Rebecca, Paul, Michelle, and I caught a taxi to the Lisbon Oriente bus station at 0900 for the 1 hour 15-minute ride to Fatima. This weekend, October 12th and 13th was the 107th anniversary of the “Miracle of the Sun,” which occurred on October 13, 1917. It would be crowded.
Fatima is the one apparation site that I am often underwhelmed due to the amount of concrete around the site. The huge open concrete square is twice as large as St.Peter’s in Rome. At one end is the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary. At the other end is the modern Basilica of the Holy Trinity. I am underwhelmed because, unlike Lourdes and Medjugorje, the site looks nothing like it did when the apparitions occured.
The Basilica of the Rosary was consecrated in 1953 and dedicated a basilica in December 1954 by Pope Pius XII. It holds 1,500 worshipers. The remains of Saints Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco are buried here. The Basilica includes one main altar and 14 side altars which correspond to the 15 decades of the rosary.
The Basilica of the Holy Trinity was built because the Basilica of the Rosary could no longer hold the large number of piligrims visiting Fatima. Pope John Paull II donated a stone from St. Peter’s tomb to start construction in 2004. This Basilica was consecrated in 2007 and holds 8,500.
On the left side of the square near the Basilica of the Rosary is the Chapel of Apparitions. The chapel was built in 1919 on the exact spot of the apparitions, two years after Our Lady’s request: “I want you to build a chapel here in my honor.” The first mass took place on October 13th 1921.
At the time, the Portuguese government was extremely anti-Catholic. Those in power were called Republicans and believed that Catholicism was the number one enemy to middle-class radicalism and must be destroyed as an influence in Portugal. The Chapel was dynamited by Republicans in March 1922. By December 1922, it had been rebuilt.
On the left side of the Chapel of Apparitions is a huge fire burning with continuous plumes of thick black smoke. There are no votive candles at Fatima. Instead, pilgrims buy candles and throw them into the fire. We saw people lined up to toss candles into the fire. There was no point in lighting the candles first. We also saw people throwing other wax items into the fire. At the gift shops outside the square, we saw wax legs, arms, breasts, etc. that you could buy to toss into the fire.
Near the Basilica of the Holy Rosary there begins a path to the Chapel of Apparitions where we watched several pilgrims walking on their knees as an act of faith and penance. Since I had knee surgery last year, Rebecca took a picture of Paul and I on our knees, on the path, as if we had walked the whole way. I tried to do other penances that day.
We attempted lunch at one restaurant but, due to the large number of people, there was more than an hour wait. In Europe, an hour wait is likely two hours. So we lunched outdoors at Cafe Romano instead.
We went to a vigil Mass at 1500 in one of the lower chapels of the Basilica of the Holy Trinity. We caught the bus back to Lisbon at 1630. Unfortunately, we did not experience the candlelight vigil on the square in Fatima that evening.