Pope Francis visits Our Lady of Fatima
Pope Francis has greeted pilgrims at the Fatima shrine in Portugal, where he plan plans to make two shepherd children -Jacinta and Francisco Marto -saints on Saturday.
The Pope arrived at a military airbase north of Lisbon with more than a million pilgrims are expected at Fatima as it is 100 years since the two – and a third child- reported seeing the Virgin Mary while tending sheep. The third is also on the way to sainthood.
Fatima is a central Portuguese town in the municipality of Ourem in the Portuguese Santarem district, a Catholic pilgrimage site where the Capelinha das Aparicoes marks the spot where the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared in 1917. A small Chapel was built here in honour of Our Lady of Fatima, beginning in 1918, and a Statue of her was installed.
Roman Catholic pilgrims have converged on the Fatima Sanctuary from countries like Venezuela, East Timor and China to participate in the torch-lit procession on Friday and a Mass on Saturday. The Pope will leave Fatima to complete his 24-hour trip.
Two of the children are to be canonised on Saturday for the miracles attributed to them. They died in the 1918-1919 European influenza pandemic.
There are three secrets of Fatima written down by their cousin, Lucia dos Santos who died in 2005 aged 97. The beatification process of her began in 2008. The church attaches great value to their visions as Mary is believed to have revealed truths to help mankind, as the first vision came on 13th May 1917.
The Pope said he was going to present himself to Mary “and I need to feel you close, physically and spiritually, so that we are one heart and one mind”.
The three secrets are prophecies written by Lucia, years after apparitions that the three said they had witnessed. She spent her adult life as a nun at a convent in Coimbra.
The first two secrets revealed in 1942 are the terrifying vision of hell, with a “great sea of fire”, demons and human souls and the second is interpreted as Mary’s prediction that World War One would end and that World War Two would start during the papacy of Plus XI.
Lucia sealed the third secret in an envelope, which was handed to the Vatican in 1957 and only revealed in 2000, which described an angel demanding “penance!”, then the Pope and other clergy climbing a mountain, only to be killed by soldiers firing bullets and arrows.
According to Pope Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI, the visions described in the three secrets are “meant to mobilise the forces of change in the right direction”. The Fatima visions are “private revelations”, he writes their purpose is “to help live more fully” in according with Christ’s teaching.