Vatican publishes text of `Third Secret of Fatima’

The outlines of the secret, said to have been revealed by the Madonna to three Portuguese shepherd children, were first disclosed on May 13 during the Pope’s visit to Fatima.

The text was written in 1944 by Lucia dos Santos, now a 93-year-old nun and the only survivor of the three children.In her recollection of the third part of the 1917 vision, Sister Lucia says she and the other two children, Francisco and Jacinta, saw "an angel with a flaming sword".

They then saw "a bishop dressed in white (and) we had the impression that it was the Holy Father".As the vision continued, the children saw the Pope "passing through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow (and) he prayed for the souls of corpses he met on his way…"When the Pope reached the top of a mountain and was praying at the foot of a cross, "he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him" as he and bishops, priests and nuns and other people "died one after the other".

A lone Turkish gunman shot and nearly killed the Pope in St Peter’s Square in 1981. The attack by Mehmet Ali Agca came as events in the Pope’s Polish homeland were starting the domino effect that led to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.The Vatican said the vision was symbolic.The document included a photocopy of Sister Lucia’s handwritten Portuguese manuscript of the secret, which has been kept locked at the Vatican.Before the Vatican decided to reveal the secret last month, Papal envoys visited Sister Lucia to seek her opinion of the Pope’s interpretation and her permission to reveal it.