The Fatima connection

David Gollob

Seville If you push them they will remind you that, before, Palmar was nothing; whereas now . . . They gesture to the metal gates in the 15-foot wall that seals off the concrete monstrosity from the outside world. Through here the faithful (' foreigners mostly') must pass, under the scrutiny of a sour-mouthed Cerberan doorman and his pack of doberman pinschers. Women without tights or head covering are turned back. Men are raspingly ordered to button their shirts up to the neck.

Mass is strictly Tridentine, with segrega- tion of the sexes, priests facing the altar, and a horde of crow-like, black-veiled nuns chanting the rosary as if the end of the world were due just after the sermon. This is the Holy See of Pope Gregory XVII..

The story begins on 30 March 1968, when four children wandering on this site were startled by what appeared to be a woman hanging from a tree, who was subsequently identified as the Virgin Mary in person. Word spread, and within days more visions were being reported, and thousands of cancer patients, blind beggars, cripples, curiosity-seekers and would-be visionaries were flocking to the site.

One of the latter was a somewhat dissipated young man called Clemente Dominguez. Clemente distinguished himself from the herd not only by having more visions than anyone else, but also by being visited by a broader spectrum of religious personalities. In states of extasis he was on speaking terms with the likes of Saints Francis and Dominic, not to mention Christ himself, from whom he now received orders directly.

Sceptics who denounced the apparitions as a publicity hoax organised by the village mayor made little headway against the flood of believers. Acting on divine orders, Clemente publicised the phenomenon with such success that by the second anniversary of the apparitions, when 40,000 pilgrims gathered at Palmar, the Virgin was appear-

ing monthly to a community of 100 seers, and more saints were joining the show every day. Clemente now had stigmata (on the palms, not the wrists, where research on the Turin Shroud implies they should logically appear) and a new monastic order was in the making. The church hierarchy refused to comment.

Only later did the course of events force the Vatican to react. Meanwhile, money poured in. Clemente went on a world-wide evangelical tour, joining up with fanatical, ultra-conservative Catholic leaders famous for their hostility to Paul VI. One of these was Mgr Marcel Lefebvre. One of Lefeb- vre's collaborators, Father Maurice Revaz, joined Clemente's new religious order, the so-called 'Carmelites of the Holy Face'. Another convert was Sister Ramonina, a nun linked with the fanatically anti- communist 'Blue Army' based in Fatima, Portugal.

The apparition of the Virgin at Fatima on 13 May 1917 bears certain uncanny similarities to the events at Palmar, and there is an interesting parallel in the way political capital has been made of both. The scenario was almost identical: the pro- tagonists were children, the setting was rural, pilgrims were attracted in their thousands, and a cathedral was built on the site. Curiously, the Fatima incident occur- red in the same year as the Bolshevik Revolution, and the priest who was later to become Pius XII was ordained on that very same day.

The symbolic potential of these coin- cidences went missing for 25 years until, as the Nazis laid siege to Stalingrad, Pius the Pontiff revealed the message of Fatima to the world. Publishing the divine imperative to 'pray for the conversion of Russia', Pius called for nothing less than a holy crusade against the 'neo-paganist' demon of com- munism, then already in progress. The first Pope to see in Marx and Lenin the most lethal enemies to the Church since Luther was also the last officially to recognise an apparition of the Virgin — or any other supernatural visitor — as an authentic in- tervention of the divine in the affairs of man.

Both John XXIII and Paul VI rejected Pius's vision of the Church as general HQ of the spiritual war against communism. Even more significantly perhaps, they re- jected both the paraphernalia and rhetoric of apocalyptic mysticism enshrined in Fatima, for years the vehicle and inspira- tion of Pius's 'crusade. However, many Catholics saw the Church's new commit- ment to realism and social change in the Third World as proof that the Vatican had gone red, and the backlash against the sweeping reforms of the Second Vatican Council had reactionary political overtones. It was a movement into which Clemente fit- ted perfectly.

Ironically, the restoration of civil liberties following the death of Franco gave Clemente the freedom he needed to bid for the leadership not only of Catholic reac- tionaries but also of Spain's so-called 'in- yolutionists', who are apparently ready to go to any extreme in order to restore a fascist dictatorship to this country. One wonders if he would have succeeded had he played his cards differently.

Clemente began wooing Spanish fascists by prophesying another civil war in the aftermath of Franco's death, in which the, political triumph of the Left would be quashed by a new caudillo who would then go on to lead a crusade across the Pyrenees to the gates of Moscow. Another predic- tion was that, after the death of Paul VI, the Vatican would elect an 'anti-Pope' while the real Pope would be elected in Seville.

However, there was a slight snag in Clemente's plans: he was only a simple layman. Father Revaz, his Lefebvrist col- laborator, was called upon to remedy the situation. Revaz convinced Mgr Ngao Dhin Thuc, a mad Vietnamese archbishop exiled in Rome and linked with Buddhist persecution in the days of Diem, that the Virgin had sent word he should ordain members of Clemente's order as bishops and priests. This Ngao did. The Vatican had to react and Paul VI excommunicated the lot of them, including Ngao — but it was too late. The ordinations, although 'il- legal', were 'valid' in ecclesiastical law. Ex- communicated or not, 'Bishop' Clemente had now arrived.

Clemente graciously exculpated Paul VI tin the grounds that he was being held prisoner, under the influence of drugs, by communist cardinals in Rome. Following Paul's death, Clemente, true to his word, was elected 'Pope' in a parallel election in Seville.

As Pope, Clemente has made some 3,000 canonisations, not to mention every one of the '300,000 Irish martyrs of the persecu- tion of the'Virgin Queen'. He also canonis- ed Charlemagne, Christopher Columbus, Philip II, Francisco Franco and Jose An- tonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Spanish Falange. He excommunicated Adolfo Suarez's democratically elected government in its entirety in 1978, and repeatedly urged the army to overthrow it in the name of God.

But Clemente grossly miscalculated the loyalty of Spanish fascists to Catholic tradi- tion, and so has failed in his attempt to become their spiritual mascot. His court of cardinals is multi-national, he has churches all over the world and seemingly limitless funds. Yet he has failed to make much im- pact in Spain and has been unable to con- solidate a position outside the lunatic fringe of the Catholic Right.

Nevertheless, whether out of his box or not, Clemente is far from being alone in seeing John Paul II as the 'anti-Pope' and in rejecting the authority of all Pius XII's successors. The shooting of John Paul in St Peter's Square on 13 May 1981 opens up a new chapter of intrigue. Investigators have tried to pin the assassination attempt on the KGB; but has anyone looked into the mysterious coincidence of the date? The shooting occurred on the 64th anniversary of the apparition of the Virgin at Fatima, the same day Pius was ordained as a priest.

The significance of this 'mysterious' coincidence to John Paul, for one, is worth noting. It had the effect of 'calling' him to Fatima a year later to give thanks. Yet there his path was to cross with that of another young Spaniard, Juan Fernandez Krohn, an economics graduate ordained by Msgr Lefebvre in 1978, the year Clemente made Franco a saint. Krohn, armed with a World War I bayonet bought in an antique shop in Paris, attempted to kill John Paul on the eve of the anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. Tackled by bodyguards, he screamed, 'Death to the Se- cond Vatican Council' and, 'Death to Com- munism' as he was led away.

A Spanish lawyer has offered to defend Krohn when he goes to trial. By another curious coincidence, the same lawyer recently 'defended an officer charged with attempting to over throw the Spanish government last year. Krohn's Falangist credentials are rather better than Clemente's, and he is a member of Lefeb- vre's much more respectable organisation. Like Clemente, he also has access to funds and travels extensively, especially in Poland and Latin America. Like Clemente, he also has attempted a spectacular resurrection of the spirit and mission of Pius XII. Krohn says he acted alone, but that his 'generous parishioners' will take care of his legal ex- penses. Like Clemente's, his parishioners must be either extremely numerous or ex- ceedingly rich. Who are they?

If the Church knows, it isn't letting on. 'These groups only seem to coincide,' said a spokesman for the Spanish Episcopal Con- ference. 'We know of no conspiracy.'