Our Lady of Fátima and the Miracle of the Sun

Spring 1916. Three shepherd children near Fátima, Portugal, said an angel had appeared to them. They were Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco Marto and Jacinta Marto. On 13 May 1917 they said a Lady appeared at a small holm-oak in the Cova da Iria. She returned month after month. Only the children saw her. She asked them to pray the Rosary for an end to the war. And she promised a miracle, "so that all may believe".

The crowds grew. So did the reports. People described a sudden breeze, thunder and a small cloud over the oak. In August witnesses spoke of coloured clouds and a luminous globe. That month the provincial administrator, Artur Santos, held and interrogated the children.

13 September. Lúcia later counted "more than 20,000" people. The air cooled. The sun dimmed until stars were visible. One account described "a luminous globe… moved slowly and majestically through the sky from east to west".

13 October 1917. Heavy rain. Estimates of the crowd run from 30,000 to 100,000. At about solar noon the clouds broke. Avelino de Almeida of O Século saw "a frosted silver disc" begin "dancing in a violent and convulsive ballet". Almeida Garrett saw "a disc with a clean-cut rim, luminous and shining, but which did not hurt the eyes." It "looked like a glazed wheel made of mother-of-pearl."

Then the colours. Domingos Pinto Coelho of Ordem saw the sun "at one moment surrounded with scarlet flame, at another aureoled in yellow and deep purple". The disc seemed to loosen from the sky and zig-zag toward the earth. Garrett recalled: "I heard a shout from thousands of voices and saw the multitude suddenly turn its back and shoulders away." Some felt heat. Soaked clothes were said to dry. The priest Manuel Nunes Formigão counted about ten minutes, the cycle repeating three times.

At Alburitel, about 18 km away, the schoolboy Joaquim Lourenço saw the sun "Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself." He ran to hide among weeping people. Yet the crowd did not share one vision. Some saw only colours. Some saw the Virgin. Some saw nothing.

Judah Bento Ruah photographed the crowd, many of them looking up. No authentic photograph shows the sun itself. No observatory recorded unusual solar activity. In October 1930 Bishop José Alves Correia da Silva declared the visions "worthy of belief".

Sceptics point to the eye. Auguste Meessen argued for afterimages from staring at the sun. Benjamin Radford blamed staring plus suggestion. Brian Dunning noted the photographs show "several thousand" people, not 30,000 or more. Others proposed dust or sundogs. In 2025 Scott Alexander traced 60 of about 150 eyewitness accounts and rejected most of these theories. Even a rare natural event, he argued, would be remarkable at the announced time and place.

Ufologists Joaquim Fernandes and Fina d'Armada read the Sanctuary archives another way. Their book Heavenly Lights argued the events were close encounters with alien beings. A critic traced that reading back to Jacques Vallée.

Francisco and Jacinta Marto were canonized on 13 May 2017, a century to the day. Lúcia was declared Venerable in 2023. The Sanctuary draws 6 to 8 million visitors a year. And the argument over what the crowd saw at noon goes on.