Some extracts from Fatima Handbook

An Explanation of Some Portuguese Nouns

A number of nouns are used in their Portuguese form throughout this handbook. These nouns, and their English equivalents, are explained here.

Aljustrel is the name of the village where the dos Santos and Marto families lived. It is about two kilometres to the south of the Santuário.

Apart from most of the village houses now being used to cater for visitors (and life for the villages would probably be intolerable if they weren’t) Aljustrel can’t be much different than it was at the time of the apparitions. There are very few modern buildings in evidence and the council hasn’t streamlined the roads. It is relatively easy to drive into from the Minde Road, the EN360, but a bit of a maze to drive out of, given the necessary one way system. The best way to approach it is on foot from the Southern Roundabout, the Rotunda Santa Teresa de Ourém, up the Via Sacra.

Capela - is easily recognised as the word for “chapel”.

Its etymology is interesting. When St. Martin of Tours divided his military cloak - cappa in Latin - in the 4th century and gave half to the beggar at the gate of Amiens, he wrapped the other half around his shoulders thus making a cape - capella. This cape, or its representation, afterwards accompanied the Frankish kings in their wars and the tent which sheltered it also became known as the capella. In this tent Mass was celebrated by the military chaplains - capellani. Subsequently any oratory where Mass was celebrated was called capella or, in French, chapelle.

Capela da Reconciliação - The Chapel of Reconciliation. A collection of oratories and confessionals beneath the South Colonnade.

Capelinha Little chapel. In Fatima Capelinha almost always refers to the Capelinha das Aparições, the Chapel of the Apparitions, the open chapel, on the north side of the vast concourse, which houses the tiny original chapel and the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.

Inha or inho, zinha or zinho added to a word in Portuguee creates a diminutive. Thus irmã, sister, becomes irmãzinha as in As Irmãzinhas de Jesus, The Little Sisters of Jesus. Similarly obrigado, thank you, can become obrigadinho, thanks.

Cova da Iria This might be translated as the Dip or Hollow of Peace. Cova is a bit slight to be a cave (gruta). It is sometimes rendered as hole, or pit or even coffin. The local Camara (Council) map of the area for 1917 shows many sections called Cova - Cova do Cebolo (onion-seed), Cova da Machado (axe) Cova das Tormentas (of the torments).

Iria, although it could mean “it makes irridescent” probably comes from the Greek meaning “peace” from where we get the English word “irenic” = promoting peace. The Greek goddess Irene was the goddess of peace (The Romans called her Pax) which passed into the girl’s name Irene. There were several Saint Irenes, one being a Portuguese nun who died around 653AD. Her name is immortlised in Portugal in the city Santarem. (Say Saint Irene - pronounce it to rhyme with “keen” - ten times quickly and you are saying Santarem as a Portuguese might say it.)

Cruz Alta The High Cross. The cross at the western end of the Recinto. It was erected to mark the closing of the Holy Year 1951. (1950 was actually the Holy Year but it was extended into 1951.)

Fátima Although the whole area is known in Portugal and world wide as Fatima, the Santuário and the town that has grown up around it is, properly speaking, the Cova da Iria. Fátima itself is about two kilometres away on the EN365, the Vila Nova de Ourém road leading off the Rotunda Santa Teresa de Ourém. The original parish church is its centre. Two pre-apparition villages, Moita Redonda (circular copse) and Lomba d’Égua (mare’s plateau) to the north and east of Cova da Iria are virtually incorporated into the main township. However, they both have their own chapels - Moita has Stª Luzia and Lomba d’Égua, S. João.

Fátima Parish Church is still the parish church for the whole area, which is why all the other churches (apart from the Basilica) are called chapels. (Chapels of Ease, is the traditional English language expression, the idea being to “ease” the strain on an overburdened church.).

For the purposes of clarity this guide will use the Portuguese Fátima (acute over the first “a”) the original village of Fátima and the International Fatima (without acute) the entire shrine and surrounding area.

The origin of the word Fátima as a Portuguese village is interesting. It is well known as the name of the Islamic prophet Muhammad’s daughter. The story goes that in 1158 (In England,Henry 11 was on the throne and Thomas á Becket, later Saint, was his Chancellor) a high ranking party of the Moorish occupiers were ambushed while they picnicned on the banks of the river Sado, south of the Tagus. The captives were taken to the Portuguese king Alphonso Henriques in Santarem.

During the journey the leader of the Christian knights, Gonçalo Hermingues, became enamoured of one of the young women of the party whose name was Fatima. He asked the king if he could take her as his wife. The king agreed providing Fatima herself consented, and that she became a Christian. Apparently Fatima returned Gançalo´s affection for she agreed on both counts and was given the name Oureana - the Golden One. The kings wedding gift was a village named Abdegas which took the name of its new mistress and which time has whittled down to Ourém.

Oureana died young. The grieving Gonçalo joined the Cistercian monastery of Alcobaça and after some time the abbot had Oureana’s body transferred to a grave in monastic lands not far from the couple’s village and built a small commemorative chapel there which, probably because her Christain name was already in use, became known by her former, Muslim name, Fatima.

Some see a Muslim name being used as the name of one of the great shrines of Christendom as ironic. “What could be more pleasing in these troubled time,” runs a well known comment, “than to see Catholics praying to a Jewish mother in a place named after Muhammad’s eldest daughter.” Indeed, when Iranian Television broadcast a film of pilgrims walking the Penitential Way on their knees, the commentary told its viewers that the pilgrims were Catholics paying homage to Islam.

Others see it as underlining the universality of the Blessed Virgin’s message. Prayer, penance, escatological truths are hardly the preserve of Catholics alone. It would seem presumptuous to hold that Our Blessed Mother’s appearance in Fatima, rather than any one of a dozen more Christian sounding places within a few kilometres, was an oversight.

Fonte or Fontenário The refers to the area in the centre of the esplanade, hedged and fenced in iron, where the statue to the Sacred Heart stands on a plinth.

The whole of the area of the Fatima parish was notorious for its lack of artesian water. Even when diviners rods shook and wells were dug little more than a trickle would result, and not even the trickles were regular. There appears to have been a body of water called the Carreira Pond for the livestock. (This pond lay opposite the first station of the Via Sacra near the South Roundabout, the Rotunda de Stª Teresa de Ourém. On 5.4.99, a marble plaque was set on the site to commemorate it.) There was little else in the way of water, however, apart from the unreliable domestic wells.

As pilgrims flocked to the site of the apparitions the Bishop, while making no statement on their credibility or otherwise, first permitted Mass to be celebrated in the Cova and then bought the land so that it would not be profaned. As the number of pilgrims increased the lack of water became an urgent problem and the Bishop commissioned a cistern to be built so that water could be brought in and stored in it. On November 9th 1921 workmen arrived with picks and shovels to dig a hole in the dry, rocky earth to accommodate the cistern and no sooner had they struck it than water sprang up.

The water was channelled into a circular, arched fountain house with 15 outlets but this was covered over when the Recinto was leveled in 1950.

(A second spiring had emerged in 1927, five yards away from the first.) There are now four outlets for the water around the circular hedge which encloses the Sacred Heart statue and many others among the surrounding parks.

Lausperene Perpetual praise. This refers to the chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at the end of the east colonnade.

Loca do Cabeço or Loca do Anjo Loca do Cabeço (the top of the hill) is the name given to a cave on a rocky knoll; the knoll itself is know as Cabeço. Cabeço and its cave are a little north of Aljustrel. A corner of it, which Lucia in her memoirs calls Chousa Velha (old ‘small inheritance’), a favourite gazing spot for the little shepherds, was the site of the first and third apparition of the angel in the spring and the autumn of 1916. For this reason Chousa Velha is now called Loca do Anjo (Place of the Angel). A group of marble statues stand among the rocks, the three children kneeling in front of the angel.

Procissão de Velas The candlelit procession which is held in the Sanctuary every night at 2130hrs during the summer months. Possibly the most enduring memory of the Shrine for pilgrims when they have returned to their homes is the Rosary and procession of worshippers each holding a lighted candle and following the flower-bedecked statue as it is carried around the precinct. (On Thursdays it is the Blessed Sacrament which is carried in procession.) At the beginning of the Rosary the candles are blessed by the presiding cleric.

On the Capelinha schedule which is displayed on the notice boards each day this devotion is abbreviated to “tv”. This doesn’t mean that the rosary and procession is televised; tv here stands for terço (q.v.) com velas.

And, a second extract from the Handbook:

The Doves of Bombarral

From 1646 till Manuel 11 was deposed in 1910 no Portuguese monarch has ever worn a crown. And the reason is this. In 1646 King João 1V, before the entire court at Vila Viçosa, took the crown from his own head and placed it at the feet of a statue of the Blessed Virgin and declared that she was to be the Queen and Patroness of Portugal under the title of the Immaculate Conception.

Then, by oath, he bound himself and his successors to defend the dogma that the Blessed Virgin was conceived free from original sin. The event was inscribed on stone tablets in every town in the land and Portugal became A Terra de Nossa Senhora.

1946 marked the third centenary of the reign of Our Blessed Lady over the country and there were festivities up and down the land. There were two high points to these celebrations. The first was on May 13th when it is estimated that up to, and perhaps over, a million pilgrims gathered at Cova da Iria to witness the personal Legate of Pope Pius X11, Cardinal AloisioBenedetto Masella, place a precious crown on the head of the little statue of Our Lady of Fatima. The gold and the precious stones that went into the making of the crown, as we have seen, were freely given by the women of Portugal from their personal jewel caskets. The kings no longer sat on the thrones but the Immaculate Conception, the Queen of Portugal, still reigned, under the additional title of Our Lady of Fatima.

The second high point was on December 8th 1946, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It was decided that the statue would be taken from Fatima to Lisbon in solemn procession. In Lisbon, in the ancient cathedral, the Sé, in the name of the hierarchy, the Government of the Republic and the People of Portugal, the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon would formally renew the consecration of the nation to the Immaculate Conception.

The procession started out from Fatima on November 22nd. The platform that bore the statue was two metres long and one metre wide. On it steps were built up to a height of 1.3 metres where the statue was secured. The whole platform was covered with white flowers and it was carried for the whole fifteen days of its ninety mile journey on the shoulders of willing men.

All along the route there were demonstrations of homage, affection and loyalty. Each town staged formal receptions, both civil and religious. The statue spent the nights in churches where it was venerated in all-night vigils. Each morning, after Mass, its journey was resumed.

Today a fine motorway links Fatima with Lisbon and a car journey takes little over an hour. But in 1946 the road was a tortuous one, zigzagging down to Batalha, south west to the magnificent old Cistercian Monastery of Alcobaca, further south to Caldas da Raínha - the Queen’s thermal spa - on to Obidos and then to Bombarral which is on a level with the city of Santarem, but near the Atlantic coast.

A lady who lived in Bombarral, Dona Maria Emilia Martins Campos, had planned a special personal welcome which involved a triumphal arch across the street, bedecked with flowers and surmounted by a crown. Inside the crown were to be six white doves and at the moment of the statues passing beneath the arch the doves would be released by means of a connecting cord. It would be a charming tribute to the Queen of Portugal.

Dona Maria wrote to a friend in Lisbon asking her to buy six white doves. The friend bought the doves for 78 escudos in the Praça da Figuera in Central Lisbon and sent them on the 29th.

The procession was to reach Bombarral on December 1st. Because of time and various circumstances the arch could not be built. Furthermore one of the doves had died in transit. Ever resourceful Dona Maria dressed two little girls fittingly and had them go out before the statue and set the five doves free. One of them flew away. The other four flew to the statue and settled in the flowers at its feet.

The statue bearers tried to shoo the birds away, fearing they might soil the statue and disarrange the flowers.When they were flushed out they simply circled the statue and returned. Eventually their persistence won out and they were permitted to remain without interference though another flew off near Torres Vedras and did not return.

The remaining three stayed on the steps at the foot of the statue for the five days it took to travel from Bombarral to Lisbon. Occasionally one would fly off to find food but very soon it would be back nestling among the flowers. Nothing disturbed them, not the noise of the jubilant crowds, the fire-crackers (a mandatory feature of any Portuguese festivity), the rain, the wind, the December cold or the aeroplanes that swooped down from on the outskirts of Lisbon to shower the statue with petals.

Initially the statue was taken to the then new church of Our Lady of Fatima which can be found off the Avenida de Berna between the Gulbenkian Museum and the Campo Pequeno bullring. The Cardinal met the procession at the door and inside delivered an address welcoming the Queen of Portugal to the Capital. For the first time the doves left the statue together, flew over to where the Cardinal stood and remained there looking at him and listening to his words as if they understood them.

After the welcoming ceremony the birds enjoyed the freedom of the church. Mostly they were to be found on the platform but it wasn’t unusual for worshippers to find them flying between their nest of flowers and the patriarchal throne. During the distribution of Holy Communion on December 7th one flew to the crown on the head of the staute and perched there with its wings extended until the last recipient had taken the Sacrament. The other two flew to the top of the ceiling during this time and could not be seen.

At ten o’clock that same evening the three-mile procession from the church of Our Lady of Fatima to the Cathedral began. As the platform was about to be lifted onto the shoulders of the men two of the doves flew to the edge of a stained-glass window which surrounds the Throne of Exposition and poised there, their heads turned towards the departing statue. The third dove remained among the flowers at Our Lady’s feet.

Outside it was raining heavily but when the statue emerged from the church the rain stopped, the clouds rolled back and the moon appeared.

Along the route most of the population of the city lined the streets, strewing flowers, singing hymns, letting off fireworks and baring candles. The two doves from the stained-glass window rejoined their companion early in the procession and all three remained with the statue till it reached the cathedral, around 1.00am. At the doors one of the doves suddenly left the platform and flew up to the topmost pinnacle of the ancient Sé where it perched, according to witnesses, for at least an hour.

Two doves remained with the statue during its night-long vigil in the cathedral, the Pontifical High Mass for the feast of the Immaculate Conception the following day, the solemn Te Deum and the renewal of the Act of Consecration of Portugal to the Immaculate Conception. Only one dove, however, was reported to have been with the statue when it was taken from the cathedral to the Praça do Comércio, transferred to a fishing boat, and taken across the Tagus on its long way around back to Fatima.

After that reports vary. Some say that one dove was with the statue, and photographed, in Setúbal on the December 13th. The press reported “doves” with it in Entrocamento on the 22nd. The procession arrived back in Fatima on Christmas Eve.

For a long time a cote was kept beneath the eaves of the Capelinha das Aparições and still today there is always a dove colony in the Santuário though one of the Servitas assures me that there are no cotes now, that the doves, with some pigeon cousins, which perch above the colonnade and invariably attend the 1100 Recinto Mass in summer, live wild.

It is non-productive to argue whether this presence of the doves during the triumphal procession of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima was the result of divine direction or not. Believers will want to think it was, non believers that it wasn’t. One way or the other it was a phenomenon and, as Fr. Thomas McGlynn O.P., the sculptor of the statue of the Immaculate Heart in the niche in the Fatima Basilica façade, pointed out, even unbelievers must admit that Dona Maria Emilia Martins Campos of Bombarral got a great bargain for her 78 escudos.

Leo Madigan/Fatima-Ophel Books - www.theotokos.org.uk/leomadigan