Fátima

Fátima is a city in Portugal whose Catholic shrine has become one of the world's largest centers of pilgrimage, religious tourism, and Marian devotion. Although its resident population does not exceed 8,000, Fátima is visited every year by 4 million people, many of whom are walking pilgrims. Beginning with a series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1917, devotion to Our Lady of Fátima has since spread worldwide and originated a network of sister shrines in several other countries, playing an important role in anticommunist and conservative Catholic movements and sensibilities. In spite of this global scope, religious practices in the shrine and along its pilgrimage paths remain largely an expression of Portuguese popular religiosity, revolving around the cure of physical and psychological ailments and the fulfillment of promises.

At the place where Fátima stands today, three young shepherds allegedly witnessed, from May to October 1917, several apparitions of the Virgin Mary. In October 1930, the Catholic Church officially declared the apparitions “worthy of belief,” responding to the already massive popular devotion to regain its local power amid a period of strong republican and anticlerical feelings in certain strata of Portuguese society. Since then, the shrine has achieved a privileged status in the Catholic world through the personal commitment of Pope Pius XII, Pope Paul VI, and especially Pope John Paul II, who credited Our Lady of Fátima with saving his life following the assassination attempt in 1981.

Central to the history of Fátima's shrine is Lucia Santos (1907–2005), the only one of the three seers to live through adulthood, who after the apparitions became a Discalced Carmelite nun. In her original reports to the ecclesiastical authorities, [Page 392]Lucia stressed the main points of Our Lady of Fátima's message: the importance of (a) praying the rosary, (b) performing acts of reparation, and (c) converting sinners; these are still the fundamental tenets that structure the “message of Fátima” promoted by the shrine. Later, in her published memoirs and correspondence with church authorities, Lucia articulated these tenets with the struggle against communism and the conversion of Russia, an effort that eventually influenced the consecration of Russia to the Blessed Virgin Mary by Pope Pius XII in 1952.

Insofar as an estimated 100,000 pilgrims arrive each year on foot at Fátima, the shrine stands, along with Compostela, as one of the last bastions of walking pilgrimages in Western Europe. Most pilgrims originate in the rural areas of Portugal, and their practices are modeled according to traditional romarias and the cult of saints; recent studies conclude that healing is still the main motivation that drives the Fátima pilgrim. However, the past decade witnessed a revival of interest among the young, educated, and urban population, largely due to the popularization of St. James's Way to Compostela and the encouragement of the Church for more contemplative and devotional pilgrimage practices, as against the penitential ones.