DCF Seleção, Annex (Os episódios maravilhosos de Fátima, 1921)

Publishing House
EMPRESA VÉRITAS
1921

THE APPARITIONS OF FÁTIMA
THE INTERROGATION OF THE SEERS
THE ASTOUNDING PHENOMENA OF 13 OCTOBER 1917
THE DAY OF 13 OCTOBER 1919
THE DEATH OF THE SEER JACINTA DE JESUS MARTO
THE GRAND PILGRIMAGE OF 13 MAY 1920

[4] Most Excellent and Most Reverend Lord Bishop of Guarda

Fernando Pais de Figueiredo, proprietor of the “Empresa Véritas”, wishing to publish a booklet entitled “The marvellous episodes of Fátima”

Asks Your Most Reverend Excellency for the necessary
authorisation, if you see fit.

Guarda, 19 May 1921

Canon Fernando Pais de Figueiredo

We appoint as censor the Very Reverend Dr. Manuel Mendes do Carmo, Canon of Our Cathedral.

Guarda, 19 May 1921

† JOSÉ, Bishop of Guarda

Most Excellent and Most Reverend Lord,

In fulfilment of the task that Your Most Reverend Excellency deigned to entrust to me, I have read the booklet entitled “The marvellous episodes of Fátima”. Having known and admired, ever since our days as fellow students at university, the solid learning and the solid piety of its author, I have ascertained that there is nothing in the said booklet against Faith or Morals. It is permeated by a marked fragrance of trust in the Immaculate Virgin Mary, which can only do good to the souls who read it.

Though its author does not claim to say the last scientific word on the validity or supernatural character of the facts of Fátima, he nevertheless gives a conscientious testimony that will help to clarify their objective nature.

Guarda, 9 June 1921

Dr. Mendes do Carmo

Let it be printed

Guarda, 10 June 1921.

† JOSÉ, Bishop of Guarda

[7] THE APPARITIONS OF FÁTIMA

At the moment when the apparition was taking place, innumerable mysterious signs, to which many trustworthy people bear witness, followed one after another in the atmosphere and in the sky.

As if by magic the clouds suddenly parted, and the sun at the zenith appeared in all its splendour and spun dizzily on itself like the most beautiful firework wheel imaginable, taking on successively all the colours of the rainbow and casting beams of light to astonishing effect.

This sublime and incomparable spectacle, which was repeated three distinct times, lasted about ten minutes. The immense crowd, yielding to the evidence of so great a prodigy, fell to its knees; the Credo, the Hail [10] Mary and the act of contrition burst from every mouth, and tears, tears of joy, of gratitude or of repentance, welled up in every eye.

The whole press, including the large-circulation papers, referred in respectful terms and at considerable length to the astounding events of Fátima. Assessments of these facts, even in the Catholic camp, were not unanimous. The children's statements regarding the imminent end of the great European war contributed to this divergence of opinions. But, despite this, from year to year devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary of Fátima grows and spreads everywhere. The flow of pilgrims grows ever greater, especially on the thirteenth of each month, on Sundays, on the days consecrated to the Most Holy Virgin, and, more than ever, on the thirteenth of May and the thirteenth of October of each year.

The graces and prodigious cures attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fátima are innumerable. In vain did the representatives of the civil authority make every effort to put an end to the abundant and unceasing stream of the multitudes drawn by the humble voice of three innocent little shepherds.

Intolerance and persecution had only, as always, the effect of making the faith and piety of the believers still livelier and more intense. The throng of the devout, coming from every part of Portugal, continues to be ever more numerous, more fervent, more persevering, and there seem to be no human forces capable of stopping it. The ecclesiastical authority, which has opened the respective inquiry, has not yet completed its

work, which is by its nature difficult and slow, nor has it pronounced its veredictum, which it is our duty to abide by, whatever it may be.

While we await that veredictum, let us try to live as good Christians, strictly fulfilling all our duties; let us do penance for our sins and pray the rosary fervently, that devotion so dear to all the Portuguese, so that Our Lady of the Rosary, if She did in fact appear at Fátima, may deign to dispel all doubts and place that fact beyond all good-faith dispute.

[12] INTERROGATION OF THE SEERS¹ (27 SEPTEMBER 1917)

To complete the impressions I had gathered on the thirteenth of this month of September, and to provide myself with the facts needed to form, as far as possible, a sound judgement on the events that for the last five months have been unfolding three kilometres south of the village of Fátima, at the place called Cova da Iria, I went for the second time last Thursday, the twenty-seventh, to that picturesque village, gracefully perched on one of the spurs of the majestic Serra de Minde. It was three o'clock in the afternoon when I got down from the carriage that had brought me from Torres Novas, by way of Vila Nova de Ourém, to the humble settlement whose name is today spoken by tens of thousands of lips, from one end of Portugal to the other, as a sweet hope of heavenly blessings and graces. The Reverend parish priest, whom I sought out at once, was not at home: he had gone out of the parish and was not due back until the evening.

Sorry not to be able to exchange a few words with him on the matter that had brought me there, I decided to go to the house of the children who claim to be favoured with apparitions of the Most Holy Virgin and to hear from their own mouths the detailed account of the strange occurrences whose report has drawn to Fátima, day after day, countless people of all classes and social conditions.

Two kilometres from the parish church and the presbytery, in an insignificant little hamlet called Aljustrel, belonging to the parish, stand the modest houses of the little shepherds' families.

The two younger children were away. I went to the house of the eldest, where her mother invited me to [13] come in and sit down, an invitation I accepted. To a question of mine about the whereabouts of her daughter, whom I was looking for, she replied that she was gathering grapes on a small property belonging to her, two kilometres away.

Someone at once offered to go and call her on her mother's orders. Meanwhile the two younger children, who had come back from the fields, learning from the neighbours that I wished to speak to them, came to see me.

They are a brother and sister, a boy and a girl. The girl arrived first. Her name is Jacinta de Jesus; she is seven years old and is the daughter of Manuel Pedro Marto and Olímpia de Jesus. Quite tall for her age, slender but not thin, with a well-proportioned face, dark complexion, modestly dressed, her skirt coming down to her ankles, she has the look of a healthy child, showing perfect normality in her whole physical and moral make-up. Surprised by the presence of strangers, who had accompanied me and whom she did not expect to find, at first she shows great embarrassment, answering in monosyllables, and in an almost imperceptible tone of voice, the questions I put to her. A few moments later her brother appears, a boy of nine, who comes into the room where we were with a certain ease, keeping his cap on his head, no doubt because he did not remember that he ought to take it off. He did not notice a sign his sister made to him to that effect. I invited him to sit on a chair beside me, and he obeyed at once without any reluctance.

I began without delay to question him about what he had seen and heard since last May at the Cova da Iria on the thirteenth of each month during the time of the apparition.

The following short dialogue took place between him and me.

– What have you seen at the Cova da Iria in recent months?

– I have seen Our Lady.

– Where does she appear?

[14] – On top of a holm-oak shrub.

– Does she appear suddenly, or do you see her coming from somewhere?

– I see her coming from the side where the sun rises and settling on the holm-oak shrub.

– Does she come slowly or fast?

– She always comes fast.

– Do you hear what she says to Lúcia?

– I don't.

- Have you ever spoken to the Lady? Has she ever said a word to you?
- No, I have never asked her anything; she only speaks to Lúcia.
- Whom does she look at, at you and Jacinta too, or only at Lúcia?
- She looks at all three; but she looks longer at Lúcia.
- Has she ever wept or smiled?
- Neither one nor the other; she is always serious.
- How is she dressed?
- She has a long dress and over it a mantle that covers her head and comes down to the bottom of the dress.
- What colour are the dress and the mantle?
- White, and the dress has golden stripes.
- What is the Lady's attitude?
- That of someone praying. She has her hands joined at the height of her breast.
- Does she carry anything in her hands?
- She carries, between the palm and the back of her right hand, some beads that hang down over her dress.
- And what does she have in her ears?
- Her ears can't be seen, because they are covered by the mantle.
- What colour are the beads?
- They are white too.
- Is the Lady pretty?
- Yes, she is.
- Prettier than that girl you see over there?
- Prettier.
- But there are ladies much prettier than that girl...
[15] – She is prettier than anyone I have ever seen.
Having finished questioning Francisco, I called aside Jacinta, who was playing in the street with other children, sat her on a little stool beside me and subjected her too to an interrogation, succeeding in obtaining from her answers as complete and detailed as her brother's.
- Have you seen Our Lady on the 13th of each month since May?
- I have.
- Where does she come from?
- She comes from Heaven, from the side of the sun.
- How is she dressed?
- She has a white dress, trimmed with gold, and on her head she has a mantle, also white.
- What colour is her hair?

- You can't see her hair, which is covered by the mantle.
- Does she wear earrings?
- I don't know, because you can't see her ears either.
- What is the position of her hands?
- Her hands are joined at the height of her breast, with the fingers pointing upwards.

- Are the beads in her right hand or her left hand?

To this question the child answers at first that they were in the right hand, but then, owing to my deliberately insistent and tricky questioning, she appears perplexed and confused, not knowing exactly which of her own hands corresponded to the hand in which the Apparition held the Rosary.

- What did the Lady most earnestly recommend to Lúcia?
- She told us to pray the rosary every day.
- And do you pray it?
- I pray it every day with Francisco and Lúcia.

Half an hour after the interrogation of Jacinta de Jesus had ended, Lúcia de Jesus appears. She was coming, as I have said, from a small property of her family's, two kilometres away, where she had been gathering grapes. [16] Taller and better nourished than the other two children, with a fairer complexion, sturdy and healthy, she presents herself before me with an ease that contrasts singularly with Jacinta's bashfulness and excessive shyness. She is simply dressed, like Jacinta, and neither her bearing nor her face betrays any vanity or embarrassment.

Sitting down, at a nod from me, on a chair beside me, she lends herself most willingly to being questioned about the events of which she is the chief protagonist, despite feeling visibly tired and dejected, owing to the incessant visits she receives and the repeated and prolonged inquiries to which she is subjected.

The daughter of António dos Santos, aged fifty, and of Maria Rosa, aged forty-eight, she has one brother and four sisters, all older than she: Maria, aged twenty-six, already married, Teresa, twenty-four, Manuel, twenty-two, Glória, twenty, and Carolina, fifteen. She turned ten on the twenty-second of March of this year. She was eight when she made her first communion. Her mother, the very model of the Christian woman and the good housewife, devoted to her household chores, has always sought to instil in her children the holy fear of God and to lead them to fulfil all their moral and religious duties. She is greatly troubled by the events that at every moment draw the attention of thousands of people to her poor home, until

a short time ago unknown to the world, and one notices at once that her mind wavers, in restless anxiety, between the hope that her daughter is really privileged with the apparition of the Virgin and the fear that she may be the victim of a hallucination that will bring her sorrow and cover her whole family with ridicule. To a question of mine about her Lúcia's piety, she replies that she finds nothing extraordinary in her in this respect, seeing her pray in the same way and with the same fervour as before the apparitions, exactly as her sisters do. I begin the interrogation of the seer.

– Is it true that Our Lady has appeared to you at the place called Cova da Iria?

[17] – It is true.

– How many times has she appeared to you?

– Five times, once each month.

– On what day of the month?

– Always on the thirteenth, except in the month of August, when I was arrested and taken to the town (Vila Nova de Ourém) by the administrator. That month I only saw her some days later, on the nineteenth, at the place called Valinhos.

– It is said that the Lady also appeared to you last year. What truth is there in this?

– She never appeared to me last year, nor before May of this year; nor did I say so to anyone, because it was not true.

– Where does she come from? From the east?

– I don't know; I don't see her come from anywhere; she appears over the holm oak, and it is when she withdraws that she goes off in the direction of the part of the sky where the sun rises.

– How long does she stay? Long or short?

– A short time.

– Long enough to recite an Our Father and a Hail Mary, or longer?

– Longer, a good deal longer, but not always the same time; perhaps not long enough to pray the rosary.

– The first time you saw her, weren't you frightened?

– I was, so much so that I wanted to run away with Jacinta and Francisco, but She told us not to be afraid, because she would not do us any harm.

– How is she dressed?

– She has a white dress that comes down almost to her feet, and her head is covered by a mantle of the same colour and the same length as the dress.

– Has the dress no trimmings?

– On it, at the front, you can see two golden cords that come down from the

neck and are joined by a tassel, also golden, at the middle of the body.

- Does she have a belt or a ribbon?
- She doesn't.
- Does she wear earrings?
- She wears small hoop earrings.
- Which hand holds the beads?
[18] – The right hand.
- Were they a five-decade rosary or a full rosary?
- I didn't notice properly.
- Did they end in a cross?
- They ended in a white cross, and the beads were white too.

The chain was white as well.

- Did you ever ask her who she was?
- I did, but she declared that she would only say so on the thirteenth of October.
- Didn't you ask her where she came from?
- I asked where she was from, and she answered that she was from Heaven.
- And when was it that you asked her that question?
- The second time, on the thirteenth of June.
- Did she ever smile or look sad?
- She never smiled or looked sad, but was always serious.
- Did she tell you and your cousins to say any prayers?
- She recommended to us that we pray the rosary in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world.
- Did she show any wish that many people should be present at the Cova da Iria on the thirteenth of each month during the apparition?
- She said nothing on that subject.
- Is it true that she told you a secret, forbidding you to reveal it to anyone whatsoever?
- It is true.
- Does it concern only you, or your companions as well?
- All three of us.
- Can you not make it known at least to your confessor?

To this question she kept silent, seeming somewhat embarrassed, and I judged that I should not insist by repeating the question.

– It is reported that, to free yourself from the administrator's pestering on the day you were arrested, you told him, as if it were the secret, something that was not, thus deceiving him, and afterwards boasted of having played that trick on him: is it true?

[19] – It is not; the administrator really did want me to reveal the secret to him, but as I could not tell it to anyone, I did not

tell it to him, although he pressed me hard to do what he wanted. What I did was to tell everything the Lady said to me, except the secret, and perhaps for that reason the administrator was left thinking that I had revealed the secret to him as well.

– Did the Lady tell you to learn to read?

– Yes, she did, the second time she appeared.

– But if She said she would take you to Heaven next October, what use would it be to you to learn to read?

– That is not true: the Lady never said she would take me to Heaven in October, and I never claimed she had told me any such thing.

– What did the Lady declare should be done with the money people leave at the foot of the holm oak at the Cova da Iria?

– She said we should put it on two processional litters and carry them to the parish church, one carried by me, Jacinta and two other girls, the other by Francisco and three other boys. Part of that money would be for the worship and feast of the Lady of the Rosary and the other part towards a new chapel.

– Where does she want the chapel to be built? At the Cova da Iria?

– I don't know: she didn't say.

– Are you very happy that Our Lady has appeared to you?

– I am.

– On the thirteenth of October will Our Lady come alone?

– Saint Joseph will come too with the Child, and a short time afterwards peace will be granted to the world.

– Has Our Lady made any other revelation?

– She declared that on the thirteenth she will perform a miracle so that all the people will believe that she really appears.

– Why is it that you often lower your eyes and stop gazing at the Lady?

– It's because she is blinding at times.

– Did she teach you any prayer?

[20] – She did; and she wants us to recite it after each mystery^* of the rosary.

– Do you know that prayer by heart?

– I do.

– Say it, then...

– O my Jesus, forgive us, deliver us from the fire of hell and relieve the souls in Purgatory, especially the most abandoned. [DCF, I - Doc.7]

THE PHENOMENA OF 13 OCTOBER 1917

Numerous and interesting accounts of the so-called “miracle of Fátima” were published by the periodical press and in pamphlets in the second fortnight of October 1917 and in the two months that followed. Although I had the good fortune to witness the astounding events of 13 October 1917 and could for that reason narrate them in detail, I prefer to reproduce here two accounts of those events written by writers whose impartiality is beyond suspicion: one of them unpublished, from the sparkling pen of the intelligent and highly cultivated mind of Dr. José Maria de Proença de Almeida Garrett, who kindly wrote it at my request two months later, and the other by the renowned journalist Mr Avelino de Almeida, published in number 610, 2nd series, of “A Ilustração Portuguesa”.

Dr. Almeida Garrett's account reads as follows:

“I shall relate briefly and concisely, without phrases that veil the truth, what I saw at Fátima on 13 October 1917.

The times I shall refer to are those that at that period officially marked the time according to the decision of the government, which had unified our time with that of the belligerent countries^*. I do this for greater accuracy, since it was not easy for me to state precisely the moment when the sun reached the zenith.

I arrived at noon. The rain, which since morning had been falling fine and persistent, driven by a harsh wind, kept on, irritatingly, threatening to turn everything to liquid.

[21] The dull, heavy sky had a greyish colour laden with water, a harbinger of abundant and long-lasting rain.

I stayed on the road, under the shelter of the car's hood and a little above the spot that was said to be that of the apparition, not daring to venture into the clayey, sticky mire of the freshly ploughed field. I must have been a little more than a hundred metres from the tall posts topped by a rough cross, and I could see distinctly around them the wide circle of people who, with their umbrellas open, looked like a vast floor of shields.

Shortly after one o'clock the children arrived at this spot – the children for whom (so they asserted) the Virgin had fixed the place, day and hour of the apparition. The hymns sung by the people surrounding them could be heard.

At a certain moment this wide mass, confused and compact, closed its umbrellas and bared its heads in a gesture that must have been one of humility or respect, but which left me surprised and amazed because

the rain, with blind persistence, was now wetting heads, drenching and soaking. I was told afterwards that these people, who ended up kneeling in the mud, had obeyed the voice of a child.

It must have been half past one (14.30) when there rose, at the precise spot where the children were, a column of smoke, thin, faint and bluish, which went straight up to perhaps two metres above their heads and at that height vanished. This phenomenon, perfectly visible to the naked eye, lasted a few seconds. Not having timed its duration, I cannot state whether it was more or less than a minute. The smoke dissipated abruptly, and after some time the phenomenon was repeated a second and a third time. On all three occasions, and above all the last, the slender shafts stood out sharply against the grey atmosphere.

I turned my binoculars on it. I could see nothing apart from the columns of smoke, but I was convinced that they were produced by some censer, not swung, in which incense was burning. Afterwards trustworthy people assured me that the same thing had happened on the 13th of each of the five previous months and that on those days, as on this one, nothing had ever been burned there nor any fire lit.

[22] While I went on looking at the place of the apparition in calm, cool expectation and with a curiosity that was waning because the time had passed long and slowly without anything arousing my attention, I heard the bruhaha of thousands of voices and saw that multitude, spread out over the wide field that stretched at my feet, or concentrated in compact waves around the upright timbers, or on the low terraces that held up the soil, turn its back on the point towards which until then its desires and longings had converged, and look at the sky on the opposite side.

It was almost two o'clock.

The sun, moments before, had triumphantly broken through the thick layer of clouds that had kept it hidden, to shine clearly and intensely. I turned towards this magnet that was drawing all eyes and could see it like a disc with a sharp edge and a vivid rim, luminous and shining, but it did not hurt the eyes.

The comparison, which I heard made while still at Fátima, to a disc of dull silver did not seem right to me. It was a lighter colour, active and rich, and with shimmering tints, with something like the lustre of a pearl. It in no way resembled the moon on a clear, pure night, because one saw and felt it to be a living heavenly body.

It was not spherical like the moon, nor did it have the moon's tone or its light and shade. It looked like a burnished disc cut from the mother-of-pearl of a shell. This is not a banal comparison of cheap poetry. My

eyes saw it that way. Nor could it be confused with the sun seen through fog (of which, besides, there was none at that time), because it was not opaque, diffuse and veiled. At Fátima it had light and heat and stood out sharply, with its border cut to an edge like a draughts piece.

The vault of heaven was hazy with light cirrus clouds, with chinks of blue here and there, but the sun at times stood out in rifts of clear sky. The clouds, which were scudding lightly from west to east, did not dim the sun's light (which did not hurt the eyes), giving the easily understandable and explicable impression of passing behind it, but at times these flakes, which came along white, seemed, as they glided before the sun, to take on a diaphanous pink or blue tint.

[23] The marvellous thing is that, for a long time, one could stare at the sun, that blaze of light and ember of heat, without pain in the eyes and without a blinding dazzle on the retina.

This phenomenon, with two brief interruptions in which the fierce sun hurled out its most flashing and resplendent rays, which forced one to look away, must have lasted about ten minutes.

This pearly disc had the giddiness of movement. It was not the twinkling of a heavenly body in its full vigour. It was spinning on itself at a furious speed.

Suddenly a clamour is heard, like a cry of anguish from all those people. The sun, keeping up the swiftness of its rotation, comes loose from the sky and, blood-red, advances upon the earth, threatening to crush us with the weight of its huge, fiery millstone. For some seconds the impression is terrifying.

During the solar incident that I have been describing in detail, there were shifting colours in the atmosphere. I cannot state the moment precisely, because two months have already gone by and I took no notes. I remember that it was not right at the beginning, and I rather think it was towards the end.

While I was staring at the sun I noticed that everything around me was growing dark.

I looked at what was near and cast my eyes out into the distance as far as the farthest horizon, and I saw everything the colour of amethyst. Objects, the sky and the layer of the atmosphere had the same colour. A purplish oak that rose in front of me cast a heavy shadow on the ground.

Fearing I had suffered an affection of the retina, an unlikely hypothesis because in that case I should not see things in purple, I turned round, closed my eyelids and held them shut with my hands to cut out all light. Still with my back turned, I opened my eyes and recognised that, as before, the landscape and the air were still of the same purple colour.

The impression one had was not of an eclipse. I saw the eclipse which in Viseu, where I was, was total. As the moon moves to hide the sun, the light grows greyer and greyer until everything becomes dull and black. One's sight takes in [24] a small circle beyond which objects become more and more confused until they are lost in the blackness. The temperature drops considerably and one would say that the life of the earth had been extinguished. At Fátima the atmosphere, although purple, remained transparent to the edges of the horizon, which could be made out and seen clearly, and I did not have the sensation of a halt in the universal energy.

Still looking at the sun, I noticed that the surroundings had grown lighter. Immediately afterwards I heard a peasant who was near me saying in a voice of astonishment: “this lady is yellow”.

Indeed everything had now changed, near and far, taking on the colour of old yellow damasks. People looked sickly and jaundiced. I smiled to find them frankly ugly and unbecoming. Laughter was heard. My hand had the same yellow tone. Some days later I made the experiment of staring at the sun for a few brief instants. When I looked away I saw, after a few moments, yellow spots, irregular in shape.

One does not see everything in a uniform colour, as if a topaz had been vaporised in the air, but blotches or patches that move with the movement of one's gaze.

All these phenomena that I have mentioned and described I observed calmly and serenely, without any emotion or alarm.

It is for others to explain or interpret them.

To conclude, I must state that never, either before or after 13 October, have I seen similar phenomena, solar or atmospheric.¹ [DCF, III-1 - Doc. 345]

THE MIRACLE OF FÁTIMA

(Letter to someone who asks for impartial testimony).

Breaking a silence of more than twenty years and invoking the distant and fondly remembered times when we lived together in fraternal comradeship, illuminated [25] then by a common faith and strengthened by

identical aims, you write asking me to tell you, sincerely and in detail, what I saw and heard on the heath of Fátima, when the fame of heavenly apparitions gathered tens of thousands of people in that desolate wilderness, people more thirsty, I believe, for the supernatural than driven by mere curiosity or fearful of a hoax... Catholics are in disagreement about the importance and meaning of what they witnessed.

Some became convinced that promises from On High had been fulfilled; others are still far from believing in the incontrovertible reality of a miracle. You were a believer in your youth and ceased to be one. Members of your family dragged you to Fátima, in the colossal tidal wave of the people who gathered there on 13 October.

Your rationalism suffered a formidable shock, and you want to form a sound opinion by turning to impartial testimony such as mine, since I was there solely to carry out a very difficult task, that of reporting impartially for a great daily, O Século^*, the facts that unfolded before me and everything curious and illuminating connected with them. Your wish shall not go unsatisfied, but surely our eyes and our ears did not see and hear different things, and few were those who remained unmoved by the grandeur of such a spectacle, unique among us and in every respect worthy of meditation and study...

What did I hear that took me to Fátima?

That the Virgin Mary, after the feast of the Ascension, had appeared to three children who were pasturing livestock, two young girls and a shepherd lad, urging them to pray and promising to appear to them there, above a holm oak, on the 13th of each month, until in October she would give them some sign of the power of God and make revelations. The news spread for many leagues^* around; it flew from place to place to the farthest corners of Portugal, and the pilgrimage of believers grew from month to month, so much so that some fifty thousand people gathered on the heath of Fátima on 13 October, according to the calculations of dispassionate individuals.

[26] At the previous gatherings of the faithful, there was no lack of people who thought they saw astronomical and atmospheric singularities, which were taken as an indication of immediate divine intervention.

There were some who spoke of sudden drops in temperature, of stars twinkling at full noon and of lovely clouds never seen before around the sun. There were some who repeated and spread abroad with emotion that the Lady recommended penance, that she wanted

the erection of a chapel at that spot, that on 13 October she would manifest, by means of a proof perceptible to all, the infinite goodness and the omnipotence of God...

So it was that, on the celebrated and so eagerly awaited day, thousands upon thousands of people flocked to Fátima from near and far, braving all the obstacles and all the hardships of travel: some who tramped leagues in sun and rain, others who came in the most varied vehicles, from the almost prehistoric to the most recent and marvellous models of motor cars, and very many more who bore the discomforts of the third-class carriages of the trains, in which, to cover what are nowadays relatively short distances, long hours and even days and nights are wasted! I saw bands of men and women, patiently, as if rapt in a dream, making their way on the eve to the famous spot, singing sacred hymns and walking barefoot to their rhythm and to the cadenced recitation of the rosary, without being troubled, deterred or driven to despair by the almost sudden change in the weather, when the downpours turned the dusty roads into deep quagmires and the mildness of autumn gave way, for one day, to the harshest rigours of winter... I saw the multitude, now crowded around the tiny tree of the miracle and stripping it of its branches to keep them as relics, now spread out over the vast heath that the Leiria road crosses and overlooks and that the most picturesque and heterogeneous throng of carriages and people encumbered on that memorable day, waiting in the best of order for the supernatural manifestations, without fearing that the wintry weather would spoil them, diminishing their splendour and majesty... I saw that discouragement did not invade souls, [27] that confidence remained alive and ardent despite the unexpected setbacks, that the composure of the multitude, in which country folk were in great abundance, was perfect, and that the children, privileged in their own estimation, were welcomed with demonstrations of the most intense affection by those people, who knelt, bared their heads and prayed at their bidding as the hour of the “miracle” approached, the hour of the “perceptible sign”, the mystical and longed-for hour of contact between heaven and earth...

And, when I no longer imagined I would see anything more impressive than that noisy but peaceful multitude animated by the same obsessive idea and moved by the same powerful longing, what did I see that was truly strange on the heath of Fátima? The rain, at the pre-announced hour, stops falling; the dense mass of clouds breaks apart and the king of stars – a disc of dull silver – appears at full zenith and begins to dance a violent, convulsive dance, which a great number of people imagined to be a serpentine dance, so beautiful and brilliant were the colours that

successively covered the surface of the sun.

A miracle, as the people cried; a natural phenomenon, as learned men say? I do not care to find that out now, but only to affirm to you what I saw... The rest is a matter for Science and for the Church [DCF, III-1 - Doc. 228].

AN EXTRAORDINARY CURE

(13 OCTOBER 1917)

By way of a complement to these brief notes on the apparitions, may I be permitted to transcribe here a letter addressed to a friend of mine and published in the issue of the fifth of October 1918 of the newspaper “A Guarda”, the weekly with the largest subscription in the two Beiras^*. Setting out in detail and with the most scrupulous exactness the circumstances of an extraordinary cure connected with the history of the apparitions, that letter has a twofold importance, by virtue of which it naturally finds its place here.

It reads as follows:

[28] The question of the origin and nature of the extraordinary events of Fátima, as I already suggested in my previous letter, is a completely open question.

The Church has not yet pronounced on them. The field is therefore open to every discussion. Any thinker has the right to assess these events as best pleases him, denying their supernatural origin, casting doubt on it or admitting it, and no one has the right to censure him for it.

The Catholic has no less freedom of judgement and of criticism in examining this matter than the atheist. That is why all sincere opinions deserve deference and respect; above all in a question like this one, which no one has so far managed to resolve satisfactorily, it is right that everyone, even those who do not share it, should respect the conclusion of a scholar in the investigation he conscientiously undertakes, whatever that conclusion may be.

The occurrences at Fátima constitute an astounding phenomenon, unquestionably worthy of study. In an age in which science has reached, so to speak, its apogee, it would be truly regrettable if that phenomenon did not command the attention of those who, by their judgement and their competence, are in a position to study profitably and to assess duly the origin and nature of that multiple and complex phenomenon. I know that illustrious professors of our highest scientific

institutes continue to devote their enlightened attention to the study of the meteorological phenomena that occurred on the thirteenth of each month from May to October and to the grandiose solar phenomenon witnessed by more than fifty thousand people on the thirteenth of October last, on one of the plateaus of the northern fringe of the Serra de Minde.

But it is absolutely indispensable that, in the interest of truth, whatever it may be, everyone contribute his share to the solution of this difficult problem, insoluble until now, to the deciphering of this singular enigma, impenetrable until now. That is what I intend to do by writing you this letter and granting you the freedom to publish whatever you think fit.

This said, it was my intention to begin today the historical [29] narration of the facts that occurred at Fátima, had you not asked me in your last letter whether any extraordinary cures had yet taken place that might in some way vouch for the supernatural origin of those facts. To satisfy your legitimate curiosity I shall now describe one of the many cures of which I have knowledge, accomplished and, as it seems, definitively secured on the thirteenth of October, at the so-called place of the apparitions, to which since then, notwithstanding the brutal and sacrilegious violence of anti-religious fanaticism, always the enemy of true freedom of belief, hundreds and thousands of people from every part of the country have been flocking uninterruptedly, in a pious and inoffensive pilgrimage that edifies, moves and delights.

Maria do Carmo, aged forty-seven, a native of the hamlet of Arnal, parish of Maceira, municipality of Leiria, married to Joaquim dos Santos, had for five years been suffering from a quite serious illness, which presented all the characteristic symptoms of tuberculosis. In the first phase of the illness she felt, from time to time, pains, not very strong ones, in her head, stomach and intestines. At the beginning of 1916 the pains grew extraordinarily worse. They were continuous and hard to bear. She then felt them in her back and, with still greater intensity, in her chest. At the same time she began to suffer from shortness of breath. Her hands, feet and belly swelled enormously. It was suspected that she had a tumour in the womb. She was wasting away and growing thinner before people's eyes. Three months later she did not look like the same person, for from being well-fleshed she had become extremely thin. She could not put any somewhat heavy object on her head because of the torments this caused her. She often felt the urge to vomit, though she did not vomit.

Whenever she took any food, and for as long as digestion lasted, the headaches increased. The stomach pains hardly allowed her to sleep.

So as not to be worse off, she ate very little.

She lived exclusively or almost exclusively on milk.

A deep, dry cough racked her chest incessantly. Her saliva often tasted of blood. All the [30] neighbours were convinced that the unfortunate woman was tubercular. She herself would not let her children come near her for fear of contagion. A man who knew perfectly well how grave the illness was, while talking one day with some friends and seeing her pass nearby, told them in a tone of voice that left no room for doubt that she was irremediably lost and could not live more than a fortnight. This took place in the middle of July of last year.

In vain did she seek relief for her ailments in the resources of medicine.

Poor as she was, and there being no doctor except some kilometres away, at Batalha, she went there only once with her husband to consult the distinguished and skilful practitioner Dr. Padrão. The remedies that physician prescribed brought her no relief whatever.

In these circumstances she cherished no illusions about the gravity of her condition and was resignedly awaiting death. At that time the consoling news was spreading from place to place, from one end of the country to the other, that since the previous month of May the Most Holy Virgin had been appearing every month on the thirteenth to some humble little children who pastured livestock at a place commonly called “Cova da Iria”, belonging to the parish of Fátima, municipality of Vila Nova de Ourém, seven leagues^* from Maceira. A gleam of gentle hope suddenly lit up her dejected and embittered spirit. Full of faith, she invokes the Mother of God and, to obtain through her intercession the so longed-for cure, makes a vow to go to Fátima four times on foot and barefoot. She chose the thirteenth of August to begin fulfilling her vow.

But her husband, though a God-fearing man, considering such an undertaking sheer recklessness, opposed her going.

“We are poor,” he said to his wife, “we haven't the means to hire a carriage in which you could make the journey without danger and with some chance of arriving there alive. Be patient, but I won't let you go”.

In truth her weakness was so great [31] that she grew extremely tired whenever she walked, however little. About two hundred metres from the house where they live she owns a small plot of farmland. For a long time she had rarely gone there, and when she did she had to

sit down countless times by the roadside to rest. Her daughters did all the housework, the mother indicating and assigning the various tasks, without being able to help them as she wished, because her strength was failing. She insisted, however, so much with her husband that he, seeing her unshakeable confidence, gave in to her persistent entreaties and resolved to accompany her.

At last the thirteenth of August came, so ardently awaited. At one o'clock in the morning of that day the sick woman sets out in the company of her husband, who still considered such a journey recklessness and folly. She rested several times on the way.

It was nine o'clock in the morning when she reached the place of the apparitions. She was quite exhausted and felt a great deal of pain; in her own words, she was nothing but pain. A few moments later, to her great surprise, she felt notable relief.

She sat down in the shade of a large, leafy holm oak, where she took some food, and stayed there until three o'clock in the afternoon, when she set off again. On the way back the pains were less intense and she did not feel as tired as on the way there.

From day to day the improvement became more and more marked. Meanwhile she began to take solid food, but her main food continued to be milk. On the thirteenth of September she went back to Fátima for the second time, the journey not causing her as much discomfort as on the thirteenth of August. Each time she went there she prayed the rosary both going and coming back, neither talking nor paying attention to the conversations of the people who accompanied her.

From that day on she improved still more.

She was already doing a little work at home and went to the farm with less difficulty. On the thirteenth of October she left early in the morning as on the other occasions, but before reaching Fátima [32] she was caught by the memorable torrential rain that marked that autumn day. Although she got soaked through, the rain drenching the clothes she was wearing, she felt perfectly well at the place of the apparitions. The pains vanished, never to return. The swelling of her belly and of her upper and lower limbs likewise disappeared as if by magic. Having returned home, from that day to this she eats everything, at any hour of the day or night, and, however indigestible the food, she does not feel the slightest discomfort. She has not again felt short of breath. She works hard and can carry heavy loads on her head as before her illness. She has never had a cough again. She is plump, feels strong and enjoys

excellent health. On the thirteenth of November she went again to Fátima in order to thank the Virgin of the Rosary for her cure.

Here is the most exact narration possible, allowing for some insignificant error of detail, of the illness and cure of Maria do Carmo, a narration drawn up on the basis of the formal record I made motu proprio on the twelfth of February, at Maceira, in the presence of several trustworthy witnesses, and in particular of her husband, all of whom confirmed the accuracy of her statement. I do not cite the names of witnesses, though I am authorised to do so, because all the inhabitants of the parish are firmly convinced that the cure of that sick woman can in no way be explained by the action of natural forces. Can that cure really be considered supernatural? It is not for me to say: it is for science and above all for the Church. Will it be easy to establish its supernatural character with certainty, after so many months have gone by and there having probably been no medical observation as thorough as would have been fitting? I do not know, nor does that concern me. My aim is simply to draw the attention of serious and cultivated people, whatever their religious principles or their opinions about the nature of the events of Fátima, to these and other facts that appear to me worthy of special study, because they may perhaps help to determine clearly the nature of those events. Are they the result of mere illusions of the senses, especially [33] of the imagination? Are they a mystification cleverly contrived by the power of darkness? Are they the work of God? That is what must be ascertained, without preconceived ideas and without parti pris, as befits a conscientious and impartial critic. [DCF, III-2 - Doc. 382]

THE DAY OF 13 OCTOBER 1919

(TWO YEARS LATER)

We had already written this brief account of what happened at Fátima on 13 October 1919, and were hesitating whether to publish it, when the death of little Jacinta, one of the little shepherdesses of Fátima, once again brought up for discussion this problem that seemed somewhat forgotten.

Did Our Lady really appear at Fátima?

To this question, naturally, no concrete and positive answer can yet be given, either one way or the other.

These are questions so transcendent that it would be rash on the part of a Catholic to accept or reject out of hand any supernatural intervention such as the one in question.

What remains for us to do, then, is to wait patiently either for the apparition to be confirmed or, on the contrary, for its impression to fade away completely.

Meanwhile we must ask and pray much to Our Lord that He may make the light of truth shine forth, and at the same time we must do the penance that the Lady recommended, which, even if the apparition were not a reality, is no less necessary for that, and has so often been called to mind by God, from the famous times of Nineveh^* to the grotto of Massabielle^*.

And while we go on praying, it is fitting to gather impartially all the facts that have occurred, without preoccupations of any kind and solely with the aim of clarifying and grounding an opinion, whatever it may be.

That is why we have resolved to publish this simple account, to which we shall add some loose and very edifying notes on the death of the humble and innocent Jacinta.

[35] ON THE WAY TO FÁTIMA

The thirteenth of October 1919 dawned.

In the village, where I had arrived the day before, the tower clock showed on its time-blackened face half past ten in the morning (official time^*).

Long strings of greyish clouds were drifting gently across the sky, seeming to herald one of those fearful thunderstorms, accompanied by heavy downpours, that are so frequent at the beginning of autumn.

Covering at a speed of sixty kilometres an hour the distance that separated me from Vila Nova de Ourém, I arrived at this important town of the district of Santarém at eleven o'clock sharp. The day before, the large-circulation newspapers, in their reports from the provinces, had announced for the following day an unusual throng of pilgrims and curious people at the land of the apparitions, the resort of mystery and prodigy, the famous and alluring Fátima.

And so indeed it was. It was the second anniversary of the sixth and last apparition to the little seers of Aljustrel and of the astounding solar phenomenon that they had predicted with mathematical certainty and that about sixty thousand people of all classes and social conditions and from every part of the country had the good fortune to witness.

Everyone still remembers the tremendous echo that this unheard-of event produced in the whole Portuguese press, which dealt with it at length.

On the road from Vila Nova de Ourém to the village of Fátima, which lies twelve kilometres away, the traffic, right from the edge of the town, is extraordinary. The inhabitants lean out of their windows or appear on the balconies or at the doors of their houses to contemplate the interesting and moving spectacle that meets their wondering eyes. One sees numerous groups of people, some on foot, others on horseback. Vehicles of every size and every model literally clog the road. Here are men and women of the common people walking slowly and in silence. Further on is a family of distinction comfortably installed in a luxury carriage. Further still a [36] distinguished army officer is driving a trap carrying some members of his family.

Then a motor car passes, quickly climbing the slope. The groups of pilgrims on foot, the lines of carts, the traditional donkey parties, the endless strings of bicycles, the ox-carts, the carriages and the solitary motor cars circulate in ever greater numbers as the vehicle carrying me approaches the crest of the hills at a dizzying speed.

It is half past eleven when I arrive at the parish church of Fátima.

A good many pilgrims, tired from the road, are resting by the roadside near the church. There are still three kilometres to go to the end of my journey, beside the modest chapel erected next to the sacred holm oak. On the rest of the way the movement of people on foot, riders, carriages and motor cars is astonishing. The pilgrims from the nearest villages, having satisfied the demands of their piety, are already returning to their homes to devote themselves to the work of the fields, which is then in full swing, especially the grape harvest and the picking of figs.

Others are leaving because they come from far away, having spent the night travelling.

They have made their visit, fulfilled their vows and are returning to their homes, because it was not curiosity but only duty and devotion that drew them to that privileged spot.

At this moment we are at the top of the hills. At that hour of the morning and at that high altitude the temperature is still, as could not fail to be the case in such a season, extremely low: it feels cold. The side-car in which I am travelling has difficulty making its way through the immense mass of people filling the road. The horn sounds incessantly and the vehicle's pace, until then dizzying, slackens considerably.

The silence, the composure and the recollection of that whole endless human wave are remarkable.

One would say it has a vivid and profound intuition that the ground it treads is sacred and that an atmosphere of the supernatural envelops and saturates it. From all the roads, [37] lanes and short cuts people are flocking. But lo, two hundred metres away, on the right-hand side of the road, an immense multitude comes into view at the bottom of a valley. We are therefore at the famous spot, commonly called Cova da Iria, where the apparitions of the Queen of Heaven took place. The lovely little chapel stands, now close to us, beside the holm oak on which the feet of the heavenly vision rested, displaying its walls of the purest whiteness and raising on high, like a perennial supplication, its rustic but graceful roof of red tiles.

Around it more than five hundred people are kneeling in fervent prayer. Here and there, on either side of the road and all over the vast slope, in the shade of the oaks, nothing is to be seen but vehicles of every kind and numerous groups of pilgrims resting or eating their packed food, in a silence and gravity inspired by devotion and by respect for the place.

SINGING AND PRAYING!... BLESSED AND PRAISED BE!...

It is almost noon. Through the clouds that keep drifting across the sky, the sun appears from time to time and darts its most vivid rays down on our heads. A group of pilgrims is approaching the spot in procession. There are about a hundred people: men, women and children. Some of the men are wearing confraternity capes, one of them carrying in front a banner bearing a panel with the image of the Most Holy Virgin. As they walk, they devoutly pray the rosary aloud. Every so often, in the intervals between the mysteries, a choir of silvery voices intones sweet hymns in honour of Our Lady. I ask where that procession comes from and am told it is from the hamlet of Covas, within the bounds of Carreirancha, parish of Alqueidão da Serra. The procession halts by the chapel. Some pilgrims go into it and one of them prays the rosary alternately with the bystanders. Part of the multitude is kneeling, the other part standing. People are arriving all the time. I set off to go round the spot. A little apart from the multitude, a man [38] of venerable appearance, modestly dressed, is sitting on the ground with his hands joined, telling the beads of his rosary, without paying attention to what is going on around him.

Meanwhile hundreds of mouths sing the moving popular hymn to the Most August Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Blessed and praised be.

TWO CURES

A man of the people comes up to me and tells me the simple but touching story of his cure. His name is Manuel Antunes Carvalho and he is 45 years old. During his narrative emotion sometimes chokes his voice and tears as thick as fists stream down his cheeks. Before his illness he had come to Fátima four times. It is the first time he has come back there since his cure. He has come with his wife and four children to fulfil the vow he had made to obtain it.

A few moments later a young man of resolute manner, to whom my attention is drawn, passes in front of me. I ask him why he has come to Fátima. He answers evasively, suspecting that I am questioning him in order to make fun of him. He starts to walk off abruptly. Some people manage to convince him that I am present to gather information intended for publication. Then he confidently retraces his steps and describes to me the cure of a son whom a few months earlier he had believed lost beyond remedy. His name is Veríssimo dos Reis Ambrósio and he lives in the parish of Vidigueira, municipality of Torres Vedras. He says that when a son of his, nine years old, had been in danger of death for two months already, nothing but skin and bone, the mother and the maternal grandmother vowed to go to Fátima to give thanks for the child's cure, if Our Lady saw fit to grant them that grace. The child was completely cured and was now there, very plump and radiating health, in the arms of his mother, who had meanwhile come up to show him to me.

[39] A GRATEFUL FIREWORK-MAKER!...

Suddenly, about fifty metres from the chapel, a big rocket goes up into the air and bursts at an enormous height, producing a tremendous bang, like a cannon shot, which echoes over hills and valleys far and wide and can be heard many leagues away. This rocket is followed by twenty more.

Around me some people, not knowing the reason for that salute, express their displeasure at the profanation of the place of the apparitions by such a scene, which contrasted so greatly with the silence and recollection of the multitude. They find it strange and regret that the clergy hold themselves completely aloof from what goes on there, because surely under their direction such things would not happen.

They fear that the edifying demonstrations of faith that are repeated there so frequently may, in the course of time, turn into vain and noisy fairground revels. If the ecclesiastical authority, these people said, respectfully, however, and without a critical spirit, had any part in the course of the events of Fátima, it would not have permitted this unseemly display of rejoicing, which was an irreverence and a disrespect, or at least would have prevented it from taking place so near the venerable landmark of the marvellous occurrences. With a notebook and pencil in hand I go up to the man who had let off the rockets and ask him his name. He draws himself up, changes colour, becomes all formal and answers me in a curt, brief tone: “If you are the authorities, sir, and have come to arrest me for letting off the rockets without a licence, I don't mind paying the fine or going to jail. I have fulfilled my vow and now I'm ready for anything”. I reassure him without delay, assuring him that my purpose is simply to know whether he had fired the twenty-one-gun salute in fulfilment of some vow. Then he takes heart, his face brightens, and, full of enthusiasm, he begins to narrate, in simple but eloquent language, his touching story.

The owner of a gunpowder and fireworks [40] factory in an important parish of the municipality of Porto de Mós, he lived with his wife and children devoted to the occupations of his trade and enjoying perfect health. At the beginning of last July he began to suffer from a serious gastrointestinal illness. The aid of medicine was of no use to him. From day to day his condition grew steadily worse.

In vain did the distinguished physicians Padrão, of Batalha, and Neves, of Alcobaça, lavish at his bedside the resources and care of their knowledge and experience. All human hope of the cure of his ills being lost, and fearing to leave his children in poverty by his death, he turns, full of confidence, to Her who is rightly called the Consoler of the Afflicted and the Health of the Sick and invokes her patronage, promising, if he obtained a cure, to go to Fátima and let off at the place of the apparitions a salute of twenty-one mortar rockets, each costing one escudo, prepared specially for that purpose. Once the vow was made, he begins to feel better and a short time later he is completely restored. He has come to Fátima accompanied by his wife, his mother-in-law, a son and a nephew, to thank Our Lady for that grace and to fulfil his vow.

LORD GOD!... MERCY!...

It is a quarter to one.

A woman with a fogaça^* on her head makes her way on her knees towards the chapel. Several people surround her and with great difficulty open a way for her through the compact multitude that pressed around the popular landmark commemorating the apparitions.

Shortly afterwards a well-dressed man, with a son in his arms and followed by his wife with tears in her eyes, also makes his way towards the chapel.

Meanwhile the procession from Covas re-forms and sets off for the parish church. Beside the chapel a woman of the people prays the rosary alternately with the bystanders. From time to time these moving supplications are heard, coming from the depths of the soul: “Lord [41] God, mercy! Lord, hear my prayer and let my cry come unto you!”.

A gentleman from the hamlet of Marruas (Torres Novas), who looks about fifty years old, is a short distance from where I am. His attitude impresses me. One would say he was the statue of suffering comforted by faith. People who know him tell me his painful story. At the end of January of this year an apoplectic stroke numbed his lower limbs and produced in his larynx a serious paralysis, which took away his voice completely. He walks with difficulty and leaning on a stick. He has come to Fátima, hoping with lively faith for his cure. I go up to him, ask him several questions and address a few words of comfort to him. Emotion takes hold of him and the poor old man weeps aloud and convulsively like a child. His wife, who is beside him, weeps too, but in silence, trying tenderly to cheer him. [DCF, III-2 - Doc. 474]

LÚCIA, THE SEER

It is now one o'clock. The news passes from mouth to mouth that the little shepherdess Lúcia, the Virgin's privileged one, the chief protagonist of the apparitions, is on her way to the Cova da Iria and is already near. A strange murmur is heard and the multitude grows more and more agitated. Countless people rush to meet the seer. She advances with difficulty and makes her way to the chapel, where she prays the rosary alternately with the people.

From time to time, in the distance, on the road, the horn of an arriving motor car is heard. The multitude is enormous. Various groups form,

which pray the rosary aloud. Beside the chapel a girl prays fervently, invoking the Queen of Peace with full confidence.

WE HAVE A MAN!

At this point I learn of another extraordinary case. It concerns a boy who has come to Fátima to thank Our Lady for his improvement. His name is Laurentino [42] Carreira Poças. He is the son of Adriano Carreira Poças and Joana Carreira Rebela Poças and is fourteen years old. A native of Reguengo do Fetal, he went last year to Leiria, where he had obtained a position as a shop assistant in a draper's shop. Of weak constitution, he began to feel ill, and his malaise grew so much worse that his employer decided to send him home so that he could be properly treated. On reaching the foot of the stairs of his home he fainted and fell helplessly to the ground, so great was his weakness. Dr. Pereira, who had treated him during his stay in Leiria, sent with him a letter to an uncle named Francisco Carreira Poças, in which he said that the nephew was tubercular. His mother, as soon as he arrived, vowed to go to Fátima and go round the chapel on her knees with an offering on her head, if he got better.

The poor boy felt a sharp stabbing pain in his chest, on the right side, up to the height of his neck. He was forbidden to make any effort. His thinness was extreme. He could not play. His only wish was to be always at rest. At present he feels no ill at all. He came by bicycle from Reguengo do Fetal, which is two leagues away, carrying a little boy in front of him on the handlebars. The day before, it had been three months since he had come home ill. A month and a half ago Dr. Pereira saw him again in Leiria, where he went to consult him, and said he found him much better, using these exact words, which expressed at once surprise and satisfaction: “We have a man!”.

SAVED FROM THE PLAGUE!

I come across again the small group I had seen a little earlier going into the chapel.

They are a husband, a wife and a son. The husband's name is José António Mota and he is 31 years old. The wife's name is Maria do Espírito Santo and she is the same age as her husband. They are natives of the hamlet of Vargos, parish of Paço, municipality of Torres Novas. The wife was very ill with an attack of bronchopneumonia for about a

month, in October and November of last year. One day the husband saw her so bad that he feared he would lose her, and for that reason he turned to Fátima, invoked Our Lady of the Rosary and vowed to go with his family to that village and give an alms in keeping with his means, if his wife was cured.

The Most Holy Virgin granted him that grace and he has come in the company of his wife, a son and his mother-in-law to fulfil the vow. He had come to Fátima two years ago today, on the day of the great prodigy.

A few metres away, by the side of the road, a woman of the people can be seen advancing on her knees towards the chapel. It is half past one: precisely astronomical noon. There must be more than two thousand people present. Near me a woman, deeply impressed by everything she had observed, was saying with conviction that even if she found herself obliged to leave the country, she would make every effort to come back to Fátima.

MOST HOLY VIRGIN, FORGIVE ME!

At this point a well-dressed man who had just arrived pushes his way through the multitude crowding around the chapel, looks with an air of mockery and pity at the pilgrims praying on their knees, and stops in front of the door of the shrine. A few moments later, seized by an inner emotion, he falls to his knees and utters, with a sob, this supplication, which the bystanders heard distinctly: “Most Holy Virgin, forgive me!”, remaining for a long time in deep recollection.

An officer on horseback advances cautiously through the people at some distance from the chapel. I ask who he is and am told he is the municipal administrator. He observes attentively everything that happens and keeps riding up and down. He seems to me anxious not to fail in the duties that propriety imposes on an intelligent and well-bred person, despite the advanced ideas I am told he holds.

[45] WILL JACINTA DIE?!...

Jacinta de Jesus Marto, one of the seers of Aljustrel, comes up to me, accompanied by her mother. Both are in deep mourning for the death of Francisco Marto, Jacinta's brother, who had also been favoured with the vision of the Virgin and who to his last breath always maintained the truth of his accounts. The little girl is

a skeleton. Her arms are astonishingly thin. Since she left the hospital of Vila Nova de Ourém, where for two months she was treated without result, she has been constantly burning with fever. Her appearance inspires pity.

Poor child! Only last year full of life and health, and already today like a withered flower, drooping at the edge of the grave! Tuberculosis, after an attack of bronchopneumonia and a purulent pleurisy, is pitilessly undermining her frail organism. Only appropriate treatment in a good sanatorium might perhaps save her. But her parents, although they are not poor, cannot meet the heavy expenses such treatment demands.

Bernadette, the humble shepherdess of Lourdes, heard from the mouth of the Immaculate One, who deigned to appear to her on the rocks of Massabielle, the promise that she would make her happy, not in this world, but in the next.

Might the Virgin have made an identical promise to the little shepherdess of the Serra de Minde, to whom she communicated a secret that the seer can reveal to no one?

Thus the sufferings of Jacinta de Jesus, borne with Christian resignation, will be for her a source of merits that will make her crown of glory in Heaven more brilliant and precious.

BLESSED LAND!

Together with the pilgrimage from Covas, which is returning from the parish church, comes a girl who was suffering from a serious illness and whose cure, attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Fátima, has been the subject of conversation of all the pilgrims in recent months.

[46] Many people accompany her, hearing from her own mouth the account of the episodes of her illness and her cure.

She is now near the chapel. I go up to her, forcing my way with difficulty through the multitude that surrounds her in a tight circle.

I proceed to question her. Her name is Maria da Conceição; she is 21 years old, the daughter of Francisco Correia and Maria dos Anjos Correia, and a native and resident of the hamlet of Carreirancha, parish of Alqueidão da Serra, district of Leiria. She has two brothers and four sisters, who live with her in her father's house.

She lives at one end of the hamlet, in the highest part. Seven years ago she suffered a severe attack of influenza and, not having been treated as she should have been, her general state of health suffered greatly. Some months after having had the influenza she was struck by cerebrospinal meningitis, and during this serious illness she was treated by Dr. Padrão, of Batalha. The remedies

she took brought her no relief at all. She felt violent pains in her head, chest and legs. A deep, dry cough constantly racked her chest. About three and a half years ago she brought up blood abundantly from her mouth for fifteen consecutive days. The blood stopped flowing after urgent supplications to Our Lady. Many people, seeing her state of weakness and prostration, said she was condemned to die soon, a victim of tuberculosis. During the last seven months she was bedridden, paralysed, scarcely able to move. The pains she felt were horrible. She had no rest by day or night, because the violence of the pains did not let her get to sleep. Yet, in the midst of her atrocious sufferings, she had never lost confidence in the protection of the Most Holy Virgin, from whom she unshakeably expected her cure.

On 23 March of this year, in the afternoon, she told her family that Our Lady had appeared to her and assured her that two days later, at 9 o'clock in the morning, she would be able to get up from her bed of pain, recommending her to go to Fátima and promising her that she would be cured by using earth from the place of the apparitions. Contrary to the expectation of her family, who refused to give credit [47] to what she said, supposing her to be the victim of a hallucination, on the 25th, at the appointed hour, the sick girl gets up, to everyone's great amazement, and, mounting a horse, sets off for Fátima. Having returned home, after carrying out her devotions and giving due thanks, she makes a novena^*. Praying the rosary and a station^* each day and applying earth from the place of the apparitions dissolved in water as a remedy for external and internal use, she feels herself cured at the end of the novena. At present she walks without difficulty, does not tire with work and feels no pain. Every month since then she has gone to Fátima on the 13th, except in the month of September, to thank Our Lady for her cure. Manuel Pastilhas and Maria de Jesus, of Boiceiros, and other people who accompany her, state that they saw her in a pitiful state, paralysed and extremely thin.

ANOTHER CURE

[48] BAD BLOOD!

An interesting group of four people, a lady and three girls, draws the attention of the bystanders. They have come to thank Our Lady for the cure of which one of them was the object. They are a mother, two daughters and a goddaughter.

They live in Lisbon at Rua de D. Estefânia, no. 115, 3rd floor. The mother's name is Dona Amélia Júlia dos Santos, widow of Carlos Alberto dos Santos. One of the daughters, the elder, is the protagonist of this moving episode. Her name is Maria Manuel dos Santos and she is 25 years old. She spent four years as a pupil at the College of São Pedro de Alcântara, having entered in 1910 and left in 1914. She belongs to a family harshly tried by suffering.

Many close relatives have died of tuberculosis, among them a brother aged six. Her father died insane and a brother went mad some months ago and is at present in the hospital of the Brothers of Saint John of God, at Telhal.

Having finished her studies she left the College and went to the Alentejo, setting herself up as a private teacher at Arraiolos, where she arrived on the fourteenth of October 1914. A few days later she was struck by an attack of appendicitis and withdrew to Lisbon on medical advice on the twenty-fourth of the same month. In November of the following year she suffered a second attack, and a third in March. On the twenty-eighth of May she entered the hospital of D. Estefânia in order to be operated on. The operation took place on the eleventh of June and was performed by Drs. Monjardim, Pinto Coelho and Medeiros. At the end of the month, on the twenty-eighth, she left the hospital and was taken home in a carriage. She spent little more than a month at home, going back again to the hospital on the fifteenth of August because her state of health had worsened. She stayed there until “August of November”^*, the day on

which she was operated on for the second time. Meanwhile she began to feel a very severe pain, located in her right leg and extending from the hip to the knee. At times the violence of the pain reached a paroxysm and became unbearable. She could only be calmed by dint of injections.

There were periods when she did not sleep for nights on end. Her leg was always drawn up and bent.

Traction bandages and plaster casts were applied to her. The fever was constant, but not very high.

She was wasting away and growing thinner from day to day. Her appetite disappeared. Various tonics were prescribed for her – glycerophosphate of lime, iodotannic syrup and strychnine, and injections of various kinds – arrhenal, cacodylate and dynamol.

Her illness was diagnosed as coxalgia, resulting from a fall the patient had had as a child, down the stairs from a fourth floor to a third. When that accident occurred she was eleven years old. She had only been left with her leg hurt and covered in bruises, which soon faded without leaving any trace of internal injury.

The doctors were of the opinion that the action of the chloroform and ether with which she had been anaesthetised at the time of the operations had brought the latent illness to light. [DCF, III-2, Doc. 480]

VIA DOLOROSA

Before the second operation the pains were not so strong, and the patient could walk, though with great difficulty. She then lived in Rua de Passos Manuel, near Largo de Santa Bárbara. It was two hundred paces from the hospital. She remained under observation and treatment for a year, spending now three months in hospital, now six months at home.

When she was at home, she went to the hospital for treatment, leaning on a parasol. She had to be admitted to the hospital some five times, going sometimes by carriage, sometimes on a stretcher. After two and a half years of treatment, on the first of November 1916, on the doctors' advice, she left the hospital of D. Estefânia for the Sanatorium of Outão, in the hope that the sea air would bring some relief to her sufferings. She was carried to the Terreiro do Paço in a Red Cross motor car. She was carried in people's arms onto the steamer that made the crossing of the Tagus. From Barreiro she was taken in the same way to the train, in which she went on to Setúbal. There a motor car was waiting for her, which took her to the Sanatorium.

[50] AT THE SANATORIUM

She spent ten months at that resort.

During the first month she did not get out of bed. Then, with the aid of crutches, she began to walk with her leg encased in a plaster appliance. After seven months coxalgia also declared itself in her left leg. She felt an acute pain in her thigh, the leg began to draw up, and the unfortunate girl found herself obliged to take to her bed. The right leg remained immobilised in the plaster appliance and a plaster boot was fitted to the left leg. As the doctor who had been treating her had left for France and the physician who succeeded him in the direction of the Sanatorium was a specialist in lung diseases and not bone diseases, the patient wished to return to Lisbon. Meanwhile her state of health worsened because of an intestinal infection that came upon her.

A fellow patient, a friend of hers, who had always been a devoted nurse to her, moved to pity by her condition, wrote her mother a letter in which she told her to come and fetch her daughter, because she was dying.

The poor lady, her soul pierced with grief, set off without delay for Outão in order to take her daughter to the capital, but, as the doctor opposed what he rightly considered recklessness, she gave up her intention for the time being and returned to Lisbon alone. Five days later, through her efforts, a nurse from the hospital of D. Estefânia went to the Sanatorium to see whether she could bring the patient home.

At that time a schoolmistress from Lisbon used to go three times a week to teach handiwork to the children of the Sanatorium.

Advantage was taken of one of the days when she was returning to the capital so that she could accompany the patient, who was also accompanied by the nurse already mentioned and by a male nurse from the Sanatorium.

[51] FROM PILLAR TO POST!...

In the courtyard of the Sanatorium a carriage received the patient, who was carried on a litter on the shoulders of two servants. In the carriage she rode in the arms of the schoolmistress and the nurse. One leg was in the appliance and the other in the plaster boot and between splints. The pains were horrible. The weakness was extreme. Any movement made her faint. At Setúbal station her three travelling companions carried her from the carriage to the train with a thousand precautions.

A man travelling in the same compartment charitably helped her to get in and settle down. During the journey she lost consciousness repeatedly.

The nurse, unable to feel her pulse, was greatly distressed, fearing she would die during the journey. At Barreiro she was carried in people's arms, unconscious, from the train to the steamer, and likewise in Lisbon from the steamer to the Red Cross motor car, which took her home, by then in Rua de D. Estefânia. On the quay her family awaited her arrival. When she disembarked her pallor was deathly. The people who saw her pass lamented her sad lot, full of compassion. Some said she was dead, others that she was injured, others finally that she was burned. She was carried on the small stretcher from the motor car up to her bed, on a third floor.

It was the tenth of August. On the advice of a pharmacist acquainted with the family, Dr. Miranda, a specialist in bone diseases, was sent for. Only eight or ten days later was that doctor able to visit the patient. As soon as he saw her, he advised her to go to the hospital for a consultation in order to have a new appliance fitted. She did so. She was etherised so that her legs could be properly stretched. However, as the appliance did not fit well and broke, so that the leg was not as straight as it needed to be, the doctor had her spend ten days in traction. Then she went back home. Later, on the sixth of July 1918, she went to Dr. Miranda's consulting room in the Avenida da Liberdade so that he could [52] fit her, as he in fact did, with another appliance, a large one, from the knees up to the stomach. She went on a stretcher in a Red Cross motor car, which waited while the appliance was fitted and then took her home. She kept that appliance on during the months of January and February. Meanwhile the patient, through the hospital employees, kept supplying the doctor with information about her condition. At Easter she sent to ask him to come and apply another appliance, because she still felt pain. The doctor told her she would always have pain and advised her to buy the necessary leather, as he was ready to make an appliance that she would have to wear all her life. As the plaster appliance had broken and she felt little pain when it was in good condition, she asked the doctor to replace that appliance with another one, also of plaster. The doctor agreed. The patient therefore went into hospital, where she stayed exactly fourteen days. She went in on the twelfth of March and came out on the twenty-eighth of the same month, Good Friday. She went and came back in a Red Cross motor car, remaining in bed for three months with the same appliance.

A SISTER'S PIETY

At the time of the last apparition at Fátima, on the thirteenth of October 1917, her sister Lúcia Maria Ana dos Santos, aged twenty, who was spending the summer in the hamlet of Carrascos, parish of Paço, municipality of Torres Novas, at the house of her cousin Amélia Estêvão, went with several family members to that village of the Serra de Minde and witnessed the marvellous phenomena that took place there, begging the Most Holy Virgin with the greatest fervour and in the greatest distress to deign to cure her sister. Her sister's cure was her great preoccupation every day, every hour, every instant. It was her most ardent desire, the grace she most longed for, the favour from Heaven she implored with the keenest earnestness and the greatest constancy. On the thirteenth of the previous month she had already gone to Fátima and ardently implored that grace. Before that day, still in September, she had asked a [53] cousin of hers, Júlio Neto de Almeida, not to forget to commend her intention to the privileged little shepherdesses of Fátima. On the thirteenth of October she herself asked the seers for the help of their prayers and promised that her sister would go to Fátima to give thanks for her cure if Our Lady deigned to favour her with that grace. Meanwhile she went on praying to Our Lady of Fátima, cherishing the hope of seeing her sister cured, despite the grave crises she was going through and everyone losing their last hopes of her recovery.

AN EXTRAORDINARY CURE! SAYS THE DOCTOR...

When, three months later, in June, the last appliance was removed and the nurse offered to carry her in her arms to the bath, the patient refused the offer, saying she could go on her own feet. A month later she was already walking without leaning on anything, though with difficulty. She then went to Fanhões, near Loures, returning to Lisbon two months later. There she walked leaning on a stick, and she came back from there walking well. Before leaving for Fanhões she went to the hospital.

The doctor, on seeing her, was dumbfounded. He would not believe it was the same person. He addressed her, saying: “Why, girl, is it you?! It looks like a miracle!”. And at once, as if on reflection, he added: “A miracle, no; an extraordinary cure, a rare case.” Then he examined her attentively and said he found her well.

Many people acquainted with the patient, who were not strong believers, said in amazement that her cure seemed like a miracle.

People of religious feeling who had known her pitiful state had no doubts about the supernatural character of her cure...

[DCF, III-2 - Doc. 492]

ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE

At the time of the two operations the patient received the sacraments. Her sister every day or almost every day, especially after the events of Fátima, [54] prayed the rosary and offered it for her cure. The patient, through a letter her sister wrote to their mother from Carrascos at the time of her trip to Fátima, learned of the vow she had made and had joined in her intentions, but resignedly conforming herself to the will of God and asking Our Lady to do what was best for her soul.

HOW GOOD IT WOULD BE TO STAY HERE!...

It is a quarter to three.

More than a thousand people are present.

The coming and going is extraordinary. Meanwhile I learn of another cure. Maria José, aged 50, a native of the hamlet of Maxieira, parish of Fátima, married to António do Rosário, began to suffer seriously from her eyes last July. Her sight grew clouded and she saw very little. She had pain and itching in her eyes. She vowed, if she got better, to go on her knees up to the chapel from the point where she first caught sight of it. She does indeed feel better, almost completely cured. She has therefore come today to fulfil her vow.

I look around me. The spectacle is superb. The multitude seems to tear itself away with difficulty from this sacred spot, to which hearts remain bound. One enjoys here a gentle and holy joy, a consolation that does not seem of this world. One breathes in the supernatural in great draughts.

... BUT ONE MUST LEAVE!...

It is time to go back. My watch shows four o'clock. I set off for the parish church, which is undergoing repairs. Many pilgrims go there to visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and to see the works. The workmen, while recently demolishing part of the walls of the high

altar, discovered a statue of Our Lady with the Child Jesus in her arms, life-size and in a perfect state of preservation. The discovery of this image caused a sensation throughout the region and among the pilgrims, all the more since everything seems to indicate that it is an image of Our Lady of the Rosary.

[55]ON THE WAY HOME!...

Along the roads I travel, which are full of pilgrims returning to their homes, the same spectacle as in the morning is to be seen, but perhaps even more impressive. Near and far, nothing is heard but the cadenced recitation of the rosary, or the singing of the litany of the Most Holy Virgin, or of popular hymns in her honour.

And when, at night, seven leagues from Fátima, I was making my way after dinner to the station of Paialvo to catch the express to Lisbon, the Lourdes Ave^* could still be heard along the roads, sung by the pilgrims who, on foot or on horseback, longed to reach as quickly as possible their distant homes, where on winter evenings by the fireside they will recount to those who had stayed behind the stupendous marvels of mysterious Fátima. And with the poet they will repeat, singing full of faith and confidence in the August Patroness of Portugal, the beautiful and inspired stanzas whose sounds the hills and valleys of the Serra de Aire seem to echo far away:

Today... But today she is still a star,
Holy Mary!... She is still Mother!
She came to the county of Nuno^*
to say so in the lands of Ourém!

When in Rome, by solemn rite, Dom Nuno
was being raised to a throne of light,
there came to Fátima to smile upon us
the sweet mother of Jesus!

She came to tell us, in the mist
of our gloomy evening,
that now from Heaven there watch over us
Friar Nuno and Holy Mary.

[57] THE DEATH OF LITTLE JACINTA

As we promised, we shall now give our readers some brief notes on the death of little Jacinta, one of the seers of Fátima, and then we shall also say something about our impressions of the thirteenth of May 1920, which the unexpected prohibition by the authorities brought into prominence, producing a counterproductive effect.

It is a general belief among the people that the whole family of the children, as well as the children themselves, are condemned to disappear within a short time, and it is added that this was announced to them by the Lady. Whatever the basis of this belief, the fact is that little Francisco, Jacinta's brother, has already died; Jacinta too, and Lúcia's father likewise, and her mother was at death's door a short time ago, just as a sister of Jacinta's is also very ill¹.

Of the three children only Lúcia remains, who was the one who talked with the Lady, as she asserts.

Jacinta, who was relatively robust, had, as we said, the pneumonic flu^*, which led to a purulent pleurisy, followed by other complications.

A distinguished specialist from the capital, having come to Fátima and having examined the little girl, was anxious that she should go to Lisbon, to see whether, by means of an operation, it was still possible to save her.

Lodging was sought for her in the house of some well-to-do person, but nothing was obtained.

She then went to stay in the poor dwelling of a modest woman, who received her gladly, to the great contentment of the little girl, who, taken out of her provincial surroundings, was all shyness and confusion.

The hospital of D. Estefânia was chosen for the operation.

Before the child went into hospital, however, she said that the Lady had appeared to her again, [58] assuring her that she would die, and for that reason the little girl thought the operation was useless.

Despite this, and although she insisted that it was all useless, the operation was carried out; it went well, although without a happy outcome, as was seen.

Four days before she died, as the child was in great pain and complaining, the woman who had taken her in, and whom she called godmother, told her to bear her pains with patience, as that would be very pleasing to God.

On the morning of the following day Jacinta said to her:

– Look, godmother! I don't complain any more! Our Lady appeared to me again, saying that she would come for me soon – and she was taking my pains away now!

And in fact, from that day until she died, so it is said, she did not complain again nor show signs of suffering.

When the godmother happened to pass or sit down at the foot of the bed, not far from the spot where Jacinta said she had seen the Lady, she exclaimed:

– Move away from there, godmother, the Lady was there!...

And the same concern came over her when any nurse passed by the same spot.

As some people immodestly dressed came to the hospital, either to see her or to see other patients, and some nurses displayed certain excesses in dress, she would say, pointing to those people and referring to certain particular ornaments and low necklines:

– What is the use of that! If they knew what eternity is!...

– Speaking of some doctors whom she thought to be unbelievers, she pitied them, saying:

– Poor things, little do they know what awaits them!

The seer stated that Our Lady had told her: that the sin that leads most people to perdition was the sin of the flesh, that people must give up luxuries, that they should not persist obstinately in sin as until now; that much penance was necessary.

And it seems that the Lady, in saying this, appeared very distressed, – because the little girl added:

[59] – Oh! I feel so sorry for Our Lady! I feel so sorry!

While she was in the house, before going into hospital, she lived in the company of another little girl, – to whom she often recommended – to be very obedient, not to be lazy and never to fail to tell the truth.

Shortly before she died – when asked whether she wanted to see her mother again, she answered: that her family would last only a short time and that they would soon meet in heaven.

She also said that Our Lady – was still to appear once more, but not to her, because she was certainly going to die, as the Lady had told her.

She asked leave to go to confession, although she had confessed and received communion before going into hospital.

The one who went to hear her confession was the Very Reverend parish priest of Anjos^*, Dr. Pereira dos Reis, but he did not have time to give her communion.

She went into hospital on 2 February, and died on the 20th.

After she died, someone put forward the idea of taking her to her native place, and so it was done, a subscription being raised for that purpose.

Many of the people who had not wanted to receive her into their houses were, after the little girl died, all eager to pay her homage, perhaps even with a little exaggeration, – which provoked some just remarks from a distinguished priest.

The little girl's body lay in the vestry of the church of Anjos, awaiting removal to the station and the necessary formalities, and then left with a large following.

Someone noted the coincidence that, when the funeral left, Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho and some members of his family, who had gone there by chance, were in the church, and connected this fact with the famous article written by His Excellency in October 1917, which, though orthodox, gave rise to criticism from some people who are quick to take offence.

The little girl left two secrets for a person who has taken an interest in this matter.

In sum and in conclusion:

God grant that the light of truth may shine upon [60] this case, not only for whatever it may have of the miraculous – but for the consequences that may result from it for the spiritual regeneration of this dear country of ours.

And meanwhile, be that as it may, let us carry out the exhortation that the little girl attributes to Our Lady – and which is, after all, the doctrine of the Church:

Let us do penance! Let us avoid luxury and the sin of the flesh! Let us not persist obstinately in sin – so that it may not happen to us as to some to whom the little girl referred when, her godmother telling her that it was necessary to pray for them, she answered:

– Very well, godmother, but for those there is no remedy now!

[DCF, III-2 - Doc. 528]

THE THIRTEENTH OF MAY 1920

THE DELUGE

I arrived at Vila Nova de Ourém at daybreak on the thirteenth of May last, under a torrential downpour, amid flashing lightning and rumbling thunder.

When I left Lisbon the most alarming rumours were circulating about the Fátima affair, it being said that the journey was useless because there were strict orders to let no one through from Vila Nova de Ourém.

For that reason many who had arranged to come with me did not come, but I persisted and came, if only to see what truth there was in it.

At the same time as I, two ladies arrived, one still young, elegant and lovely, with large forget-me-not-coloured eyes, the daughter of a former minister of the monarchy, and the other of distinguished appearance, already of a certain age, and who I understand is related to one of the best-known families of the Beira, and in particular of Guarda.

Poor things! Under all that downpour, which even called to mind the verse from Genesis:

– And the floodgates of the waters were opened, and the fountains of the great deep.
They did not complain, so great was their faith and enthusiasm, and their only worry was the idea that they would not be allowed to reach the place of the apparitions!...

[61] NOAH'S ARK

With great difficulty we managed to reach a little inn right opposite the church that goes by the name of Hospedaria da Maria Joana, and there we rested a little on a rickety couch until daybreak, for as for rooms, there were none to be had.

Early in the morning, as soon as the first light peeped through, we heard a great clatter of horses.

We ran to the window!

It was a cavalry squadron of the Republican Guard^*, marching at full gallop towards Fátima.

– So it was true after all?

We asked the inn's maid what was going on... what was being said around there...

– The same uncertainty... Rumours!... Rumours!

That there was infantry... cavalry... machine guns... I don't know what else...

A regular offensive!

– But why, good God?!...

Nobody could explain!... said the little woman.

– One thing they've already managed:

No one is going from Ourém to Fátima. All the carriages had been hired at 40$000^* each. Well, they were all cancelled, to the great annoyance of the livery-stable keeper, who is a dyed-in-the-wool republican and doesn't understand why a peaceful citizen can be forbidden to go for an outing wherever he pleases!

No one is coming from Tomar for the same reasons!

In many municipalities, according to their administrators, vehicles have been forbidden to leave!!...

We were in the middle of this conversation when a young fellow from the J. C. of Lisbon turned up, the owner of a printing works out Belém way, and shortly afterwards Dr. Dinis da Fonseca, who had slept at the inn, for he had come there the day before to defend an accused man at a trial.

I ask for information. They don't know either. As far as [61] Fátima, it seems they will let people go, beyond that no... the Father in Heaven will scold!...

The rain had lifted!...

I go down to the street and begin to see carriages, carts, motor cars, lorries, people on foot, people on horseback going by, a real pilgrimage!...

– Ah! but then what the devil was the prohibition for? I begin to think...

I thought I would find no one and in the end I constantly see men, women and children going by... in a real bustle!...

It is an endless ribbon of people!

THE HEROD OF OURÉM

Enormous char à bancs, drawn by mules with jingling bells, loaded with people laughing all along the road, laughing like mad at the figure of the administrator, whom I now see stuck in the middle of the street... in his straw boater, very crestfallen... with a sickly little smile unpuckering the corners of his lips... carts garlanded with flowers and juddering motor cars with the loud hoarse croak of sirens or the shrill make way of the auto-boxes, heavy, panting lorries with their wide roofs crammed with provisions and curtains flapping... flapping!..., aristocratic calèches and landaus, modest old jalopies, women and men on foot, soaked, muddied, with their umbrellas furled as at a funeral, streaming water, but contented, happy, with cheerful faces, all of this paraded before me like a long cinematographic film!...

Where were so many people coming from? From many places, but above all from Torres Novas, they say.

So one could get through after all!... From Ourém at least!

But what could the administrator be up to with his straw boater, scurrying from one side to the other?!...

Another show?!... Who knows!...

I wanted to set off early for Fátima. But what about Mass?
I ask what time it is at the parish church:
At 11!
What is more, on so dear a day, I should like to receive Our Lord.
I let everyone go and wait for Mass...

[63] ON THE WAY TO FÁTIMA

After hearing Mass and receiving communion, I have lunch and set off on the way to Fátima, climbing the steep slope that for a few kilometres winds over the hilltops of Ourém all the way there.

The panorama is surprising.

The land, full of greenery and soaked with water, gleams in the light of a bashful sun, playing hide-and-seek among clouds still threatening fresh squalls.

Everywhere along the roadside, rustic little houses festooned with wallflowers, in a profusion such as I have never seen.

On the wall surrounding a waving wheatfield starred with poppies and daisies, a band of youngsters had the delicate idea of filling all the free gaps between the stones with wild flowers!

We keep on climbing...

The Castle of Ourém, the Castle of the Holy Constable, raises its artistic profile to Heaven, crowning the summit of the mountain on which it stands.

Here are scrub-covered hilltops charmingly rounded, furrowed with valleys full of greenery, where fleeting streams wind, which the morning rain had made muddy and hurried.

A motor car speeds past, coming from above, showing on either side carbines fanned out, menacing...

It is the municipal administrator... and his escort!...

He didn't come off well, says a young fellow who is following us on a bicycle, pedalling...

We have been climbing for an hour and a half now...

Fátima is not far!...

Drops of rain begin to fall again...

A short time later we were indeed entering the little square by the Church.

Everywhere carriages, carts and motor cars at a standstill. A great multitude of people, some thousands of persons, filled the square and packed the church.

In the middle of the road, forces of infantry and cavalry of the Republican Guard prevent anyone going further.

[64] NO WAY THROUGH HERE!

There are still some three kilometres to go to reach the place of the apparitions.

I inquire of the bystanders whether no one has got through.

Until noon everyone got through, but then the municipal administrator came and gave orders to the contrary.

I ask the commander of the force whether it is not possible to get through. He politely informed me:

– Until now I have let people through, but the municipal administrator now orders the contrary; I have to carry out orders.

I turn back and come over to the enormous multitude which, inside the church and in the porch round about, is sadly discussing the matter, without understanding how there can be danger to public order at the Cova da Iria and not three kilometres away, the people being the same!...

It is perfect stupidity!...

Many people, unable to go on by the road, still rush across the fields, furtively, jumping over walls, and manage to reach the place of the apparition, counting themselves very happy to be able to kneel on the wet earth and devoutly recite the rosary.

Is this what endangers the regime?!...

[DCF, III-2 - Doc. 532]

PRAYER, COMMUNION AND PENANCE!

Inside the church Dr. Cruz gives pious talks interspersed with the recitation of the rosary and with religious hymns.

There are still many people going to confession.

A poor blind lady who has come from near Aveiro, at great sacrifice, walks supported on the shoulder of a relative, under a tiresome rain that begins to fall again.

She does not lament; on the contrary, she confidently blesses God and makes her way to the Church.

A bearded man, who I am told is a doctor and very old, explains to a group around him the providential reason for the prohibition.

[65] According to what he had been told, there were some who intended to start bringing bands there, oompah music, rockets, etc.

Now the Lady wants none of that.

She appeared on open waste ground precisely because she wants to be loved and venerated there in spirit, without any of those showy and noisy fairground displays.

Prayer, communion and penance.

This, and this alone, is what she wants!

By imposing the prohibition the authorities are unwittingly fulfilling the Lady's wishes!

RAIN AND SWORDFISH

The rain was now pouring down in buckets again...

And everyone was trying to take refuge either under the carriages or under the porch, for in the Church the crush was already enormous.

Just then I see the Republican Guard, swords drawn, raining blows with the flat of the blade left and right on some peaceful peasants who, with umbrellas open, were looking melancholically at the whole thing... and who, surprised by the unexpected attack, took to their heels without knowing why they were being attacked.

Someone goes up to the guards to inquire what it is about... They complain that a man of the people, wanting to get through by force and, when they prevented him, had threatened them, hence that commotion in which the innocent paid for the guilty, as almost always happens.

The matter explained and calm restored, I talk with some peasants, whom I prudently advise to refrain from going through, since obedience to orders, even unjust ones, as long as they do not offend our conscience, is more meritorious than rash resistance.

One of the Republican Guards then says to me in a burst of sincerity:

– If you knew, sir, how hard it is for me to be here!

I carry out orders and I carry them out to the letter: but believe me, inside, all this revolts me!

I am religious, sir, and I don't understand what use there is in forbidding these poor people to go and pray down there!... It makes you want to weep!...

– I have a sister who went to Our Lady of Fátima, who saved her life!

And indeed, down the sun-scorched face of the poor guard, who was there carrying out orders much against his will, there slowly slid a drop

of water that was definitely no sister of those that ran in streams from his oilskin hood, for the rain went on falling stubbornly...

THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT

I go back, and was about to make for the house of the parish priest, whose old Portuguese-style veranda had also been stormed by those seeking shelter from the rain, when I see my companion of the morning, slight, delicate, with her pensive blue eyes, soaked like a drowned chick, splashing in the mud, but still cheerful and carefree, as if she were comfortably seated at some elegant tea, well sheltered and wrapped up, and not under that deluge.

And she shows me a little engraved holy picture of Our Lady of Fátima...

– It's over there! she says, and points me to the sacristy of the Church!...

And then, softly, as if in secret, laughing a great deal, with a little touch of mischief lighting up her large eyes, blue as the sky, she adds:

– And now I'm going down there!... Show me a short cut I can take!... You cross the field!... But I will go!...

And off she went under the rain, soaked to the bone, splashing in the mud, but still smiling, still happy, glad to be going down there and so playing a little trick on the Herods of the government!...

– Oh! women, when they set their minds on something!...

[67] THE COLLIER'S FAITH!

I went into the sacristy to see what was over there.

It was an image of Our Lady of Fátima, truly very beautiful, which a devout person had had made specially.

And because the intolerance of the authorities would not allow it to be placed in the little niche at the Cova da Iria, he had therefore put it there so that the faithful, filing past it, could see and admire it!...

And it was something to see, the devotion with which many of those poor people prayed to it!

I do not really know whether into the worship of humble and ignorant people there enters a little paganism or superstition, which has been innate in the heart of man since the fall in the earthly paradise, but how admirable in its ingenuousness and simplicity is the way in which, for example, these people pray their rosary!

It was the famous Pasteur who said of himself that he had the faith of a Breton, but that, if he lived longer, he would come to have the faith of a Breton woman, or, as we say here, the collier's faith^*!...

And those who sometimes censure the materiality of popular devotions, are they not the same people who fill the parlours of Madame Brouillard and other more or less famous witches, who let themselves be taken in by the patter of the two-a-penny Bernheims^* that our Universities turn out every year, and who prostrate themselves reverently before the columns of the Temple^*, covered in aprons and triangles with ridiculous trinkets hanging from their necks, which quite outshine the little blue ribbons of the Children of Mary^*?!...

[69] IT'S STUPID!...

But the rain went on, tiresome as ever...

The coachman warned that the road was not good and that we had to go back earlier...

So, our devotions done and our farewells said, until next time!... we went back on the road to Ourém in order then to return home...

At the station, before taking the train, we met countless people from various parts of the country who were returning to their home towns, like us!...

There was the blind lady from Aveiro, accompanied by a lady from Porto, who, though both of them had been in completely soaked dresses and both were ill, had suffered nothing and kept the same good humour. There was a well-known Lisbon goldsmith, there were many other people from the capital.

I did not see my blue-eyed companion again; she probably stayed there walking over hill and dale until she got where she wanted to get!...

And an honest tradesman, a republican as it seems, was heaping vigorous invective on the municipal administrator, because he was hampering the progress of the area and preventing trade from doing its business!...

– It's stupid!... he concluded...

– Just imagine!... this prohibition caused a loss of more than twenty contos^* to the livery-stable keepers of Tomar, Ourém and Torres Novas alone!...

[70] CONCLUSION

But the reader will ask: “Did Our Lady really appear at Fátima?”

We deliberately refrain from formulating our judgement on so delicate and sensitive a subject.

We continue to maintain, as hitherto, a benevolent expectancy.

The facts – only a part of them, and undoubtedly the less important part – are narrated here in all their simplicity and with the most scrupulous impartiality.

Everyone, believer or unbeliever, has the right to think whatever he pleases about the origin and nature of these so extraordinary occurrences. Meanwhile no one of good sense will surely fail to find just the exclamation uttered by a distinguished lawyer, who was an eyewitness of the arbitrary and violent measures adopted by the administrative authority to prevent access to the place of the apparitions: “Word of honour! I didn't believe, but now, since the government forbids people to go there, I am beginning to believe that Our Lady really did appear at Fátima!

[DCF, III-2 - Doc. 537]

[71] Note. – All persons who have knowledge of interesting facts relating to the apparitions of Fátima or of extraordinary cures attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary are asked kindly to communicate all possible information in a sealed letter to the Visconde de Montelo – “Empresa Véritas” – Guarda.