Silencing of the Messengers: Father Fuentes (1959 – 1965)

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Silencing of the Messengers: Father Fuentes (1959 – 1965)

Interview with Sister Lucy

On December 26, 1957 Father Augustin Fuentes, who was preparing to become the postulator of the causes for beatification of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, met with Sister Lucy at her convent in Coimbra, Portugal. Here, he was able to converse with the Fatima seer at great length. Upon his return to his native Mexico, he gave a conference on the meeting, in which he reported Sister Lucy's words. Father Alonso, the official Fatima archivist for 16 years, stressed that the account of this conference was published “with every guarantee of authenticity and with due episcopal approval, including that of the Bishop of Fatima.” Father Fuentes affirmed that the message came “from the very lips of the principal seer.”

Sources: This matter has been documented at length by Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité in Volume III of his series The Whole Truth About Fatima. The following text is The Fatima Crusader's translation of the Spanish and the English texts published in Frère Michel's book The Third Secret (Volume III, pp. 336-338). The subtitles have been added for your convenience.


The Report by Father Fuentes

“I wish to tell you about the last conversation which I had with Sister Lucy on the 26th of December (last year). I met her in her convent. She was very sad, very pale and emaciated. She said to me,”


“No One Has Paid Any Attention”

“Father, the most Holy Virgin is very sad because no one has paid any attention to Her Message, neither the good nor the bad. The good continue on their way, but without giving any importance to Her Message. The bad, not seeing the punishment of God actually falling upon them, continue their life of sin without even caring about the Message. But believe me, Father, God will chastise the world and this will be in a terrible manner. The punishment from Heaven is imminent.”


The Secret Not Revealed

“Father, how much time is there before 1960 arrives? It will be very sad for everyone, not one person will rejoice at all if beforehand the world does not pray and do penance. I am not able to give any other details, because it is still a Secret. According to the will of the Most Holy Virgin, only the Holy Father and the Bishop of Fatima are permitted to know the Secret, but they have chosen to not know it so that they would not be influenced. This is the third part of the Message of Our Lady, which will remain secret until 1960.”


Russia, the Scourge of God

“Tell them, Father, that many times the Most Holy Virgin told my cousins Francisco and Jacinta, as well as myself, that many nations will disappear from the face of the earth. She said that Russia will be the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the whole world if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that poor nation.”


“The Decisive Battle” Between Mary and Satan: the Falling Away of Consecrated Souls and Priests

Sister Lucy also told me: “Father, the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin. And the devil knows what it is that offends God the most, and which in a short space of time will gain for him the greatest number of souls. Thus the devil does everything to overcome souls consecrated to God, because in this way the devil will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily will he seize them.”

“That which afflicts the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Heart of Jesus is the fall of religious and priestly souls. The devil knows that religious and priests who fall away from their beautiful vocation drag numerous souls to hell. … The devil wishes to take possession of consecrated souls. He tries to corrupt them in order to lull to sleep the souls of laypeople and thereby lead them to final impenitence. He employs all tricks, even going so far as to suggest the delay of entrance into religious life. Resulting from this is the sterility of the interior life, and among the laypeople, coldness (lack of enthusiasm) regarding the subject of renouncing pleasures and the total dedication of themselves to God.”


That Which Sanctified Jacinta and Francisco

“Tell them also, Father, that my cousins Francisco and Jacinta sacrificed themselves because in all the apparitions of the Most Holy Virgin, they always saw Her very sad. She never smiled at us. This sadness, this anguish which we noted in Her, penetrated our souls. This sadness is caused by the offenses against God and the punishments which menace sinners. And so, we children did not know what to think except to invent various means of praying and making sacrifices.”

The other things which sanctified these children was to see the vision of Hell.


The Mission of Sister Lucy

“Father, that is why my mission is not to indicate to the world the material punishments which are certain to come if the world does not pray and do penance beforehand. No! My mission is to indicate to everyone the imminent danger we are in of losing our souls for all eternity if we remain obstinate in sin.”


The Urgency of Conversion

Sister Lucy also said to me: “Father, we should not wait for an appeal to the world to come from Rome on the part of the Holy Father, to do penance. Nor should we wait for the call to penance to come from our bishops in our diocese, nor from the religious congregations. No! Our Lord has already very often used these means, and the world has not paid attention. That is why now, it is necessary for each one of us to begin to reform himself spiritually. Each person must not only save his own soul but also help to save all the souls that God has placed on our path.”

“The devil does all in his power to distract us and to take away from us the love for prayer; we shall be saved together or we shall be damned together.”


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 Final Battle

“The first reason is because She told me that the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Virgin. And a decisive battle is the final battle where one side will be victorious and the other side will suffer defeat. Also, from now on we must choose sides. Either we are for God or we are for the devil. There is no other possibility.”


The Last Remedies

“The second reason is because 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 Sin Against the Holy Spirit

“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 ‘certain fear’ the last means of salvation, His Most Holy Mother. It is with ‘certain fear’ because if you despise and repulse this ultimate means, we will not have any more forgiveness from Heaven, because we will have committed a sin which the Gospel calls the sin against the Holy Ghost. This sin consists of openly rejecting, with full knowledge and consent, the salvation which He offers. Let us remember that Jesus Christ is a very good Son and that He does not permit that we offend and despise His Most Holy Mother. We have recorded through many centuries of Church history the obvious testimony which demonstrates by the terrible chastisements which have befallen those who have attacked the honor of His Most Holy Mother, how Our Lord Jesus Christ has always defended the honor of His Mother.”


Prayer and Sacrifice and the Holy Rosary

Sister Lucy told me: “The two means for saving the world are prayer and sacrifice.”

Regarding the Holy Rosary, Sister Lucy said: “Look, Father, the Most Holy Virgin, in these last times in which we live, has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary. She has given this efficacy to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families, of the families of the world or of the religious communities, or even of the life of peoples and nations, that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary. With the Holy Rosary we will save ourselves. We will sanctify ourselves. We will console Our Lord and obtain the salvation of many souls.”


Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

“Finally, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, our Most Holy Mother, consists in considering Her as the seat of mercy, of goodness and of pardon, and as the sure door by which we are to enter Heaven.”1


Ecclesiastical Reaction to the Above Interview

Father Fuentes’ published interview with Sister Lucy produced, but only a year later, a strong reaction from the episcopal curia of Coimbra, the diocese in which Lucy's convent is located. They published an anonymous note that accused Father Fuentes of inventing these statements of Sister Lucy, claiming that Sister Lucy herself renounced the published testimony as untrue. The curia had declared that Father Fuentes had outright fabricated the remarks quoted above. To this day, no one has been willing to take responsibility for this note. As such, in law such a note is null and void. In Mexico, Archbishop Manuel Pio Lopez and Cardinal José Garibi y Rivera defended Father Fuentes, but to no avail. He was relieved of his position as postulator for the beatification of Jacinta and Francisco, and subsequently replaced by Father Luis Kondor.


Commentary

What happened to cause such an uproar? Someone is lying about the interview between Father Fuentes and Sister Lucy. Both Father Kondor and Father Alonso believed that Father Fuentes did not falsify reports of his interview with Sister Lucy. After being appointed the official Fatima archivist in 1966, at first Father Alonso adopted the belief that Father Fuentes had fabricated the statements he attributed to Sister Lucy. However, after ten years of studying the Fatima archives and meeting with Sister Lucy, Father Alonso changed his position and actually sought to rehabilitate Father Fuentes. He stated that the texts of Fuentes’ conference “do not say anything that Sister Lucy has not said in her numerous writings delivered to the public.” He also declared that “the genuine text … does not, in my opinion, contain anything that could give rise to the condemnatory notice issued from Coimbra.”2 Therefore, we can safely conclude that the curia's response to Father Fuentes' published interview is an indication that Sister Lucy's message is one that someone wanted silenced.


Notes:
1. Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima, Volume III: The Third Secret, (Immaculate Heart Publications, Buffalo, New York, 1990) pp. 504-508.
2. Father Alonso at first agreed that Fr. Fuentes made up the interview. But in 1975, after he had been studying the Fatima documents for some time, he concluded that it likely came from Sister Lucy. For more information, see The Whole Truth About Fatima, Vol. III, pp. 552-554.