Call it "Mystery Akita."

In 1984 a local bishop in Niigata, Japan, authorized veneration of the Holy Mother of Akita, a devotion based on the exudation of mysterious liquid from a wooden statue in a chapel used by nuns at a convent, particularly one named Sister Agnes Sasagawa.

It all started in 1973, when a voice, a sweet, indescribable voice, like a prayer, seemed to issue from a statue dedicated to Our Lady of All Peoples. It was Sister Sasagawa -- at the time deaf -- who 'heard" it. The statue shed tears on 101 occasions.

On October 13 of that year -- anniversary of the famous Fatima sun miracle -- Sister Agnes claimed to hear Mary speak an important message. "As I told you," Mary allegedly said, "if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all of humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the Deluge, such as one will never have been seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good and the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful."

It was a potent message. That was one mystery. Did it really point to a future event? There was also intrigue in its connection with "Our Lady of All Peoples," an alleged apparition in Holland that spelled many calamities. Chalk that up as a second mystery. Too, there was intrigue in the potential connection to the third Fatima secret. And there was intrigue in that the phenomenon involved a cardinal by the name of Joseph Ratzinger.

In 1979 the man who one day would become Pope Benedict XVI sent a letter to the nunciature in Tokyo that was "unfavorable to the events" claimed in Akita, according to the then-diocesan bishop John Shokiro Ito. At the time Benedict was prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- which oversees such alleged revelations.

It could have been the death blow to the statue phenomena, but the bishop sent a second dossier for prolonged Vatican examination. There had been misunderstandings in the information the Vatican had reviewed, the bishop asserted. He was then granted direction on how to approach private revelations and told that it would be in his hands.

Five years after the first Ratzinger note, Bishop Ito issued his pastoral letter, confirming his initial impression of the statue and declaring that "it is beyond human powers to produce water where there is none, and I believe that to do this the intervention of a nonhuman force is necessary."

Moreover, stated the bishop, it was not a question of pure water, "but of a liquid secreted by a human body." The bishop had had it analyzed.

Bishop Ito emphasized that after a scientific investigation of the weeping statue, and the miraculous cure of the nun's deafness (yes, this too had occurred), "one cannot deny the supernatural character of a series of inexplicable events relative to the statue of the Virgin which is found in the convent of the Institute of the Handmaids of the Eucharist at Yuzawadai, Soegawa, Akita (diocese of Niigata)."

"Consequently," he said, "I authorize throughout the entire diocese, with which I am charged, the veneration of the Holy Mother of Akita, while awaiting what the Holy See publishes definitively on this matter."

The Vatican never has issued a judgment of its own -- it usually does not, leaving it to local prelates -- but what was intriguing was that the pastoral letter was allowed to move forward and included the dramatic prophecy.

Bishop Ito was apprehensive over the reaction of the Vatican to that, but when he brought his letter to Cardinal Ratzinger in 1988, the cardinal said the pastoral letter was acceptable and allowed dissemination of the letter to the faithful. While not personally passing judgment on the messages themselves, then-Cardinal Ratzinger suggested a further inquiry by the Bishops Conference of Japan -- which expressed no need of further investigation, endorsing the findings.

Thus, a phenomenon with an apocalyptic-like message had been granted a bishop's approval, and had been done under the scrutiny of a future Pope -- one seen as hard-nosed in such matters.

That was one matter. Cardinal Ratzinger had allowed a bishop to go his own way in what amounted to partial Church approval. It was not declared outright that the message was from the Virgin Mary, only that the phenomenon of the tears was inexplicable.

But a reliable source who spoke to Cardinal Ratzinger about the alleged events came back  with the claim that the powerful cardinal was not only well aware of the potent Akita message, but linked it to the at the time still-unrevealed third secret of Fatima.

The reliable source was the ambassador to the Vatican from the Philippines, Howard Q. Dee, who related that in discussion with Cardinal Ratzinger, he had surmised that Ratzinger must have recognized the Fatima secret in the Akita message because the prefect had allowed the bishop's pastoral letter.

"To confirm this assumption, during my farewell visit to Cardinal Ratzinger at the end of my Vatican stint as Philippine ambassador, I asked the good cardinal about the correlation of the Fatima and Akita messages," wrote Ambassador Dee. "I knew it was a delicate question as his answer might reveal indirectly the content of the third secret. To my happy surprise, he confirmed that these two messages were essentially the same" [our italics].

When the third secret was revealed years later, in June of 2000, it was shown to be an image of an angel ready to torch the earth.

Such correlated, to be sure, with Sister Sasagawa's message that fire would fall from the sky.

A nuclear holocaust -- sparked by Russia, which was the central focus of Fatima -- was a daunting prospect at the time of Akita, when the Cold War was still at full throttle; the messages seemed thus connected.

But the intrigue went further. For in its actual style, the Akita message was more closely related to what had been declared as a bogus third secret. In 1963 a German publication called Neues Europa had printed what it claimed was the third secret and quoted it as predicting that "fire and smoke will fall from the sky and the waters of the oceans will be turned to steam." Moreover, it predicted that within the Church there would be a great conflict, such that "cardinals will be against cardinals, and bishops against bishops."

Sister Sasagawa's message declared the same prophecy in a way that was almost verbatim.

"The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against other bishops," she quoted the "statue" as saying.

Both the Neues Europa secret and Sister Sasagawa's message used some of the very same words: a great punishment, worse than the Flood, cardinal against cardinal, "bishop against bishops," Satan in their very midst.

The problem was that the Neues Europa "secret" was declared as false by both the Vatican and the Fatima seer, Sister Lucia dos Santos. When the actual third secret was revealed, it forewarned of a similar event, but not with words; there was instead a series of images.

And so another intrigue: how did Sister Sasagawa come up with such a similar message? Had she read the Neues Europa "version"? Or was this too supernatural in a way that remains a mystery?

And then there was the connection to what is known as "Our Lady of All Peoples." This apparition had gone through a series of rejections by bishops in Amsterdam -- at times with Vatican urging -- until it was accepted by a local bishop, Bishop Joseph Maria Punt, on May 31, 2002. It is still unknown whether that judgment will withstand subsequent bishops.

But as of now, it stands as a Church-approved apparition.

Said Punt: "Unlike Holy Scripture, private revelations are never binding upon the conscience of the faithful. They are a help in understanding the signs of the times and to help live more fully the Gospel (Luke 12:56, Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 67). And the signs of our times are dramatic."

It was an unusually candid evaluation by a bishop of an apocalyptic apparition with forecasts of nearly countless disasters -- far more, and with greater specificity, than in the revelations of places like Fatima and Akita. It was also an apparition that has urged a new dogma declaring the Blessed Mother as "Coredemptrix, Mediatrix and Advocate."

And this brings us back to Benedict XVI -- or Cardinal Ratzinger.

Asked in a book of interviews called God and  the World about the call of many who in line with the Amsterdam apparitions have urged the Church to raise Mary to the status of "Co-redemptrix," Cardinal Ratzinger had replied, "I do not think there will be any compliance with this demand, which in the meantime is being supported by several million people, within the foreseeable future. The response of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is, broadly, that what is signified by this is already better expressed in other titles of Mary, while the formula 'Co-redemptrix' departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the Fathers and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings."

"The word 'Co-redemptrix' would obscure this origin," Cardinal Ratzinger told journalist Peter Seewald in the book. "A correct intention is being expressed in the wrong way. For matters of faith, continuity of terminology with the language of Scripture and that of the Fathers is itself an essential element; it is improper simply to manipulate language."

And so a last intrigue: as Pope, will he change his mind? What does he himself feel about Akita? And what will he say about the many other apparitions that have risen since Akita and continue to rise in a world where signs, allegedly, continue to be seen?

06/02/05