Sydney
4 November 2001
Home
Archive
Subscribe
Links
Contact
Indifference main worry, says Dr Pell
Open your hearts to the refugees, bishop pleads
Beazley visits aged villa
Health care needs more money
Two Australias: Labor backs national poverty summit
Biblical principle behind split-income tax policy
Sydney’s new Maronite bishop
Archbishop Pell in protest on cloning
Amnesty backing imprisoned priest
‘Bishop buses’ ready to roll
Trinity students get their sea legs on board the Kanimbla
‘PR campaign’ on embryos
Antioch: 20 years of showing the light
Unity Group enjoys day in the sun
Soldier, teacher, actor, priest – Mark’s inspired journey
Why do boys lag behind?
Sacrament of Penance: NZ bishop denies ‘radical reform’ charge
Letters: Catholic schools
Conversation: An hilarious ministry - Fr Hilary Doran, Carmelite priest
Reflection: Questions that will require religious answers
Too many prisons?
Opinion: Can the West avoid a ‘holy war’ with Islam?
Having fun with Vinnies to help those in need
‘God’s engineer’
Tamil Catholics celebrate their 10th birthday
Education: Teach your children ‘how to pray – not what to say’
Inspirations: Fatima ‘prayer for peace’
Inspirations: Fatima ‘prayer for peace’
Angela Pgiziano, chair of the organising
committee, at the fourth annual Fatima procession – a prayer for ‘peace
in the world’
By Marilyn Kerjean
More than 200 faithful honoured Our Lady of Fatima with a procession and Mass at St Benedict’s Church, Arcadia, last month.
It was the fourth annual Fatima procession at St Benedict’s to “pray for peace in the world and look forward to next year”, explains one parishioner.
Worshippers prayed the rosary in English, Italian and several other languages as they proceeded throughout the sun-drenched church grounds led by more than 30 men who helped bear the Fatima statue.
The procession concluded with a Mass concel ebrated by Benedictine Fathers Alberic Jacovone, Gabriel Pedron and Simon Aloisi and Fr Jan Chrzezonowicz. Prayer petitions were collected and will be sent to Fatima.
It was in the rural village of Fatima in Portugal that three young children saw an apparition of an angel, and then the Blessed Virgin Mary on May 13, 1917.
Over the next six months, Mary continued to appear to the three shepherd children, nine-year-old Lucia dos Santos and her younger cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto. The Blessed Virgin had first appeared to them while they were looking after their family’s sheep.
A bright flash of light made them look for shelter – they thought it was lightning. But then Mary appeared in the centre of a ball of light before them. She was dressed in white and clasping a rosary in her hands.
Pope John Paul credits the Virgin Mary with averting the assassination attempt that injured him in 1981. He has made pilgrimages to Fatima and its Marian shrine and last year beatified two of the visionaries, Francisco and Jacinta.
At that time he explained: “The message of Fatima is a call to conversion … God does not want anyone to be lost … in her motherly concern, the Blessed Virgin came here to Fatima to ask men and women ‘to stop offending God, Our Lord, who is already very offended’.
“It is a mother’s sorrow that compels her to speak; the destiny of her children is at stake. For this reason she asks the little shepherds: ‘Pray, pray much and make sacrifices for sinners; many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them’.
“May the message of their lives live on forever to light humanity’s way!”
Lucia dos Santos is still alive. Now in her early 90s, she is a Carmelite nun in an enclosed convent in Coimbra, Portugal.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made a report last year following the release of the third message of Fatima, written by Sister Lucia in 1917.
It said: “Throughout history there have been supernatural apparitions and signs which go to the heart of human events and which, to the surprise of believers and non-believers alike, play their part in the unfolding of history.
“These manifestations can never contradict the content of faith, and must therefore have their focus in the core of Christ’s proclamation: the Father’s love which leads men and women to conversion and bestows the grace required to abandon oneself to him with filial devotion.
“This, too is the message of Fatima which, with its urgent call to conversion and penance, draws us to the heart of the Gospel.
“Fatima is undoubtedly the most prophetic of modern apparitions.
“The first and second parts of the ‘secret’ … refer especially to the frightening vision of hell, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Second World War and, finally, the prediction of the immense damage that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning the Christian faith and embracing Communist totalitarianism.”