extraordinary%20encounters

The Vision of Our Lady of Fatima (Fortean Picture
Library)
nied the children. Though the BVM appeared,
no one but the children saw her, and
the communication, which predicted the
deaths of the two younger children in the near
future (they died in 1919 and 1920), occurred
through the oldest child, Lucia de Santos,
who was told that she would live long as a
witness to the living reality of Mary.
Ever larger groups followed the children to
the site in the succeeding months. In August,
the BVM asked that a chapel be built at the
site of her appearances. On September 13,
some members of the crowd, estimated to be
between twenty-five and thirty thousand persons,
reported seeing the passage from east to
west of a mysterious globe-shaped light. A
month later, the number of pilgrims had
swelled to seventy thousand. The BVM—as
Marian apparitions 163
always, visible only to the children—appeared
at noon during a blinding rainstorm. The
three saw her, Joseph, and the child Jesus
standing in the sky near the sun. Meanwhile,
some in the crowd saw, or thought they saw,
the sun begin to “dance” dramatically through
the clouds, spinning and shooting colors, as
the rain let up.
In the 1940s, in her memoirs, Lucia de
Santos, since 1925 a Carmelite nun, revealed
two of three “s e c re t s” the BVM had
i m p a rted to her. Although open to other int
e r p retations, the prophecies we re thought
by most believers to refer to the end of
World War I and the start of World War II
and to the end of Soviet Communism and
the conversion of the Russians to Catholicism.
The third secret was sent to the Va t ican
in the 1950s. It became the focus of
much speculation, most of it alleging that it
p redicted a third world war. In May 2000,
h owe ve r, as Pope John Paul II embarked on
a pilgrimage to Fatima, during which he
spoke with the ninety-thre e - year-old Lu c i a ,
the Vatican released the pro p h e c y, which he
b e l i e ved predicted the 1981 assassination attempt
on the pope in St. Pe t e r’s Sq u a re — a n
i n t e r p retation disputed by others.
The first New World appearance of the
BVM is said to have taken place five miles
north of Mexico City just after dawn on December
9, 1531. A fifty-seven-year-old Aztec
Indian, Juan Diego, was racing along a hillside
to get to mass in a nearby village. Passing
a site at the foot of a hill called Tepeyac, which
earlier had housed a temple to the Aztec
Mother Goddess, he heard a feminine voice
calling his name. He saw a young woman,
looking about fourteen years old and having
Mexican features, who asked that a chapel be
built at the site. She also told him that he
should alert the bishop in Mexico City immediately.
With some difficulty, he got an audience
with the bishop, who was skeptical.
Diego returned to report his failure to the
BVM, who was waiting for him. She instructed
him to return the next day. This time
the bishop asked for a sign.