My visits to the shrines of Our Lady

MY first visit was to Fatima in 1947, 30 years after the apparitions to the three seers. There were no hotels then in Fatima so we stayed in the large bungalow owned by an English lady, her Portuguese husband, and their small children. There we met with the father, Mr. Marto, of Jacinta and Francisco, both recently made saints. Although I was with my family, I walked mostly alone since my mother was an invalid. In one of my visits to the Cova de Iria, I met a group of English pilgrims and took a lot of pictures with them but unfortunately the film was not returned to me when I sent it to Kodak office in the USA. It was a quiet and prayerful experience which lasted about two weeks. On arrival in Lisbon we had been met by a Dominican Irish priest who escorted us to Fatima but on the way there we passed by Santarem shrine where a Host bled after it was placed on a handkerchief by the communicant at the bidding and beating of her Jewish husband. It is still preserved to the present day in that shrine. On the way there, the Dominican priest also gave me pamphlets on devotion to St. Philomena for the preservation of vocation. From Fatima, we stayed a few weeks in Spain and came home to the Philippines in a four-engine Philippine Air Lines propeller plane. The trip took us three days with stops in Italy, Greece, Pakistan, and India (New Delhi and Calcutta.)

My next visit was to Lourdes in 1958 with three other Jesuit Scholastics. Our superiors allowed us to go by plane through Europe on the way to studies in theology in Woodstock, Maryland. It was a quiet visit and I have come back to Lourdes as a priest three more times. Once alone on my way back to the Philippines from studies, a second time with the family, and finally a third time with my sister when we stayed for a prolonged visit after the death of another sister whose house we intended to close in Florida. It was already the year 2001 and we also went back to Fatima. This time Fatima had good hotels and a shopping center and a beautiful church. It was still not as commercialized as Lourdes and we had plenty of time to pray,

In the nineteen eighties, I made several trips to Europe and in one I was not able to get a visa for France in Manila. I told my friend Mrs. Methy Filler I wanted to go to Lourdes but could not get a visa outside of Manila for France. She suggested I go to Vannous in Flanders, Belgium, where Our Lady under the title of Our Lady of the Poor also appeared to a young girl. So I did. And found many pilgrims, especially Germans, in that shrine. Later I would visit Van Nous a second time. Finally I went to Medyogurje in1987. I witnessed the sun circling out of its orbit in pastel colors for about 15 minutes. I thought this was a common phenomenon and that other people also saw the movement of the sun and that they just went about doing their business. But it seems the other people just went about their business without seeing the movement of the sun. Medjogurje has a problem being approved because the seers say that our Lady told them that she loved her children whether they were Muslims or Protestants and this has been interpreted as to be OK to belong to any church, which would not be true.

In the Philippines I have gone to visit Our Lady of Antipolo every May whenever I can. This is a devotion started by my grandfather, Silvino, during Spanish times. They took a casco, a flat-bottom boat, up the Pasig river to a town in Laguna de Bae and then walked up the hills to Antipolo. As a child, this trip took all day to go to Antipolo but recently with the good roads it takes only about an hour from our place in Marikina. This shrine has a statue of Our Lady thrown into a bonfire by Chinese revolutionaries but did not burn. This is still a very popular shrine in the Philippines.