The undeniable miracle at Fatima

[pabsta]

Undeniable?

Nope.  Definitely denied.

Three kids sharing a story and then mass delusion?

Hardly undeniable.

 
Here are some testimonials from people who saw the miracle from miles away. That rules out mass delusion or mass hysteria.


Father Joaquim Lourenço, Canon lawyer of the Diocese of Leiria, who saw the miracle from a distance of nine miles. Father Lourenço was a school boy then, and was with his brother and some other children in the village of Alburitel.
 
“I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked fixedly at the sun which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zigzag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment. It was a crowd which had gathered outside our local village school and we had all left classes and run into the streets because of the cries and surprised shouts of men and women who were in the street in front of the school when the miracle began. There was an unbeliever there who had spent the morning mocking the ‘simpletons’ who had gone off to Fatima just to see an ordinary girl. He now seemed paralyzed, his eyes fixed on the sun. He began to tremble from head to foot, and lifting up his arms, fell on his knees in the mud, crying out to God. But meanwhile the people continued to cry out and to weep, asking God to pardon their sins. We all ran to the two chapels in the village, which were soon filled to over flowing. During those long moments of the solar prodigy, objects around us turned all colors of the rainbow... When the people realized that the danger was over, there was an explosion of joy.”
 
 
Deposition of Mr. Albano Barros, a successful building contractor who was a child of 12 years in a village near Minde, about eight miles from Fatima:
 
“I was watching sheep, as was my daily task, and suddenly there, in the direction of Fatima, I saw the sun fall from the sky. I thought it was the end of the world.”
We asked if he remembers that it had been raining and whether afterward his clothes were dry.
“I was so distracted that I remember nothing but the falling sun. I cannot even remember whether I took the sheep home, whether I ran, or what I did.”
 
 
Mrs. Guilhermina Lopes da Silva was living in Leiria, sixteen miles from the place where the miracle occurred. Mrs. da Silva had seen the crowds passing through Leiria in great numbers. She wanted very much to join them going to Fatima to see whether the miracle predicted by the children would happen.
 
“But I could not go because my husband was an unbeliever. I was looking toward the mountain at noon when suddenly I saw a great red flash in the sky. I called two men who were working for us. They, of course, saw it, too. One of my relatives, Mr. Louis Lopes from Arrabalde de Santa Margarida, went to Fatima and told us afterward that although he had taken every precaution to avoid the rain (because he suffered from bronchitis) he was soaked through from his feet to his waist. But as the sun came down from the sky he noticed, to his astonishment, that he was completely dry. And my former neighbor, Dona Nazare Pinheiro, when she came back from Fatima that day, told me that when she had seen the sun coming down like a spinning wheel, she was so frightened that she fell to her knees reciting the Act of Contrition, believing it to be indeed the end of the world.”