Pope Benedict XVI Blog

The Last Triumph of Fatima

Sister Lucia with Pope John Paul II in 1991
Paulo Trindade / AFP / Getty

TIME
Friday, Feb. 29, 2008
By DAVID VAN BIEMA

It is a Vatican rule: candidates for sainthood wait five years beyond their deaths before the Catholic Church begins its investigation of their "heroic virtue," the first step toward canonization. Only two figures in recent history have received a fast-track exemption: Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II, both of them superstars in the Catholic and wider popular firmament. So, when the Vatican recently added Sister Lucia dos Santos, who died in 2005 at age 97, to this list, many wondered why she had been put in that esteemed company.

The answer is that to the men now running the church, Sister Lucia meant a great deal. She was the longest-lived of three children to whom an apparition of the Virgin Mary appeared in 1917 in the Portuguese parish of Fatima. And, as Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone makes clear in his upcoming book, The Last Secret of Fatima (May, Doubleday) she was the key human figure in a drama that eventually transformed the very nature of John Paul II's image of himself, and of his papacy. Lucia's superstar days may have waned in the memory of post-Vatican II American Catholics, but for people like Bertone and Pope Benedict XVI, who made the journey with the late John Paul, she remains an important symbol.

The story of Fatima began in 1915, when three shepherd children were first visited by what they thought was an angel. By 1917, a figure who identified herself as the Virgin appeared to them, eventually delivering a message for humankind. The children became a focus of massive interest, and in October of that year, the Virgin's presence seem to be confirmed for many others when a crowd of 70,000 — mostly Catholics, some skeptics — saw the sun appear to zigzag in the sky as the Virgin again addressed the children. Fatima almost immediately became a global pilgrimage site.
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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 2:08 PM