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His remark could apply to the entire spectrum of close encounters with UFOs.
The Impact of Fatima
What were the sequels to the Fatima story? The lives of many people who attended the "miracles"
were deeply changed. Some were cured of a variety of diseases.
At my mother's request, I went once more to Cova da Iria in August at the time of the
apparitions, writes engineer Mario Godinho. Once more I came back discouraged and
disappointed. But that time, something extraordinary happened. My mother, who had had a
large tumor in one of her eyes for many years, was cured. The doctors who had attended her
said they could not explain such a cure.
This is just one among hundreds of such testimonies. At the time of the final miracle, many people
were driven out of their senses, even those who saw it from a distance of several miles and were not
in the company of other witnesses who might have influenced them. A child of twelve, named
Albano Barros, for example, who was in a field near Minde, eight miles from Fatima, was so struck
when he saw the disk of light falling toward the earth that he does not remember what followed: "I
cannot even remember whether I took the sheep home, whether I ran, or what I did." Others were so
afflicted that, like farmer Manuel Francisco, they went home weeping. Another witness, a lady who
now lives in the United States, near Albany, added this comment, "Even today, whenever there is
lightning, I remember it, and I am afraid." A prominent lawyer, Mr. Mendes, stated in an interview
with John Haffert in 1960:
What I saw at Fatima could not help but affect the interior life and I am sure that all who
saw the miracle, or even heard about it, cannot fail to be impressed by its greatness.... I still
remember it today as vividly as at the moment it happened, and I feel myself to be
dominated by that extraordinary event.
Another witness reports: "I always keep thinking about the sign." An extremely interesting series of
testimonies came from witnesses who were not at Cova da Iria, but miles away from the crowd. I
have already mentioned the observation made by Albano Barros in Minde. A woman named Mrs.
Guilhermina Lopes da Silva, who lived in Leiria no less than sixteen miles from the site of the
miracle, could not go to the place appointed for the apparition, but she looked toward the mountain
at noon and saw "a great red flash" in the sky. The brilliance was such that it was seen thirty miles
away (at San Pedro de Muel, by Portuguese writer Afonso Vieira, his wife, and his mother-in-law).
The phenomenon, it seems, could not be photographed directly with the emulsions and shutter
speeds commonly aviable at the time. (One picture often produced by the newspapers and alleged to
show the miracle is in fact a photograph of an eclipse of the sun that has nothing to do with it.)
There are many pictures of the crowd during the "miracle," however, and the actual brightness of
the disk is an unresolved question. Two witnesses looked at it with binoculars and reported seeing a
ladder and two beings. The edges of the disk, according to all descriptions, were sharp. And it was
definitely not blinding, although pictures of the crowd show many witnesses shading their eyes. But
others report that the phenomenon darkened the sun to such an extent that at one point they could
see the moon and the stars.
Another remote witness was a schoolboy who was so impressed by what he saw that he
subsequently became a priest. An American Catholic writer named John Haffert interviewed him in
1960. At the time of the miracle the schoolboy was with his brother and other children in the village
of Alburitel, nine miles away from the Cova da Iria, and here is what he experienced:
I looked fixedly at the sun which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball
of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the
earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting
the end of the world at any moment. It was a crowd which had gathered outside our local
village school and we had all left classes and run into the streets because of the cries and
surprised shouts of men and women who were in the street in front of the school when the
miracle began.
There was an unbeliever there who had spent the morning mocking the "simpletons" who
had gone off to Fatima just to see an ordinary girl. He now seemed paralyzed, his eyes fixed
on the sun. He began to tremble from head to foot, and lifting up his arms, fell on his knees
in the mud, crying out to God.
But meanwhile the people continued to cry out and to weep, asking God to pardon their sins.
We all ran to the two chapels in the village, which were soon filled to overflowing. During
those long moments of the solar prodigy, objects around us turned all colors of the
rainbow.... When the people realized that the danger was over, there was an explosion of joy.
Two of the three children at Fatima died young, as the Lady had predicted, but Lucia lived secluded
in a convent to an advanced age.
The Physics of the B.V.M.
We have just examined one series of apparently miraculous events, namely those related to the
Fatima observations of the entity described by percipients as the Blessed Virgin Mary. These
percipients, of course, have been exposed to such a powerful alteration of reality that their [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]