The modern miracle of Fatima

While men in the trenches of World War I faced chemical gasses and industrialized weaponry that wrought unprecedented human carnage, an Angel of Peace appeared with a message.

“Do not be afraid. I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me: My God I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You. I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love You,” the angel told three children in rural Portugal in that first of several supernatural encounters that would take place over the course of 1916 and 1917.

When the Virgin Mary appeared to Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco on May 13, 1917, she requested, “Say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and an end to the war.”

The Great War did come to an end in 1918, but the story and secrets of Fatima continued to unfold after WWI until the fall of Communism in 1989. The Virgin Mary entered into the bloodiest century in human history with a message of peace and prayer.

In many ways the events at Fatima encapsulate the history 20th century, and in the long history of the Church, they will be remembered for their deep connections to the most important milestones of the last century.

Today a piece of the Berlin Wall stands in the Fatima square as a permanent monument to the apparition’s connection to 1989. The Bolsheviks’ October Revolution took place the same year as Fatima’s “Miracle of the Sun,” and the Virgin Mary specifically requested that the pope consecrate Russia to Mary, in union with the bishops of the world.

In Fatima’s museum, there is a rosary made from pieces of the Berlin Wall, a gift made by a Portuguese emigrant on May 13, 1991. There is also the ring that Pope Saint John Paul II donated to Our Lady of Fatima in gratitude for her protection during the attempt on his life on May 13, 1981, a date that coincided with the anniversary of the Fatima apparitions. The ring had a special meaning to the pope; Cardinal Stephen Wszynski had given it to him at the beginning of his papacy in 1978. The pope also offered the bullet from the assassination attempt, which fit perfectly into Our Lady of Fatima’s crown…

“Fatima is undoubtedly the most prophetic of modern apparitions. The first and second parts of the ‘secret’ . . . refer especially to the frightening vision of hell, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Second World War, and finally the prediction of the immense damage that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning the Christian faith and embracing Communist totalitarianism,” wrote the former Secretary of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith Tarcisio Bertone.

By Courtney Grogan CNA