Feast day: May 13
Our Lady of Fatima
In 1917 Mary appeared six times to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, calling for prayer and conversion during the darkest year of WWI.
In 1917, as the First World War ground on and revolution stirred in Russia, the Blessed Virgin Mary is said to have appeared near the Portuguese village of Fátima to three shepherd children — Lúcia dos Santos and her young cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto. From May to October she came to them six times, on the thirteenth day of each month, in a field called the Cova da Iria.
She identified herself as the Lady of the Rosary and called for prayer, penance, and conversion. She asked that the Rosary be prayed daily for peace and for the end of the war, urged sacrifices for the conversion of sinners, and spoke of the triumph of her Immaculate Heart. To the children she confided several 'secrets' concerning the fate of the world, of Russia, and of the Church.
The apparitions met fierce skepticism, and the children were harassed by anticlerical authorities. But the Lady had promised a sign, and on October 13, 1917, a crowd estimated at seventy thousand — believers and scoffers, journalists among them — gathered in the rain at the Cova. There they witnessed what became known as the 'Miracle of the Sun': the clouds parted and the sun seemed to spin, change color, and plunge toward the earth before returning to its place, drying the soaked ground and crowd.
After careful investigation the Church declared the apparitions worthy of belief, and Fátima became one of the greatest Marian shrines in the world, drawing millions of pilgrims. The message of Fátima — prayer, especially the Rosary, penance, and trust in the mercy of God — became one of the most influential Marian devotions of the twentieth century, and the feast of Our Lady of Fátima is kept on May 13.
The final apparition's 'Miracle of the Sun' was witnessed by a crowd of about 70,000 — including skeptical secular journalists who reported it.
“Pray the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world.”
— Our Lady of Fatima
Image: Bingar1234 (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
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