Fatima: The unexpected experience in Portugal

Our trip to Portugal would be incomplete without a visit to Fatima, where the Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared to three shepherd children: Lúcia Santos (10) and her cousins—Francisco (9) and Jacinta Marto (7)—on the 13th of each month, from May to October 1917, in Cova da Iria (Valley of Peace). The site of the apparitions, a field belonging to Lúcia's family, outside Aljustrel, a village near Fatima, is now the famous Santuário de Fátima shrine.

Finding a bond

Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima

At first, I can't feel the sanctity of the shrine, located just outside our hotel. Opposite the modern Basilica of Most Holy Trinity, at the end of the concrete sea stretching out below my feet, stands the Basilica of Our Lady of The Rosary of Fatima. The basilica is shut due to renovation work in preparation for the centenary celebrations in 2017. Around me, people are in their own world—looking for information (about mass timings, etc.), praying at the Chapel of Apparitions (where Our Lady appeared five times), offering candles. But then I see some people crawling on their knees—with and without knee pads—along a 182-metre path, from the Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity to the Chapel of Apparitions. They are praying for specific needs or have returned to thank Mary for favours granted. Some crawl to the chapel and around it, while others crawl all the way back. As I watch them, time stops, and I tear up.

When we pop over to the shrine again post dinner, Mother Mary’s statue is being taken around in a candlelight procession after the rosary. The cold night air is filled with thousands of glowing candles and hymns to Mother Mary; I finally feel the sanctity of the place.

Following the trail

Statues of Lucia and her cousins, in Fatima

The next day, after mass, as the statue of Our Lady is carried back to the chapel, people bid her farewell with white handkerchiefs and tissues. We set off for Aljustrel with our guides, Marco Gomes and Nelson Rodrigues. “A year before Our Lady appeared to Lúcia, Francisco and Jacinta, the Angel of Peace and of Portugal appeared to them thrice (twice at Loca do Anjo and once at the well behind Lúcia’s home), asking them to sacrifice and pray the rosary every day,” they tell us en route these locations. At the children’s homes, we see family photographs and the tiny rooms in which they were born, where Francisco died and where Jacinta suffered from tuberculosis.

The spot where the angel appeared the first and third time is marked by statues of the three kids and an angel giving them holy communion. There's another monument of Our Lady at Valinhos, where she appeared on August 19 (instead of August 13). As the story goes, there was no apparition on August 13 because the Council Administrator of Vila Nova de Ourém imprisoned the kids for three days.

Along the path taken by the children from Aljustrel to Cova da Iria are the Stations of the Cross called the Hungarian Calvary, gifted to Mary by Catholic Hungarians, who found refuge in the US during WW II. The Chapel of St Stephen (also part of the Hungarian Calvary) has stained-glass windows featuring saints of the first Hungarian royal house. Marco tells us, “The altar, the tabernacle, the candlestands... are made of recycled bombs and tanks used in WWII”. The ceiling above the entrance has mosaics featuring the apparitions in the Cova da Iria and the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady. The steps outside lead to a depiction of Christ's crucifixion common in Northern Europe—one nail at each wrist and one through each foot.

Once a chapel, the Fatima parish, where the children were baptised and where Lúcia received her First Holy Communion, was built with contributions by locals and is still in use. Francisco often prayed in front of the tabernacle here. Marco shows me another statue of Our Lady, which is blue and “is used when the main statue is taken to the Vatican”. Outside the church is the house in which the children were questioned by Fr Ferreira, the parish priest during the apparitions. The steps (except the bottom two and the topmost) are the very ones that the children climbed.

Through an entrance at the back of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, we visit the tombs of the children. Jacinta's body was moved here on May 1, 1951 and Francisco's in 1952. Lúcia wanted to be buried besides Jacinta, so when she died at 97, her wish was  honoured.

From thinking that two days was too much to spend in a holy place to walking away touched by the experience, I've come a long way.

Other interesting facts: 

—During the Christian reconquest in the 12th century, a group of Moors were captured by a Christian army. Among them was a Moorish girl called Fatima. One of the Christians fell in love with Fatima and married her. When Fatima died, he built a small chapel (where the Fatima parish stands) in her honour; the lands received her name.

—The crown on the statue is an offering by Portuguese women in thanksgiving for Portugal having not entered World War II and consequently saving their men from having to fight in the war. 

—The crown is believed to have 3,000 precious stones. It is also embedded with one of the bullets fired at Pope John Paul II, during an assassination attempt in Rome in 1981, in thanksgiving for saving his life.