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.
As authentic Marian apparitions go, many of the aspects of our Lady’s appearances to the three shepherd children in Fatima a century ago seem commonplace: Mary asks the seers to pray and do penance for the conversion of sinners, calls them to daily devotion to the Rosary, advocates for peace in the world, requests the children to return on specific dates, and entrusts them with secrets.
What has never ceased to surprise me, on the other hand, is what she revealed to the children after she had showed them a very vivid vision of hell.
An eyewitness tells of a second miracle she and others witness at Fatima right after the Miracle of the Sun
Several years ago Carl Malburg had the privilege of speaking with a woman who was present in Fatima at the Miracle of the Sun. But what she really wanted to tell him about was the second miracle she witnessed there at Fatima shortly after she and everyone saw the sun dancing in the sky, hurling toward earth, then returning to its place in the heavens.
Mary Sturm has long appreciated the Rosary, but it wasn't until she witnessed the dedication of a group of people praying it after daily Mass at her parish, Holy Infant in Ballwin, that her love grew deeper.
Through this prayer, Sturm finds guidance from the Blessed Mother to stay connected to Jesus. The Rosary also was a great consolation to her when her husband of 43 years, Jim, passed away last summer.
"She helps me participate fully at Mass and help others," Sturm said of the Blessed Mother. "She gives me company, protection and reassurance."
