Our Lady of Fátima

Even before the apparitions of the Virgin, back in 1916, three children who tended sheep across the fields of Fátima — Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto — reported being visited by an angel who introduced himself as the Angel of Peace, or the Angel of Portugal. There were three encounters: two at the Loca do Cabeço, in the Valinhos hills, and one beside the Poço do Arneiro, near Lúcia’s home in Aljustrel. There the angel taught the children prayers of adoration and the practice of offering sacrifices for sinners. These were only the preparation for what was to come.

On May 13, 1917, around midday, after praying the rosary while watching their flock, the three shepherd children saw a brilliant light above a small holm oak in the Cova da Iria. Standing upon it was a “Lady more brilliant than the sun,” dressed in white, her mantle trimmed with gold, a rosary in her hands. She asked them to return to that same spot on the 13th day of each of the next five months, and to pray the Rosary every day, to obtain peace in the world and the end of the war.

The apparitions returned with punctual fidelity: June 13, July 13, August 19 — that month exceptionally at the Valinhos, because on the 13th the children had been arrested and carried off by the administrator of Vila Nova de Ourém —, September 13, and October 13. At every encounter Our Lady insisted on the same requests: prayer, penance, conversion. In the Memoirs of Sister Lúcia, written decades later, the surviving visionary would record the secrets she received there, including the appeal for the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

On October 13, 1917, before a crowd of about seventy thousand gathered at the Cova da Iria, the Virgin revealed her identity: “I am the Lady of the Rosary.” And she asked that a chapel be built there in her honor. At that very moment, the multitude witnessed what came to be called the Miracle of the Sun — the star, like a disk of dull silver, seemed to spin upon itself like a wheel of fire and to plunge toward the earth. Journalists present published their accounts in the Portuguese press, and the phenomenon was attested even by people far from the place of the apparition.

On October 13, 1930, Bishop José Alves Correia da Silva of Leiria declared the apparitions worthy of belief, opening the way to public devotion. Pope Pius XII, a fervent devotee of Fátima, granted the venerated image a canonical coronation through the bull Celeberrima solemnia, on April 25, 1946; the crown was imposed on May 13 of that same year by Cardinal Benedetto Aloisi Masella, papal legate. On November 11, 1954, through the apostolic letter Luce superna, the same Pontiff elevated the Shrine of Fátima to the dignity of minor basilica, confirming once and for all that humble ground as one of the greatest centers of Marian devotion in the world.