Fatima is a small city in Portugal. In 1917, a miracle in Fatima made this city the heart of the Christianity. This is the incredible story of the ‘Miracle of the Sun’.
There were a number of heavenly sightings connected to the story of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal’s history. The first apparition of Fatima occurred in the mid-18th Century. A mute shepherdess claimed to witness the Virgin Mary, who asked the girl for one of her sheep. This caused the girl to speak and created a frenzy of religious activity around the country that supposedly led to the building of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima, now one of Portugal’s most important religious sites. Less than 50 years after its construction, Pope Pius VII began to grant indulgences for all pilgrims visiting the Our Lady of Fatima shrine.
Around 150 years after the Fatima Church in Portugal was built, a similar event took place which launched the city back into the centre of people’s consciousness. On 13 May 1917, three children were guarding their families’ sheep in the Cova da Iria part of Fatima city. There, the children claimed to see a ghostly vision of a shining lady dressed in white. This wasn’t the first time that the children claimed to see the apparition of the lady, later believed by the Church to be the Virgin Mary, and they would see her a further 5 times. The children also prophesied the vision would return on 13 October, 1917, to perform miracles.
In response to this claim, brought many to the city to witness these miracles. With more than 70,000 people gathered, newspapers across Portugal published testimonies from numerous witnesses who claimed they had seen extraordinary solar activity. These claims varied from the Sun zig-zagging in the sky, advancing rapidly towards the Earth, or emitting multi-coloured light beams. This event was called the Miracle of the Sun.
A small chapel was built at the exact site of the apparition two years later, and a statue of the Virgin Mary installed. Both were subsequently enclosed within the Fatima Basicilia, one of Portugal’s most beautiful churches.
Needing to legitimise these claims, the local bishop opened a canonical investigation. Bishop José da Silva reviewed testimonies of similar extraordinary solar events from secular sceptics such as reporters and government officials. On 13 October 1930 he declared the Miracle of the Sun ‘worthy of belief’. This led to the official crowning of the Our Lady of Fatima statue in Portugal. It also led to the establishment of 13 May each year as the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, a key date in Portugal.
The Miracle of the Sun (O milagre do sol) at Fatima on 13 October, witness descriptions – by Rev. Fr. Don Anton Saman Hettiarachchi, St. Anthony’s Bible Academy (SABA)
- “The sun, at one moment surrounded with scarlet flame, at another aureoled in yellow and deep purple, seemed to be in an exceedingly swift and whirling movement, at times appearing to be loosened from the sky and to be approaching the earth, strongly radiating heat.”
―Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho, writing for the Catholic newspaper Ordem.
- “… The silver sun, enveloped in the same gauzy grey light, was seen to whirl and turn in the circle of broken clouds … The light turned a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral, and spread itself over the people who knelt with outstretched hands … people wept and prayed with uncovered heads, in the presence of a miracle they had awaited. The seconds seemed like hours, so vivid were they.”
―Reporter for the Lisbon newspaper O Dia.
- “The sun’s disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible.” — Dr. Almeida Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University.
- “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 multicolored 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. Manuel Formigão, a professor at the seminary at Santarém, and a priest.
- “I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked fixedly at the sun, which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment.”
—Rev. Joaquim Lourenço, describing his boyhood experience in Alburitel, eighteen kilometers from Fátima.
- “On that day of October 13, 1917, without remembering the predictions of the children, I was enchanted by a remarkable spectacle in the sky of a kind I had never seen before. I saw it from this veranda …”
—Portuguese poet Afonso Lopes Vieira.
