Sir, - It seems that Pope John Paul II has assumed that the "third secret" of Fatima refers to his attempted assassination. It seems very clear to me that the "third secret" refers not to the attempted assassination of John Paul II but to the actual assassination of Bishop Romero of San Salvador in 1980.
Bishop Romero was wearing white vestments when a government-sponsored death squad killer murdered him as he was saying Mass. A Vatican scholar quoted in The Irish Times of June 26th said that the original text referred to "a Bishop clad in white who falls dead to the ground".
This refusal by the Vatican authorities to recognise Bishop Romero as the prophetic figure in the "third secret" fits quite well into the way Romero was treated by the Vatican and John Paul II while he was alive. He was openly shunned by the Papal Nuncio, recalled on several occasions to the Vatican to answer false charges made against him by his fellow bishops and, had he lived, would have been stripped of his bishop's office.
Why all this persecution of Romero? Because he had become the voice of the voiceless and without any regard to his own safety openly denounced injustice wherever and whenever he found it. Romero's criticism of US foreign policy on El Salvador upset the Carter and Reagan administrations' cosy relationship with the Vatican. So, in his death as in his life, Romero is ostracised by the Vatican and the "third secret" is misused by the Vatican to further consolidate Vatican supremacy at the expense of truth and justice - which were personified by a true martyr of the 20th Century, Bishop Romero. - Yours, etc.,
Brendan Butler, Pennock Hill, Swords, Co Dublin.