By In his homily, the patriarch of Lisbon, Portugal, said the devotion must transform lives.
Pilgrims from all over the world descended on the Fátima Shrine in Portugal to commemorate the feast of Our Lady of Fátima.
On the eve of the feast of Our Lady of Fátima, May 12, the light of thousands of candles illuminated the night at the spot where Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children 109 years ago.
The faithful filled the shrine, gathering to participate in the recitation of the rosary and the traditional candlelight procession.
‘We come as pilgrims and depart as missionary disciples’
Rui Manuel Sousa Valério, patriarch of Lisbon, Portugal, celebrated the Mass on May 13. In his homily, the prelate emphasized that the pilgrimage “does not end here” but rather Fátima is “a point for sending forth.”
This celebration commemorates the apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima to the three shepherd children in 1917. Every year, thousands of pilgrims gather at Cova da Iria, a neighborhood that was once the field where the three shepherd children pastured their familyʼs sheep.
The pilgrimage on May 13, which commemorates the Virginʼs first apparition to the three children, is the most attended, welcoming more than 450,000 pilgrims last year.
“We come as pilgrims and depart as missionary disciples; everything we experience here — prayer, silence, reconciliation, and communion — cannot remain confined within the Cova da Iria,” the prelate noted.
He invited the faithful to let the experience of Fátima “enter into our hearts” as well as into all areas of life — our homes, families, workplaces, and schools — and also “into the wounds and joys of daily life.”
Sousa emphasized that the message of Fátima is truly embraced “when it transforms into a mission, and what we receive becomes a light for others.”
He further recalled that in her apparitions, the Virgin called for conversion and for the responsibility of love: “True devotion to Mary never closes the heart. It opens it; it never isolates, it sends forth; it never sleeps, it awakens.”
According to the shrine, the year 2026 also marks the 45th anniversary of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in St. Peterʼs Square. For this reason, the Mass in Fátima was celebrated using the chalice that the Polish pontiff donated during one of his visits to the site.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
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According to some Fatima experts, the Third Secret of Fatima may not have been published; the Vatican version does not give the actual Third Secret. See the Fatima analyses at the Fatima Center:
https://fatima.org/suppression-of-the-third-secret/
Suppression of the Third Secret
A Message in Three Parts
These are some excerpts from the lengthy analysis:
“Fatima experts claim that the Third Secret has not been published. Regarding the Vatican publication in 2000 Fatima experts immediately raised some serious questions. They pointed out that the published text contains no words of Our Lady, even though the Vatican itself, when it announced the suppression of the Secret back in 1960, referred to “the words which Our Lady confided as a secret to the three little shepherds.”
Nor does it contain any of the words implied by the “etc.” Sr. Lucia used to end Our Lady’s mysterious phrase: “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved etc.”
Moreover, the document’s format, on four sheets of notepaper, does not correspond to the single sheet sealed in the envelope Sr. Lucia gave to her bishop in 1944.
It seems obvious that the published document is the second part of the Secret, the part that Fr. Schweigl said “concerns the Pope.” The first part, the letter sealed by Sr. Lucia and kept for so long in the papal apartments, has still not been revealed. Indeed, when confronted on this point by a German-speaking friend of the Pope, Ratzinger admitted that the published version of the “Bishop dressed in White” is “truly not all of it [i.e. the Third Secret].”
Mario Luigi Ciappi, who was nothing less than Pope John Paul II’s own personal papal theologian. In a personal communication to a Professor Baumgartner in Salzburg, Cardinal Ciappi revealed that:
In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.4”
The apparition and statement of Our Lady of Akita, Japan, echo the argued suppressed apocalyptic content of the Third Secret of Fatima. See
https://www.marianland.com/third-secret-not-revealed.html
Nossa Senhora de Fátima – Ora Pro Nobis.