13 May 1981, when Mehmet Ali Ağca , Soviet puppet, pulled the trigger, our Lady of Fatima redirected the bullets. Saint John Paul II survived. Where were you at the time? I was a seminarian and at that moment I was just outside of Rome, looking back at the City. The panorama is burned into my mind.
This was just five years after I had the privilege to be one of the Cadets of our Lady of Fatima who were chosen to help carry her statue for the main candlelight procession during the vigil of the July apparition, the night of 12 July, 1976, amidst a crowd of 2.1 to 2.2 million souls, when I was sixteen years old. My sister had introduced me to the scapular and rosary and the Blue Army when I was only six: 1966. She’s the one who paid for the trip when I was sixteen, something like $350. That must have been subsidized. I thank her for the great Catholic formation I received on this pilgrimage with Father Robert J Fox. Anyway, on that same trip with many other cadets, we went to Coimbra and met Sister Lucia.
It seems that the more you know about Fatima the more you realize you know pretty much nothing about Fatima, for instance, about the third secret.
Here’s what we know: The powers that be are scared to death to publish that secret. That opens up a raft of more questions.
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
I was in one of my last classes in high school. I would later that year go on a youth pilgrimage with Fr. Robert J. Fox (R.I.P.) to Fatima and Rome where we would greet St. John Paul II at the hospital. It was a time I will cherish forever. I attribute my own vocation to Our Lady of Fatima.
I don’t remember exactly where I was when the attempt was made on the life of St John Paul II, only that it happened during the time I was living in a rural town raising daughters (the boys weren’t born yet). A picture of Our Lady appearing to the Three Children of Fatima was on the mantle shelf as it has been for the past 50 years and beside it a picture of Pope John Paul II added in the early 1980s. They seemed to belong together.
No, no and no! (in answer to your questions) I have had the privilege of hosting a pilgram statue of our Lady of Fatima. My dear neighbor, who is not Catholic, came over to pray with me!
Thanks for sharing all your memories. Many of us will probably never travel again, so it is good to read about yours.
I detect your sadness nancyv when you write that many of us will probably never travel again. Until last year I had visited Lourdes every year since 2005 and as I am getting on in years do wonder if I shall ever be able to go there again.
Don’t forget nancy that both Fatima and Lourdes have webcams and I discovered only 2 days ago on youtube a film somone had taken last spring driving through the deserted streets of Lourdes. It was wonderful to ‘do’ this journey although immensely sad to see all the shops shuttered and the pavements empty which were once so thronged with people. I don’t know how to do a link but it can be found if you google ‘Driving 4K Lourdes confined by the pandemic 8 April 2021.’
(Fr George – it goes past the Chaplains House.)
Sadly, no, I don’t remember. I will guess it is because I was in a state of disgrace.
Yes I was in Tarpon Springs Florida with my aunt we just had lunch and we’re visiting the shops. The news came from one of the shop keepers right after it happened.
Years later our beautiful daughter Ann visited Fatima on a pilgrimage. She arrived early bcz she wanted a cheaper flight. She did not know where to go but when she inadvertently passed the vision sight it was amazingly knowledgeable to her! That was two years ago and she wears the brown scapular consistently. Her time there was awesome….. can’t describe it any other way. Thank you God.