Fast Facts On Fatima

[TruthBeTold7]

I wrote this article after reading all the major books about Fatima this year. The apparitions of Our Lady and the miracles of Fatima influenced me to leave Eastern Orthodoxy and to embrace the Traditional Catholic faith and Church. There is no possibility of the miraculous events at Fatima being anything other than manifestations of the grace of God.

In 1917 in Fatima, Portugl, on the 13th of each month (from May to October), the Virgin Mary appeared to three children: Lucia, Jacincta and Francisco. The first apparition was preceded by the appearance of an angel.

Father de Marchi spent hours and days researching for his book on location. He spoke at length to many witnesses including  Ti Marto, the father of Jacinta and Francisco, as well as with Maria Carreira, one of the most important witnesses.

Seven successive popes have endorsed the Fatima apparitions and message.

Pope Benedict XVI stated that that the message of Fatima is the most prophetic message of the twentieth century.

The Theotokos said, "In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved etc." She was talking about the Catholic faith, not some Eastern "Orthodox" sect.

On October 13, the day of the miracle of the sun, some estimated that there were at least seventy thousand people. Present in the crowd, a professor of the University of Coimbra, Dr. Almeida Garrett, placed the number at over one hundred thousand. Also among those present was correspondent for one of the major News Services in the country.

At the sixth apparition, Jesus, Joseph and Mary were seen in the sky. Joseph made the sign of the cross over the world three times.

The Portuguese paper "O Dia" reported about the day... of the miracle of the sun: "The people cried with one voice. Thousands whom faith seemed to transport fell to their knees upon the muddy ground...All the people were weeping and praying."

Seeing the sun did not hurt the eyes. Dr. Almeida Garrett, a witness of the miracle of the sun reported: ..."without any pain to the eyes or blinding of the retina."..

The Ordem newspaper reported: "The sun was sometimes surrounded by blood-red flames, at other times it was aureoled with yellow and soft purple; again it seemed to be possessor of the swiftest rotation and then seemed to detach itself from the heavens, come near the earth and give forth a tremendous heat."

There was a godless man who had spent the morning making fun of the simpletons who had gone to Fatima just to see a girl. But when the miracle of the sun occurred, he numbed, his eyes riveted on the sun. He was seen to tremble from head to foot, Then he raised his hands to Heaven, as he was kneeling there in the mud, and cried out, "Our Lady, Our Lady."

One of the children, Jacinta, was found to be partly incorrupt and fragrant after her death.

Many healings and conversions occurred at the Cova da Iria, the location of the apparitions.

Father Alonso was the greatest researcher of Fatima, and had direct access to Sister Lucia (one of the children).

The Theotokos specifically mentioned Pope Pius XI.

On the night of May 29-30, Sister Lucia received a revelation from Christ in which he spoke of the blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception, among other things.

Father Alonso spoke of the "(dissident) Eastern Christians, since inspite of their great Marian devotion they too refuse this dogma" [of the Immaculate Conception].

Sister Lucia experienced a vision of the Blessed Trinity with a request to consecrate Russia.

The Theotokos repeatedly refers to the pope as "the Holy Father."

"Today, it must be emphasized, since many have been confused on this issue by false ecumenism, that the conversion of Russia means conversion to Catholicism. This is not only a point of common sense, but it is also found in the testimony of Father Joaquin Alonso, probably the top Fatima expert of the 20th century. Father Alonso, who had many interviews with Sister Lucia, wrote in 1976:

""...we should affirm that Lucia always thought that the 'conversion' of Russia is not to be limited to the return of the Russian people to the Orthodox Christian religions, rejecting the Marxist atheism of the Soviets, but rather, it refers purely, plainly and simply to the total, integral conversion of Russia to the one true Church of Christ, the Catholic Church."

The Lord Jesus told Sister Lucia in a vision to "Pray a great deal for the Holy Father." Obviously, the pope. Jesus recognizes the pope as "the Holy Father."

Time has verified prophecies made by the Theotokos: the Bolshevik Revolution; World War II; the menace that Marxism offers to the entire world.

The Catholic Church rejects the "diabolical delusion" hypothesis. "For the Church has learned, from centuries of experience, that evil spirits can counterfeit the appearances of of sanctity, and that all such manifestations must be tested thoroughly before they are accepted as coming from God." (Walsh, Our Lady of Fatima, p. 75).

Editors of the Jacobin tradition of 1789 flatly accused the clergy, and particularly the Jesuits, of having invented the story to regain the prestige they had lost in the Revolution of 1910.

The three children were arrested, slandered and threatened to be boiled to death "in a cauldron of hot oil" unless they changed their story. They refused.

The Theotokos had specifically stated that she would perform a miracle, a great sign at the last apparition of October 13.

Jacinta has many visions of things which later came to pass.

Dr. Formigao examined the three children and found them to be normal and healthy. the children did not lie about the apparitions. Dr. Formigao, Father De Marchi and Father Fonseca were all convinced that the children truthfully reported what they had actually seen and heard. The few slight discrepancies offer no real difficulties. These are normal, and expected in all human testimony.

Disbelievers became convinced of the apparitions when "so many had seen the cloud over the tree on August 13, and had noted the other strange phenomena in August and September."

The secular newspaper, "O Seculo" wrote about the miracle of the sun. The managing editor, Avelino de Almeida, was a Freemason who "made no secret of his dislike of priests, sacraments, creeds and dogmas."

It had rained on the day of the miracle of the sun, but "Many were making the discovery that their drenched clothes had in some unexplained manner become perfectly dry."

Theories of mass hypnotism or suggestion were discarded when it became known that reliable witnesses not in the crowd had seen the miracle many miles away. The poet Afonso Lopes Vieira saw it from his house at St. Pedro de Moel, forty kilometers from Fatima. Father Inacio Lourenco had seen it from Alburita, eighteen or nineteen kilometers away.

70,000 people testified that they had the unique experience of of seeing the sun spin round and seen to fall.

"Several hundreds of miraculous cures meanwhile had been registered: cures of tuberculosis, Pott's disease, blindness, deafness, spinal meningitis, cancer, paralysis and many other afflictions"..."a lame youth threw away his crutches during a procession, and walked upright for the first time in many years"...

Our Lady of Fatima had saved Portugal from WW II, as she had told the children she would.

The miracle of the sun lasted about twelve minutes, and was seen by people over twenty miles away.

A clique which denied the existence of God...and held that religion was a stumbling block to social progress...had come to power in Portugal seven years before the miracle. It vowed to wipe out religion within two generations.

Among the crowd (on the day of the miracle of the sun) were scientists and "unbelievers" who viewed the phenomenon not only with objectivity, but with a particular care to protect themselves from the possibility of collective suggestion. For example, Baron of Alvaiazere, who carefully took all precautions outlined by Gustave le Bon in his "Psychology of the Crowd." The Baron had not expected a miracle; but in a deposition to the Canonical Committee he stated: "...An incredible impression overtook me I only know that I cried out: 'I believe! I believe! I believe!' And tears ran from my eyes. I was amazed, in ecstasy before the demonstration of Divine power...converted in the moment."

Pio Sciatizza, S.J., scientist who published a critique of the Miracle in Rome, said: "Of the historic reality of this event there can be no doubt whatsoever." He wrote: "Given the indubitable reference to God, and the general context of the event, it seems that we must attribute to Him alone the most obvious and colossal miracle of history."

It was the miracle of the sun which defeated the Red Star in Portugal.

The captain of the regiment of soldiers on the mountain that day---with orders to prevent the gathering of the crowd---was converted instantly. Apparently, so were hundreds of other unbelievers, as their testimonies show.

Afonso Vieira saw the miracle of the sun at San Pedro de Muel, some thirty miles from Fatima.

The prominent newspapers of Portugal at that time, Diario de Noticeas ("The Daily News") and O Seculo ("The Century") were both predominantly anti-religious. In the editions from October 13 to October 17, they reported eye-witness accounts of editors and reporters who had been at Fatima.

God has performed three miracles of the sun in history: The prolongation of the day at the prayer of Joshua (Joshua 10), the sign which Ezekiel obtained for the King of Judah, causing the shadow of a sundial to retrace ten hours (Kings IV, 20), and the miracle at Fatima in 1917.

The miracle that was to occur on October 13, 1917, was predicted three times, during three consecutive months.

Originally Catholic Church authorities were skeptical of the Miracle of the Sun, but on April 14, 1930, when the investigations were completed, the decision of the Church was given. It declared the visions of the children worthy of belief and officially sanctioned religious devotions at the place where the Miracle of the Sun occurred.

Pope Pius XI encouraged belief in Fatima 13 years before the "official" approval was given.

The people who witnessed the Miracle of the Sun belonged to all categories and all social classes.

The light in the sky predicted by the Theotokos at Fatima in 1917, was seen on January 17, 1939 over Europe. Three months later, Hitler marched into Austria.

There is no such thing as group hallucinations in the psychological literature. An hallucination is when there is no objective referent. Further, hallucinations are rare. They only occur under the following conditions:

1. Bodily depravation.
2. Someone taking drugs.

These facts do not fit the description of the people in Fatima on October 13, 1917. It is radical to claim that most of the 100 thousand people in Fatima hallucinated.  ..."the concept of collective-hallucination is not found in peer reviewed medical and psychological literature. (Footnote 16: This is based on Bergeron's comprehensive data base search of the Pubmed and American Psychological Association websites. In agreement with this conclusion, another author and researcher also attested in March, 2009: 'I have surveyed the professional literature (peerreviewed journal articles and books) written by psychologists, psychiatrists, and other relevant healthcare professionals during the past two decades and have yet to find a single documented case of a group hallucination, that is, an event for which more than one person purportedly shared in a visual or other sensory perception where there was clearly no external referent.' Gary A. Sibcy, PhD, Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Piedmont Psychiatric Center, Centra Health Hospitals, Virginia, USA.). <---- From: The Resurrection of Jesus: A Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter Joseph W. Bergeron of The Pain Clinic, USA Gary R. Habermas.

Douglas Hyde was a leading Communist of England. He was originally skeptical of the events at Fatima, but after studying the topic, became convinced of it's truthfulness and converted to the Catholic Church.

Sources

Meet The Witnesses Of The Miracle Of The Sun, By John M. Haffert;

Our Lady of Fatima, By William Thomas Walsh;

The True Story Of Fatima: A Complete Account of The Fatima Apparitions, By John de Marchi, I.M.C.

(See also the Portugese newspapers "O Seculo,' and "Diario de Noticeas");

The Resurrection of Jesus: A Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter, By Joseph W. Bergeron and Gary R. Habermas.

[mikemac]

It's nice to hear the facts on Fatima brought about your conversion.  Welcome to the forum.

[EastWest7]

Thank you for the detailed overview. Several of the items you list I was not aware of or do not recall. I too, left Orthodoxy for Catholicism and have never regretted it. Had been raised Episcopalian, converted to the Orthodox Church when I was 20 (1975), received into the Catholic Church in 1986. Many years, God bless you and welcome!