- Content
- The children were shown, for a moment, a vision of hell and the souls of poor sinners. Our Lady said that to save them God wished to establish in the world devotion to her Immaculate Heart.
- Reading
- Not a prediction but a warning that eternity is real and that our choices matter, as the Gospel itself teaches (Matthew 25:46; CCC 1033–1035).
Pillar II · Apparitions · Portugal, 1917
Our Lady of Fatima
In 1917, as the First World War raged, three shepherd children in Portugal said a Lady “more brilliant than the sun” appeared to them six times. She asked for prayer, penance and devotion to her Immaculate Heart, and gave them a secret about the century to come.
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At a glance
| Place | Cova da Iria, near Fátima, Portugal |
|---|---|
| Dates | Six apparitions, on the 13th of each month from May 13 to October 13, 1917 (the August apparition came on the 19th, at Valinhos, after the children were detained by the local administrator). They were preceded in 1916 by three visits of an angel, the “Angel of Peace.” |
| Seers | Lúcia dos Santos (10), and her cousins Francisco Marto (8) and Jacinta Marto (7). Francisco and Jacinta died young in the influenza epidemic and were canonized by Pope Francis at Fátima on May 13, 2017. Lúcia became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005; her cause for beatification is open. |
| Church judgment | Declared worthy of belief by the Bishop of Leiria, José Alves Correia da Silva, on October 13, 1930. Recognized before the 2024 norms. Popes have visited the shrine and the Holy See published the full secret in 2000. |
| Feast | May 13, Our Lady of Fatima (optional memorial in the universal calendar) |
| Weight | Private revelation, approved: Catholics may accept it with prudent devotion but are not bound to believe it (CCC 67). |
What happened
On May 13, 1917 the three children were pasturing sheep when they saw, above a small holm oak, a Lady dressed in white, “more brilliant than the sun,” as Lúcia later wrote. She asked them to return on the 13th of each month and to pray the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war.
Crowds grew each month. On July 13 the Lady showed the children a vision and entrusted them with a secret in three parts. She promised a miracle in October so that all might believe. On October 13, in front of a crowd of tens of thousands, often put at around 70,000, including journalists from the anti-clerical press, many witnesses reported that the sun seemed to dance, spin and plunge toward the earth after a day of heavy rain. The Lady identified herself as “the Lady of the Rosary.”
What Our Lady asked
The heart of Fatima is not prediction but conversion. Its requests are simple enough for children, which is the point.
Pray the Rosary every day
Repeated at every apparition, for peace in the world and the end of the war.
Penance and sacrifice for sinners
To offer daily sacrifices and sufferings in reparation and for the conversion of sinners. The children took this to heart with a seriousness that moved even their skeptics.
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart
Including the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays of five consecutive months, and the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart.
Stop offending God
Her last words in October, as Lúcia recorded them: people must amend their lives and ask forgiveness for their sins, and no longer offend the Lord, who is already so much offended.
The prayer the children were taught to add after each decade of the Rosary is now prayed around the world: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy.”
The secret in three parts
Lúcia wrote down the first two parts in her memoirs in 1941; the third she wrote in 1944 and sealed. The Holy See published it on June 26, 2000, together with Lúcia's own text of the first two parts and a theological commentary by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in The Message of Fatima. The labels below show how the Church has read each part.
“The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI.”
- Fulfilled
- The First World War ended in November 1918. Lúcia linked the “worse” war to events of 1938, the last year of Pius XI's pontificate, and the Second World War followed in 1939.
- Unfolding
- If her requests were not heeded, Russia “will spread her errors throughout the world,” causing wars and persecution of the Church. The consecration to the Immaculate Heart was made by Pius XII (1942), by St. John Paul II together with the bishops of the world (March 25, 1984), and by Pope Francis, who consecrated Russia and Ukraine by name (March 25, 2022).
- Future
- “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” Cardinal Ratzinger explained the promise: “The Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is stronger than guns and weapons of every kind.” Benedict XVI prayed in 2010 that the Church would hasten the fulfillment of this triumph.
An angel with a flaming sword points to the earth and cries out: “Penance, Penance, Penance!”
- Content
- The children see “a Bishop dressed in White,” whom they took to be the Holy Father, climbing a mountain toward a great cross through a city half in ruins, praying for the dead. At the top he is killed, and bishops, priests, religious and lay people die after him. Angels gather the blood of the martyrs.
- How the Holy See read it
- The Holy See's 2000 commentary saw in it the Church's suffering in the twentieth century, a century of martyrs, and connected it with the attempt on the life of St. John Paul II on May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the first apparition. The Pope believed a mother's hand had guided the bullet, and he later had it set in the crown of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.
- Why mystery
- Cardinal Ratzinger insisted that “the purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future.” Its images are symbolic, and the future can still be changed by prayer and penance. He judged that “insofar as individual events are described, they belong to the past.” Yet ten years later, as Pope, he said at Fatima: “We would be mistaken to think that Fatima's prophetic mission is complete.”
Fatima and the Book of Revelation
- The woman clothed with the sun. A Lady “more brilliant than the sun,” and a miracle in which the sun itself seemed to obey her, recall the great sign of Revelation 12:1. The October 13 apparition has often been read in this light.
- The angel with the flaming sword. Cardinal Ratzinger notes that this image “recalls similar images in the Book of Revelation,” where angels carry out God's judgments and the call to repentance rings out (Revelation 8–9; 14:6–7).
- The martyrs and their blood. The angels gathering the martyrs' blood echo the souls under the altar (Revelation 6:9–11) and those who conquered “by the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 12:11).
- The war on the woman's offspring. Persecution of the Church, foretold in the second and third parts, is what Revelation 12:17 describes in every age.
- The triumph. Like Revelation, Fatima ends not in catastrophe but in victory: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
Read with careFatima has drawn many speculations: claims of a hidden “fourth secret,” or that the third part was not published in full, or dates set for coming chastisements. The Holy See states that it published the complete text of the third part in 2000, and Sr. Lúcia herself confirmed the text as hers. Fatima sets no dates. Its message is what Christ himself preached: “Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
For reflection
What did Our Lady ask of me?
Not to decode the future, but to pray the Rosary every day, to offer small sacrifices for others, and to stop offending God. Which of these could I begin, or begin again, this week?
Sources
- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The Message of Fatima (June 26, 2000), with the text of the secret and the theological commentary of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
- Benedict XVI, Homily at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fátima (May 13, 2010)
- Sister Lúcia, Fatima in Lucia's Own Words (her memoirs), Secretariado dos Pastorinhos
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 67