The first time I ever heard of Fr. Malachi Martin (RIP), I was sitting in a living room in Madison, WI, where I worked for a year after college for a pro-life organization, listening to the late Fr. Charles Fiore (RIP), a Dominican priest who joined the FSSP. He was telling an FSSP seminarian, who was about to travel to meet Fr. Martin, and our group, about how Pope John Paul II had secretly commissioned him, Fr. Alfred Kunz (RIP) a priest of the diocese of Madison who also said the TLM, and Fr. Martin to conduct a secret investigation into the literal satanic underworld of pediphile priests in the Diocese of Chicago. It was all fascinating and horrifying at the same time.
Years later, after coming to Tradition, a friend would lend me Fr. Martin’s book WINDSWEPT HOUSE, an eye opener into the forces of evil in the Vatican since the Council.
Fr. Malachi Martin was, in my opinion, one of the best witnesses to the Crisis in the Church, due to personal holiness, his gigantic intellect, and being a Vatican insider. The fact he was formerly in the progressive reform camp actually at the Council, but later having a conversion of heart towards the traditionalist position, for me makes him an even more reliable analyst.
At the same time, he is not without controversy. In fact he was a sensational person in the Church. Unwilling to compromise to the liberalism of the Jesuits or of any diocesan bishop, JPII gave him permission to leave the Jesuits and live publicly as a layman, while privately saying Mass (the TLM), performing exorcisms, and writing Catholic books. He went by Dr. or Mr. Martin, while remaining a non-laicized priest in good standing.
His talks with Art Bell were riveting, while at times sounding like fantasy about the end times. His talk with William F. Buckley was excellent. It was said JPII consecrated him a bishop in secret to go behind the iron curtain and secretly consecrate new Catholic bishops. But he was accused of having an affair with a married woman, which he denied. In my opinion, the evidence and his credibility demonstrates his innocence with moral certainty. That said, even if it were true, I would also conclude with moral certainty it was a brief moment of passion in the life of a red-blooded man. Not excusable, but hardly cause to write off his contribution. But again, I’m certain of his innocence in that matter.
His greatest contribution was to understanding the Crisis in the Church. Fr. Martin described how the Masons and outright Satanists from within the actual Catholic hierarchy had transformed all the structures within the Church to advance their goal of a new, New World Ordo version of the Church, by means of the Council. Also, because he was one of a privileged few allowed by the pope to read the full secret of Fatima, in the Vatican, we know in part at least that it speaks of the great apostasy resulting in a great chastisement.