Fátima and the Miracle of the Sun

I told them a date in advance, because I wanted no one to say afterward that it was coincidence.

Three children — Lúcia dos Santos, ten years old, and her younger cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, nine and seven — were tending sheep in a field called the Cova da Iria outside the village of Fátima when I sent My Mother to them, on the thirteenth of May, 1917. Europe was tearing itself apart in a war of trenches and gas, and I chose that year, of all years, to speak to the poorest and the smallest, because it is always to the poorest and the smallest that I choose to speak first.

She came to them on the thirteenth of each month through October, and she asked what I always ask through her: pray the rosary, do penance, turn back to Me. The children were mocked, threatened, even seized by the local administrator and jailed for a night, threatened with being boiled in oil to force a confession that was never coming, because there was no lie in them to confess. Lúcia, under that pressure, told the crowds gathering by the thousands each month that on the thirteenth of October, something would happen so that all would believe.

I do not make promises I do not keep.

That morning, rain fell in sheets on a crowd that had swollen past seventy thousand souls — believers, the curious, and skeptics, among them a reporter from the anti-clerical Lisbon daily O Século, sent specifically to expose the children as frauds. At noon, Lúcia cried out for the crowd to look at the sun, and I want you to understand what I did next was not a trick of tired eyes or mass hysteria, however much that explanation has comforted those who cannot bear a world where I act. I let the clouds part. I let the sun, which no man can look upon for more than an instant without pain, become for ten minutes an object the whole soaked crowd could stare into without harm — spinning, throwing off shafts of red and green and violet light across the fields, the faces, the wet clothing of thousands, and then I let it appear to tear itself from the sky and plunge toward the earth, and men and women who had come to scoff fell to their knees in the mud, screaming, believing themselves about to die, confessing sins they had carried for years to strangers beside them.

And then, as suddenly as I began it, I let the sun return to its place, ordinary and quiet, and the crowd looked down at their clothing, soaked through moments before by hours of rain, and found it dry. I did not need to dry it slowly. I dried it the way I dry a soul in an instant of true contrition — completely, and all at once.

Francisco and Jacinta I called home to Me quickly, within two years, taken by the same influenza that swept the world in 1918, offering their short lives, as I had asked, for sinners. Lúcia I kept on this earth for eighty-seven more years, a Carmelite nun, so that the message could be carried, guarded, and finally understood by a Church I was already leading, patiently, toward the century of wars I had already seen coming.

The Record

Between May 13 and October 13, 1917, three shepherd children — Lúcia dos Santos (1907–2005) and her cousins Francisco (1908–1919) and Jacinta Marto (1910–1920) — reported six apparitions of the Virgin Mary at the Cova da Iria near Fátima, Portugal. Crowds grew at each monthly apparition, reaching an estimated 30,000–100,000 (most commonly cited as approximately 70,000) by October 13, a date the children had publicly announced in advance as when a sign would occur.

Multiple newspapers, including the anti-clerical Lisbon daily O Século, sent reporters. Journalist Avelino de Almeida published an eyewitness account on October 15, 1917, describing the crowd witnessing the sun appear to spin, emit multicolored light, and move erratically in the sky for several minutes, followed by widespread reports that rain-soaked clothing and ground had dried rapidly. Witness accounts vary in detail and some observers reported seeing nothing unusual; no physical or astronomical observatory recorded a corresponding solar anomaly, consistent with the phenomenon being understood as a localized visionary/atmospheric event rather than an actual astronomical occurrence.

Bishop José Alves Correia da Silva of Leiria opened a canonical investigation in 1922 and formally approved the apparitions as "worthy of belief" on October 13, 1930, permitting the cult of Our Lady of Fátima. Francisco and Jacinta died in the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic; both were canonized by Pope Francis on May 13, 2017, the centenary of the first apparition — the youngest non-martyr saints in Church history. Lúcia became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005; her cause for canonization is open. The apparitions included the disclosure of the "Three Secrets of Fátima," the third of which was released by the Vatican in 2000. Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis each visited the shrine, and John Paul II credited Our Lady of Fátima with saving his life after the 1981 assassination attempt, which occurred on May 13.