After three apparitions of the Virgin Mary, which occurred during the 19th century, in La Salette in 1846, in Lourdes in 1858, in Castelpetroso in 1888, the Madonna appeared in 1917, the first in the 20th century, in Fatima in Portugal. The first time was Sunday 13 May and for this reason the Church celebrates Our Lady of Fatima on this day.
Lucia, Francesco and Giacinta, the three shepherd visionaries
Fatima was then a village in the central area of Portugal (District of Santarém) on the limestone plateaus of Extremadura, 20 kilometers south-east of Leiria, (the name Fatima, before the events of the apparitions, was known exclusively as that of Muhammad’s daughter, who died in 633).
One and a half kilometers from Fatima, there was a hamlet called Aljustrel and here the three protagonists of the story of Fatima were born and lived; Lucia Dos Santos born in 1907 and her two cousins Francesco Marto born in 1908 and Jacinta Marto born 1910; the two families were large, the Dos Santos had 5 children and the Martos 10 children. Like many local boys, the three cousin-friends took the small flocks of their respective families to graze towards the surrounding grazing places each time of their choice and spent the whole day with the sheep; at midday they ate breakfast prepared by their mothers and then recited the rosary. In 1916 between April and October, the three amazed boys witnessed a prodigious phenomenon; an angel shining with light appeared to them, who qualified himself as the Angel of Peace and who invited them to prayer; the apparitions were three in total, twice at the “Loca do Cabeço” and once at the well in the garden of the father’s house. These apparitions, narrated by Lucia, are classified as ‘The angelic cycle’.
May 13, 1917, the first apparition
It was Sunday 13 May 1917; the three cousins, after attending Mass in the parish church of Fatima, returned to Aljustrel to prepare to lead their sheep to pasture. The spring weather was splendid and so they decided to go this time to the Cova da Iria, a large amphitheater-shaped clearing, bordered to the north by a small hill. Halfway up the slope, near an holm oak, the light shone again and a few steps further on they saw a beautiful Lady dressed in white standing on top of the holm oak, she was all luminous, emanating a dazzling light; they were just over a meter away and the three boys were amazed to contemplate it; while for the first time the sweet Lady spoke reassuring them: “Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you”.
The three shepherd children in 1917. From the right: Giacinta and Francesco Marto and Lucia dos Santos
Her dress made of light and white as snow, had a golden cord as a belt; a gold laced veil covered her head and shoulders, reaching down to her feet like a dress; from his fingers held on his chest in an attitude of prayer, dangled the glittering Rosary with a silver cross, two roses rested on his feet. At this point the eldest of them, Lucia, asked the Lady “Where are you from?” “I come from Heaven” and Lucia “From heaven! And why did you come all the way here?”, “To ask you to come here during the next six months every 13th day at this same time; later I will tell you who I am and what I desire, I will then return here again a seventh time”. And Lucia, “And will I too go to heaven?”, “Yes”, and “Jacinta?”, “her too”, “and Francesco?”, “he too, but he will have to say his rosary”. The Virgin then asked: “Do you want to offer to God all the sufferings that He wishes to send you, in reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and to ask for the conversion of sinners?”. “Yes, we want it” Lucia replied, “Then you will have to suffer a lot, but God’s Grace will be your comfort”.
And after advising the children to recite the rosary every day, to obtain peace in the world and the end of the war, the Lady began to rise and disappeared into the sky. During all the apparitions, Lucia will be the one who converses with the Lady, Jacinta will see her and hear her words but without speaking to her, Francesco will not hear her, but will only see her, accepting to know from the two girls what the Lady said.
The miracle of the sun
This time too, as soon as the Lady appeared, Lucia asked “Lady, who are you and what do you want from me?”; and She immediately replied: “I am the Lady of the Rosary; I want a chapel built here in homage to me; that they continue to recite the rosary every day. The war will end and the soldiers will soon return to their homes; men must not offend the Lord who is already too offended.” At this point the Virgin opened her hands again and launched a ray of light in the direction of the sun and as she rose towards the sky, the three visionaries were able to see the three members of the Holy Family, Baby Jesus, Saint Joseph and the Madonna, next to the sun; in a few moments they also had the vision of an adult man blessing the world and the Madonna who seemed to Lucia to be Our Lady of Sorrows, and finally a third scene in which there was Our Lady of Mount Carmel with the scapular in her hand.
The message and role of the popes
The three visionaries, with their simplicity and tenacity, told of the Virgin’s concern for the fate of humanity, threatened by various scourges and that to prevent them it was necessary: penance, recitation of the Rosary, consecration to her Immaculate Heart and the construction of a chapel in her honor to transform it into a destination for pilgrimages of the poor, suffering and penitents. Naturally, for a long period the story and the message remained forgotten and in the narrow horizon of a little-known environment of poor shepherds and farmers.
On 28 April 1919 the construction of the Chapel of the Apparitions began; on 13 October 1930 the bishop of Leira declared “the visions of the children at the Cova da Iria worthy of belief”, authorizing the cult of Our Lady of Fatima; on 13 May 1931 the Portuguese episcopate, according to the message of Fatima, made the first consecration of Portugal to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On 31 October 1942 Pope Pius XIIin a radio message he consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and on 7 July 1952 he consecrated the peoples of Russia to Mary, as the Celestial Lady had asked in Fatima. The coming true of the threat of the Second World War made Christians remember the message of Fatima; on 13 May 1946 with the presence of the papal legate, the cardinal Benedetto Aloisi Masella, in front of a crowd of eight hundred thousand pilgrims, there was the coronation of the statue of the Virgin of Fatima.
The Popes through their delegates, as Pius XII did, or by personally going on pilgrimage, as he did Paul VI on May 13, 1967, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Apparitions and John Paul II on May 13, 1982, exactly one year after the attack suffered in St. Peter’s Square, the bullet of which is set in the crown of the statue as a sign of gratitude, they pointed to Fatima as a beacon that still continues to shed its light today, to recall the disoriented world towards the only port of salvation.
The “Third Secret” and the prophecy about the attack on Pope Wojtyla
The third part of the message received was written down by Sister Lucia, then still a nun of Saint Dorothy, on January 3, 1944the document sent to the Vatican, was read by all successive pontiffs and by very few other close collaborators and preserved at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The entire message of the Virgin has long been the subject of conjecture and exegesis by theologians and scholars, Catholic and non-Catholic. But the third part, kept secret by the Church, was the one that made people believe in catastrophes, which would have upset the life of the Church itself, so the pontiffs preferred not to divulge it, sending the sealed envelope back to the aforementioned Congregation after reading, where it has been kept since 1957. Below is an excerpt from the communication read on May 13, 2000 in Fatimathe Pope present: “This text constitutes a prophetic vision comparable to those of Sacred Scripture, which do not describe in a photographic sense the details of future events, but summarize and condense on the same background facts that extend over time in an unspecified succession and duration. Consequently, the key to understanding the text can only be of a symbolic nature. The vision of Fatima concerns above all the struggle of atheistic systems against the Church and Christians and describes the immense suffering of the witnesses of the faith of the last century of the second millennium.
It is an interminable Via Crucis led by the Popes of the twentieth century. According to the interpretation of the shepherd children, an interpretation also recently confirmed by Sister Lucia, the “Bishop dressed in white” who prays for all the faithful is the Pope. He too, walking laboriously towards the Cross among the corpses of the martyred (bishops, priests, men and women religious and numerous lay people) falls to the ground as if dead, under the gunshots.
After the attack on Pope Wojtyla on May 13, 1981 it became clear that it had been «a maternal hand to guide the trajectory of the bullet», allowing the “agonizing pope” to stop “on the threshold of death”. During a visit from Rome by the then bishop of Leiria – Fatima, the pope decided to give him the bullet, which had remained in the jeep after the attack, to be kept in the Sanctuary. On the initiative of the bishop it was then set in the crown of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.
The theological meaning of the Fatima message
The Marian sanctuary of Fatima is one of the most venerated places by the Catholic faithful and in this place, sacred to the apparition of Mary, John Paul II wanted to go again on May 13, 2000, to proceed with the beatification of the Marto brothers, at the end of the celebration the Cardinal Secretary of State, Angelo Sodano read the communication in Portuguese on the third secret of Fatima; and just a month later, on 26 June 2000, the Pope authorized its public disclosure by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, accompanied by appropriate theological commentary by the Prefect, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Here is an excerpt: «The key word of this “Secret” is the triple cry: “Penance, Penance, Penance!… It appeared more and more clearly to Sister Lucia that the purpose of all the apparitions was to make people grow more and more in faith, hope and charity – everything else was intended to lead only to this…”».
