Une Minute avec Marie
Faire connaître et aimer Marie
The story of the secret of Fatima began on July 13, 1917, when the Blessed Virgin entrusted it to three little visionaries. Lucia did not hide the fact that they had received a secret, but none of the three children ever revealed the slightest element of it, even when Artur de Olivera Santos, the administrator of the district of Vila Nova de Ourem, threatened to fry them alive in a pot of boiling oil! After Francisco died on April 4, 1919, followed by Jacinta on February 20, 1920, Lucia remained the only person to know the secret.
With Heaven’s permission, she began to reveal parts of the secret in 1925, especially the reparative communion of the first Saturdays of the month and the request to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But neither the commission of inquiry nor her confessors at the time asked her for more information than she had spontaneously disclosed.
Between 1935 and 1941, at the request of Bishop da Silva, Sister Lucia wrote four memoirs. In the first two, she remained very evasive about the secret: she revealed certain elements, such as the visions of hell and of the Holy Father, but without explicitly saying that they pertained to the secret. It was only with the third part of the secret, written down in August 1941, that for the first time she disclosed much of the secret - 2 of its 3 parts: the vision of hell, and the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A month later, very struck by the content of Lucia’s memoir, Bishop da Silva asked her to write a complete account of the apparitions. Lucia therefore sent him a fourth memoir also containing the secret of July 13 but still missing the third part. The only difference with the previous wording was this added passage: "In Portugal, the dogma of faith (...) will always be preserved. Don’t tell this to anyone. Yes, you can tell Francisco."