It happened in a small, European country overrun by followers of Karl Marx, and that’s reason enough to sympathize with the misled farmers and common people. But throw into this mix three preadolescent shepherd children who honestly believe they’ve seen a beautiful lady, and who stick by their story even though the authorities put them in jail and tell them they’ll boil them in oil if they don’t recant, and you’ve got me — a storyteller by profession. So begins the story of Fatima.

The beautiful lady first appeared in the attractive month of May, and said she’d see them at the same mountain tree, probably an ash tree, on the 13th of every month. She kept her word, and they listened while she told them to pray for peace (World War I was at its peak). Of course, to bucolic workers in a Catholic country, that meant the rosary. She also mentioned Russia, where Lenin and Engels were spreading evil ways. Now that’s setting the stage. I’ll continue this adult-child’s tale which has the marks of a far more mature mind than mine, the next time.

My youngest brother is Rudy, he of the Ph.D., and for a while (he lives mostly alone since his three children have families of their own) he owned a dog so beautiful that people would comment on it when they visited him. He would let the dog have the run of his yard, and one day the dog disappeared. Stolen. You know how animals provide companionship.

Rudy figured out a solution before he finished his search of local dog pounds and veterinarians. He went to an SPCA affiliated pound and said, “Show me the ugliest dog on your premises.”

They showed him the one they couldn’t give away because nobody wanted him–Logan. Rudy took him home. He was part Irish Wolfhound, scraggly. Logan got to love Rudy, follow some rudimentary obedience training, and now Rudy’s worried about who will take care of the dog when Rudy’s gone.

Was Fatima a hoax? What, perpetrated on the civilized world by three mountain shepherd children? The oldest, Lucy, was about ten years old! John Haffert, who wrote the book I’m reading, Meet the Witnesses of The Miracle of the Sun (available on Amazon), interviewed witness Dominic Reis after he migrated to America. He was seventeen at the time of the October 13, 1917 apparition.

Haffert: “Was the prediction of this miracle announced in church?” Reis: “The Church said nothing at all… They were against it…”

Those three children were put in jail by the Marxist government of Portugal, and Dominic Reis himself was wounded by a National Guard bayonet, wielded by one of the the soldiers who attempted to keep the curious and the faithful from accessing the mountain meadow where the children saw their “Lady.”

I believe there can be group hypnosis or group hysteria but when it comes to a crowd of 70,ooo (that is an average of the crowd at Fatima; one reliable estimate was as high as 100,000), whoa. You don’t sway that kind of crowd without a speaker who can be heard. The three shepherd children Our Lady, in her humility had picked, had no amplifying sound system. And nobody could see what they said they saw.

Of course there were people there who wanted to see the whole thing fail and become a laughing stock. Apparently things turned out just the opposite. There are many, still, inexplicable things on this earth, leave alone in the universe, that perplex scientists and cognoscenti, but we’ve been able to take some of them as a challenge, and the Keeper of Secrets has been willing to let them go. (Quantum mechanics still mystifies and awes, while evolution is now recognized as God’s modus operandi.)

Our knowledge is still changing, and we have so much to be grateful for. My granddaughter has been urged by her fourth grade teacher to read, and read, and tonight she called up her grandmother to thank her for the books she’d been gifted. As John the Evangelist said, “God (and His knowledge) is Love.”

It was 102 years ago, in a place ninety miles from the country’s capital, Lisbon, Portugal (I was caught there in 1942, sliding on the banister of the stairs in the American Embassy).  The government in Portugal in 1917 on October 13 was Marxist, and because the newspapers had inadvertently publicized the scheduled miracle by criticizing it and making fun of it, the entire side of the mountain at Fatima was covered with 70,000 citizens.  Thus the setting of the Miracle of the Sun, performed by the Almighty for the mother of his Son.

            Witnesses from the 70,000 said although it had rained for hours that morning, and everyone was soaked, the sun suddenly broke through the clouds, spinning like a pinwheel and exuding all the colors of the spectrum, which dotted all the spectators with gules of light.  It seemed to dip within about 500 meters of them all, and when it returned to its place in the sky, their clothes and the ground were dry.  This was witnessed by people within a 400 square mile area, even those who were not attending on Fatima mountain.

            Some scientists who saw it said it was a mass hypnosis or collective suggestion, which in English translates to “mass hysteria.”  Mass hysteria for 70,000 people, some of whom turned purposely away?

            Well anyway, we’re commemorating that day in Syosset.