Mel Gibson's Next Film: Fatima

I doubt that Mel Gibson will have as difficult a time in finding a willing distributor for his next film - even if it will upset secular Hollywood again. I will make the early prediction that it takes Best Picture in 2006. Mel Gibson recently bought the rights to the book, “Stealing from Angels,” which involves the three secrets of Fatima. The last surviving witness to whom the Virgin Mary appeared near Fatima, Sister Lucia de Jesus de Santos, died two weeks ago at age 97 in Portugal.

In this week's Weekly Standard, Joseph Bottom discusses Fatima by stating:

Here's a curious thought.. Maybe the single most important person in the 20th century's long struggle against communism wasn't Ronald Reagan. Maybe it wasn't Karol Wojtyla or Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa or Václav Havel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Mikhail Gorbachev. Maybe it wasn't anyone whose name might leap to a cold warrior's mind--for the most important figure in that long, dark struggle might have been a 10-year-old girl named Lucia dos Santos.

The first two parts of the three Fatima prophecies have been known for decades and are interpreted as predicting World War I and World War II. The third prophecy was described by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the most intriguing mysteries of modern times.” In the year 2000 the Catholic Church revealed the third vision of Fatima.

Vatican officials concluded that the third Fatima prophecy was at least partly related to the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square in 1981. Angelo Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State, stated on May 13, 2000:

The vision of Fatima concerns above all the war waged by atheist systems against the Church and Christians, and it describes the immense suffering endured by the witnesses to the faith in the last century of the second millennium. It is an interminable Way of the Cross led by the Popes of the twentieth century.

According to the interpretation of the 'little shepherds,' which was also recently confirmed by Sister Lucia, the 'bishop clothed in white' who prays for all the faithful is the Pope. As he makes his way with great effort towards the Cross amid the corpses of those who were martyred (bishops, priests, men and women religious and many lay persons), he too falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire.

During the 1985 trial of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish would-be assassin, Agca made the statement that his assassination attempt was "connected to the third secret of the Madonna of Fatima." (Agca made his attack on May 13, 1981. The apparition at Fatima first occurred on May 13, 1917, exactly 64 years to the day earlier).

This day, the 13th day, seemed to follow all through the prophecy and its aftermath. On that day in May of 1917, and on the 13th of every month thereafter, until October of 1917, the visions appeared to Lucia and the other two schoolchildren with her. Pope John Paul's assassination attempt on May 13, 1981 added to the public interest of the prophecy and now Lucia's own death on February 13, 2005 provides for a very convincing article of faith.

Anyone want to bet that this movie will be in the $500 million range?