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On a spring day in 1916, three children watched their family's sheep on a hillside in rural Portugal. Completely oblivious to the fact that their country was at war and that Pope Benedict XV was begging Mary's intercession and lamenting World War I as the “suicide of Europe,” the children sang, danced, and played games.
When it began to rain, they took refuge in a cave-like rock formation and prayed the customary daily rosary. In a hurry to get back to their games, they said only the first words of each prayer as they fingered the beads: “Our Father, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary.… .”
Who could have predicted that these ordinary children were on the threshold of an experience that would transform them radically and give birth to a message of peace that still resonates today? But on that warm afternoon, Lucia dos Santos, age ten, and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, ages nine and seven, saw the first of three visions of an angel. And these visions were only meant to lead up to something even more extraordinary—the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima.
Messages from Heaven. The heavenly…
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