By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Part 3
This a further article on the apparition of Our Lady at La Salette to Maximin Giraud and Mélanie Mathieu, which took place on Saturday, September 19, 1846. It will focus on its continuing importance for today, the aftermath of the apparition, and the secrets given by the Blessed Virgin to the children, and how they relate to Fatima.
Archbishop William Ullathorne of Birmingham, England, went to La Salette in May 1854, nearly eight years after the event, and was able to verify for himself that there had been a failure of the potato crop in the autumn of 1846, leading to widespread hunger in the mountain areas. He was of the opinion that the warnings given at La Salette were one of the major reasons for a general religious revival in the south of France, especially with regard to keeping Sunday holy and eliminating blasphemy.
Clearly, these two sins in particular are no less prevalent in our own day. In fact there has been such a decline in regard to respect for the Lord’s Day that in many countries it has come to almost be regarded as just another day, with shops open, and all manner of entertainments available. And so the Third Commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” is increasingly being ignored in the developed world.
The same is true of blasphemy, which is prohibited as part of the Second Commandment, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Disrespect for, and misuse of, the Lord’s name in films, on television, and indeed everyday life, has reached the point where for many people it is no longer shocking.
So our Lady’s warnings at La Salette about these two sins in particular are very relevant for our own days, and one wonders if there is a possible link between the increasingly chaotic conditions we are seeing in our world and all this Sabbath breaking and blasphemy — among a multitude of other sins — just as was the case with the crop blights and famine in France in the 1840s.
Be that as it may, after the apparition Mélanie and Maximin became the center of attention, and were placed at a local convent, where, in the light of their intellectual slowness, they received a reasonable degree of education. Both made their First Holy Communion only in the May of 1848, nearly two years after the apparition. According to all accounts they were totally incompatible and indeed awkward personalities, who neither shunned nor clung to each other; their only common point was the apparition itself.
Early in 1847, the Abbé Lagier, a priest who was a native of Corps, came to stay in the town, and took the opportunity to question the children thoroughly. Although they talked willingly and at length about the details of the apparition, despite all his efforts, he could not pry the secrets they had been given from either of them. He tried every possible approach but in the end had to admit defeat, surprised and somewhat perturbed by their assurance.
In June 1848 another important witness, the Abbé Dupanloup, who was to become bishop of Orléans the following year, interviewed Mélanie and Maximin. He was not impressed by either of them initially, and yet despite that, he was forced to come to a contrary conclusion:
“Every time they were led — however unexpectedly — to speak of the apparition, an instantaneous change came over them. It was strange and profound. At once, they became serious and simple, and took on an air of dignity and one of great reverence for what they said. Those who listened to them were seized with a kind of religious fear of their words and also with respect for them.”
In time, the children’s secrets were communicated to Pope Pius IX, although neither of them was prepared to reveal these easily. Part of the content of Mélanie’s secret, which indicated that it specifically concerned the papacy, had earlier become apparent during the questioning of the children. Mélanie was asked if she was worried at the thought of the Pope publishing her secret once he knew it. She replied that it would then be his affair, but intimated that the secret concerned the Pope. This seemed to be confirmed in a later interview: When asked about the Pope’s reaction to her secret, she replied, “A Pope ought to love to suffer.”
There seems to be a similarity here with events at Fatima in 1917, where Mary said that, “the Holy Father would have much to suffer.” Jacinta, one of the seers, also had a vision of the residence of a future Pope being surrounded by an angry mob and attacked.
Maximin wrote his secret rapidly, and after the bishop had read it to ensure that it was worth conveying to the Pontiff, it was sealed in an envelope.
Mélanie wrote for an hour, without pause, filling three pages of narrow-lined paper, and then placed her secret in an envelope without reading it. She then said she was mistaken in a minor point so it was agreed that she should rewrite the secret, and again she wrote rapidly, only pausing to ask a few questions. She wanted to know the exact meaning of “infallibly” and the spelling of “soiled” and “Antichrist.”
Mélanie was then taken to the bishop, who read the secret alone in his room, before apparently emerging disquieted and in tears. This version was then sealed and taken, together with Maximin’s, by two priests, Fathers Rousselot and Gerin, from Bishop Bruillard to Rome, where they had a private audience with the Pope.
According to their account, Pius IX unsealed the messages in their presence, and read Maximin’s first, remarking on its frankness and simplicity. Mélanie’s secret was apparently more serious, since the two men saw the Pope’s expression change as he read it. Finally he spoke:
“I will have to reread these letters more at my leisure. There are scourges threatening France, but Germany, Italy, the whole of Europe are guilty and deserve punishment. I have less to fear from outright Godlessness than from indifference and human respect. The Church is not called militant without cause and here you see its leader.”
Some time later, the Pope was asked if the secrets could be revealed, and his reply was: “So you want to know the secrets of La Salette? Well, here they are: Unless you repent you will all perish.”
This has been understood to imply that the secrets, like the Gospels, are essentially calls to repentance: The above details are all that is publicly and definitely known about the messages given to the children, although an unreliable version of Mélanie’s secret was later published, and more recently, it has been claimed that the actual secrets have been retrieved from the Vatican archives.
What is interesting about the reference to the Antichrist in Melanie’s secret, is that there was no mention of this figure in any of our Lady’s messages at Fatima, or in the secret of Fatima.
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk.)
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