Fatima At 100

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – While conversion and prayer are at the heart of Mary's messages at Fatima, Portugal, the miracles and unexplained phenomenon that accompanied the events of 100 years ago continue to intrigue believers and nonbelievers alike.

    The 1917 apparitions of Mary at Fatima were not the first supernatural events reported there.

    Two years before Mary appeared to Lucia dos Santos and her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, they saw a strange sight while praying the rosary in the field, according to the memoirs of Sister Lucia, who had become a Carmelite nun.

    "We had hardly begun when, there before our eyes, we saw a figure poised in the air above the trees; it looked like a statue made of snow, rendered almost transparent by the rays of the sun," she wrote, describing what they saw in 1915.

    The next year, Francisco and Jacinta received permission to tend their family's flocks, and Lucia decided to join her cousins in a field owned by their families.

    It was 1916 when the mysterious figure appeared again, this time approaching close enough "to distinguish its features."

    "Do not be afraid! I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me," Sister Lucia recalled the angel saying.

    The three told no one about the angel's visit and received no more heavenly visits until May 13, 1917. While the children tended their sheep and played, they were startled by two flashes of lightning.

    As they made their way down a slope, the children saw a "lady all dressed in white" standing on a small tree. It was the first of six apparitions of Mary, who gave a particular message or revelation each time.

    Thirteen years after Mary's final apparition at Fatima, which occurred on Oct. 13, 1917, the bishop of Leiria declared the visions of the three shepherd children "worthy of belief" and allowed the veneration of Our Lady of Fatima.