History of Religious Fatima

Originally, Fatima as a small settlement took its name from a favourite Islamic princess called Fatima, during the Moorish occupation in the 12th century. When the lands were recaptured by local Christian forces, Fatima married a Spanish Count and converted to Catholicism.

Fatima is famous as a Catholic religious centre of devotion to the faith and a pilgrimage site. This is due to the apparitions of the Virgin Mary and miracle that took place there in 1917. Three shepherd children saw and heard more than 6 apparitions of an Angel of the Lord and the Virgin Mary from May 1917 to October 1917.

The three children (known as the 3 seers) were Francisco Marto 9 yrs and Jacinta Marto 7yrs brother and sister and their cousin Lucia Santos 10yrs. While they were minding the sheep the summer earlier in 1916 the Angel of Peace apparently visited them several times in Cova da Iria, near Fatima. This was in preparation for what was to come and to instruct them how to make sacrifices and pray in devotion to the Lord God.

From May 1917 they started to experience monthly sightings of the Virgin Mary on the 13th of each month. She had messages for them to bring peace to the world and end war. She asked for certain things to be undertaken and told the children they should pray the Rosary everyday, make reparation and offer sacrifice and that Russia should be consecrated by the Pope to the Catholic faith.

The Virgin Mary foretold of the early deaths of the brother/sister children seers, who subsequently died in 1919 and 1920 from the flu epidemic. She also prophesied of the raise of power of Russia and communism, world war II, the suffering of the Pope and the annihilation of nations.

The children seers believed they were given 3 secret messages by the Virgin Mary. The first was a vision of hell, so they would understand why they must make sacrifices and suffer to save the souls of sinners, as the sins of man so offended God and war had been a punishment. The second secret was about recommending devotions made to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, every first saturday of the month for 5 months and the consecration of Russia by the Pope. The Virgin warned if this did not happen another war would ensue (believed to be the second world war). The third secret which was only revealed by the Vatican in 2000, was about the Pope and other religious leaders being killed by soldiers on a mountain. Some believe this was the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 in Fatima.

The children were subject to ridicule and persecution by many including their families, who thought they were telling lies to get attention, they were even locked up by the authorities in a bid to get the children to admit the visions were all fantasy. The children are said to have asked the Virgin Mary to perform a miracle, so that the people would believe her messages to them. By the summer of 1917 many people were gathering in Fatima for the visions and to hear the messages from heaven.

On 13th October 1917 the Miracle of the Sun occurred, this was accepted by the Catholic church as a true event following a full investigation of all the events surrounding the visions in 1930. The children promised the Virgin Mary would perform a miracle and many thousands of spectators gathered in Cova da Iria, the newspapers speculated over 50,000 witnessed the miracle. The sun is said to have danced in the sky becoming brighter and illuminating the sky with different coloured lights then falling to the ground before repositioning itself.  There was no recorded scientific reason why so many people should have witnessed this event, there was no eclipse at for this time anywhere around the world.

Lucia Santos devoted her life to the Virgin Mary becoming a nun and living a long life with the Carmelite sisters in Coimbra, where she died in 2005. The children Jacinta and Francisco Marto are buried at the Sanctuary of Fatima, which draws thousands of faithful Catholics to Fatima on pilgrimage every year since the 1920’s, to the site of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary.