Between May and October of 1917, at the Cova da Iria near Fatima, three children — Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto — reported six apparitions of a lady who asked for the daily Rosary, for prayer and sacrifice for the conversion of sinners, and for devotion to her Immaculate Heart. The events took place while the First World War was consuming Europe, and the message is inseparable from that setting. The bishop of Leiria declared the apparitions worthy of belief in 1930 after thirteen years of investigation. The Church's judgment on Fatima follows the rule that governs all private revelation. Such revelations, as the Catechism teaches, do not belong to the deposit of faith and cannot correct or complete it; their role is to help the faithful live the Gospel more fully at a given moment. What Fatima asks is nothing new: repentance, the Rosary, the Eucharist, and trust in God's mercy. Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who died young in the influenza epidemic, were canonized in 2017 on the centenary of the apparitions. Saint John Paul II had a particular attachment to the shrine after the attempt on his life in Saint Peter's Square on May 13, 1981, and he returned to Fatima in thanksgiving. The optional memorial was inserted into the General Roman Calendar in the third edition of the Roman Missal in 2002. Depending on the year the date usually falls in the Easter Season, and where it is celebrated white vestments are worn with prayers from the common of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy asks that pilgrimage and Marian devotion of this kind always lead back to the sacraments and to charity, which are the ordinary paths of holiness.

Optional memorial

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Easter

May 13

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