The Vatican, the government of the Holy See and central institution of the Catholic Church, recurs in UAP research chiefly through the Third Secret of Fatima and through claims of a Vatican intelligence-gathering role. Luis Elizondo has said the Vatican has formed alliances with UAP transparency advocates in Italy and the United States and confidentially shares centuries-old historic accounts that may be UAP-related.1 Elizondo said he was told the Vatican has collected intelligence over the millennia drawn from eyewitness reports and anecdotes shared in the confessional,2 and that the Catholic Church routinely polled priests to speak in general terms about what troubled their parishioners.3 Researcher Jason Samosa has said he is certain the Vatican knows something about UFOs,4 and observes that the Vatican’s role in the subject is hinted at by many researchers he respects but then drops away with no one focusing on it.5
The Vatican’s engagement with the Fatima apparitions (1917) began cautiously. Michael Hesemann has said that Lúcia (Fatima seer)’s steps toward becoming a nun were guided by Church authorities who were at the time investigating the Fatima incidents and wanted her under their control so as to control the cult of Fatima itself.6 After Lúcia left Aljustrel, all religious proclamations at the Cova da Iria chapel were made by priests appointed by the Church.7 It had initially been difficult to find a priest willing to serve the chapel, because the apparitions had not yet been officially recognised by the Catholic Church.8 Formal diplomatic relations between Portugal and the Vatican were established by Sidonio Pais in June 1918.9
According to The Fatima Secret, the Third Secret of Fatima would become the most zealously guarded secret in Vatican history,10 and the sealed envelope was kept in the private quarters of Pius XII, the most secure part of the Vatican.11 Bishop da Silva had wanted to send the envelope to Rome, but the Vatican instructed him to keep it at Leiria for the present.12 Pius XII later ordered that Sister Lúcia could meet only people she was already in contact with, and that anyone else wishing to see her needed Vatican permission.13 According to the same account, some within the Vatican opposed consecrating Russia because they wished to establish diplomatic relations with Moscow first, fearing the Soviet Union would read a papal proclamation as interference in its internal affairs and endanger relief for Christians there14; despite being called the “pope of Fatima”, Pius XII did not overcome this opposition to the consecration the apparition was said to have requested.15 When the Portuguese bishops again petitioned Rome during the 1942 jubilee year, the Vatican remained silent until 1942-10-13.16 John XXIII read the sealed envelope on 1959-08-21 in a closed room at Castel Gandolfo, in the presence only of a Vatican interpreter and his confessor, Monsignor Alfredo Cavagna.17 A 1960 Vatican announcement stated that, given pressure both to publish and to keep the letter sealed for fear of alarming prophecies, it would likely remain sealed forever.18 The Vatican maintained official silence on the Third Secret until the fiftieth anniversary of the Fatima events.19 Swiss journalist Louis Emrich said the Vatican had taken every precaution to keep the document a papal secret.20
A separate, unofficial account known as the Diplomatic version of the Third Secret of Fatima (European News, 1963-10-15) had allegedly been sent by the Vatican to the governments of D.C. Washington, London and Moscow at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962-10, a year before its publication.21 European News further reported that the 1963 agreement between the United Kingdom, Russia and the United States to halt atomic bomb tests was due to Vatican intervention.22 Mrs Emrich, Louis Emrich’s widow, told Hans Bender that her husband had worked on the story for some time before its 1963-10-15 publication and already held information about the document’s probable contents,23 and that a Vatican priest had visited Emrich, stressing that he had come unofficially and for his own reasons.24 The Emrich version was never confirmed or denied by the Catholic Church.25 Emrich himself later admitted that his diplomatic version had been constructed from rumours and information received from the Vatican, and was not meant to represent the original text.26 Following the Vatican’s 2000 press conference, Michael Hesemann spent a week in Rome speaking to Vatican sources and conducting a long interview with Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone27; Bertone’s research, according to the same account, found no evidence of a Vatican leak nor support for Emrich’s claim that the Third Secret had been shown to Nikita Khrushchev or John F. Kennedy.28 Father Nicholas Gruner accused the Vatican of whitewashing and watering down the Third Secret’s message in the 2000 disclosure,29 arguing that the Vatican’s official interpretation raised far more questions than it answered.30
The Third Secret was formally revealed only at the end of a two-and-a-half-hour ceremony on 2000-05-13, after priests distributing the sacrament to the crowd had returned to their places.31 In response to sceptics demanding publication of Lúcia’s own handwritten notes, the Vatican released a facsimile of her handwriting alongside letters she had written three years earlier.32 Weeks later, on 2000-06-05, newly elected Russian president Vladimir Putin visited the Vatican for a confidential meeting,33 and the 2000-06-14 pardon of Mehmet Ali Ağca had been discussed with the Vatican beforehand and was supported by John Paul II.34 Michael Hesemann, who travelled to Rome many times from Germany to speak with Vatican insiders about the Third Secret’s contents,35 considers it possible that the Fatima message influenced the Vatican’s secret policy from Pius XII to John Paul II,36 reflecting what he describes as the apparitions’ deep impact on the Vatican’s secret policies more broadly.37 Among the Vatican insiders named in this research is Corrado Balducci, a Vatican official of fifty-two years’ standing38 who had worked for several years as an exorcist under Pope Paul VI.39
Jason Samosa has argued that the Vatican is, at its core, a vast network encompassing the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), the Knights of Malta, Opus Dei and the Pro Deo intelligence network, describing it as one of the biggest organisations on the planet40; he has said he once attempted to compile a full list of the networks operating under the Vatican and concluded it would take a long time to work through.41 Samosa holds that the Vatican, the European monarchies and the Knights of Malta were nearly wiped off the map in the late 1700s and subsequently colluded at the Congress of Vienna in Austria Vienna.42 Attending the Congress beneath Klemens von Metternich were the various monarchies, the Vatican and the Knights of Malta, with the aim of systematising a joint response to revolution, so that unrest in southern Italy would be treated as Austro-Hungary’s problem too.43 Samosa argues that the Vatican has historically sought to manage revolutions, characterising its institutional personality as conservative,44 and that placing figures in key positions such as the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) and the CIA directorship gives the Vatican, in effect, a seat on the board of the UFO issue.45 He believes the Vatican knows more than it discloses on the subject and has tried to reinterpret relevant events.46 On the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, the Holy See characterised the phenomenon witnessed as the sun flying around, rather than as a disc.47 Samosa considers that a silver-disc interpretation would have been dangerous for the Vatican, since it would draw believers away from devotional practice and give the Church reason to constrain the information.48 Jesse Mitchells has said the Vatican confiscated a written prophecy given to the children who witnessed the 1917 Fatima Marian apparitions, and believes that prophecy was more complex than the historical portrayal of a sun or Virgin Mary appearance.49 Mitchells also believes material from the Magenta UFO crash is held by, or at least known to, the Vatican.50