Three shepherd children in a mountainous region of central Portugal, 110 miles north of Lisbon, were the first to speak with an image of a shining woman on a cloud. Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, aged nine, eight and six, respectively, were bade to pray for world peace and the conversation of Russia to Catholicism. They were also entrusted with three secrets, and finally instructed to return to the field the following month on the same day. The children returned, followed by crowds of the faithful, the thirteenth of every month for five months thereafter, and on the last visit witnessing what many described as a miraculous event.

On this day, October 13, in 1917 a crowd numbering anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 following the children to the spot where the Virgin Mary was witnessed, saw the rain clouds of earlier in the day suddenly clear up, the sun appear as dull silver, and start to make sudden “dancing” movements about the sky.

Even the anti-clerical Lisbon newspaper admitted something extraordinary had taken place that day. For most of the believers in the assembled crowd, there was no doubt. Ti Martom, the father of Francisco and Jacinto, recounted the sun “cast its rays in many directions and painted everything in different colors— the trees, the people, the air and the ground.” Another witness recalled seeing “an unbeliever who had spent the morning mocking at the simpletons who had gone off to Fátima just to see an ordinary girl. He now seemed to be paralyzed, his eyes fixed on the sun. Afterwards he trembled from head to foot and lifting up his arms fell on his knees in the mud, crying out to our Lady.”