Teaching & Learning

Today is a very special day. 98 years ago, three shepherd children experienced the apparition of Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, at Fátima. The three children were Lúcia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto. The apparitions at Fátima were officially declared worthy of belief by the Catholic Church. Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI voiced their acceptance of the supernatural origin of the Fátima events. John Paul II credited Our Lady of Fátima with saving his life following an assassination attempt on the Feast of Our Lady of Fátima, 1981. He donated the bullet that wounded him to the Roman Catholic sanctuary at Fátima, Portugal and it was placed in the crown of the Virgin's statue. On May 13, 1917, Lúcia described seeing a lady "brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal goblet filled with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of the sun". While they had never spoken to a…