More than 300,000 people packed St. Peter’s Square for the pope’s funeral, making it the biggest event in Vatican history. In attendance were leaders and dignitaries from more than 100 countries, including seventeen kings, queens, and princes, as well as more than seventy premiers, prime ministers and presidents. Our own president, George W. Bush, called his attendance at the pope’s funeral “one of the highlights of [his] presidency,” adding that it had strengthened his belief in a “living God” and left him feeling “very much at peace” and “much more in touch with his spirit.”

More than two billion people watched the pope’s funeral on television, making it the largest media event in the history of the world. A myriad of nations declared a time of national mourning and ordered their flags to be flown at half-mast in honor of “papa.” All over the world people began making mad dashes to nearby stores to buy up Pope John Paul II memorabilia. T-shirts, posters, prayer cards, crucifixes, miniature statues, key chains, commemorative coins, rosaries, books, and encyclicals sold as fast as stores could stock them. On eBay, people were even bidding on a chicken breast that resembled the late pontiff and a bottle of “heaven’s tears”—rainwater collected by an Ohio woman on the day the pope died.

The praise paid to the late pontiff by world leaders was truly unprecedented. President George W. Bush praised the pope as “one of history’s great leaders.” French President, Jacques Chirac, called the pope an “exceptional sovereign pontiff” whose “imprint and memory” history “will retain.” Former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, credited the pope for being “the moral force behind victory in the Cold War.” According to Lech Walesa, the leader of Poland’s Solidarity Movement, “there would [have been] no end to communism” without Pope John Paul II. German Chancellor, Gerhand Schroeder, praised the pope for writing “history” and changing “our world” through “his work and impressive personality.” And Carlo Ciampi, President of Italy, eulogized the “Holy Father” as one who had given “hope to all of us, especially [to] youth from all over the world.”

Joining the world’s political leaders in this chorus of praise to the late pontiff were religious leaders from every faith. Tibet’s Dalai Lama, who claims to be god and the fourteenth incarnation of the original Dalai Lama, said, “Pope John Paul II was a man I held high regard for.” No wonder, since Pope John Paul II called the Tibetan god-man his “dear friend,” worshiped with him and his Buddhist monks, and even permitted the Dalai Lama, during an ecumenical service in 1986, to replace the cross on the altar of St. Peter’s Church in Assisi with a Buddha. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, “Muslims worldwide respected Pope John Paul II” for having “held and kissed a copy of the Koran” while visiting a mosque in the Syrian capital of Damascus in 2001. The spiritual leader of New Delhi’s Hindu community praised the pope as “a spiritual leader [who] stood for the values of tolerance and ecumenism.” These accolades from a Hindu guru were undoubtedly inspired in no small part by the pope’s 1986 trip to India, during which he praised Hinduism as an “ancient wisdom” that “the world does well to attend” in order “to find enrichment for human living.” Other religious leaders lauding the late pontiff were: Rabbi Marvine Hier (Founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center), Abraham Foxman (National Director of the Anti-Defamation League), Anahat Kaur (Vice Chairman of the World Sikh Council), Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury), Samuel Kobia (General Secretary of the World Council of Churches), Gordon B. Hinckley (President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and even evangelist Billy Graham, who called Pope John Paul II “the world’s greatest evangelist.”

Was Pope John Paul II a great evangelist—someone mightily used by God—or a great ecumenist—someone mightily used by the god of this world to set the stage for end time apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4)? Many, if not most, will recoil at the latter, arguing that Pope John Paul II fearlessly stood against communism and firmly stood for the sanctity of human life. Still, we cannot afford in these perilous times to forget the ominous warning written long ago by the divinely inspired pen of the Apostle Paul: “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Corinthians 11:13-15).

On the afternoon of May 13, 1981, while he was being driven around in a slow-moving convertible in St. Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul II was shot by a twenty-three year old Turkish terrorist named Mehmet Ali Agca. Rushed to the hospital, the pope underwent six hours of emergency surgery. Afterward, he remained in the hospital for twenty-one days. During this time of convalescence, Pope John Paul II requested that the envelope containing the “secret of Fatima” be brought to him from the Archives of the Holy Office. What was the “secret of Fatima” and why did the Pope request that it be brought to him while he was recovering from the bullet wounds of a would-be assassin?

On May 13, 1917, the Virgin Mary supposedly appeared to three small children while they were tending sheep in a rural Portuguese village called Fatima. She allegedly asked her “little shepherds” to return to the same spot for additional apparitions on the thirteenth day of each of the next six months. During that six-month period, the children—Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto—claimed to have received three extraordinary visions from the Virgin Mary.

Only two years after seeing the Madonna of Fatima, Jacinta and Francisco Marto died of pneumonia. In 1929, Lucia, the sole surviving seer of Fatima, was cloistered away for safekeeping in a Portuguese Carmelite convent. Years later, she was ordered by the Bishop of Leiria to commit the visions of Fatima to paper, lest they be lost to posterity. Though Lucia did as she was ordered, believing she had received the permission of the “Most Holy Mother” to do so, she stipulated that her written account of the third vision be put in a sealed envelope and kept secret until 1960.

Initially, the sealed envelope containing the “secret of Fatima” was in the custody of the Bishop of Leiria. To better ensure its protection, however, it was brought to the Vatican on April 4, 1957, and placed in the Secret Archives of the Holy Office. According to the records of the Vatican’s Secret Archives, the Commissary of the Holy Office, Father Pierre Paul Philippe, brought the sealed envelope to Pope John XXIII on August 17, 1959. After some hesitation, Pope John XXIII reportedly said, “We shall wait. I shall pray. I shall let you know what I decide.” In the end, his decision was to return the envelope unopened and unread to the Secret Archives. It was not until March 27, 1965, that Pope John XXIII’s successor, Pope Paul VI, finally opened the envelope and read its contents. Immediately thereafter, he ordered the envelope returned to the Archives, opting to neither publish nor divulge the secret text that it contained.

It was this envelope containing the “secret of Fatima” that Pope John Paul II called for while convalescing in the hospital. His curious request was undoubtedly inspired by the fact that the assassination attempt upon his life had occurred on the sixty-fourth anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima. Already familiar with the first two visions of Fatima, in which the Virgin Mary promised the salvation of “many souls” and “a period of peace” on earth in exchange for the world’s devotion and consecration to her “Immaculate Heart,” the pope’s fascination with the final vision had now reached a fever pitch.

Printed below is Lucia’s account of the final vision the Virgin Mary supposedly gave to her and her cousins at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917.  

THE SECRET OF FATIMA

“After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw a Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’. And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.”

After reading the “secret of Fatima” and supposedly receiving his own Marian apparition during his convalescence, Pope John Paul II concluded that the Virgin Mary had foretold to her “little shepherds” the May 13, 1981, assassination attempt upon his life. Furthermore, he believed he owed his life to the Virgin Mary, since it was her miraculous intervention that had spared him from the bullets of a would-be assassin. Had it not been for the Virgin Mary of Fatima, Pope John Paul II believed he would have died at the hands of Mehmet Ali Agca, just as “the Holy Father” in the vision was “killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him.”

In recounting the assassination attempt upon his life, Pope John Paul II wrote that it was evident to him that “a mother’s hand [had] guided the bullet’s path” enabling him “in his throes” to halt “at the threshold of death.”  This explains why Pope John Paul II gave the Bishop of Leiria a bullet found in the pope’s convertible after the assassination attempt. The pope requested that the bullet be kept in the famous Shrine of Fatima. The Bishop of Leiria, however, did more than honor the pope’s request. He went so far as to have the bullet set in the crown of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, where the bullet remains till this day.

Convinced that the Virgin Mary had miraculously spared his life in order to use him as her instrument in leading the world to devote itself to her “Immaculate Heart,” Pope John Paul II composed a prayer for what he called an “Act of Entrustment,” which was to be celebrated in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major on June 7, 1981. Since he was unable to attend, due to the fact that he was still recovering from his gunshot wounds, the pope’s prayer for the consecrating service of the world to “the Immaculate Heart of Mary” had to be recorded and broadcast. Printed below is the part of the pope’s prayer that referred specifically to the so-called “Act of Entrustment.”

THE ACT OF ENTRUSTMENT

“Mother of all individuals and peoples, you know all their sufferings and hopes. In your motherly heart you feel all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, that convulse the world: accept the plea which we make in the Holy Spirit directly to your heart, and embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord those who most await this embrace, and also those whose act of entrustment you too await in a particular way. Take under your motherly protection the whole human family, which with affectionate love we entrust to you, O Mother. May there dawn for everyone the time of peace and freedom, the time of truth, of justice and of hope.”

A year later, on May 13, 1982—the first anniversary of the assassination attempt upon his life and the sixty-fifth anniversary of the first appearance of “Our Lady of Fatima”—Pope John Paul II traveled to Fatima to repeat his “Act of Entrustment.” Two years later, on March 25, 1984, in St. Peter’s Square, the pope again prayed a prayer entrusting the whole world to the “Immaculate Heart of Mary.” This time, however, in an effort to more fully respond to the requests of “Our Lady of Fatima,” the pope added to his previous prayer of entrustment the following:

“Above all creatures, may you be blessed, you, the Handmaid of the Lord, who in the fullest way obeyed the divine call! Hail to you, who are wholly united to the redeeming consecration of your Son! Mother of the Church! Enlighten the people of God along the paths of faith, hope, and love! Enlighten especially the peoples whose consecration and entrustment by us you are awaiting. Help us to live in the truth of the consecration of Christ for the entire human family of the modern world. In entrusting to you, O Mother, the world, all individuals and peoples, we also entrust to you this very consecration of the world, placing it in your motherly Heart. Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the future! From famine and war, deliver us. From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us. From sin against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us. From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us. From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us. From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us. From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us. From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us. From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us. Accept, O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies. Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin; individual sin and the ‘sin of the world’, sin in all its manifestations. Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful love! May it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!”    

Following this more elaborate papal prayer, in which Pope John Paul II again entrusted the world and all its peoples to the care of the Virgin Mary, Lucia dos Santos, the only surviving seer of Fatima, confirmed to the pope that his solemn and universal act of consecration had finally fulfilled the wishes expressed long ago by “Our Lady of Fatima.” Years later, in a letter dated November 8, 1989, Lucia wrote of the pope’s March 25, 1984, prayer, “Yes it has [finally] been done just as Our Lady asked.”

Having consecrated the world to the “Immaculate Heart of Mary,” Pope John Paul II proudly announced that he was also dedicating “himself and his Pontificate to Our Lady.” His coat of arms (personal motto), which topped his plain cypress coffin, consisted of a small cross and a large M for Mary. Embroidered on the inside of his papal robes were the Latin words, “Totus tuus sum Maria,” which mean, “Mary, I’m all yours.” This explains why Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, said the following in his homily at Pope John Paul II’s funeral: “The Holy Father found the purest reflection of God’s mercy in the Mother of God. He, who at an early age had lost his own mother, loved his divine mother all the more. He heard the words of the crucified Lord as addressed personally to him: ‘Behold your Mother.’ And so he did as the beloved disciple did: he took her into his home—Totus tuus.” Cardinal Ratzinger then concluded his homily by entrusting the late pontiff’s “dear soul to the mother of God” and by ensuring the grieving masses that the “Mother” of Pope John Paul II, the one who had “guided [him] each day” of his papacy, would now “guide” him into “the eternal glory of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”

Having consecrated himself, his papacy, and the whole world to the “Immaculate Heart of Mary,” Pope John Paul II set out in Mary’s name to bring down communism, to bring peace on earth, and to bring all of the religions of the world together under the saving umbrella of Roman Catholicism and the sovereign command of the Roman pontiff. As far as bringing all of the religions of the world together into one big, happy family of faith, no one, especially no pope, had ever done more for the ecumenical cause than Pope John Paul II.

In his unprecedented attempts to reach out to “separated brethren”—the term utilized by the Second Vatican Council in referring to Protestants—Pope John Paul II knelt at the Canterbury Anglican cathedral altar beside then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie. He also permitted the Greek Orthodox Archbishop, Metropolitan Damaskinos, to speak in his place at St. Peter’s and sit in the Chair of the Basilica.  And he even went so far as to become the first pope in history to step foot inside a Lutheran Church, where he took part in the service and stated to all in attendance, “I am here because the Spirit of the Lord thrusts us towards ecumenical dialogue, to find complete unity among Christians.”

Although Pope John Paul II’s ecumenical outreach to “separated brethren” was unprecedented, it was his unparalleled and unorthodox attempts at gathering all the religions of the world under the wings of Roman Catholicism that truly set him apart from his papal predecessors. Though a multitude of examples could be cited, we are forced by the limited size of this article to confine ourselves to a couple. First, during a 1984 trip to New Guinea, the pope celebrated an outdoor Mass at which dancers pranced to the altar warding off evil spirits by throwing up clouds of orange and yellow smoke, while an eighteen-year-old native girl dressed in her traditional costume stood at the papal altar nude from her waist up reading from the Bible. Second, in 1986, 1993, and again in 2002, Pope John Paul II gathered the leaders of the world’s major religions together in Assisi, Italy, to pray for world peace. Praying together with the pope on these three occasions were snake worshipers, fire worshipers, spiritists, animists, witch doctors, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Shintos, Jews, and “Christians.”  According to the pope, every participant was “praying to the same God” and every prayer was generating “profound spiritual energies” that would help create “a new climate for peace” in the world.

Lest the world mistakenly believe that he was championing a “one religion is as good as another” brand of ecumenism, Pope John Paul II approved the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s 2000 “Declaration Dominus Iesus.” This document declared that only Catholics “have the fullness of the means of salvation” and that all other faiths, including Protestantism, are inferior because they are based on “superstitions or other errors [that] constitute an obstacle to salvation.” This declaration that salvation does not exist outside of the Roman Catholic Church has always been the official dogma of Roman Catholicism. As Vatican II clearly states: “This holy Council teaches. . .that the Church [Roman Catholic Church]. . .is necessary for salvation. . .Hence, they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it.”

Rather than peddling a “one religion is as good as another” brand of ecumenism, Pope John Paul II traversed the world calling for the incorporation of all religions into the Roman Catholic Church. Though he often taught that there was good in all religions, he also insisted that no religion was good enough until coupled with Roman Catholicism. This integration of the world’s other religions with Christianity is what Catholicism has always been about. It is also what exposes the Roman Catholic Church as “the great whore” of  Revelation 17 and 18. What other faith or religious institution insists that salvation is only found within its embrace, but at the same time expresses a desire to share its bed with all comers and commit “fornication” with all the false religions of the world?

A good example of Catholicism’s spiritual fornication and Pope John Paul II’s brand of ecumenism is the late pope’s 1993 tour of Africa, during which he guaranteed voodooists “that they would not betray their traditional faith by converting to Christianity”; that is, they could become “Christian voodooists.” Roman Catholicism’s willingness to prostitute itself to African paganism is clearly seen in Haiti, where every voodoo ceremony begins with Catholic prayers. As it is often quipped, especially among missionaries, “Haiti is 85 percent Catholic and 110 percent voodoo.”

Make no mistake about it, there was definitely a method to the ecumenical madness of Pope John Paul II. His campaign to incorporate all the religions of the world into the Roman Catholic Church was intended to create a one world religion headquartered in Rome. As Pope John Paul II told one of his many weekly audiences at the Vatican, “Christian unity will not become a reality unless all churches accept the authority Christ entrusted to St. Peter and his successors. This unity will not be fully manifested until all Christians accept Christ’s will for the Church and acknowledge the apostolic authority of the bishops, in communion with the successor of Peter.” In other words, religious unity is an impossibility until all people of faith willingly submit to the Catholic hierarchy and particularly submit to the Roman pontiff.

In response to Pope John Paul II’s audacious demand for unquestioned allegiance from all people of faith, Robert Schuller, the most watched television preacher in the world, said, “It’s time for Protestants to go to the shepherd [the pope] and say, ‘What do we have to do to come home?’” No wonder Pope John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, believes that some Protestants are now “ready to acknowledge. . .the tradition of primacy to Rome,” realizing “that Christianity ought to have a spokesman who can personally and authoritatively articulate the faith both to the world and to the Christian community.”

According to the Roman Catholic Catechism, the pope “has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church.” “A power” that the Catechism asserts “can always” be exercised by the pope “unhindered.” Furthermore, the Catechism ascribes to the pope “infallibility.” To disbelieve or deny the absolute and infallible authority of the papacy is to be damned by one of Vatican I’s more than 100 anathemas, all of which are reaffirmed by Vatican II.

Seeing anathematized deniers of papal primacy and their staunch opposition to his church’s religious whoredom as the main obstacle to a one world religion headed by the Roman see, Pope John Paul II frequently warned the world about “dangerous extremists”—Christian fundamentalists—who “abuse speech” and “incite hatred and violence.” According to the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 130 page publication, “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church,” which was presented to Pope John Paul II on April 23, 1993, the Christian fundamentalist’s approach to Biblical interpretation is very “dangerous” and “a kind of intellectual suicide” that leads to “prejudices” and “racism.”

In 1988, during a sermon in La Paz, Bolivia, Pope John Paul II lashed out against American evangelicals, calling them “sheep-stealing rapacious wolves” and “dangerous sects” (the Vatican’s term for cults). Such animosity was undoubtedly inspired by the explosive growth of evangelical Christianity in the predominately Catholic countries of Latin America. In one Latin American country, a Catholic bishop has even threatened “holy war” against Christian evangelicals. Speaking to the 31st National Conference of the Bishops of Brazil, the world’s most populace Catholic country, Bishop Sinesio Bohn vowed, “We will declare holy war; don’t doubt it. The Catholic Church has a ponderous structure, but when we move, we’ll smash anyone beneath us.”

In a timid response to Catholic threats and bravado, leading evangelicals began meeting with Roman Catholics in an attempt to ease rising tensions between their respective communities in Latin America and elsewhere. Then, after two years, they forged together an extraordinary document entitled, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the 3rd Millennium.” This document, which the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals called a triumphalistic moment” in American religious life, calls for Catholics and evangelicals to cease their proselytizing of each other’s flocks, or as the New York Times put it, make “a remarkable leap of faith” and “finally accept each other as Christians.”

According to this historic joint declaration, signed by American evangelical and Catholic leaders on March 24, 1994, evangelical Christians are no longer to question the veracity of Roman Catholicism’s Mary worshiping, rosary praying, pope following, penance paying, purgatory suffering, saint venerating, candle burning, sacrament observing salvation. Instead, we are to refrain from witnessing to Roman Catholics and begin acknowledging them as our brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of whether or not they have been born again. After all, in these politically-correct times, easing religious tensions and sparing peoples’ feelings is far more important than sharing Christ with lost souls.

The signing of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” by such evangelical luminaries as Charles Colson (one of the chief originators), Pat Robertson, Richard Land, Os Guinness, J.I. Packer, and the late Bill Bright should give all of us pause. If such renowned Christian leaders fail to see how such a contract with Roman Catholicism compromises the gospel, undermines the Great Commission, and puts us in bed with the “great whore” of Revelation 17 and 18, what hope is there that today’s uninformed Christian laity will catch it? Truly, these perilous times of spreading worldwide apostasy are being made even more perilous by an easily compromised, undiscerning church.

Was the Protestant Reformation a mistake, as the joint declaration “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” insinuates? Was it a mere matter of misunderstood semantics, as Paul Crouch, the founder of the world’s largest Christian television network, has suggested? Did millions of martyrs who rejected Roman Catholicism as a false gospel die for nothing? Were the likes of Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and Tyndale wrong for insisting upon and contending for “sola scriptura” (scripture alone), “solus Christus” (Christ alone), “sola gratia” (grace alone), “sola fide” (faith alone), and “soli Deo gloria” (glory to God alone)? Or are these past champions and defenders of the faith now turning over in their graves, because the Romish heresy they heroically fought against causes neither a raised eyebrow nor a shrugged shoulder in today’s complaisant church?

Far from entering into a contract with her, the Bible calls upon the people of God to come out of the end time apostate church, lest we “be partakers of her sins” and “receive of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4). For today’s church, the bride of Christ, to lend legitimacy to the Roman harlot is to aid and abet her in her seduction of the world. That multitudes are committing spiritual fornication with a harlot church at the forfeiture of their immortal souls is most calamitous, but that the true church of Christ, the sole steward of the gospel, may now be so spiritually dumbed down as to actually be assisting the harlot in luring the world into its own death bed is unconscionable.

The one world religion of the end time is materializing before our very eyes. The Roman Catholic Church, headquartered in Rome, which has been called “the city of seven hills” for more than 2000 years, is now assuming its place as the predicted end time apostate church; that is, “the great whore” of Revelation 17 and 18 who sits on seven hills. And thanks to the tireless efforts of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, the new pope, Benedict XVI, may succeed in becoming the recognized religious leader of the world. If not, a soon successor to Pope Benedict XVI will undoubtedly prove to be the long awaited “false prophet” of Revelation 13 who leads the whole world “to worship the beast.” These world events are of grave consequence and demand the careful scrutiny and continuous observation of all Bible believing Christians.

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