By CARMEN GIUSSANI

I was in Fatima on May 12th and 13th, where the pilgrim Pope had gone to raise to the honor of the altars Jacinta and Francisco Marto. The occasion was the anniversary of the Virgin’s first apparition to the three shepherd children. Television crews and journalists from all over the world transmitted an event that was hard to understand, but so strangely attractive as to leave a mark on everyone, from Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio to Prime Minister Gutierres, to the two thousand children dressed in white. As always, it was not necessary to be a believer to perceive that an extraordinary event was taking place.
But how did I happen to be there? This is not at all an obvious question. I too recognize that “a mother’s hand,” a gratuitous preference, has brought me here in this moment of the Church. What I see leads me into “that form of teaching to which we have been entrusted.”

A remnant
About thirty thousand people covered on foot the space separating them from the Sanctuary, arriving from every part of the country, without any means or infrastructures except their confidence. Among them were more than two hundred students and workers from the Lisbon CL community.
My “foreigner’s eye” has changed profoundly since 1991, when I participated in John Paul II’s second pilgrimage, thanks to my numerous Portuguese companions on the path. Belonging to the charism of CL opens me to a knowledge of this people which is without a doubt “a remnant of Israel.” A remnant that awaits the manifestation of the Lord of history.

In Portugal
In a weekend publication devoted to the Jubilee, a headline appeared: A “banalidade” do bem. What I had before my eyes was anything–heartfelt, courageous, contradictory, antimodern–but banal. At the root of the Portuguese people is the evidence of having been chosen in this century to be the beginning of the world that recognizes prayer as its task and the remedy for evil. For this reason, the murmuring of the Rosary never ceases in Fatima.
At 7:45 p.m. on Friday, the Holy Father entered the square in his “Popemobile,” after having been greeted by his admirers from the helicopter. When the Pope kneeled in the capelinha to thank the Virgin for saving his life on May 13, 1981, a silence fell, so sudden and so profound that even the photographers stopped taking pictures and the newscaster for the Portuguese TV network was quiet for some long minutes.

The first gesture
The immediate sincerity of that prayer attracted everyone to the Presence, sweeping off its path any hardness, distraction, and lack of faith or courage. The Pope and many along with him entrusted their wishes to the woman who is the “door to heaven.” Without doubt he remembered the countless martyrs of the century just ending–perhaps the most evident, continuing, and constant fact of the history of the Church in the twentieth century, people who witnessed to Christ with their blood. He thought of his life and the task he has been given. As he would say the next day to the ill, “There are various seasons in life; if by chance you feel winter coming on, I want you to know that this is not the last season, because the last will be spring–the spring of the resurrection.” And in every season the Father assigns a task, for which, even if we are nothing, we are irreplaceable.
Taken by the hand by Jacinta and Francisco, on the eve of his 80th birthday, the Pope embodies that promise of glorious fecundity which every human suffering receives when it is lived in union with Christ and for the good of men.

May 13, 2000
The Mass officiated by John Paul II began at precisely 9:30 and proceeded immediately to the beatification: “By our apostolic authority we grant to the venerable servants of God, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, that from this day forward they may be called Blessed and their annual feast day be celebrated on February 20th” [the day of Jacinta’s death]. The festivity was at its height.
In the face of the terrors of ideologies, persecutions, and wars, at the beginning of this century God chose once again some children to triumph over history. And He demonstrated it.
The words of The Memoirs of Sister Lucia become clearer in the light of our charism that grew in this same century.
Simplicity, maintaining all life long the original attitude with which God created us, is the moral attitude that makes of Peter’s “yes” the maturity of being children. Man is nothing, but the freedom of each one can recognize the One who is everything, and can offer and sacrifice to participate in the saving presence of Christ. Above all, the provocation is that which Father Giussani stated in an article in Avvenire before the Holy Father’s trip: “The response to this election lies completely in the prayer of which we are capable. Our response is a prayer, not any particular capacity; it is only the impetus of prayer.”

Three inseparable ones
“It is in this yielding to the Virgin Mary that the certainty of our life is grandly affirmed so that, looking our Christian companionship in the face, we see how it is truly the first reverberation of salvation, of a new human condition,” as demonstrated by the friendship of the three shepherd children.
When John Paul II spontaneously thanked little Jacinta aloud for all the sufferings she offered for the Holy Father, it was easy to understand the communion of saints; I have no doubt. By the intercession of these children I too am able to see the value of sacrifice as Father Giussani lives it and thus teaches it to us.
Next to the altar, Sister Lucia was with Maria Emilia Santos, the Portuguese woman who, after 22 years of immobility, received the miracle of healing on Feburary 20, 1989, through the children’s intercession.

El Adiós
After the blessing of the sick and the children and the adoration of the Eucharist, Cardinal Sodano read the message referring to the third part of the secret of Fatima. The hysteria of the press seemed to eclipse the splendor of the motherhood and fatherhood of God toward man, which had just been celebrated. The only one who was not moving wildly about on the press platform was I, because an incomparable Mystery had revealed itself to me, and also because the evening before I had read in one sitting Aura Miguel’s book, O segredo que conduz o Papa [The Secret of …].
All that was left was the procession taking the statue of the Virgin to her little chapel, which is called the del Adiós procession. While the square full of people emotionally say goodbye to the Virgin and the Holy Father, waving thousands of white handkerchiefs and singing, I see the tiny dot that appeared on the horizon at 14 years of age and the boat draws closer bearing an ever greater human dignity.