The Catholic Church will celebrate today the 102nd anniversary of the famous Fatima apparition, reverberating the same message made by the Blessed Virgin Mary calling on mankind to repent now for the world to attain genuine and lasting peace.
“The apparitions of Mary in 1917 at Fatima happened for six consecutive months, from May to October, every 13th of the month,” Fr. Omer Prieto of the Immaculate Mary Cathedral in Cubao, Quezon City said.
“Here, God is revealing to the world that Mary is indeed the ‘woman who will crush the head of the serpent’ as written in the Bible (Gen. 3:15),” Prieto said.
It was on May 13, 1917 that the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared before three young shepherds—Lucia, 10, Francisco, 9, and Jacinta, 7, in Fatima, Portugal.
Prieto said it is about time people heed the call of the Blessed Virgin to repent and return to God.
According to Lucia, “a Lady dressed in white, more brilliant than the sun…” appeared and that her indescribably beautiful face, was “neither sad nor happy, but serious,” almost with an air of mild reproach. Her hands, joined together as if she was praying, were resting at her breast and pointing upward. A rosary hung from her right hand.
“The seers were so close to Our Lady —about a yard and a half away—that they stood within the light that radiated from her,” Church records show.
It was also during the apparitions that the Virgin Mary relayed to the three shepherds, the “Three Secrets of Fatima.”
In the first message, the Blessed Mother said World War I, which was then raging in Europe, was about to end, and World War II would erupt.
According to Aleteia, a worldwide Catholic network, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope, clarified the signs and symbols found in the Marian apparitions in 2000.
