Berry, Steve - the Third Secret

John paid him little attention while he worked, chatting quietly with his secretary. When finished, he handed his effort to the pope. He watched for a reaction while John read the first sheet. Nothing. Then the pope read the second page. A moment of silence passed.

“This does not concern my papacy,” John softly said.

Given the words on the page, he thought the comment strange, but said nothing.

John folded each translation with its original, forming two separate packets. The pope sat silent for a few moments, and Tibor did not move. This pope, who’d sat on the throne of St. Peter a mere nine months, had already profoundly changed the Catholic world. One reason Tibor had come to Rome was to be a part of what was happening. The world was ready for something different and God, it seemed, had provided.

John tented his chubby fingers before his mouth and rocked silently in the chair. “Father Tibor, I want your word to your pope and your God that what you just read will never be revealed.”

Tibor understood the importance of that pledge. “You have my word, Holy Father.”

John stared at him through rheumy eyes with a gaze that pierced his soul. A cold shiver tickled his spine. He fought the urge to shift on his feet.

The pope seemed to read his mind.

“Be assured,” John said in barely a whisper, “I will do what I can to honor the Virgin’s wishes.”

“I never spoke to John XXIII again,” Tibor said.

“And no other pope contacted you?” Katerina asked.

Tibor shook his head. “Not until today. I gave my word to John and kept it. Until three months ago.”

“What did you send the pope?”

“You do not know?’

“Not the details.”

“Perhaps Clement doesn’t want you to know.”

“He wouldn’t have sent me if he didn’t.”

Tibor motioned to Katerina. “Would he want her to know, too?”

“I do,” Michener said.

Tibor appraised him with a stern look. “I’m afraid not, Father. What I sent is between Clement and myself.”

“You said John XXIII never spoke to you again. Did you try to make contact with him?” Michener asked.

Tibor shook his head. “It was only a few days later John called for the Vatican II council. I remember the announcement well. I thought that his response.”

“Care to explain?”

The old man shook his head. “Not really.”

Michener finished his beer and wanted another, but knew better. He studied some of the faces that surrounded him and wondered if any might be interested in what he was doing, but quickly dismissed the thought. “What about when John Paul II released the third secret?”

Tibor’s face tightened. “What of it?”

The man’s curtness was wearing on him. “The world now knows the Virgin’s words.”

“The Church has been known to refashion the truth.”

“Are you suggesting the Holy Father deceived the world?” Michener asked.

Tibor did not immediately answer. “I don’t know what I’m suggesting. The Virgin has appeared many times on this earth. You’d think we might finally get the message.”

“What message? I’ve spent the past few months studying every apparition back two thousand years. Each one seems a unique experience.”

“Then you haven’t been studying closely,” Tibor said. “I, too, spent years reading about them. In every one there is a declaration from heaven to do as the Lord says. The Virgin is heaven’s messenger. She provides guidance and wisdom, and we’ve foolishly ignored Her. In modern times, that mistake started at La Salette.”

Michener knew every detail about the apparition at La Salette, a village high in the French Alps. In 1846 two shepherd children, a boy, Maxim, and a girl, Mélanie, supposedly experienced a vision. The event was similar in many ways to Fatima—a pastoral scene, a light that wound down from the sky, an image of a woman who spoke to them.

“As I recall,” Michener said, “the two children were told secrets that were eventually written down, the texts presented to Pius IX. The seers then later published their own versions. Charges of embellishment were leveled. The entire apparition was tainted with scandal.”

“Are you saying there’s a connection between La Salette and Fatima?” Katerina asked.

A look of annoyance crept onto Tibor’s face. “I’m not saying anything. Father Michener here has access to the archives. Has he ascertained any connection?”

“I studied the La Salette visions,” Michener said. “Pius IX made no comment after reading each of the secrets, yet he never allowed them to be publicly revealed. And though the original texts are indexed among the papers of Pius IX, the secrets are no longer in the archives.”

“I looked in 1960 for the La Salette secrets and also found nothing. But there are clues to their content.”

He knew exactly what Tibor meant. “I read the witness accounts of people who watched as Mélanie wrote down the messages. She asked how to spell infallibly, soiled, and anti-Christ, if I remember correctly.”

Tibor nodded.

“Pius IX himself even offered a few clues. After reading Maxim’s message he said, ‘Here is the candor and simplicity of a child.’ But after reading Mélanie’s he cried and said, ‘I have less to fear from open impiety than from indifference. It is not without reason that the Church is called militant and you see here her captain.’ ”

“You have a good memory,” Tibor said. “Mélanie was not kind when told of the pope’s reaction. ‘This secret ought to give pleasure to the pope,’ she said, ‘a pope should love to suffer.’ ”

Michener recalled Church decrees issued at the time that commanded the faithful to refrain from discussing La Salette in any form on threat of sanctions. “Father Tibor, La Salette was never given the credence of Fatima.”

“Because the original texts of the seers’ messages are gone. All we have is speculation. There’s been no discussion of the subject because the church forbade it. Right after the apparition, Maxim said that the announcement the Virgin told them would be fortunate for some, unfortunate for others. Lucia uttered those same words seventy years later at Fatima. ‘Good for some. For others bad.’ ” The priest drained his mug. He seemed to enjoy alcohol. “Maxim and Lucia were both right. Good for some, bad for others. It is time the Madonna’s words not be ignored.”

“What are you saying?” Michener asked, frustrated.

“At Fatima heaven’s desires were made perfectly clear. I haven’t read the La Salette secret, but I can well imagine what it says.”

Michener was sick of riddles, but decided to let this old priest have his say. “I’m aware of what the Virgin said at Fatima in the second secret, about the consecration of Russia and what would happen if that wasn’t done. I agree, that’s a specific instruction—”

“Yet no pope,” Tibor said, “ever performed the consecration until John Paul II. All the bishops of the world, in conjunction with Rome, never consecrated Russia until 1984. And look what happened from 1917 to 1984. Communism flourished. Millions died. Romania was raped and pillaged by monsters. What did the Virgin say? The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. All because popes chose their own course instead of heaven’s.” The anger was clear, no attempt being made to conceal it. “Yet within six years of the consecration, communism fell.” Tibor massaged his brow. “Never once has Rome formally recognized a Marian apparition. The most it will ever do is deem the occurrence worthy of assent. The Church refuses to accept that visionaries have anything important to say.”