UNITED NATIONS — The message of peace Mary gave to three shepherd children 100 years ago at Fatima, Portugal, is still timely and urgent in 2017 and is an ongoing reminder that flashes of the divine are revealed in unexpected places, according to speakers at a May 12 U.N. panel.
Before an audience of more than 600 people, speakers explored the peacemaking roles of women, children and religious leaders at the event organized by the Holy See Mission to the United Nations.
Between May 13, 1917, and Oct. 13, 1917, Mary appeared on six occasions in a field to Lucia dos Santos and her cousins, siblings Francisco and Jacinto Marto, who are now saints.
Ambassador Alvaro Mendonca Moura, permanent representative of Portugal to the United Nations, noted that the Marian apparitions were met with understandable doubt and active resistance in 1917. But he said today Fatima is a central element of reverence for Portuguese Catholics, an inescapable element of Portuguese identity and an international gathering place for people looking for answers to personal existential questions.
Mendoca said at Fatima a woman brought the message of peace that was addressed to children. At the United Nations, there is a growing understanding of the peacemaking role of women, he said, and world leaders must guarantee that children grow up in safety and are allowed to become peacemakers.
Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations, said: "Mary essentially came as an ambassador of peace with a summons for the shepherd children to be key staff members, to use U.N. jargon, of her permanent mission to all the nations."
The mission is "just as relevant today, with more than 50 active violent conflicts across the globe in what Pope Francis has called a 'third World War fought piecemeal,' as it was a century ago during the First World War," he said.
"It's astonishing that Mary would preferentially come, not to heads of state or diplomats or religious leaders directly to enlist them in the cause of peace but to three simple children without much education and entrust them with a message, secrets and a special task for the cause of peace and the good of souls and the world," Archbishop Auza said.
"The selection criteria shown by Mary reveals that everyone has a role, even those whom the world considers insignificant, or incapable or too young. If the shepherd children could be chosen, and they could respond as wholeheartedly as they did, it's a sign of what is possible for everyone," he said.
Archbishop Auza said the credibility of the Fatima apparitions to the children is beyond reproach and extends to the public miracle Oct. 13, 1917. On that day, gathered in anticipation of a promised sign from Mary, thousands of believers and skeptics saw the sun appear to "dance," spin and change colors.
He said it is unlikely that 70,000 people, including church authorities, journalists from anti-Catholic newspapers, unsympathetic pubic officials and anti-clerical people, experienced a mass hallucination with regard to the sun.
The message of Fatima encourages conversion from sins such as the idolatry of money, the burgeoning arms trade, and lack of hospitality to the needy migrants. "Without conversion, peace will always remain merely an illusion. Conversion is a precondition for peace," he said.
Peace begins in the heart, and prayer is its instrument, the archbishop said. "The message of Fatima contains a lesson about the objective value of prayer, that prayer can change not just the world inside the one praying, but the world outside," Archbishop Auza said.
Johnnette Benkovic, founder and president of Women of Grace, said Fatima's message is the hour has come when women impregnated with the spirit of the Gospel can aid humanity.
"Women have been entrusted with the totality of the human person and its protection" and an opportunity to help other women embrace their feminine genius and work for peace, Benkovic said.
Andrea Bartoli, dean of Seton Hall University's School of Diplomacy and International Relations in South Orange, New Jersey, said people must know the past and listen to one another, especially victims of conflict, to live in peace.
"In Fatima, the children were open to the possibility that life can be surprisingly peaceful," he said. People who want to hear the voice of God should listen with a humble heart educated by daily prayer, Bartoli said.
Marta Santos Pais, special representative of the U.N. secretary-general on violence against children, said by entrusting her message to very young, poor shepherds at a time of widespread destruction and hopelessness, Mary gave them a mandate of peacemaking. "Children of today have the same dream of a world where violence doesn't take place," yet for many children the dream is a nightmare, she said.
"Violence against children costs $7 trillion each year and compromises economies. It is a pervasive, corrosive and silent emergency that affects the world's youngest citizens, but it's not a fate," Santos Pais said. "Safe, inclusive, relevant, empowering, quality education can bring an end to violence," she said.
Anna Halpine, founder and CEO of World Youth Alliance, said the response of the shepherd children at Fatima is a model for all young people to follow. They offered their suffering and made prodigious spiritual growth as an extraordinary contribution to peace.
"The power of the powerless surprises us in every generation. By doing what is asked of us, we can do great things to build peace," Halpine said.
The event was co-sponsored by the Vatican's permanent observer U.N. mission and Portugal's permanent mission.
— Beth Griffin, Catholic News Service
ROME —After the Vatican said the third secret of Fatima foretold the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II, the Turkish gunman in that attack proclaimed himself an ''unwitting instrument'' in a divine plan.
Mehmet Ali Agca, who is serving a life sentence in an Italian prison for shooting and seriously wounding the pope in 1981, said through his lawyer that he felt relieved from the weight of responsibility by the disclosure of the secret.
''I was an unwitting instrument in a mysterious design: Now I know this with certainty,'' Agca was quoted as saying by his lawyer, Marina Magistrelli. Agca said he would further explain his thoughts in a letter to the pope on the occasion of the pontiff's 80th birthday May 18.
Magistrelli said Agca had watched TV coverage of the pope's Mass at Fatima, Portugal, May 13 when Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, announced that the ''third secret'' said to have been revealed by Mary to three children in 1917 involved a prediction of a war waged by atheistic systems against the church.
The message also referred to a ''bishop clothed in white'' who ''falls to the ground, apparently dead under a burst of gunfire,'' Cardinal Sodano said. He said Pope John Paul II believes this foretold his being shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter's Square May 13, 1981 -- the feast of Our Lady of Fatima.
The pope met with Agca in his prison cell in 1983 and forgave the gunman. On that occasion, Agca later recounted, he asked the pope about the third secret of Fatima, but the pope would not discuss it.
Later, Agca began claiming that he was part of a divine design connected with the Fatima apparitions. He also made other claims: that he was Jesus Christ, that he was an angel, and that he was sent by God to announce the end of the world.
Agca at one point claimed that the papal shooting was carried out on the orders of Bulgarian intelligence officials. Bulgarian and Turkish defendants were acquitted in 1986, in a trial that featured incoherent outbursts by Agca.
Agca later said the Bulgarian connection was a fabrication of Italian intelligence officials who had promised him early release if he went along with their plan.
In recent years, Agca has said he acted on his own in shooting the pope. Agca, a Muslim, had publicly threatened to kill the pontiff in 1979 when the pope visited Turkey; in a letter to several Turkish newspapers, he called the pope a ''crusader commander'' sent by Western imperialists.
After Agca shot the pope in 1981, he was immediately wrestled to the ground and arrested. A letter found in his hotel room said he had committed the act to demonstrate the ''imperialistic crimes'' of the Soviet Union and the United States.
For several years, Agca and his relatives have pressured Italian justice officials to release him, saying he has served long enough. Now 42 years old, Agca would be eligible for conditional release in 2005.
Italian press reports quoted Agca as saying that if released, he would travel to Fatima to pray for 10 days.
That is an unlikely scenario, since Turkish authorities want Agca back in their country to serve a life sentence for the killing of a Turkish journalist in 1979. Vatican officials have said they have no objections to Agca's early release from his Italian sentence and his return to a Turkish prison.
— John Thavis, Catholic News Service