Lúcia, Francisco and Jacinta
We questioned the children to learn how the first apparition had come about. They answered simply that on 13 May, when they were pasturing their flock at the Cova da Iria, there was a great thunderstorm. They were thinking of gathering the flock and going away, when out of a flash of lightning they saw a Lady appear. Frightened, they wanted to run away, but the apparition told them not to, for it would do them no harm. Before the thunderstorm began the children had been praying their rosary, and the apparition told them to pray the rosary to Our Lady of the Rosary so that the war would abate, and to come back there every month, for it would come there for six consecutive months. — The children went back there in June and say that the Lady appeared to them and this time told them to learn to read, which the children did not do at once, because there was not, and never had been, a teacher in Fatima. Now, without anyone having asked for one, a teacher from the mobile schools* turns up, appointed there for two years, and the children have already begun to attend school with considerable progress, above all Lucia.
Interrogámos as creanças, para saber como se tinha dado a primeira apparição. Responderam com simplicidade que no dia 13 de Maio, quando na Cova da Iria andavam apascentando o seu rebanho, fez uma grande trovoada. Pensavam em juntar o rebanho e irem-se embora, quando d’um relampago viram apparecer uma Senhora. Amedrontados, quizeram fugir, mas a apparição disse-lhes que não fugissem, pois nenhum mal lhes faria. Antes de começar a trovoada as creanças estavam rezando o seu terço, e a apparição recommendou-lhes que rezassem o terço á Senhora do Rosario, para abrandar a guerra, e que voltassem ali todos os mezes, pois durante seis mezes consecutivos ali viriam. — As creanças voltaram ali em junho e dizem ter-lhes apparecido a Senhora que d’esta vez lhes recommendou que aprendessem a lêr, o que as creanças não fizeram logo, porque não havia nem nunca houve professora na Fatima. Agora, sem que ninguem a reclamasse, apparece nomeada para ali, por dois annos uma professora das escolas moveis, e as creanças começaram já a frequentar a escola com bastante aproveitamento, sobretudo da Lucia.
