Many hypotheses have been made on this meeting, some of which are pretty creative. In 1977, Cardinal Albino Luciani, patriarch of Venice, during a Marian pilgrimage visited Sister Lucia dos Santos in the cloister convent of Coimbra. He talked to her for a good while. Some speculated that during this meeting the religious woman would have prophesied his election – which occurred a year later, as successor to Paul VI – as well as the brevity of his pontificate.
Pope Luciani spoke With Sister Lucia of the Church with its current and acute problems and of the danger of apostasy. The outlines and details of this talk between the future Pontiff and the guardian of the secrets of Fatima were revealed only ten years ago in 2007 by Fr. Mario Senigaglia, Luciani’s secretary in Venice at the time, during a long interview with Stefania Falasca later published on the Italian monthly 30giorni.
At the origin of the elucubrations on the pontificate’s prediction, there is the testimony of the Pope’s brother, Edoardo Luciani, who however, has never endorsed them, of an episode he witnessed, and later recounted, in the winter between 1977 and 1978 when Albino Luciani stayed at his home for a few days. One evening, seeing him worried, Edoardo asked his brother what was troubling him, and he answered, “I cannot stop thinking of what Sister Lucia has told me.” After the election on August 26, 1978 and the sudden disappearance after just 33 days of pontificate, that talk with the seer was considered under another perspective.
Albino Luciani had left for Fatima on July 9, 1977 with a pilgrimage committee and had returned to Venice three days later on the 12th. It was his first time there. After having celebrated Mass at the Shrine on Day 10, they moved to Coimbra the next day. To suggest and organize the visit at the cloistered monastery was the marquis Olga Morosini de Cadaval, who, according to Don Senigaglia, had ties to the convent. Olga Morosini was married to a Portuguese man and had known sister Lucia for a long time as she assisted her in translating her correspondence. “During the war - Luciani’s secretary says- her task included personally bringing messages, often learnt by heart, to Pius XII and messages of these to Sr. Lucia. Pacelli knew the marquise since his youth ... In ’77 she was old, probably over seventy years old.”
It was the marquise to propose a meeting with Sister Lucia. She had previously spoken about it to Don Senigaglia who advised her to propose it to Luciani on the spot, that same day. And so it happened. Obviously, Sister Lucia had been informed and agreed to meet him. However, thanks to this testimony, the long-considered hypothesis that it was the seer to call the patriarch, inevitably declines.
On July 11, after the mass celebrated in the monastery, the marquise Cadaval accompanied Luciani “to Sr. Lucia and stayed with them. As Luciani could understand the Portuguese quite well, she stood aside, and when the conversation ended, she took him back” to the restaurant where the pilgrims were waiting for him. The meeting lasted a considerable time.
When he returned to Venice, Fr Senigaglia met the Patriarch. “I remember going into his study and him saying: «Sit down». That meant he was in a mood to talk. He told me about the trip, of the atmosphere of genuine prayer and moving acts of penitence he’d witnessed in Fatima. Of the pilgrims who had joined in a long barefoot walk on the stones in the spianada, under the sun, and of the pious women who tended the feet of the pilgrims who needed it upon arrival. We spoke then of the difference from Lourdes and then again of these different forms of piety, and as the conversation went on, at a certain point, I asked him about Coimbra: «I know you were there and had occasion to meet Sister Lucia… ». And he: « Yes, yes I saw her … Ah! that blessed nun», he said, «she took my hands in hers and began to talk…». Then he remained in thought a little with hands joined, then continued: «… these blessed nuns when they begin to talk they never stop …». He told me however that she had not spoken about the apparitions and that he only asked her something about the famous “sun dance”
It was Don Mario Senigaglia who proposed to Luciani to write an article on the meeting, which was published on July 23 by the diocesan weekly Gente Veneta. “And there he wrote what he had mentioned to me and all that he had in mind to say. He wrote, with his habitual and subtle humor about the nun’s jolly nature, of how fast she spoke and with how much energy and conviction she insisted on the need to have nuns, priests and Christians with a firm head and a strong passion, while recounting the Church and all its acute problems. He then wrote that the revelations, even the ones approved, are not articles of faith, that one can think what they want without doing wrong to their faith, and concludes with what he always repeated with regard to the meaning of these Marian places, appearances or not, messages or not, the sanctuaries are there Just to remind us of the teaching of the Gospel, which is to pray. “
Regarding the story of Edoardo Luciani, the Pope’s brother, and of the concern he had noticed on the face of the patriarch of Venice, Fr Senigaglia said, “These are impressions, hypotheses, personal deductions that Edoardo expressed immediately after his brother’s death. And of which I cannot speak. Edoardo, however, did not know how that circumstance had gone. Luciani told him only that he had met Sister Lucia. Nothing else. “
However, it remains the testimony of this restleness, which cannot be questioned given the trustworthiness and moral rigor of John Paul I’s brother. Fr Mario Senigaglia commented on this: “So many times while going to visit the Cloistered sisters in Venice, I heard him commenting afterwards: “These blessed women ... the never go out but never miss a thing... they know the problems of the Church better than us!” He spoke with Sister Lucia he spoke about these things in general. Of the Church with its current acute problems, the danger of apostasy. He said it. He might have gone back on these, not without concern, to reflect. “
Don Senigaglia himself, who passed away a few years ago, knew well the Cadaval marquise, who died almost one hundred years old in 1997 and who says, “She never made any hints, nor did I grasp from her words the slightest mention of prophecies of Sister Lucia regarding Luciani”
What emerges from the words of the Venetian priest, secretary of Luciani from 1969 to 1976, and that is the reference to the problems of the Church and apostasy, a theme often related to the secret of Fatima. It is therefore probable that the future Pope were thinking and reconsidering the words of the visionary not because they concerned a prophecy about him, but because they were about serious problems and serious threats to faith to the point of worrying a true believer like the patriarch of Venice. Perhaps even more serious than a prediction about his life coming to an end.
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