DCF III-1, Doc. 351

I am asked to relate how I come to be cured of the fevers that had not left me for 4 months. I was very keen to go to Fátima on 13 October, because it was the last day on which Our Lady was to appear to the 3 children, and also because it was the day on which a miracle had been announced that would turn unbelievers into believers. I wondered a great deal how I could go, being so ill, and how I would bear so many leagues^* in a vehicle without even being able to lean back, I who was almost always lying down.

But I got into the lorry, where a friend had offered me some seats, and I thought no more about myself until the rain began; it became torrential, with intense cold. I could not help thinking then that a soaking and so much cold were hardly the best things for someone with malarial fever, for even inside the vehicle some people got quite wet. My pleasure in going to Fátima that day was enormous, but not for a moment did I think of connecting my health with the trip. As for what happened there, I do not [2] describe [it], since it is already well known (though so great a wonder can never be told too often), and some

people have related it with great accuracy. I shall mention only one thing, since I see that it is not noted in any of the descriptions I have read. I mean a kind of smoke that could be seen coming from more or less the spot where the Most Holy Virgin was to appear. I cannot pinpoint the spot, because from the lorry where I was I could not tell exactly where it came from; it seemed to come from among the crowd, from the people nearest the spot where the rough arch had been set up. Some people, noticing this smoke, said it was something supernatural, but the idea passed and no more attention was paid to it, although this kind of cloud appeared about 3 times. Only later did I think again about the little cloud that no one could explain, and which I believe was, as it were, the sign of Our Lady's presence there. A little while later the miracle took place, clearly visible to all, believers and unbelievers; and I, who at that blessed moment felt no special sensation, only the joy of seeing a miracle and that God was granting us so great a grace, began, as that day went on, to feel [3] an immense consolation, a sense of well-being and an inner peace that I had not felt for years.

It was only the next day that I noticed that I had none of the malarial symptoms that had always troubled me and that I had returned to my former activity. Since then I have felt nothing more of that illness, only, as I have said, a great consolation. My cure might give me well-being, but what I feel is more than that: it is good spirits, a consolation come from Heaven, which often makes me say inwardly: Praised be God! — That was a blessed day for those parts, and it proved miraculous in various ways. One was that among the 40 or 50 thousand people present there was not the slightest quarrel or disagreement, nor a single accident or even a fright, among so many motor cars, carriages and carts of every kind, donkeys f f. Also, of all the people who were there soaked to the bone, not one is known to have come to any harm, and I know that some of them were weak or ill. In everything the hand of God is clearly seen, and it is a great consolation to see that we are not abandoned by Him as we so richly deserved. I will add that the way people saw what happened in the sky (or rather between the sky and the [4] earth) was truly miraculous, for

some saw it one way, others another, and others again in a way unlike any of them. I have heard extraordinary things about this. And, to conclude what I have to say about this event, I ask the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary for Her protection for myself and for all of us.