FOREWORD
It was on May 2, 1999, the day of the beatification of Bl. Padre Pio, that I began to write this book as I asked myself the question:
With all the evil in the world, and so little interest in Fatima, is the Blue Army, of which Bl. Padre Pio was the spiritual father, no longer needed?
I was asking the question not only because of the decline in interest in Fatima but because of adversities in the apostolate itself (as described in The Day I Didn't Die).
If I am not mistaken, Bl. Padre Pio had me ask another question:
"If Sister Lucia says that the Fatima week has just begun, has not the world apostolate just begun?"
Immediately the thought came: "Look at Fatima in the context of history." And there flooded to my mind how the atom bomb and the miracle of Fatima placed us at the hinge of history, with the threat of nuclear destruction countered by the promise of triumph. Then the thought came:
"What did Sister Lucia mean by the week of Fatima, and what was the meaning of the words of Our Lord when He told Sister Lucia that our failure to respond to the requests of Fatima was like the failed response to the "final effort" of His Sacred Heart?
With those thoughts, and invoking Bl. Padre Pio who seems to have inspired them, this book was begun.
Numerous faces of persons with whom I was intimately involved in Fatima Apostolate have come up before me in addition to Bl. Padre Pio: Bishop da Silva and Bishop Venancio (the first two bishops of Fatima), Abbé André Richard of Paris, Albert Setz Degen in Switzerland, Msgr. Strazzacappa in Italy, Msgr. Colgan, Hon. Henrietta Bowers from England, Father Fuhs from Germany, a host of others.
Now they are all gone from this world. Perhaps I have survived so that I might write this book. I beg their prayers, not so much for me but for the writing and for the world for which this message is vitally important.
[Picture to be added later]
Sister Lucia as the author saw her on May 31, 1999, day of the golden
jubilee of her profession as a Carmelite nun. The author had just published
his book Too Late? based on the startling messages given by Sister Lucia
in October, 1993, in which she said an atomic war had been avoided in 1985,
and that we are now in the "third day of the Fatima week."
The world had gained time.
This sequel to Too Late? sees "the final effort to wrest mankind from the reign of Satan" (first revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque) as now deadlining to a conclusion.
This and other books by John M. Haffert
God's
Final Effort | Too Late? | The Day I Didn't Die