May 13 is the anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady to three
shepherd children in the small village of Fatima in Portugal in
1917. She appeared six times to Lucia, 9, and her cousins
Francisco, 8, and his sister Jacinta, 6, between May 13, 1917
and October 13, 1917. The story of Fatima begins in 1916, when,
against the backdrop of the First World War which had introduced
Europe to the most horrific and powerful forms of warfare yet
seen, and a year before the Communist revolution would plunge
Russia and later Eastern Europe into six decades of oppression
under militant atheistic governments, a resplendent figure
appeared to the three children who were in the field tending the
family sheep. “I am the Angel of Peace,” said the figure, who
appeared to them two more times that year exhorting them to
accept the sufferings that the Lord allowed them to undergo as
an act of reparation for the sins which offend Him, and to pray
constantly for the conversion of sinners. Then, on the 13th day
of the month of Our La