PrologueOn October 13, 1917, in Fatima, Portugal, seventy
miles north of Lisbon, seventy thousand people wit
nessed one of the most amazing events of this century.
The sun turned pale, emitted brilliant rays of multi
colored light, spun three times on its axis, then power
dived dizzily towards the earth.
The witnesses fell to their knees, terrified and scream
ing, believing that the end of the world had come.
This was the sixth and last consecutive monthly
sighting that year, during which time people reported
movements of a tree and the arrival and departure of a
cloud-like phenomenon.
Among the people present was a correspondent for
one of the major news services of the United States of
America. The story, and its details, were printed in less
than five hundred words in some hidden corner of one of
our largest newspapers. The World Series of 1917 was
getting most of the news coverage that week. People
here and in the rest of the world just weren't concerned
with three young peasant children who had spoken to
the Virgin Mary.
The children called this woman "Our Lady of Fatima."
For more than a quarter of a century, the Fatima incident
went virtually unnoticed, except for an occasional article
in some religious magazines.
Later, the picture changed. Fatima became a subject of
universal interest. People began talking about a message
to the world given by Our Lady of Fatima, to be revealed
in 1960. Somehow that message ended up in the Vatican,
and as far as all the research is concerned, no Catholic
church official has ever made any kind of formal
statement about this matter in its entirety.
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