THESE ARE THE LAST OF TIMES

Lucy told Fr Augustine Fuentes that these were the Last Times. "Father, the Most Holy Virgin did not tell me that we are in the last times of the world but She made me understand this for three reasons. The first reason is because She told me that the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Virgin ....

"The second reason is that She said to my cousins as well as to myself that God is giving two last remedies to the world. These are the Holy Rosary and Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These are the last two remedies which signify that there will be no others.

"The third reason is because in the plans of Divine Providence, God always, before He is about to chastise the world, exhausts all other remedies. Now, when He sees that the world pays no attention whatsoever then, as we say in our imperfect manner of speaking, He offers us with a certain trepidation the last means of salvation, His Most Holy Mother.

John Paul II on the Last Times

"We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American Society or wide circles of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel.

It is a trial which the Church must take up."

This is the Great Apostasy of the Apocalypse

"In the Third Secret, it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top."

Cardinal Ciappi served as personal theologian to popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II. Note the end of the sentence, "at the top".

Cardinal Silvio Oddi said "It has nothing to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against the apostasy in the Church."

It is difficult to imagine that they may be living through the Great Apostasy. It is helpful to remember the Arian crisis of the 4th Century. Except for a few good bishops, such as St. Athanasius, virtually the entire Catholic hierarchy had been seduced or confused by the heresy that Christ was not truly and fully divine. During that time, it was the simple members of the laity who kept the faith. The Pope was in exile during much of this crisis and could do nothing to stop the spread of the heresy. "In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, etc..."

"In her third memoir, which she completed in August 1941, Sister Lucy stated that the Secret of Fatima is divided into three distinct parts, after which she recorded, for the first time, the first two parts of the Secret.

"In her fourth memoir, which was written from October-December 1941, Sister Lucy added a new sentence. "In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc." Lucy purposely inserted it to indicate to us what the final part of the Secret is about.

"Father Alonso, the official Fatima archivist had this to say on the Third Secret:
'In the period preceding the great triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, terrible things are to happen. These form the content of the third part of the Secret. What are they? 'If 'in Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved,’ ... it can be clearly deduced from this that in other parts of the Church these dogmas are going to become obscure or even lost altogether.

'Thus, it is quite possible that in this intermediate period which is in question (after 1960 and before the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary), the text makes concrete references to the crisis of the Faith of the Church and to the negligence of the pastors themselves. Knowledgeable Church authorities have confirmed Father Alonso’s conclusions about the Third Secret, that it concerns an unprecedented loss of faith, an apostasy, from which Portugal will be preserved.

Worse than War,

In 1984 the Bishop of Fatima said, "the loss of Faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that Faith is continuously diminishing in Europe."

In his 1976 book, The Secret of Fatima: Fact and Legend, Father Alonso added to his hypothesis that the Third Secret concerns the crisis of Faith within the Church, the belief that it also speaks of the negligence of the pastors, especially within the upper hierarchy. "It is therefore completely probable," he said, "that the text (of the Third Secret) makes concrete references to the crisis of faith within the Church and to the negligence of the pastors themselves." He also speaks of "internal struggles in the very bosom of the Church and of grave pastoral negligence by the upper hierarchy," and "deficiencies of the upper hierarchy of the Church."

Father Alonso also said:
'... Does the unpublished text speak of concrete circumstances? It is very possible that it speaks not only of a real crisis of the faith in the Church during this in-between period, but like the secret of La Salette for example, there are more concrete references to the internal struggles of Catholics or to the fall of priests and religious. Perhaps it even refers to the failures of the upper hierarchy of the Church. For that matter, none of this is foreign to other communications Sister Lucy has had on this subject. At La Salette, the Madonna said "Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist."