Our Lady of Fatima

On May 13, 1917, during the First World War, three shepherd children, Lúcia dos Santos, aged ten, and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, aged nine and seven, saw a lady "brighter than the sun" over a small holm oak at the Cova da Iria, near Fátima, Portugal. She asked them to return on the 13th of each month, to pray the Rosary every day for peace and the end of the war, and to offer sacrifices for sinners.

The apparitions continued monthly until October 13, 1917, when the lady said she was "the Lady of the Rosary," and some 70,000 people witnessed what became known as the Miracle of the Sun. The Church approved the apparitions in 1930. Francisco and Jacinta died young in the flu epidemic and were canonized on May 13, 2017; Lúcia became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005. Pope John Paul II, shot in Saint Peter's Square on May 13, 1981, credited Our Lady of Fatima with saving his life.

Every May 12 and 13 hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gather at the Shrine of Fatima for a candlelight procession, singing the Ave of Fatima, and the farewell to the Virgin with waving white handkerchiefs. Parishes in Portugal, Brazil, Latin America and among Portuguese communities in the US crown her image and process with it. The bullet that struck John Paul II was set in her crown.