By FR. SEAN CONNOLLY
(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of monthly articles on the one hundredth anniversary of our Lady’s apparitions at Fatima. Fr. Connolly is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York.)
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The new year 2017 marks the centenary of our Lady’s apparitions at Fatima, Portugal. In 1917 the Blessed Virgin Mary came to visit mankind at a time when man had forgotten God. The “suicide of Christendom,” as the First World War has been called, was being waged across Europe. Christian nations waged war upon one another that would cost Europe an entire generation — 17 million killed and 20 million wounded.
Such loss was not suffered for some overriding moral or religious principle — only the one small nation of Belgium had its essential freedom or existence at stake — this was a war of fronts in border regions fought for the petty and selfish interests of nations.
The violence of World War I destroyed much of what remained of a fractured Christendom. In the midst of such turmoil eroding the moral and material fabric of Christian civilization, Marxist and Masonic revolutionaries, who saw such principles as the primary obstacle to their seizure of power, were jockeying for position to pick up the pieces.
Such had already happened in Portugal. The revolution of 1910 in that country overthrew the ancient Catholic monarchy and the newly established republic began to persecute the Church. The anticlerical government was made up of prominent Freemasons and sought the complete secularization of society.
The cardinal patriarch of Lisbon and many other bishops were exiled, Church property was seized, seminaries were closed, priests and religious were forbidden from wearing their cassock or habit in public and divorce and family laws were approved which considered marriage as a purely civil contract. The chief of one of the lodges of the Grand Orient Masons predicted that within a few years there would be no more priests left in Portugal.
All the while, in far-off Moscow, Lenin prepared the revolution that would overturn the Russian social order in November 1917 and eventually engulf almost half the peoples of the Earth. It was in this context that our Lady came to Fatima. By her apparitions there, Heaven provided Earth the antidote to the moral and social evils which could lead to the destruction of the world and the ruin of countless souls.
In 1916, the guardian angel of Portugal appeared to three shepherd children at Fatima to prepare them for what would come the following year. The shepherd children were Blessed Francisco Marto (eight years old), Blessed Jacinta Marto (six years old), and the Servant of God Lucia dos Santos (nine years old).
This angel called himself the Angel of Peace and visited the children to prepare them for the mission they would receive from the Mother of God. The Blessed Virgin Mary would entrust to them a message of peace for the whole world that would only come through prayer, sacrifice, and suffering all of which the children would need to experience in their own lives before asking it of others. So God sent an angel three times in the spring, summer, and fall of 1916 to prepare the children for the coming of Our Lady of Fatima.
The Mother of God did indeed come, the next year in 1917. On the glorious spring day of May 13, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, having been to Mass at their little parish church in Fatima, took their sheep to pasture in the grassy depression among the hills called the Cova da Iria. As they played happily, there came out of the cloudless sky a brilliant flash of light. The children were frightened and began to run away when they stopped short upon seeing before them atop a small evergreen tree about three feet tall, a Lady clad in white with her hands joined in prayer.
This Lady, who identified herself as coming from Heaven, asked the children to return to the same location at the same hour on the 13th day for six consecutive months where she would tell them who she was and what she wanted.
Between May and October of that year, our Lady appeared to the children six times. She imparted to the children a prophetic secret in three parts which they guarded zealously. The first two parts refer especially to a frightening vision of Hell, devotion to her Immaculate Heart, the Second World War, and finally the prediction of the immense damage that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning Christianity and embracing Communist totalitarianism. In 1917 no one could have imagined all of this.
Pope St. John Paul II
Additionally, in the second part of the secret, our Lady requested the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, promising its conversion through this means and the hindering of the propagation of its errors. There is controversy over whether this act of consecration has ever been properly fulfilled, but most agree that Pope St. John Paul II accomplished the consecration as requested by our Lady in 1984. These first two parts of the secret would not be revealed until Lucia (who had become a religious) wrote them down in her third memoir, at the request of the bishop of Fatima in 1941.
The third part, usually called “the Third Secret,” was only later communicated to the bishop who sent it unread to Pope Pius XII. It would finally be revealed to the world by Pope St. John Paul II in 2000 that the secret pertained to the assassination attempt he survived in 1981. The content of the third secret remains the subject of controversy with some challenging whether it was revealed in its entirety.
Besides the secret, the message of Fatima is a call to penance, prayer, and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Penance is to be done in reparation for the many sins which offend God and draw down His chastisements on the world. The prayer requested by our Lady in all six of the apparitions was the daily rosary which she identified as an instrument of world peace. Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is to be practiced on the first Saturday of five consecutive months by offering the reception of Holy Communion in reparation for the sins of the world.
By following this message of penance, prayer, and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we have hope at the possibility of achieving two outcomes: firstly, the elevation of our spiritual lives to the heights of sanctity like Francisco, Jacinta, and Lucia who are likely to be declared saints; secondly, the conversion of the world from its ruinous course.
The six major apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima would end on October 13 with the “Miracle of the Sun” — a paranormal phenomenon where the sun danced in the sky, witnessed by 70,000 and reported in secular newspapers. But years later, beginning in 1925, the Mother of God in her solicitude appeared to Lucia four more times at her convent in Pontevedra and Tuy in Spain to make ever clearer the message she first revealed at Fatima.
There is no better time to more deeply learn, live, and spread the message of Fatima than in this centenary year. In this vein, I recommend the following books:
— Fatima for Today: The Urgent Marian Message of Hope by Fr. Andrew Apostoli, CFR. An up-to-date and comprehensive account of the Fatima message that includes helpful appendices on prayer, the Five First Saturdays devotion, and the controversies over the consecration of Russia and the third secret.
— 1917: Red Banners, White Mantle by Warren H. Carroll. This is an exciting examination of the historical context surrounding the apparitions.
— Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words which is the memoirs of Sr. Maria Lucia of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart. Lucia was the last surviving Fatima visionary.
Pilgrimages
Apart from learning more about the message of Fatima, one should seek to benefit from the graces available during this centenary year.
Pope Francis has granted a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions of receiving absolution in Confession, receiving our Lord in Holy Communion, being interiorly detached from sin and praying for the intentions of the Holy Father if: one pilgrimages to the Fatima shrine in Portugal and participates in a celebration or prayer dedicated to the Virgin Mary; if one visits with devotion a statue of Our Lady of Fatima solemnly exposed for public veneration in any church, oratory, or proper place during the days of the anniversary of the apparitions, the 13th of each month from May to October 2017 and there devoutly participates in some celebration or prayer in honor of the Virgin Mary.
For those who because of age, illness, or other serious cause are limited in travel: These faithful can pray in front of a statue of Our Lady of Fatima and must spiritually unite themselves to the centenary celebrations on the days of the apparitions, the 13th of each month between May and October 2017.
We live in an age where man has forgotten God. The effects of this, as our Lady warned at Fatima, can clearly be seen by the state of the world today. Man has rebelled against God and despite the Lord’s infinite hatred of sin, in His mercy, He has given the world one last hope in the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Heeding her message given to us one hundred years ago, let us in this centenary year return to God.
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