A statue of Mary is seen at the Marian shrine of Fatima in central Portugal in a 2019 file photo. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the shrine
offers a livestream of the chapel, and live daily broadcasts of praying the rosary and Mass. Photo: CNS A special section of the archive of the Shrine of Fatima reveals the intimate relationship between the Faithful and Our Lady, writes António Marujo
A sheet of paper, handwritten, with a short message, in Portuguese: “You know who I am. There is no need to describe my person…” Another sheet of paper, completely blank. Some of the items sent by mail to Our Lady of Fatima or delivered to the shrine. What did the person who wrote it desire with this gesture?
From Irish people, we may also read three mysterious letters from the 1960s. One of them, typewritten, addressed on July 7, 1968 “to the bishops of Ireland”, asks “for the removal of [Éamon] de Valera and the Fianna Fáil Party from all power & influence in Ireland, as speedily as possible”. The other two, very similar, handwritten in a tabloid sheet and big characters, both ask to “Arrange Michael Collins assassination in 1968” (we’ll take a closer look at them later).
Each message carrying its own mystery, these five enigmatic sheets of paper are now collected together with almost eight million other messages of the same kind in the Correio de Nossa Senhora (Our Lady’s Mail) — the name of the archive in the Shrine of Fatima, that holds letters and notes of all kinds addressed to Our Lady — until now practically unknown. In it, we find requests for health or employment, forbidden and confessed loves, existential anguish, prayers for peace in the world, for the ‘conversion of sinners’ or the ‘conversion of Russia’, even requests for an end to war, for example, in the former Portuguese colonies.
Whatever the origin, human needs are very similar: in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, English or French, the languages most frequently used, one finds messages asking to overcome “economic difficulties”, to obtain “better living conditions”, a “satisfactory job”, “health for the children”, the “conversion of us, sinners” or of “sinners” in general, good school results, a “nice boyfriend”…One also asks for peace in the world, the Pope’s intentions, or the success of the Second Vatican Council.
From Ireland (with no date and unsigned), someone asks, among personal requests for “peace in Ireland”. This message sums up the tone of many of them: one’s own or close relatives and friends’ needs intersect with political issues, problems in the family, ways of praying, social needs, faith and devotion. Most ask, explicitly or implicitly, to be a better person, a better parent, a better spouse, a better daughter or son – a better Christian. As two other letters, sent by the same person from Colombia, in 1966, express: “We all wish to be better, much better than we are.”
Tradition
Messages began appearing in Fatima in the 1940s, following a tradition of other pilgrimage sites. More than two decades had passed since the events at Fatima in 1917, when three children – Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto – said that they saw Our Lady (Francisco and Jacinta were canonised by Pope Francis in 2017).
The mail increased in the following decades: in 2017, the centennial year, 237 boxes were filled with about 807,000 records from devotees (10% of the total ever received), many of them, Polish, because of the Polish Pope John Paul II, who made the pilgrimage to Fátima in 1982, 1990 and 2000.
In the last two decades, Ireland is, on average, the sixth country with the highest number of foreign pilgrims to Fatima. In 2017, the centennial year of the events, 48 pilgrimages organised in Ireland brought 2,019 pilgrims to the Portuguese shrine – less than the 3,890 (77 pilgrimages) in 2000 and the 3,156 (in 70 pilgrimages) in 2010.
One may ask if it is legitimate to keep these messages, which reflect something very intimate, in several cases explicitly expressing the expectation that they will be destroyed. At the Western Wall in Jerusalem, almost all of them are destined to be buried before Pesach, the Jewish Passover, in a cemetery. In Fatima, there was “hesitation” about what to do with these documents, admits Marco Daniel Duarte, director of the department of studies of the shrine. After some debate with specialists, the decision was taken to study and organise the documents, what began in 2014. And, probably, this will be a rare collection worldwide, at least in its kind.
Many messages – especially in English – are just lists of names to be interceded for. Jewish tradition has passed on to Christianity the importance of the name. “The God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, the God of Moses…” means that, in the Bible, revelation has always been made to concrete people. Christian prayer today retains the idea of naming as a way of making present, remembering, or passing on a testimony. Writing a list of names is, in this case, a more intimate and concrete way of consecrating the loved ones.
In the part of the collection investigated – from 1940 to 1977, the last year that can be consulted, in order to comply with the archives’ rules of access – besides Portugal, the letters hail predominantly from Spain, Italy, Brazil, Ireland, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France.
After the 1980s, the number of messages from Poland became overwhelming: some of the years have dozens of boxes with messages from the native country of John Paul II, who helped so much to internationalise Fatima with his trips to the shrine.
From Portugal or India, from Ireland or the USA, from Latin America or somewhere in Africa, all the people write to the same confidant and intimate friend, with many and different invocations, but always with a filial tone: mother, dearest mother in heaven, my most holy mother, my good mother, dear mamma…
“The familiarity of Fatima is a revolution,” comments Portuguese Theologian, Fr Bento Domingues, OP. The pilgrims address “the person they talk to, to whom they pray, with whom they are, in whom they have confidence.” He adds: “It’s a revolution. What counts is not religion in its institutions, but rather the journey each person makes. I’m the one in the process of going, in the process of conversion, in the process of walking.”
There are enigmatic letters, asking only – sometimes on several pages – to “solve that problem”, without ever saying what it is, which shows closeness and intimacy. As well as some with short questions: “Mom. When do we begin? Your sinful son. B.” Or even this one: “Dear S: The days go by. We notice their weight, positive, negative, concrete, abstract, and each one in the face of personal responsibility before himself and the whole wants to live life and fight for his eternity. To how much illusion one is subject to in the realm of spirit and matter, even those that most possess the truth that matters…”
Mailbox
This is a mailbox in which women are the main senders. In the Portuguese case, when the subject is the colonial war that Portugal waged in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau (1961-1974), “it was the women who wrote, because they remained [in the mother land],” comments the bishop and historian Carlos Azevedo, working in the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture.
Some random samples show that, depending on the years, between 70% and 80% of messages were sent by women. “The feminine is the pole of humanity that is most easily placed in the position of asking, of giving thanks, and of bridging the gap with the divinity. These messages also confirm this,” observes Marco Daniel Duarte.
Many people’s connection to Fatima is based on the dimension of Our Lady as “a maternal figure, the protective mother”, states Portuguese psychiatrist Luísa Gonçalves, serving at the armed forces hospital, in Lisbon, where she treats former combatants with post-traumatic stress. “‘Mother’ is a protective word, the mother is unconditional love. She is someone who says, ‘whatever you do, whatever you go through, however you come, I love you’. And there is a mother in heaven who gives faith to these people and who, no matter what happens, will always love and protect them.”
The collection reveals, on the other hand, the intricacies of many family problems or longings: children’s fears towards their parents or relatives; confession of their own or their father’s crimes, concern or sadness over dramatic situations: “What I ask you most fervently is to bring my mother and father together”; and, above the sentence inscribed on a little sheet from a notebook, there are the words father and mother, written in big letters. “For my mother to get along with my father” or “for my father to accept me” are other such wishes.
The relationships between couples do not always go well: a letter from a rural Portuguese woman asks for her husband to return from Lisbon, as she has no news from him. Another intercedes for the conversion of her “husband who lives in corruption, with prostitutes, convert him so that he returns to his sacred home”; a third woman wants “the grace for a man to get away from a prostitute woman with whom he lives”; and yet another wants a “spirit of justice” for her husband and to “take away his alcoholic addiction”.
The strict morality of the time (“That I may not have bad thoughts,” asks one letter) imposed restrictions on one’s conscience and desired not to fall into “temptations,” an expression almost always referred to immoral behavior: “That I may not have such bad thoughts and not consent to them”; “I am 18-years-old, a formidable age, but full of temptations. Help me and accompany me in my life always”, a Portuguese female student asked in May 1967.
Bad thoughts, in her own concept, was what a student in a religious school felt, at least during some days, in May 1964, when she wrote a little diary confessing her passion for one of the nuns: “I made the sacrifice, dominating myself to not let the fire inside me be seen – love for Mother P. I couldn’t go on without exploding.”
There are much more serious dramas, at that time socially tolerated. In the tone of one who begs, ‘L.’ writes: “I earnestly beg you for purity of body and soul, Lady…How many times have I let my father touch me, not knowing that this act was impure…Make me more intimate and more confidant with my mother…Convert my father and, if necessary, take away those vital sex forces from him if you see fit. Mother, you know that I am becoming a woman, I feel it well, you know that in the presence of advances from my father, if you do not help me, I will fall into the incalculable mud and go to hell. Mother, do not allow that.”
Messages
What one reads in these messages reflects, says Marco Daniel Duarte, “human concerns: on the one hand, thanksgiving because something in the life of the believer has happened, referring to a special grace granted through the Virgin of Fatima; on the other hand, specific requests for the concrete life of the believer, the family, the wider family that surrounds him, the wider community that can be a nation or a place that is at war and that is also the object of these requests, or even the planet itself.” Or even “requests concerning health, the social position that people have in the community, the way of being and living life, not only in the community, but on a broader scale”.
“Knowing that someone cares about us gives a lot of tranquility, a lot of strength, a lot of courage,” states psychiatrist Luísa Gonçalves. “Being loved, knowing that one is loved, gives courage, makes people strong, transforms them, because they feel that there is someone who cares, who remembers them, who wants them to succeed in life. Faith has that value too.”
If Our Lady of Fatima were not there, things could be serious in some situations: “Dear Mommy…you know that I only have you in this world and for me you are everything…Don’t abandon me. Don’t you see how lonely I feel? There are moments in which if it weren’t for you, I would have already ended my life.”
Very mysterious are the three letters already quoted, sent from Ireland (or delivered by Irish people to the shrine). Two of them were cut from a “book of service”. In big characters, someone wrote: “For the secret of Fatima – 1960. J. O’Leary (Senior). Let justice be done Immediately. Smash x finish de Valera’s name x (??) now forever. Show him up publicy for what he is! Arrange Michael Collins’ assassination! In 1968. Fatima. 1960-1968. 30 years of tramping roads x streets x hills – for 1/6 – x no insurance health benefits or just pension! Is honesty ever remanded? St Malachy.”
With the strange sentence wishing the assassination of Mr Collins in 1968 (it had already occurred in August 1922), the second one, very similar, seems to be written by the same person. The message is almost the same, with some different sentences: “M. O’Leary. Let justice be done. Like lightning Ireland. Arrange Michael Collins’ assassination in 1968. Finish de Valera’s x his party, (??) associates x descendants forever! Smash their power into dust x atoms! 30 years of dragging…and no insurance or health insurance – or just pension. Is honesty ever rewarded? St Malachy.”
The third letter, typewritten, is longer. And talks about politics, religion, education and the House of Orange, among other issues. Expressing some wishful thinking, in relation with the secret of Fátima, the author writes:
“July 7, 1968 – To the bishops of Ireland:
Squash immediately the secularisation of the Irish universities and the dangerous merger;
Work and pray in full might for the removal of de Valera and the Fianna Fáil Party from all power & influence in Ireland, as speedily as possible;
Crush anti-clericalism and secularisation immediately from its strengthening grasp emanating from Fianna Fáil and its close followers…corruption was taken over;
The secret plan of Fatima demands it. The secret plan is to be worked and known by Ireland and the Vatican only. Ireland is to have a very special set-up as government – so that the plan can be carried out – within as short a time as possible;
The secret of Fatima concerns the fall and final end of the British monarchy, the abolition of the House of Orange;
The liquidation of ‘the six counties’ and its evils;
Ireland is to have a Queen and a royal monarchy that will last till the end of time;
Ireland becomes the leading country of the world – and Rome and Dublin the principal cities;
Part of the Vatican moves to Dublin (Killiney) for special administrative work;
‘The six counties’ and England are coupled together for the conversion – of Russia;
England becomes a small province, a collection of ethnic states. Their role is to be medical research, social work and penance. They come to their knees and regain their faith. London ceases to exist as a world capital city – it will become morally cleaned-up;Scotland and Wales get their own royal independence – and finally become converted;
Royal republics with a dynasty of queens specially chosen take over the countries of Europe in a new way. A new true diplomacy takes over from the corrupt one. It is the new era of the world – the age of Mary – the year 1 A.M. (Age of Mary);
The foreign question – the question of the foreign missions is solved by a miracle of the traditional Irish language. Latin and Irish become the two new languages of diplomacy – the principal ones;
The Irish universities are to be taken over by religious orders: – UCD by the Jesuits – The Royal Loyola University of Ireland: Trinity College – by the Augustinians: Queen’s University, Belfast, by the servites from Benburb Monastery, county Tyrone. – Fatima 1960.”
Enigmas
The archive is indeed full of mysterious, enigmas and personal needs. But, also of course spiritual needs and requests for peace. In May 1969, a message sent from Spain condenses in one sentence another of the main issues of the Fatima message and also of this archive: “To You, Mary of Peace, I beseech You to ask Your Son that there may be no wars.”
From the very beginning, the desire for peace has been inscribed in the events of Fatima. On May 13, 1917, in her first dialogue during the apparition, the little seer Lúcia, then 10-years-old, recounts that she asked, “when will the war end?”
The desire is universal and generic requests abound, such as “Give peace to the world, let the war stop”. As written in two small cards from Spain: “Bring peace to the world”, says one of them from 1958, with an illegible signature. “My most loving Mother, give us peace in our home and the union of all and for peace in the world”, asks another.
The theme of war is apparent from an early period until the late 1980s, in the anti-communist dimension that the message of Fatima includes. In the former Soviet Union, Bolshevism and Stalinism made Christians and believers in general one of the privileged targets of persecution. Starting in the 1920s, millions of believers would be taken to the forced labour camps of the ‘Gulag archipelago’.
Between 1925 and 1946, while a Dorothean Sister and resident in Tuy and Pontevedra (Galicia), Lúcia would receive such news, which worsened with the religious tensions of the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War.
Reports
All these reports shaped the references to the ‘conversion of Russia’ and to communism, which was seen by Lúcia and many Catholics as an enemy of the Christian faith.
Communism comes to be seen by Lúcia and many Catholics as an enemy of Christian civilization and of faith itself – whether in Russia, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, Brazil or the United States.
Regarding the colonial war that Portugal was waging in Angola, a letter from a student in Lisbon summed it up, joining Portugal and Spain in the same design: “Lady of the Rosary of Fatima give peace in the world…make Russia convert, make there be peace in the world, make the soldiers not to suffer so much in Angola and in other countries. Lady of the Rosary save Portugal from a great war that will unfold and Portugal only has on its side our Spain that forms with us the little corner of the world.”
Speaking of the pilgrim experience at Fatima, Dominican Fr Bento Domingues comments: “Whoever has never been to the candle procession [one of the most important moments in the Fatima pilgrimages] doesn’t know what the night is, and what light is, and what hope is.”
In the middle of the night, the candlelit procession “lights up” hope. And, at the end, the farewell procession speaks to people’s departure “to everyday life, to the struggle”. They don’t want to say goodbye.
“The longing that there is in the farewell song is a shedding of tears. Why? Because they all have within themselves a farewell: such as death, sickness, all things…And Our Lady is there…”
António Marujo is a Portuguese Catholic journalist with setemargens.com – this work was made possible by a journalistic research grant from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.