will be darkened and the world deranged by terror. A great War will break out within the second half of the 20th Century. Fire and smoke will fall from the sky. The waters of the oceans will be turned to steam, hurling their foam towards the sky; sinking everything… Millions and millions of men will lose their lives from one hour to the next, and those who remain living will envy those who are dead.”

Only the first line about Portugal was disclosed with ellipsis after it, indicating there was a succeeding text. If the above warning is indeed in the full Third Secret, many would ask if the prophecy proved false, since there was no “great War” after 1945, certainly nothing sending down “fire and smoke” from heaven, steaming up the oceans, or wiping out “millions and millions of men” within hours.

Reyes-Ayral, echoing other Marian scholars as well as devotees, points out, however, that “all the messages and warnings brought forth by the Blessed Virgin Mary to the three little shepherds of Fatima were always subject to man’s response, prayers and conversion…”

In fact, as this column discussed before, the world nearly suffered nuclear Armageddon twice, but was spared after two popes, Pius 12th in 1952 and St. John Paul 2nd in 1981, 1982 and 1984, partly fulfilled divine instructions conveyed by Our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart.

In July 1952, Pius 12th consecrated Russia in an Apostolic Letter, not the public ceremony joined by all Catholic bishops, as instructed at Fatima. That year, Russian despot Josef Stalin planned to invade Europe, probably thinking that the US would not defend it and risk nuclear war. But in March 1953 he died of a brain hemorrhage, and his successors scrapped war plans.

Three decades later, John Paul 2nd consecrated the world thrice after surviving an assassin’s bullets on the feast of Fatima on May 13, 1980. In 1983 Russia was again contemplating invasion after the US put intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) in Europe, capable of nuking Moscow with nil chance of retaliation.

But on May 13, 1984, again on the Fatima feast and weeks after the third consecration on March 25, 1984, the Feast of the Annunciation, a massive explosion devastated Severomorsk, Russia’s main naval base, wiping out most of the navy’s armaments.

That again scuttled war plans. Plus: the rise of reformist Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 led to the treaty banning IRBMs, signed by him and then US President Ronald Reagan on Dec. 8, 1987, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (“How God promised to bring peace to the world” https://www.manilatimes. net/2022/03/20/opinion/columns/ how-god-promised-to-bring-peaceto-the-world/1836915).

On March 25 this year, again on the Annunciation feast, Pope Francis acceded to the request of Ukrainian bishops and consecrated the world, with special mention of Russia and Ukraine and joined by thousands of bishops across the globe. We pray that this act of obedience to Mary would again spare humanity from global war.