressed in white (‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’), other Bishops, priests, men and women Religious, and men and women of different ranks and social positions.
The Pope seems to precede the others, trembling and suffering because of all the horrors around him. Not only do the houses of the city lie half in ruins, but he makes his way among the corpses of the dead. The Church’s path is thus described as a ‘Via Crucis,’ as a journey through a time of violence, destruction and persecution.
The history of an entire century can be seen represented in this image. Just as the places of the earth are synthetically described in the two images of the mountain and the city, and are directed towards the cross, so too time is presented in a compressed way.
"In the vision we can recognize the last century as a century of martyrs, a century of suffering and persecution for the Church, a century of World Wars and the many local wars which filled the last fifty years and have inflicted unprecedented forms of cruelty.
In the ‘mirror’ of this vision we see passing before us the witnesses of the faith decade by decade."
The cardinal also states that "in the Via Crucis of an entire century, the figure of the Pope has a special role. In his arduous ascent of the mountain we can undoubtedly see a convergence of different Popes. Beginning from Pius X up to the present Pope, they all shared the sufferings of the century and strove to go forward through all the anguish along the path which leads to the Cross.
In the vision, the Pope too is killed along with the martyrs.
When, after the attempted assassination on 13 May 1981, the Holy Father had the text of the third part of the ‘secret’ brought to him, was it not inevitable that he should see in it his own fate?
He had been very close to death, and he himself explained his survival in the following words: ‘… it was a mother’s hand that guided the bullet’s path and in his throes the Pope halted at the threshold of death’ (May 13 1994).
That here ‘a mother’s hand’ had deflected the fateful bullet only shows once more that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces which can influence history and that in the end prayer is more powerful than bullets and faith more powerful than armies."
