Our Lady of Fatima
What happened?
Lúcia described the vision as
"brighter than the sun" and said the lady told them three secrets, asked
them to do penance and make sacrifices to save sinners.
The children
then began to wear tight cords around their waists, abstained from
drinking water on hot days and did other works of penance.
The lady told
them to say the Rosary every day, and that saying that the Rosary was
the way to personal peace and world peace.
Imprisonment
On 13th August, the provincial
administrator, believing these apparitions were politically disturbing, intercepted and jailed the children and tried to get them to
confess the secrets.
That month the children reported that they saw Our
Lady at nearby Valinhos.
The miracle of the sun
On 13th October, with a
crowd of 70,000 people gathered, there appeared to be a fast and
whirling movement of the sun that bystanders called "dancing" and these
phenomena were visible for up to forty kilometres away.
Even The New York Times of 17th October 1917 reported the event.
Official Church approval
After a canonical
enquiry the visions of Fatima were officially declared "worthy of
belief" in October 1930 by the Bishop of Leiria-Fátima.
The three secrets
The first secret, as described
by Lucia, was a frightening vision of hell which made them tremble, but
lasted only an instant.
The second was the instructions of Our Lady on
how to save souls from hell - there would be war but if people did
penance and if the Pope consecrated Russia to her Immaculate Heart,
although there would be martyrs and the Holy Father would have much to
suffer, Russia would be converted and a period of peace would be granted
to the world.
The third secret appears to have been a rather confused
call for more penance, but seems also to have contained a vision that
was interpreted as "a bishop dressed in white like the Holy Father on
his knees at the foot of a big cross being killed by a group of soldiers
who fired bullets and arrows at him".
This third secret was withheld by
the Vatican until June 2000 and was for a time the focus of some
controversy, but this has now died down.
Francisco and Jacinta
Less than two years later,
in 1919, Francisco died of influenza in his family home. He was 11. He
was buried in the parish cemetery and then re-buried in the Fatima
basilica in 1952.
Jacinta died the next year of influenza in Lisbon. She
was just 10. During her illness she offered her suffering for the
conversion of sinners, peace in the world and the Holy Father. She was
re-buried in the Fatima basilica in 1951.
In a public ceremony at
Fatima on 13th May 1989 Pope John Paul II declared both Francisco and
Jacinta venerable and returned there to beatify them on 13th May 2000.
Jacinta is the youngest non-martyred child ever to be beatified.
Lúcia joins the Dorothean convent
Lúcia moved to
Oporto in 1921 and at 14 was admitted as a boarder in the School of the
Sisters of St. Dorothy in Vilar. She reported seeing Our Lady again in
1925 at the Dorothean convent at Pontevedra, Galicia (Spain), when she
said she was asked to spread the First Saturday Devotions. She also
reported that a subsequent vision of the Christ Child himself repeated
this request.
In October 1925, she became a postulant in the Dorothean
convent in Tuy, Spain, just across the northern Portuguese border, made
her first vows there on 3rd October 1928 and her perpetual vows on 3rd
October 1934, receiving the name Sister Mary of the Sorrowful Mother.
In
1946 she returned to Portugal and visited Fatima incognito. Lúcia wrote six memoirs while she was with the Dorothean sisters.
Transfer to the Carmelites at Coimbra
In March
1948 Lúcia transferred to the Carmelite convent of St. Teresa in Coimbra
and made her profession as a Discalced Carmelite on 31th May 1949,
taking the name Sister Maria Lúcia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart and
she lived at Coimbra until her death in 2005.
The third secret was to
have been revealed in 1960, but when the Vatican didn't reveal it,
journalists and other enquirers found it difficult to have access to
her.
This may have been due to the enclosed life of the Carmelites, but
it is widely believed that she was under an order of silence from the
Vatican.
Visits to Fatima
Lúcia returned to Fatima on the
occasion of four pilgrimages there by a Pope, all on 13th May.
These
visits were those of Pope Paul VI in 1967, and of Pope John Paul II in
1982 (in thanksgiving for surviving the assassination attempt the
previous year), 1991, and 2000, when her cousins Jacinta and Francisco
were beatified.
On May 16, 2000 she unexpectedly returned to Fatima, to
visit the parish church.
Death and influence
Lúcia was not seen in public
after the Catholic Church's publication of the third secret in the year
2000.
She had been blind and deaf for some years prior to her death of
cardio-respiratory failure, due to her advanced age. This came on 13th
February 2005.
The 13th day of the month had been the date of the
apparitions.
The day of her funeral, February 15, 2005, was declared a
day of national mourning in Portugal; even campaigning for the national
parliamentary election scheduled for Sunday, February 20, was
interrupted.
Beatification process
On the third anniversary of
her death, 13th February 2008, Pope Benedict XVI announced that in
Lúcia's case he was waiving the five year waiting period prescribed by
ecclesiastical law before opening a cause for beatification, thus
putting her on a fast track for canonisation, as was done for Mother
Teresa and Pope John Paul II.