Fátima: Local Sagrado ou Festival Religioso. Por Uncle Monty.

Fátima:

Local Sagrado ou Festival Religioso.

Por Uncle Monty.

Fátima:

Sacred Shrine or Religious Roadshow?

By Uncle Monty.
Fátima Photography By Alex Albion.

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During his great and illustrious papacy, Pope

John Paul II personally visited the Nossa

Senhora do Rosário da Fátima or The Holy

Catholic Shrine of Fátima at Portugal. He

visited there at least three times during

his priestly and papal lifetime.
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As the Holy Father of the billion-plus faithful of the

Holy Roman Catholic Church, John Paul also brought

with him to Fátima the gun wounds from his assassin

who thankfully failed to kill him. And so to mark both
the first and tenth anniversaries of his God-given

survival against his assassin’s bullets, John Paul

came to Fátima twice more to pray and to give

much thanks for his spared life at where I

myself, just only two weeks ago and as an

avid Anglican, humbly stood in his wonderful

and forgiving footsteps. No wonder I saw

pilgrims crying - along with many others simply

kissing, hugging or touching - at the impressive

statue of the pre-eminent John Paul II

at Holy Fátima.

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At Holy Fátima, 2oo9.

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John Paul represents Holy Fátima at its

best and most worthy, but sadly today the

sacred and the secular fight for space and the

attention from the millions of Catholic people

who flock annually to Portugal’s world re-

nowned Holy Shrine of Fátima.

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The lines between the sacred and the secular

seem to me to be getting more blurred by

the day as one is confronted with what I call

a “religious roadshow” vs. a “sacred shrine.”

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This is evidenced by all the hundreds of tacky

trinket shops, the secular overkill of profiteering
from the sacred, the blantant commercialism,

the street hawkers shoving their restaurant

menus in your face only moments upon one's
first arrival at Holy Fátima, and the rip-off

prices for hotels (that can house upto 10,000

pilgrims per day) and shoddy food; and the local

shopping centres that are also on tasteless

overload of mass-produced “religious” and

tourist souvenirs and gifts that adds to the

sense of a "religious roadshow" above and

beyond the core essence to preserve Fátima

as a Holy place and as a foremost sacred

shrine of Global Catholicism.
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Just one of the umpteen trinket shops.

How many crucifixes does one need to pick?

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My good and dear Italian Catholic friend

Ida Negri, who has worked for 30 years

at London’s Royal Masonic Lodge as the

housekeeper there, told me that if I thought

Fátima was full of commercial bad taste, then

France's shrine at Lourdes was even worse.

As a devout Roman Catholic, Ida seems to

have visited just about every Catholic shrine

in the book. She says she was perturbed, and

at times disgusted, by what she saw as the

over commericalisation and the sense of

desecration at such shrines like Fátima and

Lourdes. Ida Negri added that fifteen years

or so ago, those same shrines were mostly

free of such commercial junk that now

grossly clutters such sacred places.

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In sharp contrast, however, was my visit

three years ago to the English Anglican-

Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Walshingham

with my dear Contessa Maria at where such

"non-sacred" junk is shunned and at where

the small shops there are small in number

with their tasteful selection of religious items

and gifts that are suitably and sensibly pre-

sented for pilgrims to choose from to pur-

chase without any kind of overkill or ill-

mannered hawking like I sadly saw at

Portugal's Holy Fátima. Walsingham is

presented in its proper sacred proportion,

while Fátima is presented in its commercial

disproportion, it seems to me as a plain old

Anglican. I simply reject overt commercial-

ism and over-retailing, no matter what,

in all its crude forms from London's £1.7

billion Westfield Mall to the masses of

junky Hong Kong imports of The French

Market at New Orleans. I admanently

reject such even more so at sacred and

holy shrines of whatever kind they

may be called.

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The "Three Little Seers of Fátima"

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I went first to Fátima with the intention of

spending some time in religious retreat, but

when I got there I quickly changed my mind

and realised I was not fully prepared emotion-

ally and spiritually to undergo such a three-

day retreat that I had planned. One reason

why, was that I could not find the “sacred

spirit” at Holy Fátima. After all, I first went

there to hopefully find symbols and traces

of sacredness and spiritual peace and quiet

prayer, but I found instead a tasteless and

tacky religious roadshow that should not be

there in the first place. There seemed to me

to be an hollowness of prayer and earnest

supplication all around me at what is billed

as "Holy" Fátima. There was no religious

fervour or flavour that excited me or in-

duced a sense of added religiosity to my own

Anglican faith that I had hoped I would find

and see at Fátima with its overwhelming

roots and history of Traditional Christianity.

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And it was hard, frankly, to get worked up

about anything to do with the world shrine of

Fátima save for its secular and commercial ob-

scenity that surely spoils the memory of those

three “Little Seers of Fátima,” who witnessed

astounding apparitions, so we're told, of
the BVM back in 1917. In that same year

of 1917, the birth of John F. Kennedy took

place in America and the rise of the bloody

Bolshevik Revolution took place behind the

Iron Curtain of Soviet Russia and her Red

Army. The British captured Baghdad and

Jerusalem. Also, The Balfour Declaration

proclaimed British support for a Jewish

national homeland in Palestine and at what

many now believe was at the tragic expense

of innocent Palestinian blood of then and of

today. Israel's vicious 2oo8 Christmas mili-

tary attack on Gaza speaks of that blood.

Now the selection of old-hand and ultra-

rightwing Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's

new Prime Minister will most likely drain

even more innocent blood out of the opp-

ressed and occupied Palestinian people.

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Fátima Statue of Controversial Pius XII.

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Back then in 1917, Fátima wasn’t even on the map other than being a Portuguese hamlet of no religious, social, political, commercial, national or international significance of any kind. But the "Three Little Seers of Fátima" dramatically and forever changed all of that.

Of the "Three Little Seers of Fátima," the two youngest ones - The Marto Cousins - at then ages 7 and 9 died within less than three years of seeing their apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM). They were then told they would die shortly, so Ida Negri informed me upon my return from Fátima. In the meantime, the oldest of the three seers Lucia lived to the ripe old age of over 90 years old and who visited the Fátima Shrine at least three times to then describe the apparitions she profoundly experienced for the depiction of planned oil paintings at the Holy Shrine.

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On entering the grounds of the Fátima Shrine, here are at least 12 things that you cannot do and they are prominently posted for the pilgrims and public to see and to adhere to: 1. Play no musical instruments; 2. No riding bicycles at the shrine; 3. No smoking; 3. No begging. 4. No use of cellphones or radio or MP3's; 6. No walking dogs; 7. No drinking; 8. No swearing; 9. No parking car; 10. No vandalism; 11. No shouting, and 12. NO PREACHING. Woooooooow. No preaching? How strange!!

At Fátima's Late Winter Saturday Evening, 2oo9.

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Above: Delicate bottles of Holy Water from Holy
Fátima that I gave as gifts back in England.
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Below: Uncle Monty at The Steps
of the Fátima Basilica.

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Holy Fátima is created by human minds and hands and is therefore imperfect with all its sad faults and human shortcomings. What surprised me abit about the shrine was the lack of seeing hardly a priest walking on the streets, except for perhaps a dozen or so nuns or religious sisters heading to their respective convents or secular residence for some of them. It was off-season, too, during my stay at Fátima and so the shrine was relatively quiet and free of the usual masses of pilgrims at times like Eastertide and Christmastide. Also, got alot of rain to help dampen things abit. I think a day or a day and half is plenty of time to see pretty much of everything that is Holy Fátima. You can walk pretty much the whole town from north, south, east and west, without the use of transportation. English is widely spoken at Holy Fátima. It takes about 1½ hours to get there directly from the Portuguese capital of Lisboa either by car or coach.
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I was glad I visited the world renowned shrine of Fátima, despite my anxiety and vexation of having to critically deal with the obvious and pressing issue of "Local Sagrado ou Festival Religisos" or "Sacred Shrine or Religious Roadshow?" My open criticism of Fátima, so it should be clearly understood, is not intended in anyway to slight or denigrate those of the Catholic faith. Far from it. I am by nature always a protester by being a Protestant by birth and rearing no matter how hard I try not to protest. When friends of mine tell me that they must be "Protestant" to stay Catholic, I always wonder why they stay Catholic instead of Protestant!?!? Someone recently stated that Protestants don't understand Catholic Shrines. But I myself do sometimes wonder why apparitions occur among the Catholic faithful, but not among the Protestants or other non-Catholic adherents? To me, apparitions and Catholicism are synonymous. Much like, I think, it is also seen with the rise of the Physical Phenomena of Stigmata, Christian religious sainthood and marked martyrs.

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In the end though, it all comes down to the faith of the individual of whatever kind one may or may not hold. Holy Shrines are bright beacons to those who hunger to express and excerise their Catholic faith, but they also sometimes beckon other Christians like me who are Anglican from head to toe and who make no apology whatsoever to anybody for being of such faith and belief. At Fátima, I could and did hold my head up high as equally as any other pilgrim or visitor from any where else in the world of living Christianity. I shall always remember my short stay at Holy Fátima for it is, of course, not the kind of earthly Christian setting one visits and sees everyday. Its rarity should never become commonplace nor run like a "religious roadshow" over the sacred and of those apparitions of the BVM by those "Three Little Seers of Fátima" at more than 90 years ago at was then, and still very much is, rural and pleasant Portugal. Amen. Again, amen!!

Faithfully, Uncle Monty. +Ash Wednesday, 2oo9. The First Day of Lent.

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My next story in this series on Portugal is called "Some of My Photos I Took of Lisboa." And after that story, I present a selection of the wonderful "Ceramic Tiles of Fátima and Lisboa."

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