Fátima – site of the Blessed Mother’s six 1917 apparitions.
The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, appeared six times to three shepherd children (ages 10, 8 & 7) near the town of Fátima, Portugal between May 13 and October 13, 1917. The Blessed Virgin told them that She had been sent by God with a message for every man, woman and child living in our century. Coming during the First World War, She promised that Heaven would grant peace to all the world if Her requests for prayer, reparation and consecration were heard and obeyed.
Our Lady of Fátima explained to the children that war is a punishment for sin and warned that God would further castigate the world for its disobedience to His Will by means of war, hunger and the persecution of the Church, the Holy Father and the Catholic Faithful. God’s Mother prophesied that Russia would be God’s chosen “instrument of chastisement,” spreading the “errors” of atheism and materialism across the earth, fomenting wars, annihilating nations and persecuting the Faithful everywhere.
In all Her appearances at Fátima, the Blessed Mother repeatedly emphasized the necessity of:
1) praying a daily Roaary
2) wearing the Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and
3) performing acts of reparation and sacrifice.
To prevent the terrible chastisement at the hands of Russia and to convert “that poor nation”, Our Lady requested the solemn public Consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart by the Pope and all the Catholic bishops of the world. She also asked that the Faithful practice a new devotion of reparation on the first Saturday of five consecutive months.
The heart of Our Lady’s Message to the world is contained in what has come to be called the “Secret” which She confided to the three child seers in July 1917. The Secret actually consists of three parts, the first two of which have been publicly revealed.
The first part of the Secret was a horrifying vision of hell, “where the souls of poor sinners go” and contained an urgent plea from Our Lady for acts of prayer and sacrifice to save souls.
The second part of the Secret specifically prophesied the outbreak of World War II and contained the Mother of God’s solemn request for the Consecration or Russia as a condition for world peace. It also predicted the inevitable triumph of Her Immaculate Heart following Russia’s consecration and the conversion “of that poor nation” to the Catholic Faith.
The third part of the Secret has not yet been made public, but was written down by Lucy Dos Santos, the last living Fátima seer, in 1944 and has been in the possession of the Holy See since 1957. Most informed sources speculate that this portion of the Secret concerns chaos in the Catholic Church, predicting widespread apostasy and a loss of faith beginning in the seventh decade of the 20th Century.
For more information see https://fatima.org/about/fatima-the-facts/