Our Lady of Fátima

• 1. Introduction

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  Our Lady of Fátima is a Catholic title of Mary, mother of Jesus, rooted in visions that three shepherd children reported in Portugal in 1917. On the 13th of October that year, a crowd of perhaps 30,000 to 100,000 people packed the Cova da Iria in Fátima. Reporters and photographers stood among them. The children, Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, had said a Lady would reveal her identity and perform a miracle there. Her stated purpose was "so that all may believe." Newspapers had already carried the prediction. The movement that grew from that day has been called a hoax, defended by popes, and tied to wars and revolutions. Who were the children, and what did they say they were told? What were the three secrets, and why did the last one stay sealed for decades? And why do doubts about the story come from Catholics as well as skeptics?

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• 2. Village Under Suspicion

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  On the 13th of May 1917, the children described a woman "brighter than the sun," wearing a white mantle edged with gold and holding a rosary. She asked them to devote themselves to the Holy Trinity. She also asked them to pray the Rosary every day "to bring peace to the world and an end to the war." Lúcia had told the others to keep the experience private. Jacinta told her family anyway. Her mother did not believe it and repeated it to neighbors as a joke. Within a day, the whole village knew.

  Lúcia's mother took the matter to the parish priest, Father Manuel Ferreira, who advised letting the children return on the 13th of June 1917. He asked that Lúcia be brought to him afterward so he could question her. That date was the feast of Saint Anthony, patron of the local parish church. The children said the Lady entrusted them with a secret, described as "good for some and bad for others." According to Father Ferreira, Lúcia reported being told to learn to read so she could understand what the Lady wanted of her.

  Criticism came from both secular and religious authorities. Portugal had been an officially secular republic since 1910, and the provincial administrator Artur Santos, no relation to Lúcia dos Santos, saw the gatherings as politically disruptive in a conservative country. On the 13th of August 1917 he took the children into custody and jailed them before they could reach the Cova da Iria. He interrogated and threatened them to learn the secrets. Lúcia told him everything except the secrets, and offered to ask the Lady for permission to share them. Her mother hoped the officials would persuade the children to admit they had lied.

  Because of the arrest, the usual August meeting at the Cova da Iria never took place. The children said they saw the Virgin instead on Sunday the 19th of August at nearby Valinhos. There she again asked for daily rosaries, spoke of the coming October miracle, and urged them to sacrifice for sinners. In all, the children claimed six apparitions between the 13th of May and the 13th of October 1917. Lúcia later added a seventh at the Cova da Iria.

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• 3. The Dancing Sun

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  According to witness accounts, rain soaked the field on the 13th of October 1917 until the dark clouds broke and the Sun appeared as an opaque, spinning disc. Descriptions say it looked much duller than usual and threw multicolored lights across the landscape, the people and the clouds. It was then said to careen toward the Earth before zig-zagging back to its normal place. Many witnesses reported that their wet clothes and the muddy ground became "suddenly and completely dry." The children described a panorama of visions during the event. These included Jesus, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Joseph blessing the people. Much of this detail comes from Father John De Marchi, an Italian Catholic priest and researcher who wrote several books on the subject.

  Scientists at the time observed no unusual phenomenon of the Sun, and not every witness saw it dance. Some people saw only radiant colors. Others, including some believers, saw nothing at all. Skeptics have offered several explanations. They point to the suggestibility of the witnesses, to temporary retinal distortion from staring at intense sunlight, and to optical effects from natural weather.

  A sharper test of the children's credibility came from the priest Manuel Nunes Formigão, who interviewed them during the apparitions. In De Marchi's account, Formigão pressed Lúcia about the children's prediction that the First World War would end on the 13th of October 1917. "The war is still going on," he told her. "The papers give news of battles after the 13th." Lúcia answered, "I don't know; I only know that I heard her say that the war would end on that day." Jacinta, the youngest, was questioned separately and gave the same answer. The war ended a little over a year later, on Armistice Day, the 11th of November 1918. Roughly fifteen months after that Armistice, both of the younger children would be dead.

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• 4. Sacrifice and Doubt

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  Before the Lady ever appeared, the children said, an angel visited them. Beginning in the spring of 1916, they reported three apparitions of an angel at Valinhos. Lúcia later said he called himself the "Angel of Portugal" and the "Angel of Peace." He taught them to bow with their heads to the ground and to pray, "My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love you. I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love you." Lúcia later set this prayer to music, and a recording of her singing it exists.

  Lúcia wrote that the Lady's stress on sacrifice, together with a vision of hell, pushed the children toward ever harsher self-denial. They wore tight cords around their waists, flogged themselves with stinging nettles, gave their lunches to beggars and refused water on hot days. In one memoir she said the cords became blood-stained. She also wrote that on the 13th of September 1917 the Lady told her God did not want them sleeping with the rope on. De Marchi recorded that the children went without water for one stretch of thirty days and another of nine. Sometimes they drank dirty water from a laundry pond as penance, though Jacinta's mother had forbidden it because of the risk of illness. After Jacinta was hospitalized with a severe bronchial illness, she confided that she was still abstaining. "I was thirsty, Lúcia, and I didn't drink, and so I offered it to Jesus for sinners."

  Lúcia's own fears surfaced in memoirs she wrote late in life. She recalled wondering whether the visions came from the devil, and said that since they began, "joy and peace had fled" from her home. She described a vivid nightmare in which the devil laughed at having deceived her. Before the apparition of the 13th of July 1917, De Marchi says she told Jacinta to explain her absence to the Lady, because she feared the Devil had sent her. Lúcia wrote that the next day a strange force, one she could hardly resist, compelled her to go.

  Francisco and Jacinta Marto died in the flu pandemic that began in 1918 and swept the world for two years. Francisco died at home on the 4th of April 1919, aged ten. Jacinta died aged nine, in Queen Stephanie's Children's Hospital in Lisbon, on the 20th of February 1920. Their mother, Olímpia Marto, said they had predicted their deaths many times, to her and to curious pilgrims. Pope John Paul II beatified them on the 13th of May 2000, and Pope Francis canonized them on the 13th of May 2017. Both are buried at the Sanctuary of Fátima. Only Lúcia remained, with decades of life ahead of her.

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• 5. Lúcia's Memoirs

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  On the 17th of June 1921, aged fourteen, Lúcia entered the school of the Sisters of Saint Dorothy in Vilar, a suburb of Porto, as a boarder. In 1925, aged eighteen, she began her novitiate at the order's convent in Tui, Spain, near the Portuguese border. In 1947 she left the Dorothean Order and joined the Discalced Carmelites at a monastery in Coimbra. Throughout her life she kept reporting private visions. On the 10th of December 1925, at the convent in Pontevedra, she said the Virgin and the Child Jesus asked her to spread the First Saturdays devotion. In 1931 at Rianxo, in Galicia, she said Jesus taught her two prayers.

  Between 1935 and 1993, Lúcia wrote six memoirs, and they shaped how the world came to know Fátima. Before they appeared, the events were not widely known outside Portugal and Spain. In the mid-1930s the Bishop of Leiria encouraged her to record further details. Her first memoir, published in 1935, centered on the holiness of her cousin Jacinta, whom many already regarded as a saint. The second, in 1937, told more of her own life and the apparition of the 13th of June 1917. It also first revealed the earlier visits of the Angel of Peace. The first four memoirs, written between 1935 and 1941, appeared in 1976 as Fatima in Lucia's Own Words. The fifth and sixth, from 1989 and 1993, form a second volume. In December 2000, after the Holy See permitted her to answer the endless repeated questions in general terms, a book titled Calls from the Message of Fatima was published.

  Some scholars argue that the memoirs never faced the scrutiny given to the early accounts. In 1936 and again in 1941, Lúcia wrote that the Virgin had foretold the deaths of Francisco and Jacinta on the 13th of June 1917. The Jesuit Edouard Dhanis suggested there are really two Fátimas. "Fatima I" is the story told in the 1917 accounts, and "Fatima II" is the one in the memoirs written between 1935 and 1941. The early messages had centered on praying the rosary for peace and an end to the First World War.

  Cardinal Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, writing about the Church's caution, said that "it was Fatima that imposed itself on the Church." Outside the Church, critics were harsher. Tomás da Fonseca called the events "the biggest hoax of this century" and claimed three priests had promoted them for profit, though the evidence is very weak. The author Father Mário de Oliveira said the God of the memoirs was "a bloodthirsty God who delights in the suffering of the innocent." The journalist Alfredo Barroso argued that the miracle became a weapon against the Republic under the dictator Salazar. The writer Patrícia Carvalho observes that early attacks often lacked irrefutable proof.

  The description of the Lady herself changed over time. The parish priest, Manuel Marques Ferreira, questioned the children after each apparition, and the priest Formigão took notes. In their testimony, Lúcia especially described a figure about one meter tall who looked like a child of 12 to 15. She had black eyes, wore a short, tight skirt reaching the knees or a little below, and a white cloak with gold strings. She never smiled, and Francisco said she spoke without moving her lips. Formigão called the skirt length scandalous for the times and the most serious difficulty for the apparition's supernatural origin. Later descriptions drifted toward a more classic look. By 1930, Dr. Gonzaga da Fonseca in Rome described a tunic and a mantle falling to bare feet.

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• 6. Three Secrets

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  In her third memoir, written in 1941, Sister Lúcia described three secrets that she said had been entrusted to the children in 1917. The first was a vision of hell, which she dated to the 4th of July 1917. She wrote that rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth and reveal "a vast sea of fire." Demons and souls were plunged in it. The souls looked like transparent burning embers with human form, floating amid smoke and "shrieks and groans of pain and despair." She added that the sight probably made her cry out, as bystanders said they heard.

  The second secret urged devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as a way to save souls and bring peace. It predicted the end of the Great War but warned that a worse one would follow if people kept offending God. A night lit by an unknown light would be the "great sign" that punishment was near. To avert it, Mary would return to ask for the consecration of Russia and the First Saturdays devotion. If her requests were heeded, Russia would be converted. If not, Russia would spread its errors and cause wars and persecution of the Church.

  On the 25th of January 1938, an aurora borealis lit the sky across the northern hemisphere, reaching as far south as North Africa, Bermuda and California. It was the widest aurora since 1709. In Paris and elsewhere, people thought a great fire was burning and notified the fire departments. Sister Lúcia said this was the promised sign and wrote to her superior and the bishop the next day. Hitler seized Austria just over a month later and invaded Czechoslovakia eight months later.

  The Bishop of Leiria transcribed the third secret. It opens with an angel holding a flaming sword at the left of Our Lady, with flames that die out against the splendour she radiates. The angel cries out, "Penance, Penance, Penance!" The children then see a bishop dressed in white, whom they took to be the Holy Father. He climbs a steep mountain topped with a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks, passing through a city half in ruins. At the summit, soldiers kill him with bullets and arrows, and other bishops, priests, religious and lay people die after him. Two angels beneath the arms of the Cross gather the martyrs' blood in crystal vessels and sprinkle it on souls making their way to God.

  Lúcia said the third secret could be made public after 1960. Chanoine Barthas and Cardinal Ottaviani reported that she insisted it be released by then because "by that time, it will be more clearly understood." Instead, in 1960 the Vatican said in a press release that it was "most probable the Secret would remain, forever, under absolute seal." The New York Times wrote that speculation ranged from "worldwide nuclear annihilation" to "deep rifts in the Catholic Church that lead to rival papacies." The Holy See finally published the four-page handwritten text on the 26th of June 2000.

  Writers including Father Paul Kramer, Christopher Ferrara, Antonio Socci and Marco Tosatti suggested the published text was incomplete. They alleged that Cardinals Bertone, Ratzinger and Sodano concealed a further one-page document about the Apocalypse and a great apostasy. The Vatican maintains that the full text was released. A December 2001 press release, printed in L'Osservatore Romano, said Lúcia told then-Archbishop Bertone the secret had been completely revealed when published. In May 2010, Pope Benedict XVI told reporters its meaning was not limited to the 1981 attempt on Pope John Paul II. He said it has "a permanent and ongoing significance" that could extend to the Church's suffering over reports of clergy sexual abuse.

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• 7. Russia and the Popes

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  When the children first heard about Russia in 1917, Lúcia admitted later, they thought the Lady was asking for prayers for a girl named Russia. The apparitions fell in the six months before the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Bolsheviks had not yet taken control when the request was supposedly made. Lúcia's memoirs, in their first edition published after the outbreak of the Second World War, focused heavily on Russia. The warning that Russia would spread errors across the world became an anti-Communist rallying cry.

  Politics in Portugal and Spain amplified it. Portugal's First Republic had begun with the revolution of 1910, which overthrew the constitutional monarch. Its intense anticlericalism provoked a conservative reaction that led to the military coup of 1926. In Spain during the Second Republic, apparitions of the Virgin were reported at Ezquioga, where Ramona Olazabal said Mary had marked the palms of her hands with a sword. Conservative elements in the Spanish Church actively encouraged the Fátima devotion to counter atheistic Communism. The Blue Army of Our Lady of Fátima, made up of Catholics and non-Catholics who commit to daily Rosary, has always been strongly anti-Communist. Its members linked Fátima to the Cold War, and it now operates as the World Apostolate of Fátima, with Church approval.

  In 1929, Lúcia reported a vision of the Holy Trinity and the Virgin, who repeated the request for the consecration of Russia. Eugenio Pacelli had been consecrated a bishop on the 13th of May 1917, the day of the first apparition. After he was elected pope in 1939 as Pius XII, he became known as "the Pope of Fátima." In 1940, Lúcia asked him to consecrate the world and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On the 31st of October 1942, in a radio address to Portugal, he consecrated the human race, specifically naming "peoples of Russia." On the 8th of December 1942, he made the consecration in a solemn ceremony in Saint Peter's Basilica. In his Apostolic Letter Sacro Vergente of the 7th of July 1952, he went further. He wrote, "today We consecrate and in a most special manner We entrust all the peoples of Russia to this Immaculate Heart." When he was laid to rest in the crypt of Saint Peter's on the 13th of October 1958, the date matched the anniversary of the final apparition.

  Pope Paul VI renewed the consecration of Pius XII at the end of the Second Vatican Council. On the 13th of May 1967, he made his own pilgrimage to the shrine and prayed there with Sister Lúcia. Pope John Paul II consecrated "the world" on the 25th of March 1984 in a public ceremony in Rome, in union with the bishops of the world. He did not name Russia. In the September 1985 issue of the Blue Army's Spanish magazine Sol de Fátima, Lúcia said the ceremony did not fulfil the request, since Russia was not mentioned and "many bishops attached no importance to it." Letters of 1989 and 1990 changed her stance. In the 1990 letter, she wrote, "Yes, it was accomplished, and since then I have said that it was made." In 2001 she reportedly told Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone that the consecration made in 1984 "has been accepted in Heaven." She died in 2005 without a further public statement. Fátima advocates such as Abbé Georges de Nantes, Father Paul Kramer and Nicholas Gruner maintain that no pope has yet consecrated Russia together with all the world's bishops.

  The question returned after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Latin Catholic bishops asked Pope Francis to perform the act of consecration of Ukraine and Russia requested at Fátima. On the 25th of March 2022 in Saint Peter's Basilica, he entrusted and consecrated "the church and all humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine." A ceremony also took place at Fátima, led by the papal almoner, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski. It remains unknown whether the bishops of the whole world took part on the same day.

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• 8. Pilgrims and Statues

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  In the decade after 1917, two million pilgrims visited Fátima. Locals built a small chapel, the Capelinha, on the exact spot of the apparitions, where a holm oak had stood. On the 13th of May 1920, pilgrims defied government troops and enshrined a statue of the Virgin Mary there. That first sculpture was carved by José Ferreira Thedim in 1920, and the venerated image was inspired, with minor changes, by an existing image of Our Lady of Lapa. Mass was first officially celebrated at the chapel in January 1924, the year a hostel for the sick was begun. A first rector was appointed in 1927, and Stations of the Cross were erected along the mountain road. The foundation stone of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary was laid the following year.

  In October 1930, the Bishop of Leiria-Fátima, José Alves Correia da Silva, declared the apparitions "worthy of belief" after a canonical inquiry. The Church also granted a papal indulgence to pilgrims. In 1935, the bodies of Francisco and Jacinta were reinterred in the new basilica. Pope Pius XII ordered the canonical coronation of the statue by a decree titled Celeberrima solemnia, dated the 25th of April 1946. Cardinal Benedetto Aloisi Masella, acting as papal legate, crowned it on the 13th of May 1946. The crowds were so large that the entrance to the site had to be barred. On the 11th of November 1954, the pope raised the sanctuary to a minor basilica.

  Today pilgrimages take place year-round. The principal ones fall on the 13th of each month from May to October. The biggest crowds, of up to a million pilgrims, gather on the 13th of May and the 13th of October for processions by day and by the light of tens of thousands of candles at night.

  A bullet sits in the crown of the original statue. John Paul II was shot in Saint Peter's Square on the 13th of May 1981, the Feast of Our Lady of Fátima, and he credited her with saving his life. In 1984 he offered one of the bullets that struck him to the statue, and it was added to the crown in the late 1980s. Pope Benedict XVI visited on the 12th and the 13th of May 2010 and gave Our Lady of Fátima a Golden Rose. In a prayer he said she was crowned not only with the silver and gold of joys and hopes but also with the "bullet" of anxieties and sufferings. On the second day he addressed more than 500,000 pilgrims.

  Copies of the statue have traveled far from Portugal. The second International Pilgrim Statue was blessed on the 13th of October 1947 before being sent to the Americas, and one copy was smuggled into the US embassy to the Soviet Union. Another statue, made under Lúcia's supervision and blessed by Pope John XXIII, toured all the regions of South Vietnam for three years starting in 1965. Since 1984, it has been enshrined at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Shrine in Carthage, Missouri. A Fátima statue is carried at the Quyllur Rit'i festival in the highlands of Cusco in Peru, which draws 10,000 pilgrims annually. In Gwardamanġa, Malta, a statue is paraded each year with fireworks. Screens have taken up the story too. Virginia Gibson played the Lady in the 1952 film The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, and Joana Ribeiro played her in the 2020 film Fatima.

  In the Philippines, the National Pilgrim Image, also called the EDSA Image, was blessed by Pope Paul VI in 1967. It became the main Fátima image of the 1986 People Power Revolution, which ousted the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos. Pope Francis issued a decree of canonical coronation for it on the 21st of November 2023, and the coronation took place on the 25th of February 2024.

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