Father Joaquin Maria Alonso, a Spanish Claretian of indisputable learning and an apostle of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In 1966, the Bishop of Leiria, Msgr. Venancio, had officially entrusted him with the task of establishing a complete critical history of the apparitions and message of Fatima. In 1974, at the end of eight years of labour, the first volumes of his monumental work, Fatima, Texts and Critical Studies, were ready for publication; this was said to be imminent, but then it was suddenly deferred by the new Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, Msgr. Alberto Cosme do Amaral. We will return to the consequences of his unfortunate decision, which was approved by a commission of Portuguese university professors. Nevertheless, the official expert, while working on his vast critical study, even up to his death which fell on December 12, 1981, made known the essence of his works in numerous papers.

«The history of redemption», he observed, «continues and takes on at Fatima the particular character of charismatic grace accorded to the last times of the Church. At Fatima, as at Pontevedra, new sacred sites are created where it is as though the covenant were being renewed between God’s persecuted and the Lord. God is offering a new pact of reconciliation and mercy, founded on the most solid of guarantees: His love for the Virgin Mary, so enormously privileged after Her most beloved Son, whom He makes the depositary of His treasures. And the great promise of Mary’s Heart is nothing else than the continuation and almost the realisation of all the previous promises that God bestowed on His people in the Old and New Testament: “These souls will be cherished by God like flowers arranged by Me to adorn His throne” (June 13, 1917). “I promise to assist them at the hour of death with all the graces needed for their salvation.” (December 10, 1925)»

Moreover, how are we to understand Lucy’s great difficulty in writing the final part of the Secret when she has already written other things that were extremely difficult to put down? Had it been merely a matter of prophesying new and severe punishments, Sister Lucy would not have experienced difficulties so great that a special intervention from Heaven was needed to overcome them. ‹…› But, if it were a matter of internal strife within the Church and of serious pastoral negligence on the part of high-ranking members of the hierarchy, we can understand how Lucy experienced a repugnance that was almost impossible to overcome by natural means.