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.
First of all, there is the Marian devotion of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, attested by so many of his gestures, among the latest his double visit - before the trip and just after landing - at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, home of the ’Icon of Our Lady Salus Populi Romani. That of Francis is a journey in the wake of his predecessors: the first was Paul VI, fifty years ago in 1967. Then John Paul II went there three times, 1982, 1991 and 2000, the Pontiff who decided to reveal the Third Secret of Fatima and who recognized himself in the vision of a Pope being killed along with other martyred Christians. Finally, in 2010, Benedict XVI, during a delicate moment of his pontificate, as the scandal of pedophilia in the Church was storming.
Although motivated by the centenary circumstance and the canonization of the two visionary shepherds – who both died of Spanish influenza shortly after the apparitions and who became the first canonized children without having suffered martyrdom – this trip to Fatima takes place during a particularly delicate moment on the international scene as the war winds blowing in the Far East, as well as the conflicts in the Middle East and the forgotten wars in Africa. Not to mention the riots that cross Latin America, let us not forget what is going on in Venezuela. The world, in short, needs a great deal of peace and reconciliation.
Peace obtained through personal conversion, sacrifice and prayer is at the center of the message given by Our Lady of Fatima to the shepherds. Three humble, simple children who did not understand the meaning of the words of the apparition (when Mary first mentioned Russia, they believed that it was the name of a woman in need of conversion). Yet another example of God’s ways to exalt the humble and the little and not the powerful, and those who believe to know.
That of Fatima is a message related to the image of the woman “dressed in sun” mentioned in the book of Revelation. A message that warns of the risks that humanity runs if it departs from God and if it profanes the life of God’s creatures. She showed the three shepherds the vision of hell; the three children’s shocked faces immortalized in a photograph of the time, remain an eloquent testimony of that terrifying experience. In a time dominated by the “globalization of indifference” and in which we still see men and women exploited and enslaved, the violation of human life, hatred and the triumphal violence, it is necessary – Pope Francis seems to say through his gesture - to find shelter under the mantle of the Mother.
The arrival of the Pontiff at the Monte Real air base is scheduled for 16.20 local time. At the airport control tower, Bergoglio will meet with Portugal’s president, Marcelo Nuno Duarte Rebelo de Sousa, and then visit the chapel of the air base where he will greet some ill soldiers. From Monte Real a helicopter will then take him to the Fatima sanctuary. Here is scheduled a visit to the apparition chapel, and in the evening the blessing of the candles and the reciting of the Rosary.
On Saturday May 13, the centenary of the first appearance, Francis will celebrate Mass on the marble shrine of the great Marian sanctuary. At the beginning of the liturgy, the Pope will pronounce the canonization formula proclaiming saints the two brothers and sister, Francesco and Jacinta Marto. After lunch with the Portuguese bishops, at 3 o’clock, the plane will take off to Rome.
