"Interviewer: Why did a great Mariologist like Renè Laurentin never deal with Fatima? Because he considered it difficult. Lourdes was a straightforward apparition, while Fatima had several parts and, above all, a disclosure of secrets much later in the years. So he decided not to be called upon to investigate that event. He said this with great cultural independence even to the president of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference, sent directly by the Portuguese patriarch, who would have made everything possible available to him to study the phenomenon. And then too many political passions had been unleashed on Fatima, which in his opinion would have hindered his work... [Laurentin was] a good and easy-going man, always available, and he was not only a Mariologist and the greatest expert on Lourdes."