On October 13, 1917, tens of thousands of people gathered in Fatima, Portugal and witnessed what many believe to be one of the most impressive divine miracles ever seen, when the sun danced and spun in the sky. While the solar event, later dubbed the Miracle of the Sun, receives most of the attention, it was only one part of a series of prophesies delivered to the children of Fatima. The whole ordeal has since been recognized and consecrated by the Catholic Church.
Six months before the Miracle of the Sun, three children were coming home from tending to their sheep when the Virgin Mary appeared to them and explained that she would return to see them on the thirteenth day of every month for the next six months. The children returned home, told their parents and their small village of the encounter, and then dutifully returned to the spot on the 13th of the next month. Only Lucia, the oldest of the three children, ever communicated with or saw Mary, and she acted as a messenger between the interested adults and the personification of the vaunted apparition. The routine continued the next month, when Mary told the girl that she would help her convince the skeptics by performing a miracle on her last visit, which would be on October 13th.
Word got around and was enticing enough to attract a huge crowd to the small village of Fatima. While estimates of the throng vary between 10,000 and 100,000 visitors that day, it is certain that many believers and non-believers filed into a field to witness, or try to disprove, any miracles that would happen. With the group assembled, young Lucia privately communicated with the deity before shouting for the crowd to look to the sun. After collectively studying the sun for some time, it began to spin, shake, move about in zig zags, and otherwise fly around the sky. Accounts differ, but many of those in attendance agree the sun did something strange that day, and began to call it the Miracle of the Sun.
The Virgin Mary not only caused a solar stir that day, but also communicated a series of prophetic statements to Lucia. According to the Catholic Church, the first of these three secrets, as they have come to be known, was a vision of hell. The second prediction was that the first world war would come to an end soon, and that a second world war would happen shortly thereafter. The third secret loosely prophesied the shooting of Pope John Paul II, which would happen 64 years later in 1981. The Catholic Church had Lucia write these secrets down, and released them to the world over the course of the century.
As with any miracle, skeptics have attempted to explain the events using science and rational thought. What’s most difficult to address is the fact that so many of those in attendance, and there were a great many people there, believe they saw something happen with the sun. And while they agree that the sun was behaving strangely, the accounts of exactly what happened vary from person to person. Some say it jumped up and down, while others claimed it spun in a circle, and even more said it flashed in various colors. Further still, some there didn’t see the sun do anything strange at all. Most skeptics agree that this complex question has a simple explanation: your eyes react strangely when you stare into a bright light for an extended period of time and can play tricks on you. When young Lucia told the crowd to stare into the sun, they did, and they saw the sorts of things anyone might see after looking directly at the sun for a few minutes.
The prophesies are a little easier for skeptics to understand. The first, which predicted the end of the first world war and the beginning of another, wasn’t released by the Catholic Church until 1942. It doesn’t take an advanced degree in history to know that by 1942 the first world war had concluded and the second was raging in full force. The second prophesy, which predicted the shooting of the Pope, again wasn’t released until after it had happened. Foreknowledge of events is much less impressive after the fact. Even with these explanations, the Lady of Fatima has become a well-known figure in Catholicism, and the Miracle of the Sun is one of many revered sun miracles witnessed in the modern age. It seems as long as there are happenings like this, there will be believers and there will be skeptics, and rarely will a person move between the two camps.
