LEGEND MAKING CONSTRUCTED THE FATIMA SHRINE
Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta were the visionaries of Our Lady of Fatima. These three children claimed they saw Mary on a number of occasions in 1917. Francisco and Jacinta died.
Lucia became a nun in 1921. The story comes to us through Lucia and she was not a trustworthy source and the Bible itself says that God wanted all things established by three reliable witnesses.
Kevin Mc Clure has stated that “very little was written about Fatima before the end of the Second World War” (page 72, 86, The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary). This leaves considerable scope for exaggeration and outright invention.
Mc Clure also recognises that it is very difficult to be sure that the Lady told Lucia that the other two children would die before her before they died (page 75).
To make her lies easier, Lucia claimed that Francisco could not hear the apparition. That was in case she would say one thing and he another. The Virgin treated Lucia as the leader prompting the others to do the same. You really just have one person witnessing to the message of Fatima. How do we know that she accurately reported what she heard? The fact that so many things were testified to by Lucia alone especially in the Fatima II stage tells against the apparitions having a divine origin. The Bible says that God said that at least two reliable witnesses were necessary. It is bad enough having one witness who is an adult but worse if it is a child. Children are not reliable witnesses.
Fatima happened during the time of Benedict XV. He had no devotion for it and neither did his successor Pius XI. Pius XII seems to have imagined that he saw the Virgin himself and probably was mainly responsible for the promotion of the cult of Fatima.
Yet he knew that Lucia was wrong when she said that the Virgin had told her that the war had just finished on the day of the solar miracle, the 13th of October, 1917. The Virgin would take no chances of a message being delivered wrong so Lucia must have been lied to by the Virgin or imagined her.
None of the early reports about the messages mention the Lady’s emphasis on the danger of communism. This warning was dreamt up later. Did Lucia, who lived under an atheistic regime keep it quiet in case there would be reprisals? If she really believed in the apparitions she would have went to another country and revealed the message from there. It did not need saying that the Lady would have been against Russia and communism so telling all made no difference. Lucia had little faith in the Lady’s protection because she never saw her and yet she took a worse risk in announcing the apparitions in the first place! The next paragraph will tell us that if Lucia would not tell it was not because she was afraid of trouble for others but because she hadn’t thought of it yet.
There is something terribly amiss when God let Jacinta and Francisco die before they could be questioned by the investigation commission of the Church. Why would God want us to be less sure that the Lady was the Virgin and appeared? The answer is that he does not want us to believe.
Their departures caused uncertainty about the visions and the messages.
Lucia’s mother allegedly said that Lucia had witnessed three times a most unusual being before the angel and Mary apparitions. It looked like a person wrapped up in a sheet and it would have approached her and then went away. Was she into ghost stories first? An angel would not behave like that or go about with a sheet over its head. The account gives credence to those who say that spiritualism and Satan produced the miracle of Fatima. Three children whose names were never revealed saw the vision with Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco (page 86, The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary). Why were their names kept secret? Probably because they never existed. Yet pro-Fatima people alleged that these visions were freely talked about when they happened in 1915-6. Lucia never contradicted them. She was an untrustworthy person.
Lucia described herself as unintelligent and easily confused. A witness of the Virgin could not have worse credentials when they say that about themselves whether it is true or not. Some fairly knowledgeable Catholic behind the scenes must have manipulated her and there is no doubt that she was far more intelligent than we have been led to think. Catholic sources admit that she is caustic. Lucia is a rude person. Somebody that really seen Mary should be happier and nicer to people.
She had a flair for inventing religious stories (page 179, Looking for a Miracle) and Jacinta said she forgot things relating to the visions of Mary and needed Lucia to tell her what happened which shows that Lucia was manipulating her (page 180, Looking for a Miracle). Lucia had a magnetic influence over the nuns in her convent. Some nuns were so hypnotised by her that they copied her. Her observations on the rule made the nuns attain to greater sanctity (page 98, Fatima – in Lucia’s own words). Lucia wondered if her power was supernatural. Lucia could manipulate vulnerable children more easily to even see a false apparition. The people who knew Lucia well, and especially her own mother, knew that she was well able to manipulate people into saying they were having visions (page 29, What Happened at Fatima?).
The Vatican press release of February 8, 196 is clear: "Although the Church recognizes the Fatima apparitions She does not desire to take the responsibility of guaranteeing the veracity of the words that the three shepherd children said that the Virgin Mary had addressed to them." Wise move!