Between May and October 1917, Our Lady appeared six times to
three young Portuguese children in a field called the Cova de Iria, near the
small village of Fatima, about seventy miles north of Lisbon. The children who
received the apparitions had been brought up in an atmosphere of piety. They
were Lucia dos Santos, aged ten, and her two younger cousins Francisco and
Jacinta. They tended sheep together and often would kneel in the open field to
pray the Rosary.
The first apparition took place
around noon on Sunday, May 13, 1917 when a brilliant flash of lightning drew
the attention of the children. A beautiful Lady appeared clothed in white and
asked the children to return the thirteenth of each month. In these
apparitions, Mary asked the children to pray the Rosary daily for the
conversion of sinners and asked for devotion to her Immaculate Heart. She asked
for prayer, penance and the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. She
also spoke of observing the first Saturdays of each month by going to
confession and receiving Holy Communion to make reparation to the Hearts of
Jesus and Mary.
On the day of the final apparition, October 13, 1917, she
identified herself as "Our Lady of the Rosary" and the dramatic
episode of the dance of the sun took place, witnessed by a crowd of
seventy-thousand people, in which the sun seemed to tumble from the sky. After
a lengthy diocesan inquiry, a declaration of the Bishop of Leiria, in whose
diocese these apparitions occurred, approved the devotion to Our Lady of Fatima
in 1930. The young visionary Francisco had died on April 4, 1919 and his sister
Jacinta on February 20, 1920. The sole survivor, Sister Lucia, lived many years
as a professed Carmelite nun, before her death on February 13, 2005.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
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