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IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Haring

By Junno Arocho Esteves

LEIRIA, Portugal (CNS) -- Pope Francis said his two-day pilgrimage to Fatima would be a time of prayer and encounter with Jesus and Mary.

The visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima "is a bit special," he told reporters aboard his flight from Rome May 12. "It is a journey of prayer, an encounter with the Lord and the holy Mother of God."

After a three-hour flight, during which Pope Francis greeted each of the 69 journalists traveling with him, the papal plane landed at Monte Real air base, about 25 miles from Fatima.

The pope's trip was planned for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Mary's apparitions to three shepherd children in Fatima.

On the actual anniversary, May 13, Pope Francis was to canonize two of the three young seers, Blessed Jacinta Marto and her brother Blessed Francisco Marto, making them the youngest non-martyred saints in the Catholic Church.

Arriving at the military base, the pope was welcomed by Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and held a brief private meeting with him at the base. He also visited the base chapel and blessed sick members of military families.

Before leaving his residence at the Vatican that morning, the pope met with six women, who "had been through tough times," said Greg Burke, Vatican spokesman. Two were pregnant and several were migrants. They all brought their children with them to meet the pope.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state and the pope's closest collaborator, said Pope Francis' visit would "express his own love and devotion to Mary" and his great respect for the Marian devotion of Catholics around the world.

In the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima to the three shepherd children, Pope Francis sees an example of the Mary described by the Magnificat, the biblical hymn of praise for the great things God has done through her, Cardinal Parolin told L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.

At Fatima, "Our Lady of the Rosary appeared not to the rich or powerful, nor to people who were influential, but to children," he said. The children were from simple families and were illiterate, "like the least of society or, to use the terminology of the pope, the 'discarded' of society. And Mary wanted to favor this category of people, giving the little shepherds a countercultural message."

In 1917, World War I was raging and people and public discourse was filled with words of hatred, vengeance and hostility, the cardinal said. "Mary, on the other hand, spoke of love, forgiveness, self-sacrifice and giving oneself to others. It was a total reversal of all the values, or anti-values, that prevailed at that time."

The two lessons Pope Francis draws from Fatima for the world today, he said, are the need to value the least of one's brothers and sisters and the need "to live those authentic values that can be the basis for peaceful coexistence and solidarity within a nation and among countries."

Bishop Antonio dos Santos Marto of Leiria-Fatima, also writing in the Vatican newspaper, said the Fatima message has touched so many people around the world for generations because it spoke and continues to speak about strengthening faith when the world around one is in turmoil.

The messages given by Our Lady of Fatima to the three children in 1917, the bishop said, spoke of "the two world wars and the suffering of humanity, with a specific mention of nations like Russia; the persecution of the church with the mention of the martyrs of the 20th century and of the pope himself; and of the great cause of peace among people."

"All of that," Bishop Marto said, "was accompanied by a very strong warning to not resign oneself to those situations as if they were normal" and not to give into a sense that evil will determine human destiny. "It is possible to defeat evil by starting with the conversion of hearts to God, prayer and reparation for sins."

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Vatican Weekend for May 14th, 2017 features our weekly reflection on the Sunday Gospel reading, “There’s more in the Sunday Gospel than Meets the Eye,” plus our resident Vatican watcher Joan Lewis reviews the past week’s events in the Vatican.

Listen to this program produced and presented by Susy Hodges:

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(Vatican Radio) Estonian Catholics are preparing for the centenary of the Marian apparition in Fatima. 

The Catholic Church’s Press Office in Estonia said that on the day of the anniversary, Saturday 13th May, the Medieval Old Town of Tallin will be animated by a procession carrying the statue of Our Lady of Fatima: 

Estonia as a secular society, it is a big step to show public catholic traditional customs, and first time so wide catholic procession will take place in Tallinn old town. Usually, catholics do small procession on the feast of Corpus Domini, close to catholic cathedral in Tallinn old town.

The Our Lady of Fatima apparition role is quite important in Estonian history. 

“In 1993, pope John Paul II visited the country, and it was the first papal visit in Estonian history, shortly after Estonia declared formal independence. After the collapse of Soviet Union, people in Estonia believe that the fall of Soviet communism, particularly in Eastern Europe was work of pope John Paul II, but the pope said, it is part of the Fatima Message that the communist regime collapsed,” said Marge-Marie Paas, press-representative in Catholic Church in Estonia.

The present-day Estonian Roman Catholic Church, which, according to church data, has nearly 6000 catholics. Small catholic community in Estonia is active and visible in society and in national culture. 

On 23 March 2005 Mons. Philippe Jourdan was appointed a Titular Bishop of Pertusa and Apostolic Administrator of Estonia by Pope John Paul II, becoming the second Catholic bishop in Estonia after the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Msgr. Jourdan's predecessor Eduard Profittlich, S.J. died in 1942 in Soviet prison. 

In 2015, Estonian Apostolic Administator, Mons. Jourdan visited Ad Limina the Pope Francis together with Latvian bishops, and The Holy Father reminded the Bishops that they are not alone in this “renewed evangelization.” They can count on their priests, and he called on them to commit themselves to continual prayer for vocations. 

 

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis’s plane touched down at Monte Real Air Base shortly before 4:30pm local time in Portugal. The sky was threatening for much of the afternoon – not in the way it is always threatening a little rain in the height of springtime a thousand feet up and twenty-odd miles off the Atlantic coast – but a serious thunderstorm.

The crowds at the airport were larger than I expected to see them, not only for the weather, but especially since they were there only to catch a glimpse of the Holy Father, who was not scheduled to deliver any prepared remarks and who in fact visited only privately with the President of the Portuguese Republic , Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and then it was to the chapel at the air base where he landed, to share a moment of prayer with sick service personnel and their families.

Pope Francis, you see, is here on pilgrimage.

“A pilgrim of hope and peace,” is how he described himself ahead of his departure – and he has asked the faithful all around the world to accompany him with prayers for the success of his pilgrimage.

Scores of thousands of people have taken him very much at his word, deciding to join him in Fatima for the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the first of a series of Marian apparitions to a trio of shepherd children: the now Blessed siblings and soon-to-be Saints Francisco e Jacinta Marto, and their cousin Lucia, who became a Discalced Carmelite and died in 2005.

That is the first sign of “success” – at least as such things are measured in worldly measures: people have noticed.

One of the fairly constant refrains of Pope Francis’ pontificate has been his encouragement of popular devotion among the faithful: those acts of piety that moviemakers love so much and seem usually to understand so little, which have of late fallen rather away from the fore of the public Catholic mind, but that nevertheless constitute an integral part of Catholic life and an indispensable piece of the Catholic character, wherever the faith has taken hold.

We are all very much looking forward to what Pope Francis will say in his public engagements this evening at the Rosary to begin the vigil, and Saturday at the Mass of canonisation.

From here on the ground in Fatima, it seems clear that the Holy Father is staking this part of the effort to renew the faith of Europe by counting on the power of the faith to attract, especially when practiced simply and devotedly by the faithful themselves.

In Fatima with Pope Francis, I’m Chris Altieri

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