Sister Lucy's Cell Ordered Sealed by Cardinal Ratzinger

by Christopher A. Ferrara

       Sister Lucy of Fatima died on February 13, 2005 - the same day of the month on which the Fatima apparitions occurred each month for six months (May - October) in 1917, and the same day of the month on which Ali Agca attempted to assassinate the Pope in 1981.

       The very next day Vittorio Messori, one of Italy's top journalists, whose interview of John Paul II became the best-selling book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, broke the stunning news in the Italian daily Corriere della Serra: "Secret of Fatima, Sealed in the Cell of Sister Lucia." Messori reports that Sister Lucy's cell in the convent at Coimbra "has already been sealed" and that "whatever is enclosed there will be passed through the sieve of trusted theologians and monsignors sent, one supposes, by the same Cardinal Ratzinger who, as custodian of orthodoxy, must keep at bay visionary temptations which always reemerge."

       Messori further reveals that according to the Bishop of Coimbra, Sister Lucy's now-sealed cell is where "she would have had other apparitions, where she kept a diary, where she wrote letters to the Pope, where she had undergone her mystical intuitions." Messori adds that Ratzinger has not said "that these pages will not end up, segregated forever, in some inaccessible section of the Secret Archive of the Vatican."

       So it seems that the last surviving Fatima visionary, who had nothing further to reveal as Cardinal Ratzinger assured us in June 2000, may well have had a great deal more to reveal - so much, in fact, that a "sieve" of reviewing monsignors and theologians will be needed to investigate the contents of the sealed room.

       As Messori notes, "the departure of the last visionary has not closed the case. Perhaps, on the contrary, it has opened new and unknown horizons. We do not know what will be found in her inaccessible cloistered cell ..." Even in death, Sister Lucy of Fatima remains under lock and key by order of Cardinal Ratzinger - the same Cardinal Ratzinger whose "interpretation" of the vision presented as the entire Third Secret was so clearly aimed at "gently debunking the cult of Fatima," as even the Los Angeles Times could see.

       The Secret of Fatima still remains under the control of the Cardinal who seems determined to make it go away forever. And yet, even now, it will not go away. As Mark Fellows has observed (in his article, "Lucy and the Pirates"), "the cork continues to bob to the surface." Heaven's prophecies have a way of doing that until they are fulfilled. And this one is a long way from fulfillment - no matter what certain members of the Vatican apparatus would like us to believe.

       No doubt the last suriving Fatima seer is looking down on the scene from Heaven, with her two cousins, and waiting for the inevitable disclosure of the whole truth about Fatima, and the glorious fulfillment of the Fatima promises. May we, by the grace of God, live to see that happy day.