on this day Pope Pius XII granted permission for the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic Church in Portugal before resigning as the Holy Pontiff so that the German occupation forces in Rome would arrest him in the name of the private citizen Eugenio Pacelli.

The well grounded fears that Hitler would order the kidnapping of the Pope had forced the Catholic leadership to make advanced plans should the Nazis carry out such a threat. When Italy signed the September 3 armistice with the Allies and German troops occupied Rome, Please click the icon to follow us on Facebook.Pius informed key aides that he believed his arrest was imminent. And so the decision to relocate the Vatican and appoint a new Pontiff was taken without delay.

Nazis secured the archives and art treasures unaware that the prophetic document that foresaw these very events had already been removed from the Vatican archives. In fact, the Third Secret of Fatima had been smuggled out of Rome during the summer and was already in the safe hands of the new leadership in Portugal. Ironically, not far from where Sister Lucy dos Santos had confided the account to the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon just three years before ~

"In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, in many nations, perhaps in almost the entire world, the Faith will be lost. The pastors of the Church will fail gravely in the duties of their office."..

Pius would die under mysterious circumstances whilst in custody, the suspected reason for which was the near certainty that on release he would speak out to condemn Nazi atrocities against the Jews. In his place, his successors would lead a a remarkable transformation that prepared the Roman Catholic Church for the last times. It was, as Fatima had predicted, a cathartic final renewal that had been initiated by the work of the devil.