October the 13th this year marked the 100th Anniversary of the great sign of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, Portugal. I have used for our Bulletin front cover this striking picture, reproduced in The Latin Mass Magazine, of the people awestruck by what they are seeing in the sky above.

In the July 13th Apparition Our Lady had told the children: “In October…I will work a miracle so that all will see and believe.” In expectation of this promised miracle tens of thousands of people went to the Cova da Iria beginning on October 12th—people of all kinds, good and bad, believers and unbelievers.  The crowd estimate was 70,000 people.  A soaking rain continued all through the night and until 12 Noon solar time on the 13th when Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children as she had promised.  At the end of the Apparition all of the people began to experience the sun changing its appearance in the sky.

Here is the description of Avelino de Almeida, Editor in Chief of O Seculo, the liberal and anti-clerical daily newspaper of Lisbon, who witnessed the event:

“One could see the immense multitude turn towards the sun, which appeared at its zenith, coming out of the clouds.  It resembles a dull silver disc, and it is possible to fix one’s eyes on it without the least damage to the eye.  It does not burn the eyes.  It does not blind them.  One might say that an eclipse was taking place.  An immense clamor bursts out, and those who are nearer to the crowd hear a shout: ‘Miracle! Miracle! Prodigy!… Prodigy!…”

“The attitude of the people takes us back to biblical times.  Stupefied and with heads uncovered, they watch the blue sky.  Before their dazzled eyes the sun trembled, the sun made unusual and brusque movements, defying all the laws of the cosmos, and according to the typical expression of the peasants, ‘the sun danced…’ What did I see at Fatima that was even stranger?  The rain, at an hour announced in advance, ceased falling; the thick mass of clouds dissolved; and the sun—a dull silver disc—came into view at its zenith, and began to dance in a violent and convulsive movement, which a great number of witnesses compared to a serpentine dance, because the colors taken on by the surface of the sun were so beautiful and gleaming.”

“Miracle, as the people shouted?  A natural phenomenon, as the learned would say?  For the moment I do not trouble myself with finding out, but only with affirming what I saw…The rest is a matter between Science and the Church.” (Quoted in The Whole Truth About Fatima: Science and the Facts, by Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, Immaculate Heart Publications, English translation edition, 1989.)

In his Pastoral Letter authorizing the cultus of Our Lady of Fatima (October 13th, 1930), the diocesan Bishop José Alves Correia da Silva cited this great sign of the public miracle as a motive for believing in the supernatural character of the Fatima Apparitions.

“The solar phenomenon of the 13th of October, 1917, described in the papers at the time, was something marvelous and caused a great impression upon those who had the happiness to witness it…This phenomenon which no observatory has registered, and therefore, was not a natural one, was observed by persons of all ranks and social classes, believers and unbelievers, journalists of the principal Portuguese dailies and even by persons kilometers away, all of which eliminates the idea that it was a collective illusion.” (quoted from The Latin Mass, Fall 2017, p. 80)

(Fr. Higgins)

Pastor’s Note from the Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Bulletin for October 29, 2017