The construction of Fátima

Abstract

More than five million people a year in Fatima make the sanctuary one of the busiest in the world. One hundred years ago, three children reported that they saw Jesus’ mother. Can this be true? Is Fatima a lie? Or is it a construction? The article tries to analyze some of the elements that made the phenomenon what it is: the religious language of the time, marked by fears and rituals; the opposition of the republican press, that would be the biggest initial promoter of the phenomenon; the anti-communist language, in a context of violent persecution of Christians; the anxieties of peace, present from the beginning and that crossed the century, until the Colonial War; and the speech of the Popes who, on their visit to the sanctuary, emphasized ideas different from those present in the founding discourse – culminating in Pope Francisco who in 2017 criticized even the idea of the «santinha» to whom favors are solicited at low prices.