– Sr Margaret Fung
This is our last stop. We will spend three days in Fatima after leaving France. I was glad to discover the name Fatima was a Muslim name. It dates back to the early years when the last group of Muslim people were being chased away from Portugal. Among them there was a young princess, named Fatima who was captured by the Portuguese people. A Catholic knight called Gonçalo fell in love with this princess and soon after she got baptized with the name of Ourem. They got married. Unfortunately, she passed away quite soon. Ourem is the name of the place where the three children were kept in prison in August, 1917. Gonçalo gave the name Fatima to the place where he buried his wife and this is the place where Our Lady appeared to the three shepherds. Eventually, Gonçalo himself became a monk.
Our Lady appeared to the children, Jacinta Marto with her brother Francis Marto and their cousin Lucia Marto who at the age of ten was the eldest of the three. Our Lady appeared to them six times, asking them to pray for world peace, to offer themselves for the conversion of sinners, and to do penance for sinners.
We are very fortunate to visit this holy place, to follow in the steps of those three little children in praying for the conversion of sinners and doing penance for world peace. We can offer our daily pains and unite them to the suffering of Jesus so that we may receive his strength and energy to help us overcome all our difficulties.
They had agreed to keep the appearance of Our Lady a secret but Jacinta could not keep it and told her mother about it. Soon, the entire village knew about it and her father was rather upset and forbade the children to speak about the appearance again. After the second apparition, the local parish was afraid they were tempted by the devil because they had seen a vision of hell. The mayor took the children to his office and threatened them separately to tell him their secret, but it was in vain. Lucia could not tell him the secret. Jacinta could not remember what Our Lady said and Francis could not hear what she was saying. So, he had to send them back home.
On 13th October, 1917, the sixth time when Our Lady was about to appear, many people came, even from Lisbon, to see for themselves. Some reporters from newspapers also came to write a report of the event. Rain was was pouring. Suddenly, the sun appeared: it was turning round and round and seemingly appeared to drop down from high above. People were shocked. In no time, everything returned to normal and they found themselves completely dry. It was as if there had been no rain at all. Francis said he saw Our Lady but could not hear what she said. Jacinta heard her speaking but could not remember everything. Only Lucia saw and heard all.
Francis passed away in 1919 and Jacinta passed away in hospital in 1920. Pope John Paul II canonized the two children on 13th May 2000. In the meantime, Lucia was sent to study in a school and was told not to talk about the apparition any more. When she graduated from school, she entered the Sisters of Dorothy in 1928. She died in 2005.
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