On August 13, 1917, the shepherd children Lucía dos Santos (in the process of beatification), and the cousins San Francisco and Santa Jacinto Marto, canonized in 2017 by Pope Francis, could not see the Virgin of Fátima because they were detained by a mayor mason.
Arturo de Oliveira Santos, mayor of Ourem, was a Catholic who had apostatized from his faith and who wanted the little shepherds to reveal to him the secret that the Virgin of Fátima entrusted to them. For that he devised a plan that would allow him to retain them and prevent them from seeing the Mother of God.
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The Freemason offered them a car so they could move safely among the crowd that accompanied them at each of the apparitions of the Virgin of Fatima, which began on May 13, 1917.
De Oliveira Santos told the children that the priest of Cova de Iría wanted to see them and took them to the parish house. There he revealed their deception and threatened to kill them to force them to talk.
He then locked them in a cell with criminals so that they would tell him the secret but nothing made the sighted shepherds talk. They never gave in, even though he threatened to kill them in a cauldron of boiling oil.
As had happened in other months, a crowd was waiting for the children at the site of the apparitions, but they never arrived because they were prevented from doing so by the mayor, who finally let them go on August 15, the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
Since the little shepherds could not see the Virgin of Fátima on August 13, the meeting took place on the 19th in a place called Valinhos.
“Come again to Cova da Iria on the thirteenth of next month, my daughter, and continue praying the Rosary every day. On the last day I will perform a miracle so that everyone will believe,” the Virgin of Fátima told them that day.
The other apparitions of the Virgin of Fátima
The first apparition occurred on May 13, 1917. That day the Mother of God told them that she would return every 13th of the following months, always at the same time.
In her second apparition, on June 13, the Virgin of Fátima told them that Francisco and Jacinta would die soon and that Lucia would live to bear witness to the apparitions. Sister Lucía Dos Santos died on February 13, 2005.
On July 13, in the third apparition, Fatima’s secret was revealed to little Lucía.
After the events of August, the little shepherds saw the Virgin Mary again on September 13 in Cova de Iría.
The sixth and last apparition of the Virgin of Fátima occurred on October 13, 1917. That day the so-called “Miracle of the Sun” occurred before thousands of people present.
After an intense rain, the clouds dissipated and the sun could be seen that looked like a silver disc. Its rays took on different colors and it was seen in a kind of “dance.”
It also seemed to fall on the thousands of people, who fell to their knees.
Originally published August 13, 2023. It has been updated for republication.
Walter Sanchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.