The Third Secret: A Novel
by Steve Berry
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Book Summary Information
Author: Steve BerryEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-11-27
ISBN: 0345504402
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of The Third Secret: A Novel
Book Review: Although I enjoyed how Berry trashed the Catholic Church to its core, this book was not as believable as his others. It was a g
Summary: 4 Stars
The Third Secret by Steve Berry
On July 13, 1917, the Virgin appeared to three shepherds at Cova de Iria in Fatima, Portugal. Jacinta and Francisco died three years after the apparitions but Lucia lived until her nineties in a convent. On that day, the Virgin gave the two girls a secret that would be part of the three secrets of Fatima. The first two secrets were revealed shortly after the 1917 apparitions, but the third secret was not made public until the year 2000, when John Paul II finally released the text. Sister Lucia, who was forbidden by the Church to talk about the Third Secret, made no public statements about its release. The Third Secret was anticlimactic--a complete metaphor that makes little sense. Consequently, many observers--including some high ranking Vatican officials--believe there might be more to the message. This is the basis for Steve Berry's novel--The Third Secret.
The novel opens with Pope Clement XV--Jacob Vakner--the first German pope since Pope Stephen IX, (sometimes counted as Stephen X) Friedrich von Lothringen, 1057-1058, who has succeeded John Paul the II. Clement is affected by something he has read in the Secret Archives of the Vatican. Clement was a pope elected at age 82, and he was meant to be a transitional pope until another one could be selected. After he reads this documents, his behavior starts to be erratic and his health starts to deteriorate.
Monsignor Colin Michener is the personal secretary of the pope, and a close friend. Pope Clement absolved his indiscretions with a Rumanian woman, Katerina Lew, while he was in his thirties and studying law. He was an orphan in Ireland, where the Catholic Church took the babies from unwed mothers and adopted them out to Americans against the wishes of the single mothers. Now in his sixties, he is given a task: to find father Andrej Tibor, retired priest in his eighties, who translated from Portuguese the Third Secret in 1917. Father Tibor caters to orphans in Zlanta, Rumania.
There is also a tribunal to excommunicate father Thomas Kealy, who has a big following because he believes the Church should stop the vows of celibacy. He is dating Katerina Lew and she meets Michener in Rome. Alberto Cardinal Valendrea, The Vatican's Secretary of State, is conducting the tribunal. Valendrea was supposed to be elected Pope at the last conclave a year and a half ago, and he is making sure he will be elected pope as soon as Clement dies. He is one of the few people that knows of the Third Secret and he knows it's a threat to the Church. So he has his assistant, father Paolo Ambrosi, follow Michener to Zlanta, Rumania, using Katerina as his spy. Ambrosi and Valendrea kill Andrej Tibor to prevent the contents of the Third secret to be known.
Meanwhile, Pope clement orders Michener to Medjugorje, Bosnia where another Virgin apparition has happened for the last 20 years and orders him to get the Tenth Secret revealed by the Virgin to the people there.
Just after this, Clement commits suicide because he had a vision and the Virgin ordered him to atone for his sins by killing himself. Michener is surprised when Maurice Cardinal Ngovi from Nigeria--the Camerlengo and thus in charge of the transition--asks Michener to go to Medjugorje, Bosnia anyway. Katerina is again recruited by Ambrosi to spy on Michener, but this time she does it only because she has fallen in love with Michener.
The conclave occurs and Ngovi and Valendrea are the two top contenders. But Valendrea had the Vatican bugged so he could get dirt on the cardinals, so that he can blackmail himself to the office of the Pope. The votes are tied, but after two votes with no 2/3 majority Ngovi withdraws his name. Thus Valendrea is elected Pope and chooses the name of Peter II.
Back in Medjugorje, Bosnia, Michener meets Jasna--the woman who sees the Virgin at Church every Saturday. She has no knowledge of the Tenth secret but both her and
Michener are hit by lightning and the tenth secret is revealed to both by an apparition of the Virgin.
Once he is Pope, Peter II gains access to the Secret Archives of the Vatican and realizes that the copy of the Third Secret is missing, probably hidden by Pope Clement before his demise.
Peter II also discovers a prophecy published in Venice in 1595 by a Dominican historian, Arnold Wion, as the definitive accounts of what St. Malachy himself wrote of his visions--real document. Malachy was an Irishman born in 1094 who had strange visions of the future correctly describing who most of the popes would be by more than 90%. Of Malachy's predicted popes, he predicted that the 112th pope would be names Peter and that would mean that the end of the world as we know it would come--Christ's second coming.
So Peter is now even more afraid of the Third secret and will kill to find it.
Michener had mailed a letter to from Turin to an Irma Rahn. Michener inherits all the worldly possessions of Clement and discovers love letters to Irma Rahn in Clement's armoire. Clement was in love with Irma, from Bamberg, Germany. Michener figures she must have the missing copy of the Third Secret.
Katerina saves Michener from Ambrosi and they both go to Bamberg. Unfortunately he leaves some of the letters behind, so the new pope knows where to look for them.
Irma was awaiting for Katerina and Michener and tells them of her love for Clement--which was never consummated. She gives her copy of the Third Secret to Michener and it turns out to be exactly word by word the same as the Tenth Secret from Medjugorje. Michener realizes the significance of this--and how the Virgin is contradicting all the doctrines of the Church--embroiled in suspicion, deceit, suicide, and murder, Michener is forced to face the very thing that had so distressed Clement--and must unravel a mystery that will shake the world.
Although I enjoyed how Berry trashed the Catholic Church to its core, this book was not as believable as his others. It was a great read because of the combination of fiction with history.
Summary of The Third Secret: A Novel
Explosive in both its pace and its revelations, The Third Secret is a remarkable international thriller. Bestselling author Steve Berry tackles some of the most controversial ideas of our time in a breakneck journey through the history of the Church and the future of religion.Fatima, Portugal, 1917: The Virgin Mary appears to three peasant children, sharing with them three secrets, two of which are soon revealed to the world. The third secret is sealed away in the Vatican, read only by popes, and not disclosed until the year 2000. When revealed, its quizzical tone and anticlimactic nature leave many faithful wondering if the Church has truly unveiled all of the Virgin Mary?s words?or if a message far more important has been left in the shadows.
Vatican City, present day: Papal secretary Father Colin Michener is concerned for the Pope. Night after restless night, Pope Clement XV enters the Vatican?s Riserva, the special archive open only to popes, where the Church?s most clandestine and controversial documents are stored. Though unsure of the details, Michener knows that the Pope?s distress stems from the revelations of Fatima.
Equally concerned, but not out of any sense of compassion, is Alberto Cardinal Valendrea, the Vatican?s Secretary of State,. Valendrea desperately covets the papacy, having narrowly lost out to Clement at the last conclave. Now the Pope?s interest in Fatima threatens to uncover a shocking ancient truth that Valendrea has kept to himself for many years.
When Pope Clement sends Michener to the Romanian highlands, then to a Bosnian holy site, in search of a priest?possibly one of the last people on Earth who knows Mary?s true message?a perilous set of events unfolds. Michener finds himself embroiled in murder, suspicion, suicide, deceit, and his forbidden passion for a beloved woman. In a desperate search for answers, he travels to Pope Clement?s birthplace in Germany, where he learns that the third secret of Fatima may dictate the very fate of the Church?a fate now lying in Michener?s own hands.
From the Hardcover edition.
For Steve Berry, it's a fortuitous coincidence that his third novel, a Vatican-centered conspiracy thriller titled The Third Secret, was published in the immediate aftermath of Pope Benedict XVI's anointment in Rome. While this exuberantly contrived yarn would likely have drawn an audience at any time, it benefits from coming before readers just after they've been primed with news reports about papal succession, the relative influence and legacy of pontiffs, and the increasing tug-of-war between Roman Catholic progressives and conservative traditionalists.
Set in the near future, Secret introduces Jakob Volkner--Pope Clement XV--a German "caretaker pope" who, nearing the age of 80, was elected as John Paul II's successor. But three years into his papacy, the thoughtful Clement has begun to quietly express skepticism about papal infallibility and the Church's restrictive dogma, and to make odd requests of his longtime secretary, Monsignor Colin Michener, an Irish-born but American-reared priest whose vows of celibacy have been tested--and found wanting. Clement has also made repeated visits to a guarded sanctum within the Vatican archives, where sacred and historic documents are stored. And he's dispatched Michener to Romania to locate an elderly cleric who, in the 1950s, translated three cryptic prophecies, purportedly offered by the Virgin Mary in 1917 to a trio of children in Fatima, Portugal. Those secrets have since been fully disclosed to the world. Or have they? That?s the question facing Michener in the wake of Clement's shocking suicide, as he pursues a twisted trail of clues, crimes, and religious forecasts from Rome to Bosnia to Germany, accompanied by his former lover, journalist Katerina Lew. But making any additional secrets known to the world will put Michener in confrontation with doctrinal reactionaries, led by Cardinal Alberto Valendrea, the Vatican's Italian secretary of state, who's determined to follow Clement as the Vicar of Christ--even if that requires inventing a few new sins and flouting a 900-year-old prediction of doom for the next pope.
Attorney-author Berry, praised previously for The Amber Room and The Romanov Prophecy, enriches The Third Secret with glimpses behind the locked doors of a papal selection process and knowledge of centuries-old Catholic prognostications that, while employed judiciously in these pages, nonetheless suggest a prodigious amount of research. He's less successful with his casting. Valendrea is a wincingly unnuanced scoundrel, and Ms. Lew achieves scarce definition beyond being a raven-tressed temptress to powerful prelates. Thankfully, Berry does better by Michener, who finds himself at a crossroads, carrying on in Clement's name even as he searches for confirmation that his own life of devotion and service has been meaningful. Although the secrets "revealed" in this tale seem more controversial than plausible, and a potentially intriguing subplot about the excommunication of a maverick priest ends up as a throwaway device, The Third Secret builds to a conclusion that is as suspenseful and stunning as it is inevitable. Have faith. --J. Kingston Pierce
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