41. Fatima, ninety years of marian presence

The former Vatican secretary of state and dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, will represent the Pope Benedict XVI in the religious celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. This presentation gives an idea of the importance that the Vatican gives to this celebration. We offer, below is a summary of the messages given by Our Lady at Fatima.

In Fatima, there occurred in 1917 some supernatural events that would call the world to change. Fatima: at the beginning of the 20th century, it was an unknown place even for the majority of the Portuguese, now her name resonates in the world. Some shepherds, only a few children, were favored by unheard of mystical experiences. They could not read and had no hope even going to school, but the Virgin entrusted them with secrets that transformed international relations. A number of Popes, Cardinals and Bishops from all over the world, and above all simple millions of faithful of all conditions have come on pilgrimage to the shrine erected in a spot that in 1917 was no more than an impracticable quagmire. Then it was an inaccessible place except for carts, but now a comfortable highway leads quickly to Lisbon and Porto.
In 1917 Europe was at war. Portugal was one of the belligerent countries on the side of the Allies, and there was much discontent among the population. There was almost no family that didn’t have a child or nephew battling in the trenches of a distant country in a war that almost nobody understood.

Fatima is the name of a parish belonging to the municipality of Ourém, in the district of Santarém, about 120 kilometers north of Lisbon. At the end of the parish the population is grouped into several locations or small hamlets of just a few dozens of inhabitants. In one of them, Aljustrel, just two kilometers from the village of Fatima, lived the brother and sister Jacinta and Francisco Marto and their cousin, Lucia dos Santos. From very young children they went out into the field with the flock of sheep of the family.

In one of those outings, they took the sheep to graze to Cova da Iria, a place uninhabited about three kilometers of Aljustrel and three from Fatima. It was the 13 of May of 1917. There the Virgin Mary appeared to them, and asked them to return to that place for another five months until October 13. The Virgin rested on an oak tree.
It was not her first vision from on high: since the spring of 1916 appeared to them three times a being with human figure. In the first apparition, he taught them a prayer of reparation and told them he was the angel of peace. In the second apparition, he told them who he was: he was the Angel of Portugal. In the last apparition, he showed them a chalice with the sacred Host that was held in the air. After worshipping the Lord with the children and teaching them a prayer, he gave them the Communion.

Children did not discuss the vision of the angel to anyone except in their own conversations, -Francisco and Jacinta were able to keep it a secret until his death-, but the vision of Our Lady was something different: that very night Jacinta told about it in her house. Immediately the news spread by Aljustrel and other villages nearby.

The 13 Of June already gathered a few tens of people. They saw miraculous signs, although they did not see or hear anything except the words that Lucy directed to the Virgin. The 13 July were hundreds of pilgrims, and the news spread throughout the district, to the point that the authorities were alarmed. A few years before there had been introduced in Portugal a republic of marked court secularists and they had enacted restrictive laws of Catholic worship. The Mayor of Ourem decided to completely stop this explosion of popular devotion in a place forbidden to worship (the field) that led to the people to committing the crime of praying next to an oak tree. The 13 of August, therefore, he detained the children and kept them under guard all day. The people gathered in the Cova da Iria, witnessed the same signs from above which were the previous months, but the children were not there and no one saw the Virgin.
The Virgin however, he returned to visit the 19 of August, this time in Valinhos, a crossroads of about three hundred meters of Aljustrel where sometimes they took the flock.

In September, the Virgin Mary appeared again on the 13th before thousands of faithful. The 13 of October had perhaps 70,000 people gathered in Cova da Iria. All Portugal had heard of the events of Fatima. The Great Lisbon newspapers carried special envoys and photographers to Cova da Iria. All of them watched the miracle that the Virgin did: at the end of the vision, the sun began to dance in the sky of Cova da Iria, turned several colors, was spinning and moving while people looked at it without hurting their eyes.

The Virgin entrusted heavenly secrets to children. At Fatima, Our Lady requested that mankind be converted from their sins. She predicted to the children great wars and suffering if men do not repent, and in a special way announced that Russia would spread errors throughout many nations, causing wars and persecutions against the Church.

At the apparition of July, the Virgin revealed to them a secret. The secret was revealed by the seer, Lucia and by the Holy See three times, for it speaks of the three parts of the secret of Fatima. The third part of the secret of Fatima was to be given in the year 2000. The first part is a vision of hell; the other two are announcements of the future, such as the prediction about Russia and the announcement of the Second World War, as well as the warning about the future persecution. But it is a message of hope, which is why the Virgin concludes: “But in the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph, Russia will be consecrated and will be converted, and a period of peace will be given to the world.”

But above all, the Message of Fatima is about prayer. In the second appearance, Our Lady tells the shepherd children that Jesus wants to establish in the world devotion to Her Immaculate Heart. She also requests in all the apparitions to pray the Rosary.

But the purpose of the Virgin is not the satisfaction of our curiosity, but the glory of the Lord and the salvation of souls. This is the Message of Fatima, prayer and conversion: the wars will happen, the governments of the nations come and go, but the need for personal conversion is permanent.

John Paul II had expressed, that the messages at Fatima are of great significance for the whole of humanity. The was recognized as the Pope of the messages, who should guide the Church in time of crisis. He put both the bullet that is passed into your body in the attack of 1981, and his papal ring, at the feet of Our Lady of Fatima. He beatified two of the seers, made a pilgrimage to Fatima several times; consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as she requested (1984) and in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. Sister Lucy died on 13 February 2005, two months before the death of the Pope John Paul II.