Cardinal Oddi:

It [the Third Secret] has nothing to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against the apostasy in the Church.

In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.

Moreover, how are we to understand Lucy’s great difficulty in writing the final part of the Secret when she has already written other things that were extremely difficult to put down? Had it been merely a matter of prophesying new and severe punishments, Sister Lucy would not have experienced difficulties so great that a special intervention from Heaven was needed to overcome them. ‹…› But, if it were a matter of internal strife within the Church and of serious pastoral negligence on the part of high-ranking members of the hierarchy, we can understand how Lucy experienced a repugnance that was almost impossible to overcome by natural means.

Msgr. Eugene Pacelli, the future Pope Pius ХII:
“I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. ‹…› I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past.
A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?'”

…Vl. Solov’ev acknowledges a positive significance to the falling separate of the natures of the human powers from God, since after the falling separate there is made possible the free co-uniting of man with God. The Kingdom of God cannot be realised by way of compulsion and coercion. Compulsory theocracy ought to collapse, and man ought to enter upon the path of a free revealing of his powers. Vl. Solov’ev surmises, that the world ought to proceed through freedom and freely come to God.