On the 13th of May, we celebrate the Feast Day of Our Lady of Fatima. This day marks the day that the Blessed Mother appeared to the children of Fatima in Portugal, in 1917. These children were Lucia, and her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta.
These 3 children had Our Lady appear to them multiple times over the course of 5 months. There was a lot of doubt surrounding their visions and they were even jailed to make statements. The apparitions were made worthy of belief when multiple witnesses had watched the sun break through the clouds, spin, and tremble, which confirmed the children’s statements. This site became revered and Catholics from all over the world came to visit. A couple of years later, the siblings Francisco and Jacinta died during the influenza epidemic. Lucia lived until 2005 (aged 97), and her beatification process began in 2008. Her last public interview, in 1957, was with Father Augustin Fuentes – a Mexican Priest. After this interview, all other interviews were declined, and she lived quite isolated until the end of her life. In this interview, she told Fr Augustin Fuentes the 3 secrets Our Lady entrusted the children with:
- The Vision of Hell – this vision was full of demons and souls in human form, surrounded by fire.
- The End of WWI and the start of WWII – they were told the end of WWI was coming, but if man continued offending God, another war would begin.
- Vision of the Pope – A Bishop dressed in white, and other religious were going up a steep mountain. They were afflicted with pain and sorrow and killed by a group of soldiers.
You can read more of the Words spoken to the Children of Fatima, here.
Our Lady is a beloved Marian devotion of protection, hope, and comfort for those who are suffering or are experiencing times of uncertainty. Pope John Paul II stated:
“It is the suffering who fell attracted by the perspective of “relief” which the Divine Physician is able to offer those who turn to Him with trust. And in Fatima this relief is found: sometimes it is physical relief, when the soul, pervaded by the inner light of grace, finds strength to accept the painful weight of infirmity, transforming it, through communion with Christ the suffering servant, into an instrument of redemption and salvation for oneself and one’s brothers and sisters. The direction to move in, on this hard road, is pointed out to us by the motherly voice of Mary, who, in the history and life of the Church, has always continued to repeat – and in a special way in our time – the words “Do whatever He tells you.”
