The secret of La Salette

# The Secret of La Salette (1846): The Eight Versions of Maximin and Mélanie, the Long Edition (1858-1878) and the Church Controversy## The DocumentThe secret was written down eight times: three editions by Maximin on July 3rd and August 3rd, 1851, and August 5th, 1853; and four editions by Mélanie on July 6th, 1851, August 14th, 1853, and the long edition, edited three times between 1858 and 1878, of which only the last two are preserved. These later editions are longer; Mélanie stated that she was not authorized to release a complete account until 1858. The subsequent editions vary slightly without contradicting each other.The visionaries were so disoriented by what they experienced, “in the light of God” (as Mélanie put it), that they each wrote down the text in a new way (without access to previous versions). They concatenated what came to their minds, without sacrificing brevity (except in Mélanie’s later 1858 editions). Clearly, the closest to the event and most representative is the first official double-redaction of 1851, recently discovered.> “The secret of La Salette was given to the visionaries intuitively, in images, and not in words,” Mélanie explicitly states: > > *”A great veil was lifted, events were revealed before my eyes… I saw events… and even further… a thousand and a thousand times more things than the ears can perceive.”* (December 26th, 1870).## The Children’s TestimonyThe two children kept silent and wrote down the secrets on July 2nd, 1851, only on the condition that they send the letter to the Pope through the bishop. When Pius IX read it, he was deeply moved by its contents.> When asked about what the secrets of La Salette meant by priests of the new Society of Missionaries of La Salette, the Pope expressed himself thus: > > *”Do you want to know the secret of La Salette? The root of the secrets is this: unless everyone decides consciously to do penance, we are lost.”*In 1879, the secret revealed to Mélanie was made public in this way:*”Mélanie, what I am about to reveal to you now should not remain a secret forever. Until 1858 (the year of the apparitions of the Mother of God in Lourdes) you may make it known.”***Translation:**

The priests who are servants of my Son, precisely those with a dissipated life and the greed for money, will make possible the manifestation of the wrath of the Almighty. Consecrated men and priests put my Son back on the cross. Due to the behavior of the inhabitants of the Earth, the wrath of the Heavenly Father will be called. Heads of state and peoples have forgotten prayer and penance; the devil will be called back by these stars that have become dark and full of error. Humanity is on the eve of sad events and the heaviest punishments.

The representative of my Son, Pope Pius IX, will not leave Rome after the year 1859; he will bravely fight with the weapons of faith and love. I will be with him. The Church will go through a very deep crisis.

It will be a time of darkness. Sacred faith in God will fall into oblivion; man without God will lose love for all things, and everyone will desire to be the head of others. An endless crisis will follow with violence and arrogance of every kind. This time is approaching when we will only see the triumph of the empire of oppression and assassins, hatred and lies; everyone will seek only their own selfish gain.

There will be no more love for family and country. The Holy Father will suffer greatly, but I will be by his side and accept his sacrifices. The triumph of evil will not be guaranteed forever.

(Melanie pronounces these words in fact in Lecce:

“He will not reign for long.”

The temporal governments will all have the same goal: to overthrow the religious foundations of the peoples and undo them, to found materialism, spiritualism, and atheism. France, Italy, Spain, and England will go to war. The French will fight against the French, and the Italians against the Italians. There will be a great war.

God will no longer be honored in Italy and France; the Gospel will be completely forgotten. Evil will enter every home. Many large cities will be burned and almost destroyed, others will be swallowed up by earthquakes. Everyone will believe that the end has come. The just will suffer greatly, but their prayers and expiatory sacrifices will ascend directly to heaven. They will beg for my mercy, and my help will be granted to them.

My Son’s mercy will order the Angels to destroy the enemy of the world. Suddenly, all enemies of the Church of Jesus Christ will disappear, and the Earth will become a desert. Slowly, a new era will begin in which men on Earth will serve Christ truly. Peace, harmony between men and God, and love for one another will prevail. The new rulers will become the right arm of the Holy Church, which will truly bear the virtues of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel will be preached everywhere, and men will take great steps toward true faith, for there will be unity among the followers of Christ, and men will live from the fruits of God. This peace and harmony among men will not last long. It will be forgotten that the sins of the world are the source of all the punishments that befall the Earth. A precursor of the Antichrist will appear and seek to be seen as the new God.

The seasons will change, the atmosphere as well. Water and fire will cause terrible earthquakes and great destruction; mountains and cities will fall. The stars and moon will no longer have their usual brightness. Rome will lose faith and become the seat of the Antichrist.

Demons in the air will produce wondrous phenomena in the sky and on Earth. Men will grow worse and worse. But God will always care for His most faithful servants and men of good will. The Gospel will be preached everywhere. All peoples and nations will come to know the truth of God.

I shall call the apostles of the last times, the faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, those who lived a life of humility and courageous deprivation, in contemplation and silence, in prayer and expiation, in union with God and divine things.

I shall call those who have lived immersed in suffering and hidden from the world. The time will come when they must reveal themselves to fill the world with light.

I shall tell them:

“Go and show yourselves, my children! I will be with you and in you. Fight, children of light, for the glory of God and Jesus Christ.”

“The Prince of Darkness,” as the Savior of the world will be called, will emerge from the abyss that opened on Earth. He will want to proudly ascend into the air and reach heaven. But he will know the breath of Archangel Michael and be choked by him. He will fall back to Earth and be forever sucked into the eternal abyss of hell with his accomplices. Water and fire will purify the Earth, and all will be renewed. Only then will God be served and honored.

The secret of La Salette and the conversion messages transmitted by Mary fit into the tradition of private revelations analyzed in the encyclical Redemptoris Mater by John Paul II, which presents Mary as a watchful mother who intercedes for humanity before her Son.

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