FATIMA, Portugal (LifeSiteNews) — Nearly 200,000 pilgrims from all over the world gathered in Fatima, Portugal, on Sunday in honor of the anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima on October 13, 1917.
Groups of pilgrims from 30 countries across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia flocked to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima, where they held lit candles during an evening procession of a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, as a choir sang beautiful hymns.
Almost 200,000 people in Fatima tonight. The faith is alive. pic.twitter.com/2RJfYrS7eR
— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) October 12, 2025
“The faith is alive,” remarked the Catholic Sat X account.
The massive turnout for the annual anniversary pilgrimage is a moving testimony to present devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, who appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima on the 13th of every month from May to October 1917, when a miracle of the sun occurred, “the most stupendous public miracle in the history of the world.”
The Blessed Virgin Mary had promised a miracle that October to confirm the apparitions and messages She had given the children. The Communist-leaning government in Portugal at the time, attempting to prove the whole thing a farce, actually encouraged the crowds and media to attend the apparition on October 13, intending to “show everybody that this is all nonsense.”
Noon came, and it was pouring rain. All of a sudden, “the sun begins to spin, gyrate on its axis, and then threw off various colors, and then it starts to dance in the sky, and then it comes hurtling toward the earth,” as John-Henry Westen has related. “There’s 70,000 people there and reporters photographing this. They think they’re all going to die. They honestly think it’s the end of the world. And then all of a sudden, just as fast it started – everything goes back to normal. The sun goes back to where it belongs. Everything is back to normal, except one thing is weird. Everything is dry, like there was no rain. So it is a stupendous miracle witnessed by 70,000 people and photographed.”
The Blessed Virgin Mary foretold the Second World War and said She would come to ask for the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart in order to prevent it. In 1929, She did appear again to the seer Lucia, then in the convent, asking that the Pope, in union with all the bishops of the world, consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart. Several popes have attempted to fulfill Our Lady’ request but have failed to carry it out in one aspect or another, either not mentioning Russia specifically or not involving all of the bishops of the world.
In 1933 Our Lord appeared to Lucia to warn Her that the world was following in the footsteps of the king of France and would suffer his same fate because Russia had not been consecrated to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. Jesus had asked for France to be consecrated to His Own Sacred Heart. This was not done, and “a hundred years to the day after that request was made, and unfulfilled by the kings of France, the kings of France were removed. They were deposed and then later killed,” as Westen explained.
This warning pertains to the three prophecies that Our Lady of Fatima gave the children in 1917, known as “secrets.” She predicted both the rise of Communism and World War II in the first two secrets, and warned of many souls falling into Hell.
The Third Secret, which was intended to be released in 1960, according to one of the seers, was not released then. The Vatican later claimed to have released it in 2000.
“However, in short, there are good reasons to believe we have not yet seen the full text of the Third Secret,” explained author and former White House speechwriter Joshua Charles. “There is a good deal of testimony from men who were apparently aware of its full contents that it represents an apocalyptic warning to the Church.”
“In ‘The Fourth Secret of Fatima,’ Antonio Socci – who was initially very skeptical of the claims of the ‘Fatimists’ that we did not get the full Third Secret – lays out in great detail how the official account does not add up. He concludes that the Third Secret involves a matter that literally ‘terrorized different Popes,’” Charles continued.
Socci wrote, “It occurred to me that throughout the Fatima affair there are so many questions without answers as to color it a ‘detective story.’ Perhaps the most fascinating and dramatic detective story of our times because it involves not only the Vatican, great powers and their secret services, as well as certain obscure apparatuses of power, but also each one of us, and the proximate destiny for all humanity and for the Church.”
As LifeSiteNews columnist Maike Hickson recently explained, respected clergy and high-ranking prelates have alluded to the fact that the Third Secret warns at least in part of “apostasy,” including Cardinal Raymond Burke.
Famous exorcist and traditional Catholic priest Father Chad Ripperger said in a May 18, 2024, interview conducted by Radio Immaculata’s Marian Franciscan Friars that he was open to the possibility that the Vatican has published perhaps “only part of the Secret.”
Ripperger said that there were Vatican officials who revealed in public that the Third Secret warned against “Vatican II” and against adding “extraneous elements to the liturgy” that he found “kind of interesting because supposedly Our Lady wanted it to be released in 1960 which would have averted a lot of the stuff that we have seen, I think.”
In 1933, the later Pope Pius XII, as the then-Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, Secretary of State to Pope Pius XI, reportedly commented on the message of Fatima to his friend, Count Enrico Pietro Galeazzi, as follows:
I am concerned about the confidences of the Virgin to the little Lucia of Fatima. This persistence of the Good Lady in face of the danger that threatens the Church is a divine warning against the suicide that the alteration of the Faith, in its liturgy, its theology, and its soul, would represent.
I hear around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments, and make her remorseful for her historical past. Well, my dear friend, I am convinced that the Church of Peter must affirm her past, or else she will dig her own grave.