Centenary of Our Lady of Fatima Apparitions-Pope Francis to Canonize Francisco and Jacinta

Compiled by Dr. Eugene DSouza
Bellevision Media Network

Portugal, 13 May 2017:  13 May 2017 is the centenary of the Apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. On 13 May 1917, Our Lady appeared to the three children as they shepherded their parents’ sheep near what is now the Fatima grotto. She did so six times in all, beginning on May 13 and concluding on October 13.

1917 was the year when the First World War that had started in 1914 was in progress and was causing widespread death and destruction in Europe and Middle East. Besides the scourge of the war, Russia had undergone Communist Revolution in the Months of  February/March.  It was under this background that Our Lady appeared to three Portuguese children. 

 

On Sunday, 13 May 1917, the three children, sister and brother Jacinta Marto(7) and  Fancisco Marto (9) and their cousin Lucia dos Santos (10) were grazing their flock as usual at the Cova da Iria, which was about a mile from their homes. 

 

About noon, the children were startled by a sudden flash of lightning. Looking up, they saw no sign of a storm. The sky had never been so beautiful, nor the valley more peaceful. Again came the flash. Fearing now that a sudden storm would overtake them, they ran in the direction of the little cave. As they turned, they were startled to see a beautiful lady standing in one of the little oak trees nearby. 

 

The lady spoke to them and said: “Fear not! I will not harm you.”  When the children asked “Where are you from?” , the beautiful lady replied gently raising her hand towards the distant horizon, “I am from heaven”. When Lucia asked  “What do you want of me?”, the lady said ” I came to ask you to come here for six consecutive months, on the thirteenth day, at this same hour. I will tell you later who I am and what I want.”

 

We know what happened  during these apparitions from the memoirs written by Sr. Lucia, who became a Carmelite nun. She wrote the memoirs at the request of the local bishop and narrated the experience that the three children had during these apparitions.

Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta

Sr. Lucia  recalled that on her third appearance on July 13, the lady clothed in light revealed to them a secret in three parts. First, she let the children see a brief vision of hell—“we saw something like an ocean of fire. Immersed in the fire were the demons and the souls (of the damned), that were like transparent embers, black or bronze, that had human forms.” Next, the second secret, Our Lady told them that  the First World War  would soon end but another world war would break out if people did not stop offending God and Russia was not converted. These first two secrets were made public in 1941, but the third, which speaks of the persecution of the church and the assassination of “a bishop dressed in white”, was only revealed by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in 2000 at the behest of John Paul II, who identified with the bishop being killed and attributed his survival of the assassination attempt on 13 May 1981, to Our Lady of Fatima’s intervention.

 

Our Lady asked them to keep all this secret, but after the first apparition Jacinta told her mother and soon the whole neighborhood and beyond came to know. People wanted to meet them, and they tried to hide as best they could. But in August, hundreds of people began to arrive at Fatima for the day of the apparitions, and the local mayor put the children in prison and threatened to fry them alive in boiling oil unless they admitted that the whole story was false. Despite this and other threats and punishments, the children never gave in. They held firm in their belief in Our Lady and, growing ever deeper in their love of Jesus, they offered their sufferings and prayers for sinners as she had requested. The final apparition on 13 October ended with the sun turning in the sky, which was witnessed by thousands of people.

 

Our Lady had told Francisco and Jacinta that they would have short lives, and so it happened that within two years they both died from the Spanish flu. But Lucia lived until the age of 97, wrote her memoirs and met three popes, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

 

Pope Francis has gone to the Portuguese town of Fatima about 90 miles to the north of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal to honour two children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic church.

Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima

Pope Francis at Fatima

Pope Francis at Fatima Shrine

The children being canonized, brother and sister Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who were nine and seven at the time of the apparitions and died of influenza two years later. Their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, who became the main raconteur of their tale, is on track for beatification, the first step toward becoming a saint. Her case could not begin until after her death in 2005.

 

Fátima has long been associated with St John Paul II. The Polish-born pope credited the Virgin Mary with having saved his life in 1981 when a would-be assassin shot him on Fátima’s feast day, 13 May, in St Peter’s Square.

 

Pope St. John Paul II made the first of three pilgrimages to Fátima the following May, and one of the bullets fired at him now adorns the crown of the Madonna at the shrine.

Pope St. John Paul II with Sr. Lucia

Like John Paul, Argentinian-born Pope Francis is devoted to the Madonna, thanks in large part to the strong role Marian devotions play in the popular piety of Latin American Catholics.

 

Apart from the regular pilgrimages and the religious celebrations, the 100th anniversary will be celebrated until 13 October 2017 with a wide-ranging cultural programme including a number of exhibitions, concerts of sacred music, performances relating to the apparitions, conferences, summer courses and the International Congress “Thinking Fátima”, which will be held in June.