In front of 200,000 faithful, this Saturday morning in Fatima, Pope Francis granted a whirlwind visit before returning to Lisbon where he will preside over the vigil of World Youth Days (WYD). In this emblematic Marian sanctuary in central Portugal, the pope upset the organization by improvising almost all of his first speech, without reading its text, and did not deliver the second, not evoking the theme main expected for this stage, the war in Ukraine and the search for peace, which he had already spoken about on Wednesday.
The day before, his speech had also been improvised. According to the Vatican spokesman, this change was due to a “discomfort of vision” due to a reflection on his glasses, but that, on Saturday, it had been “a choice” of the sovereign pontiff. “In silence, the pope prayed for a long time with pain for peace in front of the Virgin of Fatima”, then specified Matteo Bruni during a press briefing, excluding any problem of sight.
In a text published on Twitter, renamed “X”, the pope prayed for “the Church and the world, in particular the countries at war”. At Fatima, he reaffirmed his message in favor of a Church open “to all, without exception”. “The Church has no doors, for all to enter,” he said.
“We don’t need to speak the same language”
On board his “Popemobile”, then seated in a wheelchair, Pope Francis enjoyed a long walkabout on the esplanade surrounding the small chapel marking the place where, according to Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary would be appeared to three children in 1917. Blessing and kissing many infants, the pope appeared smiling and blessed the faithful massed along the barriers before reciting the rosary with young sick and handicapped people, but also six prisoners.
A few minutes earlier, the sovereign pontiff had flown over the vast esplanade of the sanctuary aboard a helicopter, in a sky reddened and obscured by smoke and ash caused by a forest fire a hundred kilometers away. It is here, 130 kilometers north of Lisbon, that the Virgin Mary appeared to three little shepherds six times in 1917, and confided three secrets to them, one of which concerns Russia. “We are united, people are connected through music and prayer, we don’t need to speak the same language,” said Lucia Marinho, a 14-year-old Portuguese girl who traveled four hours to “live this experience”, even if she does not call herself a practitioner.
Several themes discussed with young people
After spending about two hours there, the pope left by helicopter for Lisbon, where he arrived at the end of the morning. He had previously traveled to Fatima in 2017 to canonize two of the shepherds there on the centenary of what would have been their first vision. With six million visitors expected this year, Fatima is one of the most visited Marian shrines in the world, like that of Lourdes, in France.
The pope arrived in Portugal on Wednesday to meet the Catholic youth of the world, gathered in Lisbon for a week of festive, cultural and spiritual meetings. Since the beginning of his visit, the longest of a pope in this Iberian country, he has already addressed many topics, such as ecology, social networks, the war in Ukraine, or child crime within the Church. .
On Thursday and Friday, up to 800,000 faithful flooded the streets of Lisbon before massing in a park overlooking the city center to offer him a rock star welcome, according to figures from the authorities. According to the organizers, they could be a million on Saturday evening, during the vigil which will be held at the gates of Lisbon, in a vast park laid out for the occasion on the site of a former landfill located on the edge of the Tagus estuary. .