PORTUGAL: SANCTUARY OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA

 July 1, 2022

Our final destination of the day was our third pilgrimage site of the trip (the first two being Santiago de Compostela and Bom Jesus Cathedral), The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima.

The story is that in 1917, Mary the Mother of Jesus appeared to three shepherd children--Francisco and Jacinta Marto and their cousin Lúcia--in a field in Fátima, Portugal. Over a period of five months, the children experienced six visitations. They told others that they were asked by the Virgin to say the rosary and were told three "secrets" regarding events that were to occur. In 1930, the Catholic Church recognized the visions as "worthy of belief" and granted a papal indulgence to pilgrims to the site. The site quickly became an important pilgrimage destination, and it now receives as many as six million pilgrims a year. 

The huge open courtyard of the shrine is twice as large as St. Peter's in Rome, and it reminded us a lot of the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City that we visited in 2018. The Shrine of Fátima, built near the place where the children saw Mary, is one of the largest Marian shrines in the world.

There are two minor basilicas on the property, and we began our visit in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, which has a 213-foot-tall tower topped with a 15,000-pound bronze crown and a cross.

The interior is grand but very peaceful. The Latin words above the altar read "Queen of the most sacred Rosary, Fátima pray for us."

In contrast to the white walls, the painting behind the altar is dark and mysterious. It appears to be Mary kneeling in front of the three children, but I am not sure who all the othere figures represent.

Above the painting is a beautiful relief of Mary being crowned the Queen of Heaven by Jesus and God the Father with the Holy Spirit hovering in dove form.

To the left of the altar is a very tall crucifix with a diminutive Mary at its base.

The organ at the other end of the church is made up of 12,000 pieces.

Stained glass windows throughout swirl with energy and depict moments from the apparitions.

Initially, I thought the altars surrounding the nave were the Stations of the Cross, ubiquitous in Catholic churches.  However, I learned that the fifteen altars represent beads on the rosary--a unique concept! I know little to nothing about the rosary, so I have had to learn about it. 

The first five beads are the "Joyful Mysteries," which are the events related to the birth of Jesus. 

1: The Anunciation and 2: The visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth:

3: The birth of Jesus (my favorite, as always):

4: The presentation of Jesus in the temple, and 5: The finding of the boy Jesus in the Temple.

The next five are the "Sorrowful Mysteries".

6. The Agony in the Garden, and 7: The Scourging.

8: The Crowning with Thorns, and 9: The Carrying of the Cross.

10: The Crucifixion of Jesus.

At finally, the Five Glorious Mysteries.

11: The Resurrection of Our Lord, and 12: The Ascension of Our Lord.

13. The Descent of the Holy Ghost.

14. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and 15. The Coronation of Our Blessed Mother. (If there was a side chapel for the final mystery of the rosary, I didn't get a picture, but it may be that the cental altar - below right - is the only depiction.)

Then there are the sweet tombs of two of the three children who witnessed the apparition in 1916 and 1917. Francisco Marto died in April 1919 a few months short of his 11th birthday, and has sister Jacinta died in February 1920 just before her 9th birthday, both victims of the flu epidemic that swept through Europe in 1918, although both lingered in their illness for quite a while before succumbing. The were both canonized by Pope Francis here on the Sanctuary property in May 2017. They are the youngest of all the Catholic saints.

Too bad this photo is a bit out of focus. It shows Mary appearing to the three children and is really lovely.

You can make an offering to the two saints if you'd like.

Back outside, we explored the colonnades on each side of the basilica.

It was on the walls of these colonnades that we found what we expected to see inside: The 14 Stations of the Cross. I really love the brilliant colors and sharp outlines of the paintings and found this meditative walk to be very moving.

1: Jesus is condemned to death, and 2. Jesus is given his cross.

3. Jesus falls for the first time, and 4. Jesus meets his mother Mary.

5. Simon of Cyrene helps to carry the cross, and 6. Veronica wipes Jesus' face with her cloth.

7. Jesus falls for the second time, and 8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem.

9. Jesus falls for the third time, and 10. Jesus is stripped of his clothing.

11. Jesus is nailed to the cross--the Crucifixion, and 12. Jesus dies on the cross.

13. Jesus' body is removed from the cross - the Deposition, and 14. Jesus' body is plaed in the tomb.

From the colonnade we walked clockwise around the perimeter of the enormous square, which is said to be able to accommodate 500,000 people.

I particularly love this depiction of Mary and the Nativity scene that we passed on our perimeter walk.

At the far end of the square in front of the new basilica is an ENORMOUS abstract crucifix that faces the open space and is known as "The High Cross of Fátima." At over 110 feet, it is thought to be the tallest vertical crucifx in the world. 

In the square itself are statues of Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II. Pope Paul visited Fátima in 1967 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the apparitions, and John Paul visited in 1981, shortly after the assassination attempt on his life. He attributed the protection of the Virgin of Fátima as the reason he survived the attempt, which occurred on the the feast day of Our Lady of Fátima. He later presided over the beatification of Francisco and Jacinta Marto in 2000.

Pope Benedict XVI visited the Shrine of Fátima in 2000 and 2010, and Pope Francis visited in 2017 to officially canonize the two shepherd children on the 100th anniversary of the apparations. The third child, who as noted earlier lived until 2005, is on the road to canonization. If you don't think a half-million people can fit in the square, take a look at this photo from the canonization ceremony.

Photo from the BBC

Our next stop was the Basilica of the Holy Trinity, a second basilica built to accommodate more people the the original basilica. It was completed in 1996. You can see the edge of the giant crucifix on the left below. It acts as a kind of steeple to the unadorned building.

The interior has low ceilings and minimal decoration, quite a change from the older basilica on the other side of the square.

The altar has the customary crucifix . . . 

But the crucifix is anything but ordinary. I think it is stunning, and the lamb behind the figure of Christ is equally breathtaking.

On either side of the crucifix are murals of saints. Note the two children with Mary on the far right.

That must be John the Baptist on the far left.

We continued to make our way around the square, walking back towards the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary. Our last stop was the Chapel of the Apparitions. I don't think I realized at the time of our visit that this is the spot where Mary appeared to the three children. No mural, signage, or painting indicated what it was. In general, I thought the vision of Mary was downplayed at the entire complex.

A chapel was constructed here in 1919, and again in the 1920s, to mark the exact spot and in response to Our Lady of Fátima's request. 

A separate building had racks for prayer candles. The small candles I'm used to seeing in Catholic churches won't do for a place as monumental as this.

The heat from the large candles was so great that many of them had slumped or fallen into weird blobs.

The Chapel of the Apparitions is simple, peaceful, and obviously sacred to many of the visitors. To us, it seemed rather non-descript, and as I noted earlier, it wasn't until we were back at our hotel that we discovered its significance in the Fátima story.

Photo of the simple altar borrowed from here.

MOVIE

This week, seven months after our visit to Fátima, I discovered a highly-rated movie made in 2020 about the miracles that occurred there, and Bob and I sat down to watch it together. It was filmed in Portugal, and it was fun to see some of the places we had been. Overall, we thought it was a well-made movie, and we really enjoyed it. We learned a few things, such as that after the first visitation, the children were surrounded by villagers for most of the rest of the visits, and while the children could see Mary, no one else could. Also, after the last visitation, there was a solar phenomenon of some kind that 700 people saw, and there are multiple written records of the event that describe it in similar terms.  We especially enjoyed the portrayal of the three children. They were very believable, especially the young brother and sister, Francisco and Jacinta. Their older cousin Lúcia was the only one of the three who lived to adulthood, and she became a nun. The movie revolves around her sharing her experiences with a skeptical man who is writing a book about the events. She died in 2005, and she never recanted her story.