Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII, was consecrated as bishop on 1917-05-13 - the same day and hour, as he himself noted, that the Virgin Mary was reported to appear above the hills of Fatima during the Fatima apparitions (1917), an event later recorded as the Consecration of Eugenio Pacelli as bishop (1917-05-13).1 He served as pope from 1939 to 1958; according to The Fatima Secret, the Prophecy of the Popes described him as “Pastor angelicus” (“the angelic shepherd”).2
Lúcia (Fatima seer) later said she felt full of hope that her words would finally be heard in Rome when she learned of the new pope,3 and on 1940-08-18 she decided to write to him directly.4 She wrote on 1940-10-24, two days after Jesus had reportedly appeared to her again, threatening to punish nations through war, hunger and religious persecution unless the pope worked to convert Russia to the worship of Mary.5 That first letter was censored by the bishop of Leiria for being too long,6 and she sent a second version on 1940-12-02.7 According to The Fatima Secret, it was another two years before Pius XII paid attention to her message.8 In his Pius XII radio message on Fatima jubilee (1942-10-31), he said heaven had intervened during Portugal’s “hours of darkness and despair”, adding that no one could have imagined the horrors to come in 1936, when the danger of Communism was so close.9 He said the war, then in its fourth year, was growing more dangerous the more it spread, and called on people to again ask the Virgin Mary for help.10 He also made a subtle reference to Russia, speaking of peoples separated by error and discord who had once displayed Mary’s icon in their homes but now hid it away.11 On 1942-12-08, at the Pius XII repetition of the consecration (1942-12-08), he repeated the consecration; the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-12-08 to 1943-02-02), regarded as the turning point of World War II, began the same day.12
On 1944-05-04 Pius XII announced the Creation of the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (1944-05-04), to be celebrated annually on 22 August.13 At Lúcia’s request, he set it to be observed worldwide as one of the church’s major feasts.14 On 1946-05-13, at the Crowning of the Statue of Our Lady of Fatima (1946-05-13), the statue was carried in procession to the court of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, after which Pius XII broadcast a radio message of thanks to the Portuguese nation.15 He described the statue’s subsequent 1947 pilgrimage through Europe, the United States and Canada as a “pilgrimage of miracles”.16 When Lúcia discovered a newly built Carmelite convent near the site of the Fatima visions and again wished to join the Carmelite order, she wrote to Pius XII for permission, which he granted.17
For Pius XII, the miracle of the sun of Fatima was said to have repeated itself in the Vatican gardens.18 On 1950-10-30, at the Vision of the pope in the Vatican gardens (‘dance of the sun’) (1950-10-30), he had a vision in the garden of the Vatican in which the “dance of the sun” repeated itself.19 He later wrote that he had been taking his daily walk at about four o’clock that afternoon, reading official papers, when he went up the Esplanade of Our Lady of Lourdes to the top of the hill.20 He wrote that the sun, fairly high, appeared as a pale, yellow, opaque globe surrounded by a luminous halo, without causing him any discomfort to look at, with a small cloud in front of it, and that the globe rotated and moved from left to right before reversing direction.21 He wrote that the same phenomenon repeated the following day, then on 1950-11-01, and once more on 1950-11-08, after which nothing more happened.22 When he asked the Vatican Observatory whether anything unusual had been recorded during those periods, the reply was negative.23
Sister Lúcia repeatedly tried to gain an audience with Pius XII to tell him personally the contents of the Third Secret of Fatima, but the attempts failed.24 He wanted the document under his own control to prevent it falling into the wrong hands, even by mistake,25 and it was kept in the most secure part of the Vatican, his private quarters.26 When French journalist Robert Serrou of Paris Match was allowed to photograph the pope’s private apartment on 1957-05-14, he noticed a small wooden safe on a table bearing the words “Secret of the Holy Office”;27 he asked the pope’s housekeeper what it contained, and she told him it was the Third Secret of Fatima.28 Michael Hesemann assesses that Pius XII probably never read the document and, like others, was likely waiting for 1960, the date set for the seal to be opened.29 On his instructions, Father Schweigl interviewed Sister Lúcia at her Carmelite convent of Coimbra on 1952-09-02, in the Father Schweigl’s interview of Sister Lúcia at Coimbra convent (1952-09-02).30 He also restricted her contact with the outside world, ordering that she meet only people she was already in touch with, and that anyone else needed Vatican permission.31 A rumour circulated, according to The Fatima Secret, that Pius XII had said he did not want to hear anything more about Fatima;32 confronted with it, he said indignantly that people had invented such things to serve their own purposes, and that his thoughts were completely in agreement with the message of Fatima.33 During a 1951 papal audience, when someone called out “Long live the pope of Fatima!”, he answered with a smile, “That’s me!"34 Yet according to The Fatima Secret, he did not succeed in overcoming Vatican opposition to the consecration act the Virgin Mary was said to have requested,35 and the same source describes him as a man of compromise who tried to please everyone and avoided confrontation, adding that this inability to stand firm was his undoing in his early confrontation with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Rome.36 It notes that although he is historically credited with helping thousands of Jews escape, he never spoke out openly against Hitler’s anti-Semitism, which made him a target of criticism,37 and draws the same conclusion about his handling of the Fatima consecration request.38 On 1952-07-07 he issued a pastoral letter to the people of Russia condemning the errors of “godless Communism” and calling for veneration of the Virgin Mary,39 and on 1953-09-08 he declared 1954 a Marian year without reference to Fatima.40 Hesemann judges that Pius XII did his best to fulfil the request to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary but did not achieve the desired effect.41
Pius XII died on 1958-10-09, a year after the Death of Bishop da Silva (1957-10) of Leiria, in what came to be recorded as the Death of Pius XII (1958-10-09).42 His successor John XXIII went to Castel Gandolfo in August 1959 before deciding to open the Third Secret envelope, unlike Pius XII, who had not done so out of respect for what proved a mistaken reading of a 1960 date.43 In total, five popes - Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II - kept the Third Secret under lock and key.44 Sister Lúcia later said that the seer children in the 1917 vision had not known which pope they were shown suffering, since the Virgin Mary had not specified whether it was Benedict XV, Pius XII, Paul VI, or John Paul II.45 John Paul II regarded himself as the “Fatima pope”, a title he considered had originally belonged to Pius XII.46 Hesemann considers the Fatima message to have influenced Vatican secret policy from Pius XII through to John Paul II,47 and argues that every twentieth-century pope from Pius XII onward was aware of the Fatima messages.48 Hesemann has separately suggested that Pius XII’s importance may have lain less in spiritual power than in being the one figure able to command the attention of Catholics worldwide, speculating that this amounted to an early experiment in “channelling mental energy”.49 Shortly before her death, Godinho (Mother Superior) wrote to Pius XII on 1954-04-25 asking that her institution be officially designated a convent,50 and in that letter also related that Jacinta Marto had warned her to prepare for 1972, when sins would cause the pope much pain.51 Separately, and outside the Fatima material, Jesse Mitchells has said that information about the Magenta UFO crash was back-channelled through Pius XII to Franklin D. Roosevelt.52