Andrew D. Basiago said:
Undoubtedly, the Fatima incident was the most exceptional "religious" even of the 20th century. ...
The apparitions were presumed to be a case of divine intervention in human affairs, a sign from Heaven that the world war then raging in Europe should end. A shrine sprang up at Fatima that drew millions of believers, and a myth was invented that the secrets of Fatima would be revealed in the fullness of time...
Whatever truths the Fatima apparitions held in 1917 would not be properly investigated for 60 years. The original records of the case remained locked up for over six decades in secret archives located at the Sanctuary of Fatima. The celestial secrets contained in them encompassed what religion could not admit and what science could not explain.
Then, in 1978, two young Portuguese historians, Joaquim Fernandes and Fina d'Armada, were given unprecedented access to the archives. The files revealed that the children did not interact with an "apparition" of the Virgin Mary but rather with a hologram of a luminous being projected by a beam of light emitted from an object hovering above them. The entities encountered by the Fatima children were not deities descending from Heaven but rather alien beings visiting our planet from "elsewhere" in the vast Cosmos.
Fernandes and d'Armada spent the next 25 years in pursuit of the actual facts of the Fatima case. They dug deeply into the historical record, as only Portuguese researchers fluent in the language of the events could. They scoured newspapers and journals, meteorological reports, diary entries, and letters written by witnesses. They even interviewed several witnesses who were youngsters when the Fatima events took place.
Hundreds of facts uncovered from the time of the apparitions corroborated what Fernandes and d'Armada knew the secret archives at the Fatima sanctuary confirmed. The whole world had to be told, even if their conclusions contradicted Catholic dogma. The Fatima incident of 1917 was the first major UFO case of the 20th century. ...
Not only were the two historians presenting a radical reinterpretation of the Fatima apparitions as a "close encounter" case, but they were doing so from a position of almost unimpeachable credibility as Fatimists. Their book was the first history of Fatima to be written by Portuguese historians based on the original documents of the actual events.
... a brilliant synthesis of anthropology, history, and science. Fernandes and d'Armada had subjected all of the pertinent facts of the Fatima case, so long misunderstood as divine in nature, to a sweeping evidentiary analysis that was at once thorough and fascinating. ...
As its title suggests, Celestial Secrets tells the "hidden history" of Fatima. By this it is meant that it explores how the hand of conspiracy actively suppressed the truth about Fatima as it shaped the distorted contours of our modern understanding of the apparitions. ... reveals new information about the Fatima incident that makes its "hidden history" even more mysterious and inscrutable. These revelations transcend a mundane portrayal of the case as an "untold alien contact case." ...
Celestial Secrets show how our modern view of Fatima is not based on the events that occurred in 1917. Rather, it is based on a "cover story" concocted by the Church in 1941. The thrust of this propaganda effort has been to conceal the alien nature of the Fatima contacts and portray them as "Marian" instead, in order to affirm the Catholic Orthodoxy.
The secrets of Fatima, long since enshrined in the liturgies of both myth and religions, were the result of this disinformation program...
Yet the historical and scientific evidence shows that alien beings have been interacting with human beings since time immemorial. Celestial Secrets is part of the growing body of world literature that adheres to the principle that knowing the truth about such visitors from other worlds, and telling it is in the best interests of the inhabitants of this one.