By Father Rich Tomkosky
This past Sunday marked the 108th anniversary of the most striking apparition of Our Lady in Fatima, Portugal, and the one-year anniversary of my mom’s last full day on earth – not an accident in God’s Providence as my mom suffered greatly at the end of her life with Our Lady to help save souls.
What Our Lady did on July 13, 1917, inspired many to convert but provoked others to reject the faith out of hand. The mystery of human freedom and the response to good or evil.
July 13 returned hell to the center of Catholic consciousness.
Lucia dos Santos was 10 when Our Lady of Fatima began to appear to her every 13th of the month starting in May, 1917, along with her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, 8 and 7. But in July, instead of just exhorting the children to say the Rosary daily for world peace and the conversion of hardened sinners – which hopefully we are all praying a set of the mysteries each day, if not, to start now – and pointing them to heaven, Mary showed them a terrible sight.
From Lucia: “We saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form … amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear.” And Mary told her that more souls go to Hell for the sins of the flesh than any other type of sin. The children didn’t know what that even meant, but when it was told to the adults, they knew and were taken aback just like we are, as so many people rationalize the sins of the flesh and forget how sacred that area is to God, since we can bring new life into the world with Him through that gift of sexuality properly used within the Sacrament of Marriage.
To give Our Lady of Fatima credit as a model spiritual mother of us, the vision of hell only happened after a year of preparation of the children, including visits by an angel and much reassurance about Heaven. But the vision so badly rattled Jacinta, especially, that it seemed to change her personality utterly from a carefree sanguine little girl focused on dancing and games and looking beautiful to a life of serious penance and prayer.
See: her going to daily Mass sacrifice in reparation for the adults who don’t go to Sunday and Holy Day Masses, and praying multiple Rosaries each day and giving up many things – food and drink and tying a rope around her waist for sinners – but Our Lady told her to only do it during the day and it was keeping her from sleeping at night. Mary is always looking out for us as a good Mother while calling us to generously sacrifice for souls, but not to the point of ruining our health.
This vision of hell was not scare tactics on the part of Our Lady but showing us that it is a real place and we are in eminent danger of going there if we misuse our freedom on earth. Just like Jesus spoke more about Hell than Heaven in the Gospel. A dire warning for us humans. She also taught the children in July the prayer that we say at the end of each decade of the Rosary, “O My Jesus forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of your mercy.” Reflect on that reality daily.
Our Lady at Fatima reiterated the most unpopular — and most important — message of Christianity. The messages of Jesus (Mark 1:15), John the Baptist (Matthew 3:1-2) and Peter (Acts 2:38) were all the same: “Repent!” Jesus defined the Church’s mission as preaching “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47). Yet, every pope from Pius XII to Leo has said “the sin of the last century is the loss of the sense of sin.
Finally, Our Lady of Fatima de-romanticized war and martyrdom. She said in this vision on July 13th, “This war will end (WWI), but if men do not refrain from offending God, another and more terrible war will begin during the Papacy of Pius XI.” It’s amazing she knew in eternity who the next Pope would be after Benedict XV.
Whatever, they understood about the particulars, the general sense of this message was clear to the children: War isn’t an occasion for God to reward victors, but to punish sin. The “reward” war paradigm had existed for a long time in Christian history: From Charlemagne to Joan of Arc to the Conquistadores.
Every Christian culture had their Robin Hood and King Arthur figures: Heroes of the unconventional virtues of clever violence. But Our Lady of Fatima poured cold water on all of that. Military virtues are real, and many people of noble character serve in the military, but if war occurs it is always bad and whatever good comes from it is an example of God bringing good out of evil like the Crucifixion of Jesus – not of God’s will being won by violence, which is why the Popes always tell us to pray for peace.
Our Lady also de-romanticized martyrdom. People sometimes naively look for glory in the persecutions of the faith, but in reality, find soul-numbing horror instead. See the Jesuits who apostatized during the Japanese persecutions a few centuries back or some of the Christians in Roman times.
The children also saw a vision of an unknown Pope “half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow,” praying for the corpses he stumbled past until he was himself shot.” Almost everyone thinks that was a prophecy that applied to St. John Paul II who was shot on May 13, 2025, and was miraculously saved, by Our Lady’s intercession, from a bullet that should have landed in his heart. Our Lady knows that in heaven martyrdom is glorious – but on earth, it is painful and sad.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
[Modified from the Aletia website article “Fatima: How July 13, 1917, Changed the Church” by Tom Hoopes]
Father Rich Tomkosky is the Pastor of Saint Thomas the Apostle Parish in Bedford and the Pastor of Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Beans Cove.
