church
fatima

With Mary, for
the Good of Humanity
During his four-day trip to Portugal in May, Pope Benedict XVI  visited Fatima, the place where Our Lady appeared in 1917. There he prayed–together with thousands of pilgrims–like a son who had come to visit his Mother, bringing the suffering "of a wounded humanity.” To better understand the value of such a locus for Christianity, we asked a writer friend of ours to describe what he found in that unique place.  

by Luca Doninelli

Lisbon is a beautiful and tragic city, and it is not by chance that its music is called fado, or fate–which does not mean simply “destiny,” but “obscure, inscrutable destiny.” On this extreme western edge of the Old Continent ended the dreams of ancient peoples and their eternal migrations from far-away Asia, and here the dreams were born again: men of unheard-of courage challenged the unknown ocean in search of something more–that “more,” that eternal “more” that we are all searching for, always.
I am here in Lisbon on my way to Fatima, where the Pope will visit in a few weeks. Today, there’s a lot of rain, pouring down like waves breaking on a cliff. The churches are open, and there is always someone inside. I am struck by the fact that, unlike elsewhere, you find people of all ages there, young people, mothers with children, and men in jackets and ties, perhaps on a break between appointments.
So it is that, with this apparently marginal observation, the event of Fatima hits me. During Mass, I seem to understand an aspect of this event: that it is something personal, something that touches the person. Often religion is manifested in the form of a general reawakening, a collective devotion, but the nature of Christianity reveals itself as a personal event.
 It was to three children, three shepherds, that Mary appeared for the first time, on May 13, 1917, in a place called Cova da Iria (Cove of Peace), where the chapel rises today. Beside the chapel stands the Shrine in which are buried the three children who witnessed this event. The visions went on until October of the same year.
At the center of a town that grew in a disorderly fashion (as often happens), the Shrine–fronted by a huge square whose other side is now closed by an enormous Church of recent construction, which aroused much controversy–has the typical pomposity of countries that know poverty, completely different from Lourdes, so wisely situated in the well-supervised French countryside.
The three children were Francisco Marto, at the time of the vision, 9 years old; his sister Jacinta, 7; and Lucia Dos Santos, 10. As they were playing, they saw what at first appeared to be a flash of lightning. Lucia, the eldest, asked the others to stop playing and go home, when, as they were descending the slope, there was another flash near an oak tree. There, on the tree, they suddenly saw a beautiful lady dressed in white, with her hands joined, holding a rosary which hung down the front of her dress.

 The sun and the Lady. The apparition surprised the children, but they were not frightened by it. This Lady was “brighter than the sun, radiating a light clearer and more intense than a crystal glass full of crystal-clear water traversed by rays of the burning sun” (Sr. Lucia’s memoirs). Lucia is the only one to speak to the Lady; Jacinta can only hear what she says, and Francisco can only see her (they will tell him what she said later).
There is something familiar in this method, something that respects man and his nature, quite unlike the “equality” of the Guillotine and of Cambodia’s Pol Pot–that is, of terror. Here, the announcement is linked to human communication, to the affection of these three children, to their human friendship. The Lady’s words are communicated to Francisco through the mouths of his little friends. The Mystery communicates itself through feeble humanity, and this is how the world is changed.
In this first apparition, the Lady opens wide her arms and a great light enfolds the three children, “Making us see ourselves in God, who was that light, more clearly than we see in the best mirror” (ibid.).
In the June apparition, the Lady announces that soon Jacinta and Francisco will go to heaven, while Lucia will have to remain on earth longer. Lucia is saddened, not so much because her friends will die, but because she must remain alone. Why does God give us this companionship, this comfort for our human vocation, for such a short time? Why does everything beautiful have to end so soon?
The Lady shares this sadness, and understands it, but she promises the child she will always be near her. It is the exaltation of human freedom–it is not enough for man even to have “seen himself in God,” if this, which is the supreme reason for things, does not receive the unforeseeable help of human freedom.
The apparitions at the Cova da Iria occur on the 13th of every month. The news of the apparitions spreads, and more and more people witness the visions of the young shepherds. The civil authorities are concerned, so much so that the mayor, after threatening the children, puts them in prison. He would like to make them confess to a deception and tries to fool them by telling each one that the others have already confessed, but in the end he has nothing to write in his report. The three children cannot deny that they have seen what they have seen. Because of this imprisonment, the apparition in August occurs on the 19th instead of on the13th. Reading Sr. Lucia’s memoirs, it is evident that, from the first apparition to the last, the three children grow gradually in awareness. They are children like any others, each one with his own character. Lucia is reflective, Jacinta is cunning and rather pretty, Francisco is naïve–three children who will go on being children. They will still take their flock to pasture, and will have to deal with the incredulity of their playmates.

The window and the sacrifice. Their personal journey, however, is quite clear. When, during the later apparitions, they are almost overwhelmed by a huge number of poor and sick, the unhappy, and the merely curious, despite the trouble it brings them, they are capable of great things. Sr. Lucia writes, “There, one could see all the misery of poor mankind; some were crying out from up in the trees, and from on top of walls, where they had climbed to see us pass by. Saying yes to some, and taking others by the hand to help them get up from the ground, we moved along, helped by some men who opened a way for us through the crowd. Now, as I read in the New Testament of those enchanting scenes of Jesus passing through Palestine, I remember those whom the Lord, when I was only a child, had me help in the poor footpaths from Aljustrel to Fatima and the Cova da Iria. And I thank God for it, offering Him the faith of our good people of Portugal. And I think: if this people bow down like this before three poor children, only because they were mercifully granted the grace of speaking with the Mother of God, what would they not do if they were to see Jesus Himself before them?”
After many years, Lucia is still moved by what continues to be generated by that gift. She, who saw, is nothing but a “poor girl” astounded by the faith of the “good people of Portugal,” who bow before what they do not see. The dynamic of reason linked to faith is almost more evident in this poor people than in the three children. But, before speaking of the Secret of Fatima (which made Antonio Socci say that Our Lady is “the greatest political scientist of the 19th century”), I would like to look again at these children. My guide during that unforgettable two-day visit to Fatima took me to see their home.  The two siblings, Francisco and Jacinta, caught the Spanish Flu in 1919 and Francisco died in that same year, after receiving his first Holy Communion. Jacinta recovered at first, but the sickness had left its mark and she later contracted a painful lung infection, for which she was hospitalized in Lisbon, where she died in 1920.
Lucia’s account speaks of the sickness of her two cousins, of their bedroom always full of people–many children, but adults, too–who did not want to leave them. In Francisco’s room, people did their work (weaving), while the children sat at the foot of the bed and played. They brought him hot milk, which he could drink only with great pain, but which he drank thinking of sinners who would be saved through his suffering. I saw the window that Francisco could see from his deathbed.
Sr. Lucia talks at length of Jacinta, too. Her sickbed in Lisbon was the object of many pilgrimages. The child answered respectfully all the questions posed to her and, despite her enormous sufferings, she was always calm. In her words, one has the impression that she felt her body to be nothing but a gift from Someone else, and now this Someone else was about to take it from her.
Today, we know all three parts of the Secret of Fatima. The first, after visions of hell, contains the prediction of the Second World War along with Mary’s exhortation that unceasing prayer and penance might prevent other souls from ending up in eternal sufferings. The second was regarding Russia and her error, destined to spread ruinously throughout all the earth (note that these words were pronounced before the October Revolution) until Russia is converted and is consecrated–by the Pope and all the bishops–to her Immaculate Heart. The third–which includes the vision of a bishop dressed in white going up a steep mountain, who then kneels before a big Cross and is killed there together with all the bishops, while two angels gather up the blood of this martyrdom, and with it sprinkle the souls that are making their way to God–was revealed in 1944 in a letter written by Sr. Lucia, who, until then, had decided not to speak of it. It was revealed to the world in the year 2000 by Pope John Paul II.

The seal of an encounter.  On the interpretation of the Secret, the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger, with their celebrated conclusion, will always be valid: “Christian faith in general cannot be reduced to an object of mere curiosity. What remains was already evident when we began our reflections on the text of the ‘secret’: the exhortation to prayer as the path of ‘salvation for souls’ and, likewise, the summons to penance and conversion.”
As to what the words “penance” and “sacrifice” mean, we are helped by the vision of the angel, which appeared to the children several times in 1916, before the visions at the Cova da Iria.
The angel told the children to offer “prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Almighty.” Lucia asked him how they were to offer sacrifice. The angel’s answer was, “Offer a sacrifice of all you can in reparation for the sins by which He is offended and in supplication for the conversion of sinners.”
“Of all you can”–that is to say, every instant of our days can be offered; nothing is alien to the salvation of the world (even the hairs on your head are numbered). The first way to participate in the salvation of the world is to live our days like this, in the loving memory of the Mystery made flesh; this touches us personally, even if we are at death’s door.
Devotion to Fatima is not obligatory for a Christian; however, the whole Church in the 19th century, starting from the popes, was sustained in the interpretation of its own mystery and mission by the words of a shepherdess, who later became a Carmelite nun, Lucia Dos Santos. The words of Giovanni Testori just before his death come to my mind: “For Christ, destiny is not what is obligatory or inevitable, but what human freedom chooses not to avoid (though it could) out of love for the Father.”
So it was for the Church before the mystery of Fatima, and so it is for me, the last of writers, who, upon visiting Fatima, saw nothing magical, but rather the imprint of an encounter–like that of John and Andrew with Jesus; like mine with Fr. Giussani and his children–that changed the world forever, offering man a new way of looking at everything.