Our Lady of Fátima

Feast Days May 13th and October 13th

Patron Saint of recitation of the Rosary, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

For almost one hundred years, the miraculous apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima have been inspiring the faith of millions throughout the world.

In the year 1917, in a mountainous region at the center of Portugal, the Mother of God appeared to three young children. She appeared six times to Lucia, 9, and her cousins Francisco, 8, and his sister Jacinta, 6, between May 13, 1917 and October 13, 1917. A resplendent figure, Our Lady of Fatima appeared to the three children who were in the field tending the family sheep. “I am the Angel of Peace,” said the figure, who appeared to them two more times that year exhorting them to accept the sufferings that the Lord allowed them to undergo as an act of reparation for the sins which offend Him, and to pray constantly for the conversion of sinners.

Elsewhere on the continent the “Great War” raged, that would cost Europe an entire generation, over 37 million lives. Besides sending her own sons to die—Portugal was in political chaos at home. There was a dizzy succession of governments following a revolution in 1910. The monarchy had been replaced by a republic, with a new liberal constitution separating Church from state. But for the people themselves, the Faith was the air they breathed, as in the village of Aljustrel, a collection of whitewashed houses on a dusty road in the parish of Fatima.

On the 13th day of the month of Our Lady, May 1917, an apparition of ‘a woman all in white, more brilliant than the sun’ presented itself to the three children saying “Please don’t be afraid of me, I’m not going to harm you.” Lucia asked her where she came from and she responded, “I come from Heaven.” The woman wore a white mantle edged with gold and held a rosary in her hand. The woman asked them to pray and devote themselves to the Holy Trinity and to “say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and an end to the war.” In the last apparition the woman revealed her name in response to Lucia’s question: “I am the Lady of the Rosary.”

Our Lady’s requests were for prayer, reparation, repentance, sacrifice, the abandonment of sin, and devotion to her Immaculate Heart. Our Lady stressed the importance of praying the Rosary in each of Her apparitions, asking the children to pray the Rosary every day for peace. Another principal part of the Message of Fatima is devotion to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, which is terribly saddened and offended by the sins of humanity, and we are lovingly urged to console Her by making reparation.

Our Lady showed Her Heart, surrounded by piercing thorns, to the children, who understood that their sacrifices could help to console Her. Our Lady told the children, “pray much and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to hell because there is no one to make sacrifices for them.” Perhaps the most well-known utterance of the apparition of Our Lady at Fatima was her confident declaration that “My Immaculate Heart will triumph”.

Sources:

_{https://www.ewtn.com/fatima/our-lady.asp
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint.php?n=485
https://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/Litanies/fatima.htm
http://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=2294}