The Apparitions of Fatima and the Miracle of the Sun

May–October 1917 Fatima, Portugal Reported in secular press

The core historical puzzle

On October 13, 1917, approximately 70,000 people gathered in a muddy field outside Fatima, Portugal, to see what three shepherd children had predicted: a public sign visible to everyone present.

The crowd included atheists, journalists from secular anticlerical newspapers, government officials, university professors, and medical doctors. Many had come specifically to document the failure of the prediction.

What they witnessed was reported the following day in major secular newspapers. The journalists’ accounts were not sympathetic — they were written by people who had not expected to see anything and did not want to admit that they had.

The historical question Fatima poses is not theological. It is this: 70,000 people simultaneously witnessed something extraordinary. What was it, and how do we account for it?

The Witnesses

The Children

Born March 22, 1907. Age 10 at the time of the apparitions.

Lúcia was the eldest of the three and the primary recipient of the messages. She later entered religious life as a Carmelite nun (Sister Lúcia of the Immaculate Heart) and lived until 2005, dying at the age of 97.

Throughout her long life, she was interviewed repeatedly by bishops, cardinals, and Vatican officials. Her account never changed in any material respect. She maintained until her death that she had seen the Virgin Mary and that the messages she received were authentic.

Why Their Testimony Matters

The three children were:

From an illiterate peasant family with no religious sophistication
Subjected to repeated interrogation by skeptical priests, civil authorities, and eventually the Portuguese government (which was actively anticlerical at the time)
Imprisoned by the Administrator of Ourem, Artur de Oliveira Santos, who threatened them with death to make them recant — they refused
Interviewed independently and found to be consistent in every essential detail

They had nothing to gain from their accounts. They faced mockery, imprisonment, and social disruption. They did not recant.

The Six Apparitions

Date	Location	Key Events
May 13, 1917	Cova da Iria	First apparition; Lady identifies herself as coming from heaven
June 13, 1917	Cova da Iria	Crowd grows; Lady reveals Francisco and Jacinta will die young
July 13, 1917	Cova da Iria	The Three Secrets of Fatima revealed
August 19, 1917	Valinhos	Apparition moves due to children’s imprisonment; cloud phenomena witnessed
September 13, 1917	Cova da Iria	~25,000 witnesses; “shower of white petals” visible to crowd
October 13, 1917	Cova da Iria	70,000+ witnesses; the Miracle of the Sun

The Three Secrets of Fatima

During the July 13 apparition, the Lady communicated three secrets to the children.

A vision of Hell — a sea of fire with the souls of the damned. Lúcia later described it as terrifying and said the vision lasted only a moment but was seared into her memory permanently.

The children were explicitly told not to reveal this until further instruction.

The Miracle of the Sun — October 13, 1917

The Prediction

At each of the six apparitions, the Lady had promised that on October 13, she would perform a public miracle so that everyone would believe. The children reported this publicly. Word spread. On October 13, an estimated 70,000 people traveled to the Cova da Iria — a field outside Fatima — in driving rain, to see what would happen.

The Crowd

The crowd was not composed entirely of believers. It included:

Atheists and freethinkers
Journalists from O Século (a major secular, anticlerical Lisbon newspaper), O Dia, and other publications
Government officials
Medical doctors
University professors
Ordinary villagers and pilgrims

Many had come specifically to expose the children as frauds.

What Happened

At approximately noon, the rain stopped. The clouds parted. The sun appeared, and then — according to thousands of independent accounts — it began to behave in a way that defies ordinary description.

The accounts describe:

The sun spinning — rotating rapidly on its own axis, throwing off colored light in all directions
Colored light — waves of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet light sweeping across the crowd, the land, and the clouds
The sun plunging — the sun appearing to detach from its position and plunge toward the earth in a zigzag pattern, causing widespread panic among the crowd, who believed the world was ending
Sudden drying — the crowd, which had been standing in heavy rain for hours, found their clothes completely dry at the end of the event
Duration — the phenomenon lasted approximately ten minutes

What the Evidence Rules Out

Mass hallucination is not a medically recognized phenomenon at the scale of 70,000 people. Hallucinations are private experiences — they do not produce identical sensory content in thousands of people simultaneously. Furthermore, the event was witnessed from distances of up to 40 kilometers away by people who were not part of the crowd at Cova da Iria and did not know the Miracle of the Sun was being predicted for that day.

Witnesses at Distance

Several witnesses reported seeing the solar phenomenon from locations far outside the Cova da Iria, including people who had no knowledge that anything was expected to happen that day. These distant witnesses — in towns such as Alburitel, 18 kilometers from Fatima — reported the same phenomena described by the crowd.

This fact effectively eliminates explanations based on suggestion or crowd psychology. People who were not in the crowd, who did not know what was expected, and who were miles away also saw something extraordinary.

The journalist’s account — primary source

The most significant document associated with the Miracle of the Sun is not a religious text. It is a newspaper article written by a skeptic.

Avelino de Almeida was editor of O Século — Portugal’s largest secular daily, explicitly anticlerical in its editorial stance. He traveled to Fatima on October 13, 1917, to write a dismissive piece on peasant superstition. His article, published October 15, 1917, was headlined “Como o Sol Bailou ao Meio-dia em Fátima” (“How the Sun Danced at Noon in Fatima”).

From that article:

“Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was Biblical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun ‘danced’ according to the typical expression of the people.”

“People were weeping and praying with uncovered heads and… one heard cries of repentance, calls to the Holy Virgin… and other exclamations of a people deeply moved by the event that was taking place.”

De Almeida did not convert. He continued as editor of a secular newspaper. But he published what he saw.

A second journalist, Avelino de Almeida’s colleague at O Dia, wrote:

“The silver sun… was seen to whirl and turn in the circle of broken clouds… The light turned a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral, and spread itself over the people who knelt with outstretched hands. The people wept and prayed with uncovered heads, in the presence of a miracle they had awaited.”

Dr. José Maria de Almeida Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at the University of Coimbra, was present as a scientific observer. He later published a detailed account:

“It was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl. Then, suddenly, one heard a clamor, a cry of anguish breaking from all the people. The sun, whirling wildly, seemed all at once to loosen itself from the firmament and, blood-red, advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge and fiery weight.”

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Place image files in public/images/fatima/ and reference them here:

![The crowd at Cova da Iria, October 13, 1917](/images/fatima/crowd-1917.jpg)

Original photographs from October 13, 1917 are in the public domain and available through the Diocese of Leiria-Fatima and various archives.

The formal investigation

The Diocese of Leiria conducted a canonical investigation from 1922 to 1930, gathering testimony from hundreds of witnesses and cross-examining the children’s accounts. On October 13, 1930, the Bishop of Leiria formally concluded that the events warranted credibility. This does not mean the Church claims certainty about every detail — it means the investigation found no basis for dismissal.

Primary sources

Source	Type	Notes
de Almeida, A. (Oct. 15, 1917). O Século	Secular newspaper	Editor who went to debunk; reported what he saw
O Dia correspondent (Oct. 17, 1917)	Secular newspaper	Independent account of same phenomena
Garrett, J. A. (1922). University of Coimbra documentation	Scientific observer account	Published detailed description
Kondor, L. (Ed.). (1976). Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words	Memoir/primary document	Lúcia’s direct testimony
Diocese of Leiria — Canonical investigation archive	Institutional record	Hundreds of witness depositions