Portugal's government decided to give public sector employees the day off on Friday, May 12th to mark the Pope’s arrival in the country in preparation for Saturday and Sunday’s celebrations in Fátima. The visit marks the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1917, witnessed by three children.
The controversial extra day’s holiday has not gone down well with some, pointing out that the celebrations are on Saturday and question why there should be a day off on the preceding Friday.
Casting aside this grumble, Portugal will welcome Pope Francis who is to canonise two of the three shepherd children, Jacinta and Francisco de Jesus Marto, to mark the centenary of the ‘apparitions’ in Cova da Iria. The canonisation follows Pope Francis’ official recognition of the so-called ‘Miracle of the Sun.'
During his official visit to Portugal, Pope Francis has meetings scheduled with the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the Prime Minister, António Costa.
The 80-year-old Francis is the 266th and current Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and the fourth Pope to visit Fátima, after Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Of the children, Francisco Marto, born in 1908 and the second youngest of the Fátima seers, died in 1919, a victim of the 1918 influenza pandemic that swept through Europe.
Originally buried with little ceremony in the cemetery of the local parish church, his remains were exhumed in 1935 and transferred to a tomb in Fátima shrine. His remains again were exhumed in 1951.
Jacinta Marto, the youngest of the visionaries at seven-years-old, fell seriously ill in 1919 and suffered considerably before dying in February the following year, ten days after an operation in Lisbon's Dona Estafánia Hospital. Buried in Vila Nova de Ourém, her remains were exhumed in 1935 and again in 1951.
Lúcia de Jesus Santos, the principle visionary then aged ten, died in 2002 at the age of 95. Her funeral Mass at the cathedral of Coimbra was presided over by the city's bishop, Most Reverend Antonio Cleto.
The process of beatifying and canonising Sister Lúcia has been speeded up, as it was for such luminaries as Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II.
All three of the Fátima seers now rest together in the basilica in the Fátima sanctuary, which will welcome hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world this centenary year.
