Visiting the Fatima Shrine in Portugal

1. What Stands at Fatima Today

Fatima is a town in the municipality of Ourem, in the district of Santarem, on the limestone plateau of central Portugal roughly a hundred and twenty kilometres north of Lisbon. In 1917 the place was farmland and scrub, and the parish of Fatima had a church, a cemetery and a scatter of hamlets around it. The sanctuary that grew there over the following century occupies the hollow the local people called the Cova da Iria, and its bell tower is visible from the roads across the plateau.

A pilgrim arriving on foot from the town comes over a rise and sees the whole precinct at once. At the far end, on the high side, stands the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, a long neo-baroque church with a single tall bell tower and two curved colonnades reaching out from it like arms. At the near end, on the low side, stands the Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity, a wide circular church of pale stone finished in 2007. Between them lies an open paved space large enough to hold an enormous crowd, and on the north side of that space, small and easily missed at first, sits the Chapel of the Apparitions with a canopy over the seating in front of it. That small chapel is the reason for everything else.

What happened here in 1917 belongs to a separate guide. The apparitions of the thirteenth, the vision the children reported of hell, the request for the rosary and for reparation, and the events at the Cova on 13 October 1917 that the crowd described as the sun moving are set out in the guide to the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima and the message given there. The contents of the third part of the secret, published by the Holy See in 2000, are handled in the guide to the third secret of Fatima. This page stays on the ground: the buildings, the stones, the gestures, and what a visitor sees.

2. The Cova da Iria: The Ground Itself

The Cova da Iria is a shallow natural basin, a cove of land, lying about two kilometres from the hamlet of Aljustrel where the three children lived. Part of it was worked by the family of Lucia dos Santos, who kept sheep on it and grew a little on the thin soil. There was no building there in 1917 and no reason for anyone outside the parish to know the name.

The three children were Lucia dos Santos, then ten years old, and her cousins Francisco Marto, nine, and Jacinta Marto, seven, and from 13 May 1917 they said that a lady appeared to them at the Cova above a small holm oak, returning on the thirteenth of each month to 13 October. What was said and seen on those dates is set out in the guide to the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. Two of those dates fixed places on the ground that a pilgrim can still walk to. The August apparition did not happen at the Cova, because on 13 August the children were detained by the administrator of the county at Vila Nova de Ourem, and they reported instead an apparition at Valinhos on 19 August, which is why Valinhos is a marked site today.

The hollow has since been cut back, levelled and paved, so the pilgrim standing on the esplanade is not standing on the contour the children knew. The sanctuary keeps one part of the original ground legible, and that is the position of the holm oak, marked by a pillar under the statue in the Chapel of the Apparitions. Everything at Fatima is oriented to that one point.

Why the Ground Was Bought and Enclosed

Crowds began coming to the Cova immediately after October 1917, and they came in a country whose government at the time was actively hostile to public religion. The land was gradually acquired, the first structures were put up by local people rather than by any authority, and the diocese of Leiria, restored in 1918 after decades of suppression, took the site in hand under Bishop Jose Alves Correia da Silva from 1920 onward. The enclosure that resulted has a practical purpose: it keeps a very large number of people moving, praying and hearing Mass in the open air without trampling the one square metre that matters.

The restoration of the diocese of Leiria in 1918 and the appointment of Bishop Jose Alves Correia da Silva are recorded in the acts of that diocese, now the diocese of Leiria-Fatima, and in the sanctuary's published account of its own foundation.

3. The Chapel of the Apparitions

The Chapel of the Apparitions, called in Portuguese the Capelinha, is the oldest building at the sanctuary and the smallest one that matters. It is a plain rectangular structure of local stone, open along the front, with a tiled roof and no ornament worth the name. Inside it there is an altar, and to one side a marble pillar rising from the floor. On that pillar stands the statue of Our Lady of Fatima. The pillar marks the place where the holm oak grew.

The tree itself did not survive. Pilgrims took branches, then twigs, then bark, until nothing was left of it, which is what happens to any small tree at the centre of a devotion. A larger holm oak still stands a short distance from the chapel, and the sanctuary identifies it as the tree under which the children and the waiting crowds sheltered rather than the tree of the apparitions. The two are easily confused.

Built, Bombed, Rebuilt

Local people built the first chapel on the site between April and June 1919, without waiting for any judgment from the Church, and the first Mass was celebrated in it on 13 October 1921. On the night of 5 to 6 March 1922 explosives were placed at the chapel and detonated, wrecking the building. The attack was the work of people hostile to the devotion, and its practical effect was the opposite of what was intended: the crowds grew. The chapel was repaired and has stood ever since, with modest alterations.

The 1919 construction, the first Mass on 13 October 1921 and the destruction of the chapel by explosives in March 1922 are recorded in the Sanctuary of Fatima's own published history of the Chapel of the Apparitions.

What a visitor sees now is the small chapel with a very large canopy attached to it, covering rows of benches for the congregation that gathers in the open. Mass and the rosary are celebrated at the chapel in several languages, and the sanctuary publishes the programme. There is a constant slow traffic of people crossing the front of the chapel, touching the rail, and standing for a long time looking at the pillar. The chapel is small enough that most people pray outside it.

4. The Statue, the Crown and the Bullet

The statue in the Chapel of the Apparitions was carved by the Portuguese sculptor Jose Ferreira Thedim and placed in the chapel in 1920. It was made to descriptions given by Lucia, and like every image made that way it is an approximation. Lucia herself corrected sculptors more than once over her long life and was never fully satisfied with any of the results, which is worth knowing before a pilgrim treats the statue as a portrait.

The statue wears a crown, and the crown has a history of its own. It was offered by Portuguese women as a thanksgiving in the years of the Second World War, and the statue was solemnly crowned at the Cova da Iria on 13 May 1946 by a cardinal legate sent by Pope Pius XII. The crown is a substantial piece of goldsmith's work, and the sanctuary uses it on the statue for particular occasions rather than continuously.

The Bullet

On 13 May 1981 Pope John Paul II was shot in St Peter's Square. He attributed his survival to the protection of Our Lady of Fatima, made a pilgrimage to the Cova on 13 May 1982, and afterwards gave one of the bullets removed from him to the sanctuary. That bullet was set into the crown of the statue, where it remains. A visitor standing at the rail will not see it with the naked eye, and the sanctuary's own published photographs of the crown are the way most pilgrims ever look at it.

The crowning of the statue on 13 May 1946 by a legate of Pope Pius XII, and the placing of the bullet from the 1981 attempt on Pope John Paul II into the crown, are both recorded by the Sanctuary of Fatima in its published accounts of the statue and of the papal visits. Pope John Paul II's own pilgrimages to Fatima in 1982, 1991 and 2000 are documented in the acts of his pontificate.

For the life of the pope who came here after being shot, see the guide to Pope John Paul II. For the woman at the centre of the account, see the guide to Mary, the Mother of God.

5. The Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary

The Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary closes the high end of the precinct. Its foundation stone was laid on 13 May 1928, and the church was consecrated on 7 October 1953, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The style is a restrained Portuguese neo-baroque in pale limestone, with a single central tower rising above the façade, crowned with a bronze crown and a cross. Two curved colonnades run out from the sides of the church and down along the esplanade.

The laying of the foundation stone on 13 May 1928 and the consecration on 7 October 1953 are published by the Sanctuary of Fatima in its description of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Inside, the nave is long and rather plain, with fifteen altars set along the walls corresponding to the fifteen mysteries of the rosary as they were counted when the church was designed. Stained glass windows carry scenes from the apparitions and invocations drawn from the Litany of Loreto, so a reader who knows the litany can work along the glass and name each one. The high altar carries a large painting of the apparition scene, and the whole interior is built to be read rather than admired: it exists to teach the rosary to people who came here because of the rosary.

The Statue on the Façade

In the niche above the main door stands a large marble statue of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It was made to a design by the American Dominican Thomas McGlynn, who worked from corrections given to him directly by Sister Lucia, and it was the gift of Catholics in the United States. It is the closest thing at Fatima to an image made under the supervision of the surviving seer, and it is worth looking at properly from the middle of the esplanade rather than from directly beneath.

The façade statue's authorship by Fr Thomas McGlynn OP, and the corrections he received from Sister Lucia, are recorded by the Sanctuary of Fatima and in McGlynn's own published account of the work.

The Tower and the Bells

The bell tower carries a carillon, and the bells are rung for the anniversary pilgrimages and the daily offices. The tower is the fixed point on the skyline for anyone walking in from the town, and at night it is lit. The steps in front of the basilica, running the full width of the façade, are where a large part of the crowd sits during the big pilgrimages, and they function as the shrine's grandstand.

6. The Tombs of Francisco, Jacinta and Lucia

All three of the children of 1917 are buried inside the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, under slabs set into the floor of the side walls of the nave. Pilgrims stop at them, and there is usually a small silent group standing at each one.

Francisco Marto died at the family house in Aljustrel on 4 April 1919, aged ten, in the influenza epidemic that swept Portugal after the First World War. He was buried in the parish cemetery of Fatima, and his remains were moved into the basilica in 1952. His tomb is on the right side of the nave as a visitor faces the altar.

Jacinta Marto died in Lisbon on 20 February 1920, aged nine, after a long illness and an operation, away from her family. Her remains were brought back to the Fatima cemetery in 1935 and transferred into the basilica in 1951. Her tomb is on the left side of the nave.

Lucia dos Santos outlived her cousins by eighty-five years. She became a Carmelite nun at Coimbra and died there on 13 February 2005 at the age of ninety-seven. Her body was buried at the Carmel and then brought to Fatima on 19 February 2006 and laid beside Jacinta, so that the three are together in the church built on the ground where they said they saw what they saw.

The dates of death of Francisco Marto (1919), Jacinta Marto (1920) and Sister Lucia dos Santos (2005), and the transfers of their remains to the basilica in 1952, 1951 and 2006, are published by the Sanctuary of Fatima. The beatification of Francisco and Jacinta on 13 May 2000 by Pope John Paul II and their canonisation on 13 May 2017 by Pope Francis are acts of the Holy See.

Two Children Declared Saints

Francisco and Jacinta Marto were beatified by Pope John Paul II at the Cova da Iria on 13 May 2000 and canonised by Pope Francis at the same place on 13 May 2017, the centenary of the first apparition. Their memorial is kept on 20 February, the date of Jacinta's death. The Church did not canonise them for having seen anything. Canonisation follows a judgment about a life of heroic virtue, and in their case the evidence is what two very young children did with the years they had left: constant prayer, hidden penance, and in Jacinta's case a long illness borne alone in a Lisbon hospital. The point is made in the guide to how and why the Church declares someone a saint.

Sister Lucia's cause for canonisation was opened at Coimbra after Pope Benedict XVI dispensed from the customary interval following her death. Where that cause now stands is for the Holy See to announce, and no site should get ahead of it.

7. The Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity

The Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity closes the low end of the esplanade, facing the older basilica across the open ground. It was designed by the Greek architect Alexandros Tombazis, its foundation stone was laid on 6 June 2004, and it was dedicated on 12 October 2007. It is circular, built low and wide in pale stone, and its roof is carried without interior columns so that every seat has a clear view of the altar.

The architect, the laying of the foundation stone on 6 June 2004, the dedication on 12 October 2007 and the seating capacity of 8,633 are published by the Sanctuary of Fatima in its description of the Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity.

The building was put up for a plain reason. The esplanade works in fine weather and fails in a Portuguese winter, and the old basilica seats a fraction of what a modern pilgrimage brings. The new church gives the sanctuary an interior that holds 8,633 people, so that the liturgy can go indoors when the weather is against it.

The interior is deliberately austere: broad, low, grey, with the sanctuary wall filled by a large gold mosaic of Christ in glory with the Lamb, made by the workshop of the Slovene artist Marko Ivan Rupnik. The doors and side chapels carry work by a number of contemporary artists, and several of the small chapels around the perimeter are dedicated to particular mysteries and to the Blessed Sacrament. Reactions to the building are strongly divided, and a pilgrim expecting a second baroque church will dislike it on sight. Sit in it during a rainstorm with several thousand other people and the argument for it becomes obvious.

The Crucifix Outside

Beside the new basilica stands a tall steel crucifix by the German sculptor Robert Schad, a single stark vertical visible across the whole precinct. Below the church, on the side facing away from the esplanade, are further chapels and a large underground area used for confessions and catechesis.

8. The Esplanade, the Colonnade and the Monuments

The open paved area between the two basilicas is the shrine's largest single feature and the one that surprises first-time visitors most. It is empty for most of the year and it is designed to be empty, because on the anniversary dates it fills. Walking it end to end takes a few minutes and gives the best sense of the scale of what has been built around a small chapel.

Several things stand on or around it that reward attention.

The Monument to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Near the middle of the esplanade stands a monument to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, set above a water source, blessed in the early 1930s. Its position matters theologically. A shrine built on a Marian apparition places Christ at its centre point, and the sanctuary has been explicit that the devotion at Fatima is ordered to him. Mary's own recorded instruction in Scripture points the same way.

The Colonnade

The two curved colonnades running from the old basilica down the sides of the esplanade give shelter from sun and rain and carry statues of saints in niches along their length, many of them founders of religious orders and Portuguese saints. Walking under them is the cool option on an August afternoon and it doubles as a small tour of the sanctoral calendar.

The Berlin Wall

Set on the north side of the precinct is a large block of the Berlin Wall, given to the sanctuary by a Portuguese emigrant who had lived in Germany and installed in 1994. It is there because of the request recorded in the second part of the Fatima secret concerning Russia, and because of the consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary made by Pope John Paul II in union with the bishops in 1984. The sanctuary presents the stone as a votive offering made by a private individual. Reading it as a proof of anything is going further than the Church has gone, and the honest description is that a man who had lived on both sides of that wall gave a piece of it in thanksgiving.

The installation of the Berlin Wall monument in 1994 and its origin as the gift of a Portuguese emigrant are recorded by the Sanctuary of Fatima. The act of consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary made by Pope John Paul II on 25 March 1984 in union with the bishops of the world is published in the acts of the Holy See.

9. The Candle Burner

To one side of the Chapel of the Apparitions stands a long open structure with metal troughs and gas burners, known in Portuguese as the queimador. Pilgrims buy candles at the sanctuary's counters and put them into the fire there. It burns continuously and it is the smell and the heat that most people remember about Fatima.

The candles come in every size, from the ordinary taper up to plain wax columns as tall as an adult, and pilgrims carry the large ones on their shoulders across the esplanade. Alongside the candles the sanctuary sells wax votive figures: hearts, heads, arms, legs, whole small bodies, and figures of infants. These are an old Portuguese practice. A person burns a wax leg when praying for a leg, or for the person whose leg it is, and the gesture is a way of putting a specific and embarrassing petition into a physical act rather than leaving it in words.

The Church attaches nothing automatic to any of this. Burning a candle is a sign of a prayer continuing after the person who lit it has walked away, and it obtains nothing by itself. What is being asked for is asked of God. The wax is collected and recycled by the sanctuary, and pilgrims who expect their candle to stand for hours are often surprised at how fast the heat takes it.

10. The Penitential Walkway

Running along the esplanade toward the Chapel of the Apparitions is a narrow strip of smooth pale stone set into the paving. Pilgrims who choose to approach the chapel on their knees use it, and the sanctuary laid it so that the gesture could be made on an even surface rather than on rough ground. On the anniversary dates there is a slow line of people on it, some praying the rosary aloud, some with a family member walking alongside carrying a cushion or a folded coat.

Three things need saying plainly about this walkway, because it is the part of Fatima most often misdescribed.

The first is that the Catholic Church requires nobody to do it. No obligation attaches to it, no indulgence depends on it, and a pilgrim who walks upright the whole way has done nothing wrong. Bodily penance in the Catholic tradition is voluntary, and it is measured by the intention rather than by the distance.

The second is that the practice long predates the walkway and is not peculiar to Fatima. Approaching a holy place on the knees is a common gesture in Portuguese and wider Iberian piety, and pilgrims here have been doing it since the crowds first came.

The third is that it can be done badly. A person who makes the crossing in order to be seen, or in order to bank something with God, has misunderstood the gesture. Penance in Catholic teaching is an expression of repentance and a joining of oneself to the suffering of Christ. The confessionals at the sanctuary matter more than the stone strip does, and the sacrament of penance is the ordinary way the Church reconciles a sinner, as the guide to confession and how the sacrament works sets out.

11. Confession, Adoration and the Quieter Chapels

Fatima is a shrine of confession as much as of procession, and the sanctuary is organised around that. The Chapel of Reconciliation holds a long series of confessionals, each marked with the languages the priest inside can hear, and a pilgrimage shrine that draws people from dozens of countries needs exactly that arrangement. Queues form there through the day, and many pilgrims come specifically to make a confession after a gap of years.

There is also a chapel of perpetual adoration where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed and where the noise of the esplanade does not reach. Pilgrims who find the crowds hard should know it exists. Between the two basilicas, the crypt chapels, the adoration chapel and the underground chapels beneath the newer church, there is always somewhere quiet at Fatima, which is the single most useful thing to know about the place.

The sanctuary also keeps a museum holding vestments, votive offerings and objects connected with the history of the shrine and with the papal visits. It is the place to see at close range the sort of object a pilgrim can only glimpse in the chapel.

What the Church Says a Shrine Is For

A pilgrim who arrives expecting a transaction will be disappointed at Fatima, because the Catholic Church does not present shrines that way. The apparitions here belong to the category the Church calls private revelation. The Catechism teaches that the definitive revelation of God is complete in Jesus Christ, and that approved private revelations serve to help the faithful live more fully by that revelation in a given period of history (CCC 67). A pilgrimage is prayer done with the body: travel, fatigue, sacraments, and time given to God in a place where a particular grace has been recognised. The guide to what a pilgrimage is and why Catholics make them works through that in full.

12. Valinhos and the Loca do Cabeco

Two sites lie outside the main precinct, on the rising ground to the north east, and a visitor who stays inside the esplanade will never see either. They are within an easy walk of the sanctuary and they are the quietest ground at Fatima.

Valinhos

Valinhos is a stony field near Aljustrel where the children reported the apparition of 19 August 1917, the one displaced from the Cova because they had been detained on the thirteenth by the county administrator. The site is marked by a monument with a statue of Our Lady, set among the boulders and olive trees. There is no building, no shop and usually nobody there. A pilgrim who wants to understand what the landscape looked like to three shepherd children in 1917 should stand at Valinhos rather than on the paved esplanade.

The Loca do Cabeco

A little further along the slope is the Loca do Cabeco, a cluster of large rocks with a hollow among them, where the children said the Angel of Peace appeared to them in 1916, the year before the Marian apparitions. Sculptures of the angel and the three children have been placed at the spot. The angel episodes are the beginning of the whole Fatima account and are usually skipped in retellings, and the site is easy to walk past.

The Way of the Cross

A Way of the Cross runs from the edge of the sanctuary up the old path toward Valinhos and the Cabeco, with stations given by Hungarian Catholics living in exile and built in the early 1960s, and a small chapel of St Stephen of Hungary at the top of the rise. Walking the stations on that path takes the best part of an hour on foot and is the closest thing at Fatima to the experience of getting there the hard way.

The dedication of the Way of the Cross by Hungarian Catholics in exile and the chapel of St Stephen of Hungary are recorded by the Sanctuary of Fatima in its description of the Hungarian Calvary.

13. Aljustrel and the Parish Church

Aljustrel is the hamlet the three children came from, about two kilometres from the Cova. The houses of the Santos family and of the Marto family are preserved and open to visitors, and they are low, dark, cramped stone dwellings with beaten floors and small windows. Nothing at Fatima corrects a sentimental picture of the seers faster than standing in the room where Francisco died.

Behind the house of Lucia's family is the well, the poco do Arneiro, where the children said the angel appeared to them a second time during the summer of 1916. It sits in a small enclosed garden with olive trees, and it is another place where a visitor can be alone.

The parish church of Fatima, dedicated to St Anthony, stands in the old village, and the three children were baptised there. The parish cemetery beside it holds the graves where Francisco and Jacinta were first buried before their remains were moved to the basilica. Both are a short walk from Aljustrel and both are usually empty.

The Whole Walk

A pilgrim with a free morning can walk the sequence in order: the parish church where they were baptised, the houses at Aljustrel where they lived, the well where the angel appeared, the Loca do Cabeco, Valinhos, and then down to the Cova da Iria. Done that way the shrine reads as the end of a story rather than the whole of it, and the enormous paved precinct makes sense as an answer to a request made in a field.

14. The Pilgrimages of the Thirteenth

The anniversary pilgrimages at Fatima are kept on the twelfth and thirteenth of each month from May to October, matching the months of the 1917 apparitions. They are the days the sanctuary is built for, and a pilgrim who comes on the thirteenth of May or the thirteenth of October sees a different place from the one visitors see in February.

The pattern is consistent. On the evening of the twelfth the rosary is prayed at the Chapel of the Apparitions, and afterwards the statue is carried out and a candlelight procession crosses the esplanade, with the crowd holding candles and singing the Ave. On the morning of the thirteenth there is an international Mass on the esplanade, with the readings and prayers distributed across several languages. At the end the statue is carried back to the chapel in a farewell procession, and the crowd waves white handkerchiefs as it passes. That last gesture is the image most people carry away from Fatima.

The statue leaves the chapel only on these occasions and a small number of others. Seeing it carried out is the reason many pilgrimages are scheduled for those dates, and those are also the dates on which the town is fullest. The sanctuary publishes the programme for each anniversary date and for the rest of the year, and that programme is the authority on what happens when. Nothing on this page should be treated as a timetable.

The Rest of the Year

Outside the anniversary dates the shrine runs a daily rhythm of Mass, rosary at the Chapel of the Apparitions, adoration and confessions, together with a candlelight rosary and procession in the evening. Pilgrims who want the shrine quiet come in the colder months and get the chapel almost to themselves. Pilgrims who want the crowd, the singing and the sight of the candlelight procession crossing the esplanade come on the thirteenth.

The Feast Days

The feast of Our Lady of Fatima falls on 13 May, the date of the first apparition, and is kept as an optional memorial in the calendar of the Latin Church. The memorial of Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto is kept on 20 February, the date of Jacinta's death. Both dates are observed at the shrine with particular solemnity.

The observance of Our Lady of Fatima on 13 May and of Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto on 20 February follows the liturgical calendar of the Latin Church as promulgated by the Holy See. The programme of the anniversary pilgrimages is published by the Sanctuary of Fatima.

15. How the Church Judged Fatima

Fatima rests on a specific act that can be named. Bishop Jose Alves Correia da Silva of Leiria established a canonical commission of enquiry in 1922, and on 13 October 1930 he issued a pastoral letter declaring the visions of the children at the Cova da Iria worthy of belief and permitting the public cult of Our Lady of Fatima. That is the deciding act, and it is a diocesan act, made by the local bishop with competence over the place.

The canonical enquiry opened in 1922 and the pastoral letter of 13 October 1930 are acts of Bishop Jose Alves Correia da Silva of Leiria, published in the acts of that diocese and reproduced by the Sanctuary of Fatima.

Papal acts followed and built on it: Pius XII consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942 and sent a legate to crown the statue in 1946, Paul VI came to the Cova on 13 May 1967 for the fiftieth anniversary, John Paul II came three times, Benedict XVI came in May 2010, and Francis canonised the two child seers there on 13 May 2017. None of those acts adds a new article of faith. They express the mind of successive popes about a devotion already approved by a bishop.

What the 2024 Norms Changed

On 17 May 2024 the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published new Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena. Under these norms the Church ordinarily does not declare that an apparition is supernatural at all. The competent authority, working with the Dicastery, reaches one of six conclusions.

The six conclusions above are those of the Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena, published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on 17 May 2024.

The practical effect is that the word "approved" no longer fits a recent case. On 19 September 2024 the same Dicastery issued a note titled The Queen of Peace granting a nihil obstat to the spiritual experience connected with Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That permits public devotion and makes no declaration that the apparitions there are supernatural. Saying Medjugorje was approved is wrong. Saying it was rejected, or that it remains under study, is equally wrong. The accurate statement is the one the Dicastery itself made.

One thing holds across every case. No Catholic is required to believe in any apparition, at Fatima or anywhere else. Approval means that a devotion may be practised and that nothing in it contradicts the faith. For how the Church tests a reported miracle before saying anything at all, see the guide to miracles and how the Church verifies them.

16. Frequently Asked Questions