Estremadura & Ribatejo - Portugal - page 588

Whatever your beliefs, you can't help but be impressed by the vast reserves of faith that
every year lead as many as six million people to the glade where, on 13 May 1917, the
Virgin Mary is said to have first appeared to three awestruck peasant children ( Click
here ) . Where sheep once grazed there are now two huge churches on opposite ends of a
vast 1km-long esplanade.
Aesthetically, it's hard to get past the town's bland and monolithic architecture, and out-
side the main pilgrimage dates (the 12th and 13th of each month from May to October)
the vast parking lots ringing the basilicas have the feel of a forlorn desert. Yet for Catholic
pilgrims Fátima has a magnetic appeal like few places on earth, and a trip here will
provide any visitor with new insights into Portugal's religious culture.
The focus of the pilgrimages, known as Cova da Iria, is just east of the A1 motorway.
Several major roads ring the area, including Av Dom José Alves Correia da Silva to the
south, where the bus station and turismo are located.
The town itself is packed with boarding houses and restaurants for the pilgrim masses,
and shop windows crowded with glow-in-the-dark Virgins and busts of the Pope.

Sights

Santuário de Fátima
( www.santuario-fatima.pt ) It's difficult to believe that a century ago, this was pastureland outside
an insignificant village. This vast complex is now one of Catholicism's major shrines; the
focus of enormous devotion and pilgrimage. At the eastern end is the 1953 basilica, a tri-
umphantly sheer-white building with colonnade reminiscent of St Peter's. Nearby, the
Capela das Apariçoes (Chapel of the Apparitions) marks the site where the Virgin ap-
peared. At the precinct's western end is the 2007 Basilica da Santíssima Trindade.
The chapel is the focus of the most intense devotion. Supplicants who have promised
penance (for example, in return for helping a loved one who is sick, or to signify a partic-
ularly deep conversion) s huffle on their knees across the vast esplanade, following a long
marble runway polished smooth by previous penitents. Near the chapel is a blazing pyre
where people can throw offerings on the fire, leave gifts - donated to charities - or light
candles in prayer. The sound of hundreds of candles is like a rushing waterfall.
Inside the older church, the Basílica de Nossa Senhora do Rosário de Fátima , attention is focused
on the tombs of the three children, Os Três Pastorinhos (the three little shepherds): Fran-
cisco (died 1919, aged 11) and Jacinta (died 1920, aged 10), both victims of the flu epi-

CHRISTIAN