Pope Francis canonises two children at Portugal's Fatima shrine
13 May 2017
Pope Francis was greeted by crowds of hundreds of thousands as he made saints of two shepherd children at the Fatima shrine complex in Portugal.
"We declare the blissful Francisco Marto and Jacinta Marto saints," the pontiff said to loud applause.
It is 100 years since the two - and a third child - reported seeing the Virgin Mary while tending sheep. The third is also on the way to sainthood.
Portugal boosted security and re-imposed border controls temporarily.
Some 500,000 worshippers gathered in the town of Fatima, north of Lisbon, for the ceremony on Saturday, the Vatican said in a statement.
Roman Catholic pilgrims converged on the Fatima Sanctuary from countries as far away as China, Venezuela and East Timor.
The town's local bishop first read out the request for the two "little shepherds" to be canonised before the Pope declared them both saints of the Catholic Church.
Earlier on Saturday, the official Twitter account of the Pope posted a message with reference to the Virgin Mary.
"Whenever we look to Mary, we come to believe once again in the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness," it said.
The pontiff also met Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa for a private meeting ahead of the ceremony.
Plea for harmony
On Friday, Pope Francis flew into Fatima in a helicopter and travelled through the town in his "Popemobile".
At a candle-lit vigil he called for harmony between all people at the Chapel of the Apparitions and spoke of wars "tearing our world apart".
The chapel is built on the very spot where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared.
Two of the children - Jacinta and Francisco Marto - have been canonised for the miracles attributed to them. They died in the 1918-1919 European influenza pandemic.
The so-called three secrets of Fatima were written down by their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, who died in 2005 aged 97. The beatification process for her began in 2008.
The Church attaches great value to their visions, as Mary is believed to have revealed truths to help mankind. The Church says the first vision came on 13 May 1917.
In a video message to the people of Portugal, the Pope said he was going to present himself to Mary "and I need to feel you close, physically and spiritually, so that we are one heart and one mind".
What are the three secrets?
They are prophecies written down by Lucia, years after the apparitions that the three said they had witnessed. She spent her adult life as a nun at a convent in Coimbra.
The first two secrets in Lucia's account were revealed in 1942.
-The first described a terrifying vision of hell, with a "great sea of fire", demons and human souls
-The second is interpreted as Mary's prediction that World War One would end and that World War Two would start during the papacy of Pius XI
-Mary also called for the "consecration" of Russia, saying: "If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church"
-Lucia sealed the third secret in an envelope, which was handed to the Vatican in 1957 and only revealed in 2000
-It described an angel demanding "penance!", then the Pope and other clergy climbing a mountain, only to be killed by soldiers firing bullets and arrows.
What does the Vatican say about them?
According to Pope Francis's predecessor, Benedict XVI, the visions described in the three secrets are "meant to mobilise the forces of change in the right direction".
They are not like the Bible - a text he describes as a "public revelation".
The Fatima visions are "private revelations", he writes. Their purpose is "to help live more fully" in accordance with Christ's teaching.
The late Pope John Paul II was shot by a Turkish gunman on 13 May 1981.
He believed that his survival was due to Mary's divine intervention, and that the third secret had predicted the attack on him.
John Paul donated the bullet to Fatima, and it was inserted into the crown adorning a statue of Mary there.
What about Pope Francis's visit?
He follows John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who also made pilgrimages to the Fatima Sanctuary.
Security was high at the site, with Portugal deploying 6,000 police and emergency workers. Concrete blocks were placed on approach roads, to stop any terrorist "ramming" attack with a vehicle.
Only nine border crossings remained open, with systematic checks, as Portugal temporarily suspended the Schengen open borders pact.
Local accommodation over the weekend was far more expensive than usual, as hotels and residents cashed in on the papal visit.
MacCruiskeen » Thu Jan 14, 2016 12:12 pm wrote:§ê¢rꆧ wrote: I'd love to hear any suggestions for what you think make up the best sample of Jeff's blog for me to share with my friend. I'd like to give her a sense of what is so intriguing and unique about RI. It's a good excuse to do some re-reading.
Too many to list, §ê¢rꆧ, but here's one that I found particularly haunting, and not only because I was raised catholic:
I had of course heard of Our Lady of Fatima as a kid, but until Jeff wrote that post I had no idea how very strange the story is.
Full text of that:
The Sheep Look Up
Friday, May 13, 2005
Last week I suggested that UFO encounters may be a subset of religious phenomenon. I thought that begged an exploration of how religious manifestations can mirror those of UFOs, and how both may be mechanisms of control for non-human agents.
But first, if anyone's missed it, I'll say again: the assumption that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft does not explain the data. The phenomenon is too weird and too diverse, and even too common, to be accounted for by survey teams from Zeta Reticuli, the Pleiades, the planet "Ummo," or any other home the "aliens" have identified. (And I find it a fascinating frustration that many of those convinced of a massive government cover-up fall over themselves to accept the words of non-human entities.) So before I bring in the religious material, let me be clear that I consider the "God rides a spaceship" hypothesis popularized by Erich von Daniken to be a crude, backwards misapprehension of what's going on. It is simply not strange enough to account for the hyperreality of both the God Event and the UFO phenomenon, which may be virtually identical.
As today is May 13 let's start with Fatima, since it was on this day in 1917 that the "Lady from Heaven" first appeared to the young cousins Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. (Though manifestations began two years earlier, when the then-eight year old Lucia first saw a transparent white cloud in human form. In 1916, the three were visited by a beautiful boy who identified himself as the "Angel of Peace." His appearance followed a loud rumble and a white light which glided over the tree tops. The appearences left the children momentarily paralyzed, confused and physically drained - all symptoms familiar to students of close encounters.)
In broad strokes, this is the story: on the 13th day of the month, for six successive months, three young Portuguese children received visions of a small, brightly glowing figure of a woman, who appeared with attendant aerial manifestations of globes and rays of light. The events increased in intensity until the promised miracle of the final appearance, on Octorber 13, which drew a crowd of some 70,000.
Avelino de Almeida, editor of the Lisbon newspaper O Seculo, had written dismissively of the growing legend of Fatima on the morning of the predicted miracle. A few hours later, he became a witness to the event:From the road, where the vehicles were parked and where hundred of people who had not dared to brave the mud were congregated, one could see the immense multitude turn toward the sun, which appeared free from clouds and in its zenith. It looked like a plaque of dull silver and it was possible to look at it without the least discomfort. It might have been an eclipse which was taking place. But at that moment a great shout went up and one could hear the spectators nearest at hand shouting:
"A miracle! A miracle!" Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was Biblical as they stood bareheaded, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside any cosmic laws - the sun "danced" according to the typical expression of the people.
Another witness was natural science professor Joseph Garrett:This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmamant and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during these moments was terrible.
Nine miles away Joaquim Lourenco was so impressed by what he saw that he became a priest:I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked fixedly at the sun which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the earth.... There was an unbeliever there who had spent the morning mocking the "simpletons" who had gone off to Fatima just to see an ordinary girl. He now seemed paralyzed, his eyes fixed on the sun. He began to tremble from head to foot, and lifting up his arms, fell on his knees in the mud, crying out to God.
Poet Alfonso Lopes Viera witnessed the phenomenon from the oceanside town of San Pedro der Muel, though it is 30 miles from Fatima. It was also viewed in Pombal, 32 miles north. "The total land-area of visibility, based on witness interview, was approximately 32 by 20 miles." Yet no observatory recorded it.
A final witness, Maria Teresa of Chainca:The sky was covered with clouds and it rained much. We could not see the sun. Then suddenly, at noon, the clouds drew away and the sun appeared as if it were trembling. It seemed to come down. It began spinning like a fire-wheel in the pagan feasts. It stopped for a few minutes and again started rolling, perhaps in a diameter of more than a meter while we could look at it as though it were the moon. Things all around turned into different colors.
Let's pay close attention to this: before the miracle, the sky was overcast. "We could not see the sun." Then, at the appointed time, the clouds parted as though they were curtains, and where the sun should be, now was a dull silver disc, revolving on itself, that could be observed directly without harming the eyes. Then it was seen to descend in a zig-zag pattern, spinning and flashing lights to psychotronic effect. Sound familiar?
(Also worth noting is that the heavy rains had soaked the ground and the thousands of spectators. Yet it was reported that the phenomenon quickly dried the earth, as well as the clothes of those in attendance. Microwave heat effects are also quite common to UFO encounters.)
The 1930 decision of the Roman Catholic Church on the validity of the Fatima miracle, arrived at after 13 years of investigations, states that though no astronomical observatory reported the phenomenon, it was nevertheless "witnessed by persons of all categories...believers and unbelievers, journalists of the principal Portuguese newspapers and even by persons some miles away. Facts which annul any explanation of collective illusion."
It was not a collective illusion, for the reasons mentioned. But neither was it the sun, for the same reasons.
In Dimensions, Jacques Vallee has this to say about Fatima's phenomena:Not only was a flying disc or globe consistently involved, but its motion, its falling-leaf trajectory, its light effects, the thunder-claps, the buzzing sounds, the strange fragrance, the fall of "angel hair" that dissolves upon reaching the ground, the heat wave associated with the close approach of the disk - all of these are frequent parameters of UFO sightings everywhere. And so are the paralysis, the amnesia, the conversions, and the healings.
Many UFO researchers, particularly those who regard themselves as "serious," likely recoil at this material, and either dismiss it without consideration as pre-modern superstition which threatens to "contaminate" the hard data, or worse, attempt to divest the experience of its religious content. But wait: the religious effect is the point of the contact event.
As would seem to be the case with UFO encounters, the point of the manifestation is self-evidently the effect upon the witnesses. Whether to induce terror, or wonder, or worship, the effect is socio-religious. And if we can say this about Fatima, then it would be fair to admit that this has probably been going on for some time. Say, maybe, for all of human existence.
UFO contactees are generally inclined to accept that non-human entities are telling them the truth. So also religious visionaries tend to accept without question the integrity of their visions. But regardless of her bag of tricks, just because a Lady says she came from Heaven, doesn't mean she came from Heaven. As UFO encounters are often self-contradictory, so too are alleged appearences of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or "BVM," as Vallee coins them. For instance, the recent apparitions of the Virgin at Medjugorje deliver a message of feel-good ecumenism quite foreign to the Lady of Fatima. (Malachi Martin judged the Medjugorje manfestations "clearly demonic.")
Yet there is a recurrent theme, common to both UFOs and BVMs : a warning of apocalypse soon. Why would that be?
Sister Lucia, the last survivor of the three children of Fatima (as prophesied, the other two died in their youth), passed away on February 13. (Yes, the 13th: the same day of the month on which the Fatima visions occured.) Her convent cell was ordered sealed by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI (And yes; Benedict XV was Pope at the time of Lucia's childhood visions.) It was Ratzinger who disseminated the story that Fatima's Third Secret was no biggie; it had been fulfilled in the assassination attempt on John Paul II.
Now, why would he do a thing like that?