Book Reviews and More: What Happened at Fatima - Leo Madigan

What Happened at Fatima?

The First Objective and Comprehensive Retelling of the Story in 50 years

CTS Christian Shrines Series
Leo Madigan

Catholic Truth Society
ISBN 9781860820915

eISBN 9781784692209

ASIN B071RNCN65

CTS Booklet D651

What Happened at Fatima - Leo Madigan - CTS Christian Shrines

This is a great read in a wonderful series. Over the last several years, I have read many books from the Catholic Truth Society, in fact over 450 of them as of the reading of this volume; many read more than once; this all since the spring of 2018. Most were good reads; some were great reads; and a few are exceptional. This was the eighteenth in the CTS Christian Shrines Series that I have read; many of them have been read twice. This is the first I have read by Leo Madigan, and I believe the only one of his published by the CTS. But many of his other titles both fiction and non-fiction caught my attention. This booklet was originally published 2000 and the eBook was released in 2017. The description of this volume is:

“An objective and comprehensive retelling following the history of the events at Fatima, adhering faithfully to the memoirs of the longest surviving seer, Sister Lucia.

Adhering faithfully to the memoirs of Sister Lucia, the longest surviving seer, this book follows the events of Fatima: from the first stirrings of the wings in the appearances of the angels before the six apparitions of the Blessed Virgin herself, the deaths of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the subsequent apparitions to Sister Lucia in Pontevedra and Tuy, the consecration of the world and Russia to the Immaculate Heart, the dissolution of Soviet Communism, to the beatifications of Francisco and Jacinta and the opening of the third part of the secret that Our Lady confided to the children in 1917.”

The chapters in the book are:

Introduction

What Happened at Fatima

The stirring of wings

The unfolding of the wings

Angel at prayer

The Lady

From May to June

Wednesday, 13th June 1917

From 13th June to 13th July 1917

Friday, 13th July 1917

Monday, 13th August 1917

Sunday, 19th August 1917

From August to September 1917

Thursday, 13th September 1917

Saturday, 13th October 1917

The miracle of the Sun

Francisco, 11th June 1908-4th April 1919

Jacinta, 11th March 1910-20th February 1920

Lucia, 22nd March 1906

I highlighted only few passages while reading this volume, they are:

“But if the choice of peasant children as heaven’s messengers is a paradox, that is in keeping with the Message of Fatima itself because heaven’s values are opposite to ours. If you can accept that, read on. Indeed, read on even if you find believing difficult.”

“That rural community, Aljustrel in the parish of Fatima, could not possibly have known it, but heaven was schooling one of its children, Lucia dos Santos, preparing her for a role it had selected her to play in one of the most public manifestations of Divine Mercy in our world since Christ walked among us.”

“From lunch-time to nightfall! That must have been at least 4-5 hours. 4-5 hours spent in prayer with one’s forehead to the ground would suggest a form of ecstasy in a spiritually mature person. In 7 to 10 year olds it couldn’t be anything else.”

“The Lady had beguiled them; the God they saw themselves in when the rays from the Lady’s hands penetrated their hearts had beguiled them; heaven itself had beguiled them. The supernatural had kidnapped their every thought and affection. They had been promised heaven, had even been given a glimpse of it and now all else was insipid.”

“It doesn’t require much imagination to picture the pressure put on the children, their families and their village, before the October Apparition.”

“When the 13th arrived an estimated 70,000 people turned up in appalling weather conditions in this remote hill country that was barely equipped to sustain its few villages and livestock. 70,000 would be a dream number for a sponsored event nowadays but in 1917, long before television and radio, to say nothing of mass transport, a crowd of 70,000 must have been an awesome sign of man’s hankering for the supernatural.”

“Francisco’s lack of self-interest, together with his secret prayer life are of a piece with the prototypes of the Christian contemplative like Benedict Joseph Labre, Charles de Foucauld and Therésè Martin. The symptoms are the same. The thirst for solitude, the hours hidden camouflaged in prayer, the absorption in the Divine that go unremarked by those around because of the veil of paradox, the veil that enables the contemplative to disappear into prayer, into the very wood of the cross, to contemplate the sun at midnight and to stake all on a virgin with a child.”

I hope those quotes give you a feel for the volume. This book is a real focus on the history of the events and the events after. It has a really well balanced mix history and personal accounts. It is cleanly written and easy to engage with. It could benefit anyone from secondary school on.

This book is another great read and one any Catholic would benefit from reading. The CTS Deeper Christianity Series of books is written in such a way that they can easily be read in any order. Pick and choose the ones that interest you, read them in order, or jump around. I have been blessed by the entire series that I have read and can highly recommend this book and the series.