Lonely Planet Portugal (Travel Guide) by Planet Lonely & St Louis Regis & Armstrong Kate & Mutic Anja & Symington Andy
Author:Planet, Lonely & St Louis, Regis & Armstrong, Kate & Mutic, Anja & Symington, Andy [Planet, Lonely]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications
Published: 2014-01-31T16:00:00+00:00
Fátima
pop 11,600 / elev 320m
Whatever your beliefs, you can’t help but be impressed by the vast reserves of faith that every year lead as many as six million people to the glade where, on 13 May 1917, the Virgin Mary is said to have first appeared to three awestruck peasant children (Click here). Where sheep once grazed there are now two huge churches on opposite ends of a vast 1km-long esplanade.
Aesthetically, it’s hard to get past the town’s bland and monolithic architecture, and outside the main pilgrimage dates (the 12th and 13th of each month from May to October) the vast parking lots ringing the basilicas have the feel of a forlorn desert. Yet for Catholic pilgrims Fátima has a magnetic appeal like few places on earth, and a trip here will provide any visitor with new insights into Portugal’s religious culture.
The focus of the pilgrimages, known as Cova da Iria, is just east of the A1 motorway. Several major roads ring the area, including Av Dom José Alves Correia da Silva to the south, where the bus station and turismo are located.
The town itself is packed with boarding houses and restaurants for the pilgrim masses, and shop windows crowded with glow-in-the-dark Virgins and busts of the Pope.
Sights
Santuário de Fátima CHRISTIAN
(www.santuario-fatima.pt) It’s difficult to believe that a century ago, this was pastureland outside an insignificant village. This vast complex is now one of Catholicism’s major shrines; the focus of enormous devotion and pilgrimage. At the eastern end is the 1953 basilica, a triumphantly sheer-white building with colonnade reminiscent of St Peter’s. Nearby, the Capela das Apariçoes (Chapel of the Apparitions) marks the site where the Virgin appeared. At the precinct’s western end is the 2007 Basilica da Santíssima Trindade.
The chapel is the focus of the most intense devotion. Supplicants who have promised penance (for example, in return for helping a loved one who is sick, or to signify a particularly deep conversion) s huffle on their knees across the vast esplanade, following a long marble runway polished smooth by previous penitents. Near the chapel is a blazing pyre where people can throw offerings on the fire, leave gifts – donated to charities – or light candles in prayer. The sound of hundreds of candles is like a rushing waterfall.
Inside the older church, the Basílica de Nossa Senhora do Rosário de Fátima , attention is focused on the tombs of the three children, Os Três Pastorinhos (the three little shepherds): Francisco (died 1919, aged 11) and Jacinta (died 1920, aged 10), both victims of the flu epidemic, were beatified in 2000. Lúcia, the third witness of the apparition, entered a convent in Coimbra in 1928, where she died in 2005. Her beatification is underway.
The new basilica was inaugurated in 2007, and, while impressive, has something of a conference-centre feel. A central passageway hung with golden angels leads to a long etched-glass window spelling out scriptural verses in dozens of languages. Twelve 9m bronze doors run around the edges of the monumental round marble structure, each with a Biblical quote dedicated to one of Jesus’ disciples.
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