Dear Editor, Fr McGillicuddy’s letter in last week’s Irish Catholic (IC 19/09/13) should provide useful food for thought for those who may have doubts about the existence of God. Similarly, an open-minded study of the Miracle of the Sun in Fatima on October 13, 1917 can help non-believers.
In recent years Gunther Stolz, a German scientist who worked as a lawyer and served as a judge, used his legal and judicial expertise to establish what exactly happened, by analysing the sometimes conflicting descriptions contained in the more than 100 witness statements available.
These are his conclusions: The children did predict on July 13 the date, the time and the place of the event. Around 70,000 turned up. It rained heavily and consistently in the four hours leading up to midday. People were miserably cold. At midday the rain stopped. The crowd could see what to them looked like the sun. The ‘sun’ was encircled with a halo of multi-coloured light and within that circle the ‘sun’ rotated, projecting beams of extraordinary light. This first phase lasted about two minutes. After a pause of a minute the ‘sun’ seemed to dance in the sky for about two minutes. Another pause was followed by a third phase in which the ‘sun’ seemed to fall towards the earth in a dancing movement before returning to its place in the firmament. The spectacle was over in 10 minutes, but something else had happened. The temperature had risen to more than 90F. Everything around was completely dry.
Gunther Stolzr regards Fatima as the greatest miracle in recorded history, but he does not think that the sun actually moved. He believes that about 70 different meteorological phenomena all came together over Fatima that day in the space of 10 minutes, to produce the spectacle. But the fact the time and place was predicted in advance most certainly makes this the most gigantic miracle ever recorded. Yes, God exists!
Yours etc.,
Lauri Duffy,
Howth,
Dublin 13.