Door de creatie van de 31 nieuwe kardinalen, is het aantal stemgerechtigden op 135 gebracht. Daar kan nog één man bijkomen, want Johannes Paulus houdt één naam geheim. Zolang die niet bekendgemaakt is, mag hij niet deelnemen aan het conclaaf. [De Standaard]

Wat krijgen we nu? Da’s het eerste dat ik daarvan hoor, een geheime kardinaal. Weird. Ik ga dan eens op onderzoek gaan. Misschien heeft het wel iets te maken met het geheim van Fatima!!! Tijd om mijn alumiumfolie weer boven te halen.

[Update]

Kom het tegen, ik wist geeneens dat het derde geheim al publiek gemaakt was:

VATICAN CITY, JUN 26, 2000 (VIS) – Given below is the complete translation of the original Portuguese text of the third part of the secret of Fatima, revealed to the three shepherd children at Cova da Iria-Fatima on July 13, 1917, and committed to paper by Sr. Lucia on January 3, 1944:

“I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine.

“After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’. And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.”

Het Vatikaan heeft er zelfs een officieel rapport over laten maken, onder leiding van Kardinaal Ratzinger (nobody expects the Austrian inquisition!). Die maakt een proeve van verklaring voor de beeldspraak, maar concludeert vooral dat het allemaal in het verleden ligt:

“Insofar as individual events are described, they belong to the past. Those who expected exciting apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the future course of history are bound to be disappointed. Fatima does not satisfy our curiosity in this way, just as Christian faith in general cannot be reduced to an object of mere curiosity.”

Mja.

O ja: die “geheime” kardinaal, daar is niets lugubers aan. Da’s gewoon de geijkte manier om iemand kardinaal te maken die mocht het bekend zijn dat hij kardinaal wordt, zou te lijden kunnen hebben van vervolging of zoiets. Dus misschien een tibetaan of zo?