While
the number of practising Catholics in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe is in
decline, the Sanctuary of Fátima remains one of the most visited Catholic
places of pilgrimage in the world. Pilgrims
will be pouring in this weekend for the 102nd anniversary of the “Miracle of
the Sun”.
According
to Sanctuary statistics, the annual number of visitors to Fátima over the past
ten years has fluctuated between 3 million and 6 million. The centenary
year, 2017, exceeded all expectations with 9.4 million pilgrims from 109 countries.
Fátima
attracts the largest number of visitors around 13 May and 13 October, the first
and last dates in the six successive months in 1917 when three children tending
sheep claimed to have witnessed apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
It
was on 13 October that a miracle is said to have occurred at the time and place
prophesied to the children by the Virgin Mary. The event occurred before an
estimated crowd of 70,000.
Many
believers consider that the way in which the sun whirled and seemed to defy all
cosmic law was one of the most outstanding miracles of the 20th century if not
the entire history of Christendom.
Among
the crowd on that day there were contradicting opinions about what actually
happened, with some people saying they did not see the sun do anything unusual
at all.
Since
then, psychologists, meteorologists and other scientists have offered plenty of
non-supernatural explanations, including the power of suggestion and mass hallucination.
Unlike
at Lourdes in France, the Sanctuary of Fátima does not actively encourage the
idea of miracle cures for the seriously ill. An official spokesperson
explained: “Fátima's spirituality is very much centred on prayer, conversion
and reparation, with particular attention to prayer for the Pope and peace in
the world”.
In
May 2017 Pope Francis visited the Sanctuary to attend the centenary
celebrations and canonise the two shepherd children, Jacinta and her brother
Francisco, who died of influenza two years after their visions.
Portuguese
make up the majority of the pilgrims each year, but this October registered
groups will be coming from other predominantly Catholic countries such as
Italy, Poland and France, and from countries such as Azerbaijan, Indonesia and
Senegal, where the overwhelming majority of the populations are Muslim.
Sanctuary
officials have confirmed that this weekend they will also be welcoming pilgrims
from Sri Lanka, where most citizens are Buddhists, and from South Korea, where
all the major religions co-exist but most people have no formal affiliation
with any. South Korea is the fastest growing Asian country represented at the
Sanctuary, with about 250 South Koreans in seven groups having announced many
weeks ago their planned presence this weekend.
In
recent times the distribution of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics has been
changing significantly. About 80% of Portugal's population are nominally
Catholic, but increasingly empty pews and closing churches indicate a huge decline
in the numbers attending Mass – thought to be down to about 18% of the
population and also falling steeply elsewhere in western and southern
Europe.
Europe
as a whole is now home to just 24% of the world’s Catholics, compared to about
65% in 1917. Where Catholicism still has a strong hold are parts of Africa, and
Central and South America. In Asia, Catholicism is flourishing in the Indian
states of Goa and Kerala; and in the Philippines, 86% of the population are
Catholic.
Catholicism
has been the dominant religion among the Portuguese since Roman times and even
through the centuries of Moorish occupation. The Church, along with monarchies,
continued to control the nation well after the 18th century Age of
Enlightenment which advocated individual liberty and eradication of religious
authority.
“The
time has come for people of reason to say enough is enough”, says Prof. Richard
Dawkins, the outspoken Oxford University evolutionary biologist. “Religious
faith discourages independent thought, it’s divisive and it’s dangerous”, he
says.
Like
Dawkins, many contemporary atheists and agnostics condemn the routine ideological
indoctrination of the young from an early age, particularly by Catholics and
Muslims. They regard such indoctrination as a form of totalitarianism based on
a collection of made-up writings that are anything but the “Word of God”.
A
close read of the original story of Fátima, say the sceptics, must persuade all
but the most blinkered dogmatists to question the mindset of the child
visionaries. It is surely obvious that particularly the two highly imaginative
girls, Lúcia and Jacinta, aged ten and seven, were highly imaginative and
utterly devoted to angels and the image of a person they identified as Our Lady
of the Rosary who became popularly known as Our Lady of Fátima.
Despite
the hopes of secularists, religion is not going away any time soon. About 2,700
different religions exist today to which 84% of humanity is affiliated.
Christianity has 2.1 billion followers. Islam, with 1.6 billion, is growing at
a considerably faster rate and by 2050 its numbers are expected to equal those
of Christianity.
The
gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, such as Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, Athena,
Aphrodite and Nemesis, have long passed into mythology. To sceptics, Our Lady
of Fátima is already a myth, but to the pilgrims visiting the Sanctuary this
weekend she is very real.
Part of the crowd at Fátima on 13 October 1917
Fátima Basilica 2019
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