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Lucia de Santos, Francisco Marco and Jacinta Maro in 1917
The Miracle at Fatima
"On May 13, 1917, a vision appeared to three shepherd children near the village of Fatima in Portugal. On a cloud that hovered above an oak tree they saw the shining figure of a woman, 'a beautiful Lady from Heaven'. The lady told the children - Lucia, 10, Francisco, 9, and Jacinta, 7 - to meet her in the same place on the 13th of each month until October."
On the first two visits only the children claimed to have actually seen the lady, but on the third and last visit, "a crowd of 50,000 gathered, on a wet and dismal day, to see the last apparition. This time the shining lady, again invisible to all but the children, announced her identity: she was Our Lady of the Rosary, and she told them three 'secrets' about the future.
"Then something shocking happened.
"The rain suddenly stopped and the sun came out. At first it seemed to start spinning and then it began to plunge crazily toward the earth. The crowd was terrified. After a moment the sun returned to its normal position and then, twice more, repeated the same maneuver."
-Cyril Charlie Mardindale, The Message of Fatima
"The sky had a certain grayish tint of pearl and a strange clearness filled the gloomy landscape, every moment getting gloomier. The sun seemed to be veiled with transparent gauze to enable us to look at it without difficulty. The grayish tint of mother of pearl began changing as if into a shining silver disc, that was growing slowly until it broke through the clouds. And the silvery sun, still shrouded in the same grayish lightness of gauze, was seen to rotate and wander within the circle of receded clouds! The people cried out with one voice, the thousands of the creatures of God whom faith raised up to heaven, fell to their knees upon the muddy ground."
- The Portuguese newspaper O Dia, May 14, 1917
"As if like a bolt from the blue, the clouds were wrenched apart, and the sun at its zenith appeared in all its splendor. It began to revolve vertiginously on its axis, like the most magnificent firewheel that could be imagined, taking on all the colors of the rainbow and sending forth multi-colored flashes of light, producing the most astounding effect. This sublime and incomparable spectacle, which was repeated three distinct times, lasted for about ten minutes. The immense multitude, overcome by the evidence of such a tremendous prodigy, threw themselves on their knees."
- Dr. Formigao, a professor at the seminary at Santarem
"This power is so intense that it absorbs and almost completely annihilates them. It practically deprives them of the use of their body senses. Their bodies are subject to a mysterious, depressing force that prostrates them."
- Joseph Pelletier, The Sun Danced at Fatima
"Then as if it were shining through the stained glass windows of a great cathedral, the light became a rare blue, spreading its rays upon the gigantic nave. Slowly the blue faded away and now the light seemed to be filtered through yellow stained glass. Yellow spots were falling now upon the white kerchiefs and the dark poor skirts of course wool. They were spots which repeated themselves indefinitely over the lowly holmoaks, the rocks and the hills. All the people were weeping and praying bareheaded, weighed down by the greatness of the miracle expected. These were seconds, moments, that seemed hours; they were so fully lived."
- The Portuguese newspaper O Dia, May 14, 1917
"Later, people found that their clothing, which had been soaked in the downpour, was quite dry."
-Cyril Charlie Mardindale, The Message of Fatima
Yet the event evidently was not just a local phenomenon or entirely explainable as mass delusion with the appearance of the sun breaking through the clouds. Poet Afonso Lopes Vieira reportedly eyewitnessed the event from his house twenty-five miles away.
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