Fr Leonard E Dollentas
Aljustrel is a hamlet on the outskirts of Fátima, Portugal, municipality of Ourém. This tiny village is the birthplace of Lúcia dos Santos, and Francisco and Jacinta Marto, known as the “three little shepherds of Fátima.”
On May 13, 1917, the three children were tending a small flock at the nearby Cova da Iria (in today’s Diocese of Leiria-Fatima) when they saw Our Lady, whom they described as “Lady brighter than the sun.” Our Lady invited them to return to the Cova da Iria for six consecutive months on the 13th day. During those apparitions, Our Lady told Francisco and Jacinta that they would have short lives, within two years they both died from the Spanish flu. But Lucia would live to fulfil the mission. There is much to learn from the immensely rich spiritual lives of these children, especially Jacinta and Francisco and the extraordinary grace given to them, their brave acceptance of death.
What is even more fascinating in the lives of the three Fatima “seers” was the fact that they were “ordinary” children who were given the challenge of a divine mission. At the time of the beatification of Jacinta and Francisco on May 13, 2000, Fr Paulo Molinari, the “postulator” of the children’s cause recalled that throughout the experience of the apparitions and afterwards, the three children remained “normal children, who responding to the invitations of the grace of God working in them, showed themselves ready to put aside their own personal interests to please God and their neighbor, and to do so readily and with joy.” They did so, “each in their own way, with the spontaneity of children.”
As regards the personality of the two much younger children Fr Molinario said Francisco was “rather reflective and reserved, good, reconciling, ready to give way to others rather than quarrel, while Jacinta was a rather lively and sensitive child, irritable and capricious, who easily got upset, but, had a very well-disposed heart and a sweet and tender character, that made her lovable and attractive. She liked to dance and gather flowers with Lucia, he to play the whistle and sing. But even before the encounter with Our Lady they used to pray together while they watched their sheep, and recited the rosary, sometimes at high speed so as to have more time for play.” The two Fatima visionaries, Jacinta and Francisco, were canonized as saints by Pope Francis on May 13, 2017, on the 100th anniversary of the apparitions at Fatima.
Lucia entered religious life and joined the Sisters of Saint Dorothy in 1928. In 1946 she moved from her active religious congregation to the cloistered convent of the Carmelite Nuns of Coimbra, where she was known as Sister Maria Lucia of the Immaculate Heart. She would later meet three popes – Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. She had been blind and deaf and ailing for some years prior to her death. She died in 2005 at the age of 97 at the Carmelite convent of Santa Teresa in Coimbra, where she had lived since 1948. On February 13, 2008 Pope Benedict XVI announced that he would waive the five-year waiting period established by ecclesiastical law before opening a cause for beatification of Sister Lúcia. On February 13, 2017, Sister Lúcia was accorded the title Servant of God, the first major step toward her canonization.
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