Fatima's Solar Miracle: A Nuclear Prophecy?

World War I was still raging when on May 5, 1917, in a letter to his Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Pope Benedict XV wrote:

Our earnestly pleading voice, invoking the end of this vast conflict, the suicide of civilized Europe, was then and has remained ever since unheard. Since all graces which the Author of all good deigns to grant to the poor children of Adam, by a loving design of His Divine Providence, are dispensed through the hands of the Most Holy Virgin, we wish that the petition of her most afflicted children, more than ever in this terrible hour, may turn with lively confidence to the august Mother of God

He then directed that the invocation, "Queen of Peace, pray for us," be added permanently to the Litany of Loreto and made his ultimate appeal to her:

Now, Portugal, since its very foundation, was called "La Terra de Santa Maria" and in 1646, two hundred years before Our Lady appeared in Lourdes, King Dom John IV of Portugal and the entire nation swore fidelity to Mary under the title of "The Immaculate Conception." Since that year, the Mother of God was proclaimed Queen and Patroness of Portugal. For that reason, the Portuguese monarchs never wore a crown. It has been reserved exclusively for the immaculate Virgin.

Eight days after the appeal of Pope Benedict XV, on Sunday May 13, 1917, the Blessed Virgin responded to his prayers and those of the rest of the Catholic world and appeared to three children, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, in a little village called Fatima in Portugal. "I come from Heaven," she said. "I want you to come here on the 13th of each month until October when I will tell you who I am and what I want." In her last words on that day, she stressed the immense crisis which had brought her from Heaven and implored: "Say the Rosary to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war."

The following month on June 13, she showed the children a vision of her Heart encircled by piercing thorns, which obviously represented, not simply her Immaculate Heart, that gratuitous gift from God, but her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. She then said to Lucia: "God wishes you to remain in the world for some time because He wants you to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart for the Heart of Jesus wants my Immaculate Heart to be venerated by His side. I promise salvation to those who embrace it and their souls would be loved by God as the flowers placed by myself adorning His throne."

On July 13, she said to the little seers:

It is important to recall that Russia at that time was still a very Christian country, mainly Orthodox, and that the Communist revolution did not take place until October. Note that she did not speak of her Sorrowful Heart in Fatima as will be explained later. Also note that in Fatima she asked for the consecration specifically of Russia (not the world) to her Immaculate Heart.

The last of the monthly apparitions took place on October 13, 1917. It was on a Friday. Expectations were high as the Blessed Virgin had promised the children during the first apparition on May 13 that in October she would say who she was and would perform a miracle. The Cova da Iria was crowded with 70,000 spectators to witness the promised miracle in October. Needless to say, there were also many skeptics among the multitude. The ground was quite muddy from a heavy downpour of rain that day and there were umbrellas in abundance beneath a canopy of grey, cloudy and rainy skies.

According to Dr. Joseph Garret, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University of Portugal, as quoted by Francis Johnston in his book Fatima. The Great Sign:

It must have been about half past one when there rose up, on the precise spot where the children were, a column of smoke, a delicate, slender, bluish column that went straight up to about two meters and then evaporated. The phenomenon lasted for some seconds and was perfectly visible to the eye... It was repeated yet a second and third time. On these three occasions, and especially on the last one, the slender posts stood out distinctly against the dull grey atmosphere.

Soon afterwards, the children in Fatima saw the usual flash of light from the east, which always preceded the apparitions of Her Majesty in Portugal. To quote Lucia's own words:

We saw the flash of light and then Our Lady appeared on the holm oak tree. She said: "I want to tell you that a chapel is to be built here in my honour." And then, as promised on May 13, she at last disclosed who she was: "I am the Lady of the Rosary. Continue to pray the Rosary everyday. The war is going to end and the soldiers will soon return to their homes."

Looking upward, the Queen of the Universe then opened her hands and it seemed to Lucia that a light arose straight up from them to the very zenith of the grey skies. The clouds then parted, the sun appeared in the blue window, and the three children saw a tableau of the Holy Family. As recorded by John Haffert in his book In Her Own Words, Lucia herself described the three final visions while the sun whirled and people thought that the world was coming to an end:

First appeared St. Joseph with the Child Jesus blessing the world. Our Lady stood beside her holy spouse, clothed in a white tunic and a blue mantle. Next, Our Lord appeared in His glorified manhood. He too blessed the world as St. Joseph had done. Beside Him was His Co-redemptrix, Our Lady of Sorrows, to whom He had entrusted the peace of the world. Finally, Our Lady came under her ancient title of Mt. Carmel. She held the Child Jesus in her arms while holding the scapular down to the world.

The Diario de Noticias (The Daily News) in Fatima, which commanded the largest circulation in Portugal at the time, described the miracle of the sun on October 1917:

October 13, 1917 was indeed an unforgettable experience for those 70,000 people. The poet Alonzo Lopez Viera saw the miracle of the sun from his own house. Other distant witnesses of this event absolutely destroyed any theory of mass suggestion or hallucination generated by emotion and expectation as an explanation of what was seen in the sky.

But at that time science knew little about nuclear fission and fusion of atoms. An atom with its central nucleus is the smallest possible piece of an element. However, it was not until 1938 that the German physicist Otto Hahn discovered the new radioactive process: nuclear fission. It is a splitting of the nucleus of an atom with the release of a huge amount of heat energy. This is the principle behind the atom bomb. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is the joining together of two atoms of the lightest element, hydrogen, to form helium, which is the second lightest element by atomic weight. An extremely high temperature is needed before hydrogen is affected by this nuclear reaction.

We now know that the sun is a gigantic ball of hydrogen nearly 1 million miles in diameter and in its core there is a furnace of about 15,000,000 degrees C (water boils at 100° C), which continually converts hydrogen into helium by the fusion process. This nuclear fusion reaction in the sun has resulted in continuous explosions over the past five billion years (the estimated age of the sun). It is these continuous nuclear explosions which illuminate the planets and sustain life on Earth.

In fact, the idea of a hydrogen bomb is to produce an extremely rapid conversion of hydrogen into helium, that is, to do exactly what the sun does but to do it quickly. This is achieved by enclosing a device causing an extremely high temperature in the bomb. This scale of temperature occurs during enclosure of a neutron or plutonium bomb. It is about 150,000,000°, which is about 10 times greater than the temperature at the centre or core of the sun. In other words, the sun, our nearest star, is a gigantic nuclear reactor, a continuously-exploding hydrogen bomb. The miracle of the sun on October 13, 1917, its apparent falling to Earth and its subsequent return to its celestial position at the command of the Queen of Portugal now assumes an apocalyptic significance!

Francisco died from the influenza epidemic on April 4, 1919 and Jacinta died on Friday February 16, 1920. Shortly before going to the hospital in Lisbon, Jacinta said to Lucia:

It will not be long now before I go to Heaven. You will remain here to announce that God wishes devotion to the Immaculate Heart to be established in the world, and that the Heart of Jesus wishes the Heart of Mary to be venerated at His side. Let them ask for peace through the Immaculate Heart of Mary for God has entrusted the peace of the world to her.

Now, on December 10, 1925, eight years after the last apparition in Fatima, Her Majesty appeared to Sr. Lucia when she was a postulant in the Dorothean (named after St. Dorothy) Convent in Pontevedra, Spain, and by her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. The Blessed Virgin held her Heart encircled by sharp thorns. The Child Jesus spoke first: "Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them." Fr. Robert J. Fox in his book Fatima Today The Third Millennium, in describing that 1925 apparition did get it right: "The importance of the First Saturday devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary cannot be overlooked," he wrote. "Our Lord Himself came to introduce this devotion. His mother then announced it, while exposing her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart!"

Four years after the apparition in the Convent of Pontevedra, Spain, Lucia received yet another vision in the chapel of the Convent of Tuy also in Spain on June 13, 1929 after she became a nun of the Carmelite Order. This is the description of the vision in her own words:

The whole chapel was illuminated by a supernatural light and a Cross of light appeared above the altar, reaching the ceiling. In a bright light at the upper part of the Cross could be seen the face of a man and His body to the waist (the Father). On His breast was a dove, also of light (the Holy Spirit), and nailed to the Cross was the body of another man (the Son). Somewhat above the waist, I could see a chalice and a large Host suspended in the air onto which drops of blood were falling from the face of Jesus crucified and from the wound in His side. These drops ran down onto the Host and fell into the chalice. Our Lady was beneath the right arm of the Cross. It was Our Lady of Fatima with her Heart within a crown of thorns and flames. Under the left arm of the Cross, large letters, as if of crystal clear water, which ran down over the altar, formed the words "Graces and Mercy." I understood that it was the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity which was shown to me. (Indeed, what Sr. Lucia saw and described in this vision was not the Immaculate Heart but the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary "crowned with thorns," standing at the foot of the Cross of the Man of Sorrows).

It was not until thirteen years after the apparitions in Fatima ended that on October 13, 1930, the Bishop of Leiria/Fatima, deemed that the miracle and the visions of the children were "worthy of belief." (In the meantime many graces were lost). He declared:

This phenomenon, which no astronomical observatory registered and which therefore was not natural, was witnessed by all categories and by those social classes, believers and non-believers, journalists of the principal Portuguese newspapers, and even by persons some miles away dismissing any explanation of collective illusion.

But as John Haffert wrote, "perhaps what an atomic age should know particularly about this miracle, this really special sign from God to this age, is that the crowd expected to be destroyed. It was suddenly spared." The message is clear. In fact, there is disputably no greater exponent on the Fatima apparitions than John Haffert. In his book Her Own Words, he wrote:

In the liturgy of September 15, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, we are plunged into the mystery of Fatima, the mystery of Co-redemption. Fr. A.M. Lepicier says: "This liturgical emphasis on the Sorrows of Mary, which follows the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, shows the primordial place given by the Church to Our Lady in the plan of redemption and what place she should have in the devotion of Christians redeemed by the Blood of Christ and by the tears of His dear mother."

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