Pope cheered in Fatima, site of Virgin Mary visions
Up to 1 million people expected
FATIMA, Portugal — To the cheers of tens of thousands, Pope Francis traveled Friday to the Portuguese town of Fatima to honor two illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church.
Pilgrims three-to-five deep lined his motorcade route and tossed flower petals as he zoomed by. The huge crowd erupted in cheers and applause as the pontiff’s open-topped, white popemobile arrived at Fatima’s vast square. The rain that had poured down earlier in the day gave way to a brilliant, warm sun by the time Francis arrived.
There was no official crowd estimate, but authorities had previously said they were expecting 1 million people
Francis is in Fatima to celebrate the centenary of the apparitions and to canonize the children. He is hoping the message of peace that they reported 100 years ago, when Europe was in the throes of World War I, will resonate with the Catholic faithful today.
Over the past several days, church groups, families and individuals have made their way to Fatima, 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Lisbon, some completing the final leg of the pilgrimage on their knees in prayer.
Carrying candles, rosaries and roses, they have headed to the statue dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima. Many tossed wax body parts — ears, hearts, limbs — into a huge fire nearby to pray for healing.
“For me, it’s the second time I am here with a pope, first with John Paul II and now with Papa Francisco,” pilgrim Elisabete Fradique Conceicao said in between the rain showers. “They are simple men and that simplicity makes sense when you think what happened here 100 years ago.”
On May 13, 1917, while they were grazing their sheep, the children saw the first of a half-dozen visions of the Virgin Mary.
They said she revealed to them three “secrets” — apocalyptic messages foreshadowing World War II, hell, the rise and fall of communism and the death of a pope.