From Mount Carmel to Lourdes and Fatima

The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was established by the Carmelites around 1380, to commemorate both the end of the opposition to their order and the vision received by Saint Simon Stock on July 16, 1251, during which the Virgin Mary gave him the scapular.

In 1587, Pope Sixtus V extended this feast to the whole order, including men and women Carmelites. In 1726, Benedict XIII added it to the Roman calendar.

As for the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, they ended on July 16, 1858, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. On that day, Bernadette tells us, the apparition remained silent and looked more beautiful than ever. The Queen and Beauty of Carmel, the Virgin of silence and contemplation, crowned her series of 18 apparitions with the reminder of her presence with the Order of Carmelites.

Likewise, at her last apparition to the shepherds of Fatima on October 13, 1917, Mary chose to manifest herself as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Virgin of the scapular.

Sister Françoise Breynaert