The Vatican is to make public today the full text of the third secret of Fatima, revealed to three Portuguese children in 1917. It is interpreted as a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.
According to the Vatican, the third secret, revealed in essence last month, predicted the assassination attempt when the Pope was hit in the stomach and arms by bullets fired by a Turk, Ali Agca, as he drove through a crowd of 20,000 people in St Peter's Square in Rome.
Last month the Pope beatified two of the three shepherd children who reported being given the secrets in a series of visions of the Virgin Mary in 1917.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, responsible at the Vatican for doctrine, is scheduled to disclose the full text during a press conference today.
The substance of the first two Fatima secrets, said to be referring to God's punishment for mankind's sins, the need for repentance and a prophecy of Russia's attempt to wipe out religion under communism, has long been known.
Cardinal Ratzinger has warned that the full text of the third secret contains no great surprises.
The Vatican spokesman, Mr Joaquin Navarro, told journalists last month in Fatima: "It is clear today that the bishop dressed in white [mentioned in the secret Fatima vision] was Pope John Paul II."
However, a Vatican scholar, Mr Vittorio Messori, said yesterday in an Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, that the original text does not talk of a "bishop fallen to the ground as though dead" but of "the bishop clad in white who falls dead to the ground".
"If it really was a prophecy of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II how can it be explained that he emerged unscathed?" he asked.