Most of us, I think, are familiar with the Marian apparitions at Fatima, the 100th anniversary of which we celebrate this year.

If you’re not familiar with them, here’s a brief synopsis:

Francis’ Mass for the canonization of the two visionaries, the first holy children who were not martyrs: “God effects a general mobilization against the indifference that chills our hearts”.

These Must-Know facts about Fatima can turn into a perfect response to the 100th Anniversary celebrations of Fatima.

Fatima’s 100th anniversary gives us yet another chance to do more than just familiarize ourselves with the messages of Fatima. It gives us the opportunity to really take the messages of Our Lady to heart and put them into the practice. Isn’t that what Our Lady of Fatima called for?

The place to start is with the 10 Must-Know Facts on Fatima.

Many people believe that living the Gospel message is unrealistic. Numerous times people have begun a conversation with me using the phrase: “Father, out there in the real world …” Their unspoken assumption is of course that because I am a priest I am somehow not in the real world.

Francis' greeting at the blessing of the candles from the Chapel of the Apparitions of Fatima: No to subjective images that make Mary appear “sweeter” than Jesus, “Mercy has to be put before judgment”

The Story of Our Lady of Fatima

Between May 13 and October 13, 1917, three Portuguese children–Francisco and Jacinta Marto and their cousin Lucia dos Santos–received apparitions of Our Lady at Cova da Iria near Fatima, a city 110 miles north of Lisbon. Mary asked the children to pray the rosary for world peace, for the end of World War I, for sinners, and for the conversion of Russia.

Among Papa Pacelli’s papers his dry account of what seen on the eve of the proclamation of the Assumption’s dogma, in 1950: the solar globe swirled as it happened during the last Portuguese appearance

Pope Francis is scheduled to arrive in Fatima later today, May 12, to celebrate the centenary of the apparitions and canonize the little blessed visionaries Francisco and Jacinta.

The journey that begins today, Friday, May 12, 2017, is among Pope Francis’ international trips the one with the strongest Marian feel. One hundred years after the apparitions in Cova da Iria, in Fatima, a century has passed by since the coming of a message intended to mark the history of the Church of the Twentieth Century.

A few weeks ago, four of my friends and I had a mini-reunion. We have all gone our separate ways since college, and it usually takes a wedding to get us all back together. That was the case this time.

In a letter to Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II, Pope Francis said he hoped that both their churches can continue along the path of true unity and communion.

The bond between the Catholic Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church is a reminder “to intensify our common efforts to persevere in the search for visible unity in diversity, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,” the pope wrote in a letter to the patriarch May 10.