The three secrets of Fatima

In 1917, Lucia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto claimed to have seen visions, the three young shepherd children from the town of Fatima in Portugal claimed to have received words of prophecy from the Virgin Mary and they were shown terrible visions of which they refused to share. Within three years, two of the children had died, and the third decided to share the secrets in the prophecies with the Vatican, with-holding the last of the three till 1943.

The secrets have since been released by the church, yet many people believe that these could be false and that the church has chosen to withhold the true secrets that had been revealed. The first secret is of a vision of hell, seeing the demons and the tormented souls suffering the great fire. The second announces that the war (World War 1) will soon end, but that if people don't change their ways that a bigger and more devastating war will break out (World War 2). The third foretells blood of many religious people being spilt and some point to this as predicting the attempted assassination of the Pope in modern times.

The controversy is centred around the third secret, as it was supposedly written on only one sheet of paper, where-as four sheets were released, leading to claims that the actual secret had not been released. People who had spoken to the author and people who had seen the secret referred only to one piece of paper. The Vatican did not help themselves as they held back from releasing it, as the author had wanted it revealed in 1960, yet they held out, making some guess at what it could have said and that it may suit the church to hide the real secret for some reason. Either way, we will never know for sure.