VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has approved the recognition of a miracle attributed to the intercession of two of the shepherd children who saw Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, thus paving the way for their canonization.
Pope Francis signed the decree for the causes of Blesseds Francisco and Jacinta Marto during a meeting March 23 with Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes, the Vatican said.
The recognition of the miracle makes it likely that the canonization ceremony for the two children will be scheduled soon. The cardinals and bishops who are members of the congregation must vote to recommend their canonization and then the pope would convene the cardinals resident in Rome for a consistory to approve the sainthood.
Many people are hoping Pope Francis will preside over the canonization ceremony during his visit to Fatima May 12-13.
The pilgrimage will mark the 100th anniversary of the Marian apparitions, which began May 13, 1917, when 9-year-old Francisco and 7-year-old Jacinta, along with their cousin Lucia dos Santos, reported seeing the Virgin Mary. The apparitions continued once a month until Oct. 13, 1917, and later were declared worthy of belief by the Catholic Church.
A year after the apparitions, both of the Marto children became ill during an influenza epidemic that plagued Europe. Francisco died April 4, 1919, at the age of 10, while Jacinta succumbed to her illness Feb. 20, 1920, at the age of 9.
Francisco and Jacinta's cause for canonization was stalled for decades due to a debate on whether non-martyred children have the capacity to understand heroic virtues at a young age. However, in 1979, St. John Paul II allowed their cause to proceed; he declared them venerable in 1989 and beatified them in 2000.
Their cousin Lucia entered the Institute of the Sisters of St. Dorothy and, later, obtained permission to enter the Carmelite convent of St. Teresa in Coimbra, where she resided until her death in 2005 at the age of 97.
Following her death, Pope Benedict XVI waived the five-year waiting period before her sainthood cause could open. Bishop Virgilio Antunes of Coimbra formally closed the local phase of investigation into her life and holiness Feb. 13, 2017, and forwarded the information to the Vatican.
Also March 23, Pope Francis signed other decrees recognizing miracles, martyrdom and heroic virtues in six other causes, the Vatican said.
The pope also approved the bishops' and cardinals' vote to canonize two Brazilian priests -- Blessed Andre de Soveral and Blessed Ambrosio Francisco Ferro -- as well as Mateus Moreira and 27 laypeople, who were killed in 1645 as violence broke out between Portuguese Catholics and Dutch Calvinists in Brazil.
Pope Francis also approved the vote to canonize three young Mexican martyrs, known as the child martyrs of Tlaxcala, who were among the first native converts in Mexico. Known only by their first names -- Cristobal, Antonio and Juan -- they were killed in 1529 for rejecting idolatry and polygamy in the name of their faith.
In addition, Pope Francis signed a decree recognizing the martyrdom of Franciscan Claretian Sister Rani Maria Vattalil, who died in 1995 after being stabbed 54 times, apparently because of her work helping poor women in India organize themselves. With the signing of the decree, a date can be set for her beatification.
— Junno Arocho Esteves, Catholic News Service
SOTTO IL MONTE GIOVANNI XXIII, Italy — The feast of Our Lady of Fatima, May 13, is the occasion every year for millions of devotees to celebrate the apparition of Mary to three Portuguese peasant children in 1917 and to meditate on her call for repentance and conversion by the modern world.
For a much smaller but highly dedicated group of people, the anniversary of the first apparition is also an occasion for exploring their belief that, 95 years later, the Vatican is still hiding a portion of Mary's revelations.
The controversy is associated in a particular way with the pontificate of Blessed John XXIII, because one of the Fatima visionaries, Sister Lucia dos Santos, committed the so-called "Third Secret" to writing, with instructions that the pope should read it in the year 1960. Blessed John, who was pope from 1958 to 1963, declined to reveal the secret, which was published by the Vatican only in 2000.
The official version of the secret comes with a Vatican commentary interpreting it as an allegory of the Catholic Church's past struggles with 20th-century ideologies and characterizing its description of a "bishop dressed in white" shot down amid the rubble of a ruined city as a prophecy of the 1981 assassination attempt on Blessed John Paul II.
But some argue that the long-suppressed document must contain something even more disturbing, perhaps a prophecy of what they call the "great apostasy": the modernizing changes that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which was called by Blessed John.
One man with whom such skeptics would very much like to talk is Archbishop Loris F. Capovilla, Blessed John's personal secretary, who was present when the pope read the secret for the first time.
Speaking to Catholic News Service, Archbishop Capovilla, now 96, dismisses reports that he told an Italian writer in 2006 that part of the secret remains unpublished. He says that he noticed no discrepancy between the published version and the original.
Yet he qualifies his statement with a rare admission of doubt about his own remarkable memory. "I remember a bit," he says, "but you will understand, after so many years I wouldn't know how to reconstruct (the secret) fully."
Nor does he rule out the presence of such a document elsewhere in the archives of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, often referred to as "the Holy Office."
"At the Holy Office there must be a kilometer of paper regarding Fatima," the archbishop says. "I don't deny that there may be something else, but I don't know it."
When he was prefect of the doctrinal congregation, Pope Benedict XVI wrote the Vatican's commentary on the secret and insisted that what was published in 2000 was everything. In a book marking the 90th anniversary of the Fatima apparitions, he said publishing the text "was a time of light, not only because the message could be known by all, but also because it unveiled the truth amid the confused framework of apocalyptic interpretations and speculation."
He said he had written the commentary "after having prayed intensely and meditated deeply on the authentic words of the third part of the secret of Fatima, contained on sheets written by Sister Lucia."
Archbishop Capovilla does not disguise his reservations about the cult of Fatima, not least, he says, because it was "sometimes exploited a bit for political ends."
During the Cold War, many interpreted the Virgin's prophecy that Russia would "convert" as foretelling the fall of the Soviet Union. But Archbishop Capovilla says he considered those words to mean merely that Russia would embrace Christianity, which he suggests did not exclude the survival of communism.
"I have known people in perfectly good faith who were communists, but they weren't atheists," he says.
The archbishop's reservations about Fatima extend more generally to the phenomenon of Marian devotion.
"A cloistered nun who has visions -- here we underscore one aspect of the Christian life," he says.
Amid the enthusiasm for ecumenism that animated Blessed John's papacy and the Second Vatican Council, he recalls, "it was concluded, as far as Marian devotion was concerned, that perhaps it would not be appreciated by the Protestants."
An excessive focus on Marian devotion also runs contrary to the express wishes of Mary herself, he says.
Imagining himself receiving an apparition of Mary, Archbishop Capovilla says he would tell her: "Lady, you were present at the wedding at Cana; you said words that remain eternal, 'Do what Jesus tells you.' You come now to tell me to convert, to do penance. But he already said all of this; it's in the holy Gospel."
He adds that "all of Christianity -- all -- for me, for the Protestants, for the Orthodox, is summed up in these words: Convert, recognize your condition as little creatures and believe in the Gospel, put it into practice, live it."
"Having said this," the archbishop says, "it seems to me that is everything."
— Francis X. Rocca, Catholic News Service