Turbulent Times
Without any doubt, many of you have read the statement above in the title of my article dozens of times. It is usually claimed that this sentence belongs to the secret of the La Salette apparition (1846). It is circulated by numerous websites of various origins, including some that claim to uphold Catholic Tradition. The Fatima Center also provides an English translation of the entire text from which the statement was extracted, asserting, erroneously, that it is “the original texts of the Message and Secret of La Salette, approved by the Catholic Church.”[1] In fact, the text has an entirely different provenance, which excludes it from the category of an apparition recognized by the Church.
As we recall, the two visionaries of La Salette were—just like at Fatima—two young shepherds, Mélanie Calvat (14 years old) and Maximin Giraud (11 years old). On the evening of Saturday, September 9, 1846, encountered a wondrous and luminous Lady in tears. Deeply saddened, the Queen of the Universe conveyed a message to them addressed to all. Her unforgettable words mentioned the “strong and heavy” hand of her Son that she could no longer hold back. The sins of humanity that caused this were the violation of the commandment to attend Sunday and holy day Mass, along with blasphemous words and neglect of fasting periods. Punishments were imminent. Asked by the children how to pray, she recommended at least one Pater Noster and one Avea Maria when more could not be done.
After an investigation that lasted five years, the Bishop of Grenoble, Mgr. Philibert de Bruillard, recognized the authenticity of the apparition on September 19, 1851. Additionally, there were two secrets which, after being independently written by each child, were sent to Pope Pius IX in the same year, 1851. The secrets of La Salette were not intended for the general public. That is why they were lost in the Vatican archives for almost a century and a half. They were rediscovered in the Vatican archives only in 1999 by a French Theologian, Father Michel Corteville. I will come back to them immediately.
Even though they remained faithful Catholics, both visionaries had tumultuous lives. Particularly, Mélanie went through many trials, some caused even by ecclesiastical authorities. In 1879, she published a small brochure entitled L’apparition de la Tres Sainte Vierge sur la Sainte Montagne de la Salette (The apparition of the Holy Virgin on the Holy Mountain of La Salette).[2] It bears the Imprimatur of the Bishop of Lecce at that time, Mgr. Sauveur-Louis, Comte Zola. Although the original work was overlooked by the Roman authorities when it first appeared, it was condemned in 1923 (thus, almost half a century later) by the Vatican and included in the famous Index Librorum Prohibitorum. As can be seen in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (1923 edition), the condemnation was applied to a much later edition of the book, published in 1922.[3] It was from this book written by Mélanie and condemned during the pontificate of Pope Pius XI, when Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val (1865–1930) was Secretary of the Holy Office, that the statement circulated by certain websites obsessed with ecclesiastical conspiracies was extracted.
Unfortunately, some Catholic traditionalist publications and websites have also spread this fake prophecy, attributing it to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It certainly does not belong to the two secrets—one received by Maximin and the other by Mélanie. This was definitively demonstrated by their discovery in 1999, an event I have already mentioned. Reading the two texts is, at the same time, clarifying and relevant.
The Secret Received by Maximin Giraud
“On September 19, 1846, we saw a beautiful Lady. We never said that this lady was the Blessed Virgin but we always said that it was a beautiful Lady. I do not know if it is the Blessed Virgin or another person. As for me, I believe today that it is the Blessed Virgin. Here is what this Lady said to me:
‘If my people continue, what I will say to you will arrive earlier, if it changes a little, it will be a little later.
France has corrupted the universe, one day it will be punished. The faith will die out in France: three quarters of France will not practice religion anymore, or almost no more, the other part will practice it without really practicing it. Then, after [that], nations will convert, the faith will be rekindled everywhere. A great country, now Protestant, in the north of Europe, will be converted; by the support of this country all the other nations of the world will be converted.
Before all that arrives, great disorders will arrive, in the Church, and everywhere. Then, after [that], our Holy Father the Pope will be persecuted. His successor will be a pontiff that nobody expects.
Then, after [that], a great peace will come, but it will not last a long time. A monster will come to disturb it.
All that I tell you here will arrive in the other century, at the latest in the year two thousand.’
Maximin Giraud
(She told me to say it some time before.)
My Most Holy Father, your holy blessing to one of your sheep.
Grenoble, July 3,1851.”[4]
The Secret Received by Mélanie Calvat
“J.M.J.
Secret which the Blessed Virgin gave me on the Mountain of La Salette on September 19, 1846
Secr[e]t.
‘Mélanie, I will say something to you which you will not say to anybody: The time of the God’s wrath has arrived! If, when you say to the people what I have said to you so far, and what I will still ask you to say, if, after that, they do not convert, (if they do not do penance, and they do not cease working on Sunday, and if they continue to blaspheme the Holy Name of God), in a word, if the face of the earth does not change, God will be avenged against the people ungrateful and slave of the demon.
My Son will make his power manifest! Paris, this city soiled by all kinds of crimes, will perish infallibly. Marseilles will be destroyed in a little time. When these things arrive, the disorder will be complete on the earth; the world will be given up to its impious passions.
The pope will be persecuted from all sides, they will shoot at him, they will want to put him to death, but no one will be able to do it, the Vicar of God will triumph again this time.
The priests and the Sisters, and the true servants of my Son will be persecuted, and several will die for the faith of Jesus-Christ.
A famine will reign at the same time.
After all these will have arrived, many will recognize the hand of God on them, they will convert, and do penance for their sins. A great king will go up on the throne, and will reign a few years. Religion will re-flourish and spread all over the world, and there will be a great abundance, the world, glad not to be lacking nothing, will fall again in its disorders, will give up God, and will be prone to its criminal passions.
[Among] God’s ministers, and the Spouses of Jesus-Christ, there will be some who will go astray, and that will be the most terrible.
Lastly, hell will reign on earth. It will be then that the Antichrist will be born of a Sister, but woe to her! Many will believe in him, because he will claim to have come from heaven, woe to those who will believe in him!
That time is not far away; twice 50 years will not go by.
My child, you will not say what I have just said to you. (You will not say it to anybody, you will not say if you must say it one day, you will not say what that it concerns), finally you will say nothing anymore until I tell you to say it!’
I pray to Our Holy Father the Pope to give me his holy blessing.
Mélanie Mathieu, Shepherdess of La Salette, Grenoble, July 6, 1851.
J.M.J.+”
The Shadow of Antichrist and an Eschatological Warning
Despite the fact that they have a relatively similar structure, there are particular features of the two secrets that deserve to be emphasized.
France occupies a special place. If we consider the fact that three archbishops of Paris—Denis Auguste Affre (1793–1848), Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour (1792–1857), and Georges Darboy (1813–1871)—were killed within a period of almost a quarter of a century, we can easily realize how grave the situation was in the country of Saint Vincent de Paul. The perpetuation of the spirit of the 1789 Revolution was to erupt once again during the Paris Commune (1871), which culminated in the assassination of the last of the three archbishops mentioned above. Then, during both the First and Second World Wars, the disasters suffered by France confirmed the prophecies contained in the two secrets. But the most important content concerns the imminence of the Apocalypse implied by the manifestation of the Antichrist.
While Maximin speaks—recalling the language of chapter 13 of the Apocalypse of Saint John the Apostle—of “a monster” who will disturb a brief period of peace, Mélanie speaks explicitly of the Antichrist. She adds two details.
The first is chronological: the interval until the moment of his manifestation would be “twice fifty years” (= one hundred years). If the secret was received in 1846, this would mean that the “deadline” for the birth of the Antichrist was the year 1946. “But where is the Antichrist?” we may ask. Could he already be present in the world? That would mean that he is at least eighty years old. Of course, this is true under one condition only: that we are dealing with the “individualist” interpretation of the Antichrist, which assumes that he will indeed be a certain person.
But, as we may recall from the eschatological commentaries in Théologie de l’histoire (Theology of History, 1966) by the Dominican friar Roger-Thomas Calmel, the “collectivist” interpretation is also legitimate. According to this interpretation, the Antichrist will not be a person, but rather the ultimate manifestation of evil in history through the manipulation of a significant portion of humanity in the end times, which will act systematically against Our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, it would be a manifestation of evil reminiscent of the “great apostasy” prophesied by Saint Paul the Apostle (2 Thessalonians 2:1–3).
The second detail concerning the Antichrist provided by Mélanie’s secret refers to his origin: he would be born of a nun. It is therefore clear that the interpretive line suggested by the secret is the “individualist” one. Such a biographical detail reveals something even more profound: namely, that the greatest evil is always perpetrated in history by those who are called to do the greatest good. For the representatives of the consecrated life are those who ought to live out “great holiness,” serving as models for all of us. The fact that a nun would give birth to the “monster” demonstrates – besides the Christian (i.e, Catholic) origin of the Antichrist – how grave the consequences can be of the sins of the most important representatives of Christian life.
Mélanie also speaks of the crisis among the ministers of the Church when she says that “[among] God’s ministers, and the Spouses of Jesus-Christ, there will be some who will go astray.” The fact that Traditionalist circles and authors so frequently mention the apparition of La Salette is not entirely without justification. However, their use of a sentence that does not appear in the authentic secret is a grave abuse—especially since this sentence is attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I do not believe that any of us doubts that both the world today and the Church are going through the deepest crisis in the history of humanity. The simple fact that official statistics speak of billions of lives ended through abortion is sufficient to understand that we are dealing with a genuine “state of emergency.” Even so, the repeated use of a pseudo-prophecy that “parasitizes” the original prophecies of La Salette is an unacceptable practice that every authentic lover of the Christian Tradition should reject without hesitation. The cloud of heresies and lies that surrounds us today needs no additions.
Photo by Amy Burgess on Unsplash
[1] https://fatima.org/apparition-of-the-blessed-virgin-on-the-mountain-of-la-salette/ [Accessed: 19 September 2026].
[2] Extraordinary rare, a 1930 reprint of it can be read on the French portal Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k379148g.r=melanie%20calvat?rk=21459;2 [Accessed: 19 September 2026].
[3] Here is decretum published in Acta Apostolicare Sedis, Annus XV, Volumen XV, 1923, pp. 287–288:
“In generali consessu Supremae Sacrae Congregationis S. Officii Emi ac Rmi Domini Cardinales fidei et moribus tutandis praepositi proscripserunt atque damnaverunt opusculum: L’apparition de la très Sainte Vierge sur la sainte montagne de la Salette le samedi 19 septembre 1845. – Simple réimpression du texte intégral publié par Melanie, etc. Société Sainte Augustin, Paris-Rome-Bruges, 1922; mandantes ad quo spectat ut exemplaria damnati opusculi e manibus fidelium retrahere curent.
Et eadem feria ac die Sanctissimus D. ST. D. Pius divina providentia Papa XI, in solita audientia R. P. D. Assessori S. Officii impertita, relatam sibi Emorum Patrum resolutionem approbavit.
Datum Romae, ex aedibus S. Officii, die 10 maii 1923.
Aloisius Castellano, Supremae S. C. S. Officii Notarius.”
A detailed analysis of both the book written by Mélanie Calvat and its condemnation by Vatican will be highly useful.
[4] Both texts are available on the website sspxasia.com (the French original text is also provided): https://www.sspxasia.com/Newsletters/2003/Jul-Dec/Secret_of_La_Salette.htm [Accessed: 19 September 2026].