Sat May 13 12:30:00 2000 EDT

& FATIMA, Portugal (Reuters) - The Vatican said on Saturday that the 1917 "Secret of Fatima," long feared as apocalyptic, had predicted the attempt to kill Pope John Paul and the persecution of Christianity under communism. The Pope's top aide, addressing a huge crowd in Portugal on the 19th anniversary of the shooting in Rome, also said the Vatican would publish the entire text of the secret after "appropriate" preparation for the faithful. The secret has intrigued the world for more than 80 years.

Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano announced the decision to hundreds of thousands of people at a mass where the Pope beatified two of the three shepherd children said to have seen Madonna at Fatima in 1917 and received her message.

Over the years, the Vatican's refusal to make it public has inspired books, doomsday cults convinced that it predicted the end of the world and even a hijacking by a man who demanded that the Vatican reveal it. Sodano said the "vision of Fatima" concerned events in the 20th century, including the "war waged by atheist systems against the Church" and the "immense suffering" of Christians and the Popes in the last century of the second millennium.

Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot and nearly killed the Pope in St Peter's Square in 1981, a time when events in the Pope's Polish homeland were starting the domino effect that would lead to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

Sodano said the third part of the secret -- the first two are already well known -- involved a vision of martyrdom and suffering, including a "bishop clothed in white" who "makes his way with great effort toward the Cross amid the corpses of those who were martyred. He too falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire." The cardinal said that after the assassination attempt "it appeared evident to His Holiness that it was a motherly hand which guided the bullet's path, enabling the dying Pope to halt at the threshold of death."

PAPAL SURVIVAL AFTER SHOOTING LINKED TO THIRD SECRET "This protection (of the Madonna at the time of the assassination attempt) seems also to be linked to the so-called 'third part' of the secret of Fatima," Sodano said.

In order for the faithful to better receive the message of the Madonna, the Pope had ordered the Vatican doctrinal department, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to "(make) public the third part of the secret, after the preparation of an appropriate commentary."

Sodano said that since the secret contained a "prophetic vision" similar to those in the Gospel and condensed events spread over time, it "must be interpreted in a symbolic key."

There was no indication when the text and the commentary would be published.

Sodano said that even if events referred to in the Secret of Fatima "now seem part of the past" and atheist regimes had fallen in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1989, attacks on the Church and Christians "tragically continue."

"Our Lady's call to conversion and penance, issued at the beginning of the 20th century, remains timely and urgent today."

The Pope himself had set the scene for the revelation of the secret earlier in his homily during the mass in which he put the two shepherd children on the road to sainthood.

POPE CALLS FOR RETURN TO TRADITIONAL VALUES He said modern society had to return to traditional values if it wanted to avoid self-destruction.

The beatification ceremony, in which Francisco and Jacinta Marto were declared "blesseds" of the Church, was attended by Sister Lucia dos Santos, a frail, 93-year-old nun who is the only survivor of the three visionaries. The Pope met Sister Lucia before the mass.

"The message of Fatima is a call to conversion, appealing to humanity so that it does not fall into the (devil's) trap," the Pope said, adding that a struggle between good and evil was still in progress today.

"Man, by putting God to the side, cannot reach happiness. He will only end up destroying himself," the 79-year-old Pope, who wore resplendent gold and white vestments and appeared to be in good form despite his shaky health, told the crowd.

The first part of the Madonna's message was a vision of hell shown to the children.

In the second part, Mary predicted the outbreak of World War Two some 22 years before it started, asked for devotion to her Immaculate Heart and asked that Russia, which was about to undergo the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, be consecrated to her.

Otherwise, the Madonna is said to have told the children, to whom she appeared each month from May to October 1917, that Russia, about to become the Soviet Union, would "spread her errors" in the world and the Pope would suffer much.

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