Our Lady and the Three Kids

by Gunther Simmermacher · Published May 13, 2024 · Updated May 12, 2024

In 1917, three children reported visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in rural Portugal. Günther Simmermacher & Junno Arocho Esteves look at Our Lady of Fátima.

As the Catholic world prepares to turn its focus on Portugal for World Youth Day in August, much attention will also be given to the apparitions of Our Lady at the small village of Fátima, about 100km north-west of the capital.

The apparitions to Lúcia dos Santos, 10, and her cousins Francisco, 9, and Jacinta Marto, 8, took place between May 13 and October 13, 1917, on a field near the town of Fátima.

The Marto and dos Santos families lived in the village of Aljustrel, about 2km from what is now the Fátima sanctuary. The two peasant families were relatively well-off in terms of land and livestock ownership. Their respective houses, both now museums, are not tiny, but by our modern standards not really big enough to accommodate such large families. For example, five Marto boys had to share one bed.

The apparition of the Blessed Virgin was not the children’s first supernatural experience. In 1915 Lúcia had an apparition of an angel. The following year, Francisco and Jacinta were with Lúcia when the strange figure appeared again. “Do not be afraid! I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me,” the angel said. The children told no one about the mysterious event.

Top: Colourised photo of Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, taken outside the Marto home in Aljustrel.
Bottom: Some of the crowds during the Miracle of the Sun on October 13, 1917.

The lady appears

They were tending sheep on a field known as Cova da Iria, which was owned by the dos Santos family, on May 13, 1917, when “a lady” appeared to the children — “brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal goblet filled with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of the sun”.

The lady said she was “from heaven” and would reveal her identity later. She instructed the children to come back to the Cova da Iria on the 13th day of the next six months, and asked them to pray the rosary every day “in order to obtain peace for the world”. Portugal had entered the First World War on the Western front just a few weeks earlier.

Lúcia wanted to keep the apparition secret, but Jacinta innocently told her mother about it. She in turn told a neighbour, as a joke — by the next day, the whole village knew. And soon great controversy arose. The parents were incredulous, and Lúcia even suffered beatings and ridicule from her mother. The local priest was dubious, and the local politicians were angered. Portugal at the time was ruled by an anti-clerical government which had taken power in 1910. For them, any expression of religious fervour represented a political threat.

Mayor’s death threat

It is remarkable that the three children stuck by the account of their experiences, with even the local priest and Lúcia’s mother expressing their disbelief, and at the brutish hands of the civil administrator who in August interrogated the children individually and threatened to boil them in a vat of oil (telling each that he had already done so to the others). When Lúcia was ready to crack under the pressure, little Jacinta and Francisco insisted that they must stay firm, for to deny the apparitions would be to tell a lie and thus to commit a sin.

As promised, Our Lady had appeared on June 13 and July 13. The June apparition held terrifying news: that Francisco and Jacinta would soon die, while Lúcia would remain on earth for “some time longer” to establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Indeed, Francisco and Jacinta died in 1919 and 1920 respectively, but Sr Lúcia died in 2005 at the age of 97.

Fatima’s basilica during a candlelight procession. (Photo:Günther Simmermacher)

In the July apparition, the lady said she would reveal her identity in October and “perform a miracle for all to see and believe”. She told the children to make sacrifices for sinners, and revealed three secrets. Two of the secrets were made public in 1941; the third secret was not released until 2000. The first secret involved a vision of hell. People who had begun gathering around the children on the 13th of the month, heard Lúcia “cry out” during the frightening revelation.

The second secret was that while World War I would end, a “worse one will break out” if people continued offending God. The children were told that calamity would be prevented if Russia was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Although Sr Lúcia confirmed that the consecration was done properly by Pope Pius XII in 1942 and by John Paul II in 1984, some Fátima devotees continue to argue that it was not.

The third secret was a vision of a “bishop dressed in white” shot down amid the rubble of a ruined city. The official Vatican interpretation, discussed with Sr Lúcia before its publication in 2000, was that it referred to the persecution of Christians in the 20th century, and specifically to the 1981 attempt on the life of St John Paul II.

Delayed apparition

Since on August 13 the children were detained by the mayor, Our Lady appeared six days later at Valinhos, just outside Aljustrel, also on land owned by the Dos Santos family. This time, the lady asked that money given by pilgrims be used to build a chapel on the site of the apparitions.

In the September 13 apparition the lady asked the children to continue praying the rosary “to obtain the end of the war” and promised that Jesus, St Joseph, Our Lady of Sorrows and Our Lady of Carmel would appear during the final miracle in October.

October 13 was a rainy day. Still, tens of thousands of people, devotees and sceptics, gathered at the Cova da Iria to witness the promised miracle — or to see no miracle and thus discredit the children’s claims.

The lady appeared and finally identified herself as “Our Lady of the Rosary”. She requested that people cease to offend God, and then opened her hands, which reflected a light towards the sun. Lúcia cried out: “Look at the sun!” As the crowds looked on, the sun appeared to “dance,” spinning and changing colours. The children also saw the promised figures of Jesus, St Joseph and Mary.

Many theories but no conclusive scientific explanation have been forwarded for the reported solar phenomenon. Apart from unproven scientific theories, sceptics suggest a mass hallucination, supposedly caused by all these people looking into the sun too long and seeing what they wanted to see — all at the same time, including neutral observers and even sceptics. In 1930, the Church declared the phenomenon a miracle.

Devotion to Our Lady of Fátima grew quickly. In short order, a small chapel was built on the spot of the apparitions, as requested in the September apparition, and in 1920 pilgrims installed a statue of Our Lady of Fátima in the chapel — in defiance of government troops. The first Mass there was celebrated in 1924, and the foundation stone for the basilica of the Holy Rosary was laid in 1928. Two years later, only 13 years after the apparitions at Fátima, the Holy See officially approved them as “worthy of belief”.

One devotee was St John Paul II, who credited his survival from the assassin’s bullets on May 13, 1981 to Our Lady of Fátima, whose feast day it was that day. On the first anniversary of the murder attempt, the pope placed an assassin’s bullet into the crown of the statue of Our Lady in Fátima.

Sr Lúcia went on to become a Carmelite nun, living most of her life in the order’s convent in nearby Coimbra until her death at 97 in 2005. Francisco and Jacinta were canonised by Pope Francis on May 13, 2017, the 100th anniversary of the first apparition. Sr Lúcia’s cause is ongoing.