May 13, 2018

A rest day today, but still a big day. After breakfast in the hostel, we marched ourselves to the bus station. Fortunately, we had done some research and explored the bus potions, and when we got there, a bus was ready for us. The trip would not have been longer than 30 minutes, so we arrived at Fatima at around 8:00am.

The place was already a buzz with huge number of Pilgrims converging on the place from all over the world – literally. Wherever you looked, you could see people pouring out of hotel, hostels, cars, tents, camper vans and all manner of accommodation. It was easy to find our way to the Fatima complex – we just followed the many thousands of pilgrims; it felt pretty familiar, as we had been doing that anyway over the last few days, at various stages. For those who don’t know too much about the story of Fatima, it is allegedly the place where, according to Catholic folklore, the Virgen Mary appeared to three children, 2 sisters and a brother, who belonged to a very poor Portuguese farming family in 1917. The story goes that that Virgin Mary was becoming so distressed about the state of the world that she appeared to these children, who were holy and devout, and gave them 3 messages for world leaders. Two of the messages have been revealed, but one is still to be published.

The morning at Fatima started with a Rosary, which is a series of Our Fathers and Hail Marys, interspersed with some other prayers. This took approx 45 minutes which brought is to 10:00am.

The high Mass was next at 10:30, which began with a procession of the Virgin Mary from her side altar, through the length and breadth of the crowd. She was paraded around on a platform of white flowers. The Mass eventually started and proceeded extremely slowly, as many of the different parts of the Mass were said in a number of different languages, to cater for the many pilgrims from all over the world. The mass eventually finished at around 12:20, after which again there was a parade of the Madonna back to her own chapel.

The Mass was certainly highlight for all, just to share the ceremony with a huge multitude (we have since seen TV news figures which talked about 300,000 people attending). The devotion of the people was certainly on show, with many people making the final part of heir journey to Mary’s Altar on their knees. All of us went to Communion which was an experience in itself, as there were about 200 clergy on hand to distribute Communion.

We were fortunate enough to find a taxi very quickly to get us back to Tomar, where we had a pleasant lunch with some camino friends. In the afternoon some of us went up to the World Heritage listed Templar Castle sight, called the Convento Da Cristo, a very well preserved castle / monastery complex built progressively starting in the 14th Century. It was a very impressive and amazing site (see photos).