Pope Francis’ trip to Fatima took place on May 12 and 13, exactly 100 years after the apparitions of the Virgin of Fatima. He canonized two of the three shepherd children who lived that experience in 1917: Francisco and Jacinta Marto. Lucia, the third child, died in 2005 and the cause of her beatification is ongoing.
This was the fifth trip of a successor of St. Peter to Fatima and follows those by Paul VI (in 1967 on the 50th anniversary of the apparitions of the Blessed Mother), by Saint John Paul II (in 1982, a year after the attempt on his life in St. Peter’s Square and again in 1991 and 2000), and by Benedict XVI (in 2010 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the beatification of the shepherd children, Jacinta and Francisco).
In the following pages we will provide a detailed report of the pope’s trip and we will pick out three elements that in our opinion were the important focal points of the trip in order to help better understand its meaning[1]: the political value of the trip; the importance of a prophetic message being entrusted to shepherd children; and the true meaning of Marian devotion.
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