Today, the Church celebrates the feast of the Virgin of Fatima, who appeared to the three little shepherds, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, in Cova da Iria (Portugal), in 1917, exactly 105 years ago.
Catholic news shares seven facts about the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima.
1. The Virgin Appeared Six Times in Fatima
There were six times that Mary appeared to the little shepherds in Fatima.
LucÃa and her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto lived in the town of Aljustrel, in Fátima, and worked as shepherds of their families’ herds.
On May 13, 1917, the three children saw the Virgin Mary who told them, among other things, that she would return for the next few months, every day of the 13th at the same time.
The Mother of God also revealed to the children, in her second apparition, that Francisco and Jacinta would die soon and that Lucia would survive to bear witness to the apparitions. Sister LucÃa Dos Santos passed away on February 13, 2005.
In the third apparition of the Virgin, on July 13, the secret of Fatima was revealed to Lucia.
2. Francisco and Jacinta died soon, and LucÃa became a nun
A Spanish flu pandemic swept Europe in 1918, killing nearly 20 million people.
Francisco and Jacinta contracted the disease Spanish flu in 1918 and died in 1919 and 1920, respectively.; while Lucia entered the convent of the Dorothean Sisters.
On June 13, 1929, in the chapel of the convent in Tuy (Spain), Lucia had another mystical experience in which she saw the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary.
The Mother of God told her: “The time has come when God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the bishops of the world, to make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save her by this means” (S. Zimdars -Schwartz, Encounter with Mary, 197).
The declaration of the authenticity of Fatima apparitions was made by the Bishop of Leiria (now Leiria-Fátima) on October 13, 1930.
3. Sister Lucia wrote the secret of Fatima 18 years after the apparitions
Sister Lucia wrote four memoirs of the events at Fatima between 1935 and 1941by the orders of her superiors.
In her third memoir – published in 1941 – she wrote the first two parts of the secret and explained that there was a third part that heaven did not yet allow her to reveal.
In the fourth memory, she added a sentence, at the end of the second part: “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, etc.”
In 1943, the Bishop of Leiria ordered Sister Lucia to put the third secret of Fatima in writing, but she did not feel free to do so.
She did not write it until 1944, but the text was kept in a sealed envelope on which Sister Lucia wrote that it was not to be opened until 1960.
4. The third part of the secret of Fatima was read by several Popes
The secret was kept with the Bishop of Leiria until 1957 when it was requested (along with copies of other writings of Sister Lucia) by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican.
According to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secret was read by Saint John XXIII and Saint Paul VI.
“John Paul II, for his part, asked for the envelope containing the third part of the ‘secret’ after the assassination attempt on him on May 13, 1981.”
After reading the secret, the Holy Father realized the connection between the assassination attempt and Fatima: “It was the hand of a mother that guided the trajectory of the bullet,” he detailed.
Saint John Paul II decided to make it public in the year 2000.
5. The keys to the secret: repentance and conversion
Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, pointed out that the key to the Fatima apparition is his call to repentance and conversion.
Adapted and edited from the article published in AciprensaÂ