Free The Third Revelation by Ralph McInerny

synod following on the famous Ratzinger Report , the assembled bishops had acknowledged that there was a false spirit of the Council abroad in the Church. This was contrasted with the true spirit, and the marks of each were enumerated and stated. Crowe had known the great relief that what hitherto had seemed merely his opinions were now identified as the true spirit of the Council. Now at last would come clarity and unity, a dying away of the surly undertone of dissent.
    But nothing changed. The report of the synod was filed away with all the previous post-conciliar clarifications to be ignored by all those Crowe now saw as his adversaries. The time seemed to have come to follow the example of Donohue, get out of Rome and back to Ireland and comparative sanity. Oh, for a little rural parish in County Clare where he could be sustained by the solid faith and piety of his people. Two things intervened.
    The first was the then Bishop Maguire’s stay at the Irish College where Brendan roomed. The prelate had just been created cardinal and had come to Rome for the ceremony. One afternoon, when Brendan was pacing the graveled walks of the college ground, while most of the residents were taking their postprandial nap, a voice called. It was Maguire, sitting on a bench.
    â€œYou are pensive, Father.”
    â€œMy thoughts are not Pascalian, I’m afraid.”
    Maguire had liked that, and he had recognized the west country accent. He patted the bench beside him and Brendan sat.
    Two Irishmen in a foreign land, two clerics from County Clare with a fund of common memories and all of Holy Ireland sustaining them—there was immediate rapport. Brendan had described the work he did in the Vatican but mentioned his intention of returning home. Maguire sighed.
    â€œI won’t be going back.”
    He told Brendan of his appointment as head of the Vatican Library and Archives. Before they rose, he had asked Brendan to come there as his assistant.
    â€œI’ll want someone whose Italian I can easily understand.”
    Brendan had asked for and received a day to think on it. And then he had gone to Catena.
    He had made the appointment before Maguire had made his offer, with the intention of telling Catena he was returning to Ireland. But things were more complicated when he kept the appointment. If he accepted Maguire’s offer, he must sever all connections, however informal and clandestine, with the Confraternity of Pius IX.
    â€œIt is the answer to a prayer, Father,” Catena had said.
    Neither man had said it in so many words, but the implication was clear. Brendan Crowe would become the confraternity’s man in the archives. No need to mention that the third secret was stored there.
    â€œI couldn’t do that.”
    â€œCouldn’t work for the good of the Church? Surely you don’t imagine that I am asking you to be subversive. The subversives are already there.”
    Catena was a persuasive man and, Crowe had to admit, it was flattering to be recruited by both Maguire and Catena. Even so, Crowe’s agreement had been tacit. Over the intervening years, he had kept in touch with Catena, but had never been asked to do anything that could have been construed as disloyal to Cardinal Maguire. Sometimes he almost persuaded himself that he was keeping a watch on Catena and the confraternity. And then had come the awful day when an assassin had roamed the halls, had found the villa on the rooftop of the library, and had plunged a knife into the breast of Cardinal Maguire.
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    He had found the third secret of Fatima on the bedside table in Maguire’s villa, just lying there where the cardinal must have placed it after reading it, perhaps while in bed. If the assassin had had time, he could have found the folder and been off with it. Crowe knew why Maguire had been perusing the secret. After the publication of it in 2000, a steady stream of letters came that claimed that parts of the