Paranormal record / 1950
30 October 1950. About 4 p.m. Pope Pius XII was on his habitual walk in the Vatican Gardens. He had reached the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. The sun had become a pale, opaque sphere inside a luminous circle. He could look straight at it. It spun. It swayed from left to right. It happened again the next day. Then on 1 November, the day he defined the dogma of the Assumption. Then once more on 8 November. After that, never again. He told only a few people. In 2008, a pencil note in his own hand surfaced in the family archive. It began: "I have seen the 'miracle of the sun,' this is the pure truth."
Autumn 1950. Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Pacelli, was 74 years old. He was about to solemnly define the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. Every afternoon he took his habitual walk in the Vatican Gardens, reading and studying. Pacelli had been consecrated archbishop in the Sistine Chapel on 13 May 1917. The same day as the first apparition at Fátima. That October, crowds there reported the sun dancing in the sky.