Armchair Fatima: A tour of the Shrine and nearby sites.

By Leo Madigan

The author lives in Fatima and has written extensively on the Shrine – its history, significance and message. In Armchair Fatima he has written and entertaining, informative and often outrageously humorous book on this Marian jewel based on his researches and occasional work as a guide.
His object is clearly to lure his readers to Fatima, in spirit if not in person. Along with the facts and the photographs, old and new, he uses stories. He has a keen ear for a story and his pages are full of them, not only those associated with the immediate Fatima area, but also those places of religious interest which pilgrims visit on day trips such as, Coimbra, Sitio and Nazare, Santarem, the great monasteries of Batalha and Alcobaça. Balasar (Alexandrina and the earth cross).
After reading this book central Portugal is no longer a vague area on a map but a region of colour, life and excitement. Furthermore it is full of intriguing characters and that laughter which is a constant companion of the serious pilgrim.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leo Madigan
• Release date: Apr 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9789898564047

Leo Madigan

Born in New Zealand. Joined the British Merchant Navy at 16. Graduated with B.Ed from London University and taught High School in London and Izmir, Turkey.Currently lives in Fatima, Portugal.

Book preview

Armchair Fatima

A tour of the Marian Shrine and Nearby Sites

Leo Madigan

Copyright Leo Madigan 2013

Published by Leo Madigan at Smashwords

Cover illustration by Anastasiya Zhurzha

For John Hauf, Maryland, USA

CONTENTS

1. Lisbon to Fatima

The Airport

Santarem

Church of the Eucharistic Miracle

Stone Soup

The Riachos Oxen

Fatima, First Impressions

Daniel and the Angel

Back to First Impressions

The O Lord Restaurant

2. The Sanctuary

The Sanctuary

The Capelinha

The Museum

The Berlin Wall

The Penitential Way

The Fountain and the Sacred Heart Monument

3. The Statues

The Immaculate Heart

The Central Statues

The Colonnade Statues

4. Around Aljustrel

The Hungarian Calvary

Cabeço

Valinhos

5. Adjacent Sites

The Fatima Parish Church

The Fatima Cemetery

Ortiga.

6. Batalha

Reguengo do Fetal

The Monastery of Our Lady of Victory in Batalha

Aljubarrota

Sítio

Cós

7. The North

Leiria

Coimbra

Maria Droste zu Vischering

Preta

Balasar

Tuy

Road Back to Fatima – Braga and Guimarães

8. The Doves

The Doves of Bombarral.

The Pilgrim Virgin

9. Lisbon

Francis Tregian

St. Brigid’s Skull

10. Fatima Again

Back in Fatima

Old Fatima

11. Leaving Fatima

12. Epilogue

13. Author’s Page

1

FROM LISBON TO FATIMA

The Airport

You stand around the Arrivals gate at Lisbon airport holding up a notice on which you have scribbled Fatima Pilgrimage. Smart women with blue and gold eyelids wave placards printed for Sunshine Golf Extravaganza or Casino Cruises. Lean young men with designer crew cuts whose eyes are hidden behind mirrored blue lenses flash Sand and Surf Paradise. A uniformed chauffeur awaits Herr Grüber. The efficient blonde in the track suit doesn’t need a placard. She’ll recognize her film crew by their cameras and equipment.

Passengers emerge, now in shoals, now singly or in pairs. They are off a dozen different flights, some from airports you have never heard of. You wonder how you are going to recognize your pilgrims from the Dublin flight 525 which arrived half an hour ago. They should be coming through by now. Maybe they are already here and you’ve missed them. Maybe all 42 are trailing their luggage around the airport concourse lost and disorientated.

Clearly those people in blazers and boaters aren’t them. They can’t all be Chinese, not from Dublin. Here come the surfers. These next must be the flight from the Azores. Here’s the film crew.

Did the pilgrims miss a connection, do you think? Did some catastrophe befall at the last minute – no! Here they come. These gentle ladies; these smiling men. It always happens like this. You fret and fret and then when they appear there is no room for doubt. They have an aura. It’s not a holiday glee; not the breeziness of golfers, the quaint xenophobia of film folk, the vacuous hedonism of sun worshippers. These pilgrims are people who have foregone pleasure for joy, for them a holiday is an opportunity to pay homage to the Mother of God.

They are not aware of this aura themselves, but the angels are and the angels spread it about.

The bus is in a bay close by. When the luggage is stowed and the headcount tallies with the agent’s list we set off. Fatima is over an hour’s drive to the north on a motorway, freeway, autostrada – whatever you care to call it. After a bit of introductory chat we say the Rosary, to let Our Lady know that we are on our way and that we mean business.

This initial Rosary relaxes everybody. It establishes common ground. Unless they are from the same parish or organization they will not have met before. It doesn’t do to bombard them with heavy facts, but the landscape is featureless and they need to be diverted. Now is the time to warn against thieves. In high season the professionals come from all over Europe for the rich pickings a Sanctuary provides. No one expects to be robbed at the feet of the Blessed Mother, no one believes that she would allow it. But the tares grow along with the wheat and it’s up to the wheat to be vigilant. They are advised to carry wallets and such in inside pockets. Never let a purse out of the hand, and make sure that hand is keeping a firm grip. The thieves work in twos and threes. A purse can be emptied or a pocket picked and the contents down the other end of the esplanade before a victim registers a movement.

Scraps of advice about passports, shops, food, drinking water, comments to preclude the regular questions follow around here, and then were are near enough in the vicinity of Santarem to start telling the stories.

Santarem

During the time of Christ this city, some 60kms south of Fatima, was called Praesidium Julium after Julius Caesar. Later the Romans called it Scalabis.

In the mid 7th century it became Santarem, and this is the reason why.

In those days, in the city of Tomar further to the north, there was a monastery which accommodated both monks and nuns in its cloisters. The Abbot had a young niece among the nuns called Irene. Irene was as spiritual as she was beautiful. A local prince, whose name was Britaldo, attended the monastery Mass each morning and seeing the beautiful Irene in choir fell in love with her. Poor Britaldo did battle with himself over the inappropriateness of his passion but in the end resolved that virtue would be best served by declaring his affections even if they were spurned. So he asked for a meeting in the parlour which, he being a local dignitary, was granted. When they were alone Britaldo told of his passion. Irene’s said how honoured she was to be noticed by so distinguished a figure but that he must understand that she was vowed to Christ and intended to remain so.

Britaldo, the noble lad, accepted the inevitable but asked her to promise, as a balm for his aching heart, that if she ever decided to leave the monastery she wouldn’t commit herself to any other man but come to him. Irene graciously consented to this request while assuring Britaldo that, while it wouldn’t happen in this life, they would be together in heaven for eternity, bound as one in the immense love of God.

Now, among the monks in this duplex monastery was one called Regimo. (If this were a British pantomime or a Victorian melodrama the name Regimo would be the cue for us to ‘boo’ and ‘hiss’ like billy-O.) Regimo, the monastic apothecary, also desired the beautiful Irene but for his own lustful satisfaction. Several times he had made advances but she had, of course, spurned him. Being vindictive he concocted a potion which he surreptitiously slipped into her food as he passed her place in the refectory each day. The potion wasn’t poisonous, it didn’t paralyze or maim, but what it did do was make the stomach of whoever took it swell, though with just a drop a day it took some time for the change in Irene’s appearance to show.

After six months however, Britaldo, still attending early Mass and languishing with love, began to notice the abdominal transformation. After eight months he was convinced Irene was pregnant and, enraged at having been deceived, and humiliated at what he saw as blatant hypocrisy, he dispatched his servant, Banão, to kill her.

Irene’s favourite place to pray was on the banks on the river Nabão which passed near the monastery. She was kneeling there when Banão approached from behind, whipped out his sword, sliced her head off her shoulders and kicked the body into the river where it was carried off by the current.

That night Irene’s spirit appeared to her uncle, the Abbot, in a blaze of celestial light, and told him what had happened. Heaven, she said, wanted her reputation to be exonerated so her uncle lost no time in putting the word about and in a very short time there was no one down the length or across the breadth of Lusitania who hadn’t heard of the foul murder of the saintly Irene.

The body floated down the Nabão and into the river Zezere. Slowly it made its way down the Zezere till that river met the mighty Tagus. Its progress along the Tagus was slow but eventually, a week or so after her death, it washed up on the sands of a river beach beneath the cliffs behind Scalabis. When the inhabitants of the lower city got up in the morning and found the body of a headless virgin on their beach they knew it must be the slain Irene and, so great had her reputation for sanctity grown that that they didn’t dare touch the body but built a chapel over it (which, incidentally, was the original of the present day Parish Church of Santa Iria, Ribeira da Santarem).

In time miracles occurred there and it became a place of pilgrimage. Pilgrims, instead of saying they were going to Scalabis would say they were going to visit Santa Irene and that is how Santarem got its name. Indeed, if we repeat Saint Irene ten times quickly we are pronouncing Santarem just as the Portuguese do.

The Church of the Eucharistic Miracle.

The foremost attraction in Santarem for Fatima pilgrims is the church where the ‘Most Holy Miracle’ took place. Indeed, it mightn’t be short of the mark to estimate that around half of the pilgrims who come to Fatima from outside Iberia for more than an overnight stay, visit Santarem to see the Host of the Eucharistic Miracle in this church and pray in its presence.

The story, related in detail in the ancient chronicles, concerns a husband and wife who lived near the church, then called for St. Stephen, in the year 1247 (or perhaps 1266 – the precise date is disputed). The husband was unfaithful to his wife and frequently beat her up when he was drunk. The poor woman was distracted beyond endurance. Alas, however, instead of applying the divine remedies prescribed by the Church, she sought the ministrations of a neighbor, a woman of the Hebrew nation the chroniclers say, who was deep into the occult. This sorceress said that she could prepare a potion which would win back the affections of the husband but that the wife would have to procure a necessary ingredient herself and bring it to the witch. This ingredient was a Consecrated Host from a Catholic Mass.

In those days Holy Communion wasn’t received at the individual’s discretion. The faithful required the priest’s permission to approach the rails but this was usually forthcoming, especially if the recipient was ill. So the woman went to the confessional before Mass and feigned illness and permission was granted.

Having received the Sacred Host she slipped it from her tongue and hid it in the folds of her veil. Immediately after the blessing she left the church. As she hastened to the house of the witch she was aware that people were looking at her oddly. In the tumult of her mind she paid them little heed but when they started asking her what was wrong, if she had been stabbed or if her throat was cut, she glanced down at her hands which were crossed beneath her chin and saw that her veil was soaked with fresh flowing blood.

She fled to her own house instead of the witch’s, flung the veil and the Host into a chest and bolted the doors. There she stayed all day in terror. When her husband came home she told him nothing. They went to bed but in the middle of the night were woken by beautiful singing and a strange but glorious light coming from the outer room. The music, which could only be that of angels, and the light, which could only be the light of heaven, grew in intensity and the poor woman broke down and told her husband what she had done and why she had done it. Repentant, both prostrated themselves and spent the rest of the night in prayer and adoration before their Eucharistic God.

At first light the woman left the house and made her way to St. Stephen’s. In spite of her own shame she told neighbors she met on the way of the great mercy God had shown in her house and by the time she reached the church a number of people had collected around her. The priests were informed and it was a sizeable procession that arrived back at the house with sacred vessels for the transportation of the Sacramental Christ.

At the church the Host, which was stained with blood, along with the blood that had been salvaged, was placed in the tabernacle. It seems, too, that the Host was still bleeding fresh blood, though only in miniscule quantities.

When it was decided to keep the Blood-stained Host in the Church of St. Stephen, it was placed in a setting of clean, pure wax. The priests thought that this was the best way to protect it from corruption. However, the emission of blood took properties from the wax which accounts for the darkened area of the particle of Host visible today.

Later the tabernacle was opened to remove the Host, in its wax surround, for veneration. But it was found to be no longer in the wax, but in a small pear-shaped crystal ampoule, or bottle. This container was hermetically sealed so that it was clear that the Host could not have been transferred into it by any human strategy.

For many years the Miracle Host and Blood were kept in a reliquary and only exposed for veneration on seven designated days of the year.

Sometime, probably during the late 16th or early 17th centuries when Portugal was under Spanish domination, an archbishop broke the neck at the top of the ampoule. Perhaps he was incredulous, or maybe simply inquisitive, but one way or the other heaven seems to have taken offence for straightaway the blood began to flow afresh. The interfering prelate became paralyzed with terror and is reported to have died shortly after.

Since 1996 the Miracle Host has remained in a monstrance in its own tabernacle high above the main altar in the Holy Miracle Church, as St. Stephen’s is now called. Beside it is the crystal chalice containing the dried blood which came from the Host. The pilgrims, individuals and groups who come to this shrine, may take the stairs up behind the