In the morning of August 13, the children were abducted by the Masonic mayor of their locality. They were, therefore, unable to meet the Lady at the appointed place and time. Certainly, Heaven knew that the children were not present at the Cova di Iria, where the Apparition appeared. But God deigned to grant certain signs to the throng of people, thus manifesting the Lady’s unseen presence.
The sun shone brightly in the clear August sky, and those who came to Fatima eagerly awaited the arrival of the children and the noon hour. Then word came and spread throughout the crowd that the mayor had kidnapped the young visionaries. As the people began to talk among themselves, the hour of solar noon commenced−as did certain signs previously seen and heard in July:
• First came an extremely loud boom of thunder, which so badly frightened the people that many scattered and ran, thinking they would be killed. Maria Carreira, eyewitness to every Fatima apparition since June 1917, said, “Some thought the thunder came from the road; others thought it came from the holmoak; but it seemed to me that it came from a distance. It frightened us all…”
• A flash of lightning, following the thunder, also garnered the attention of the now-silenced crowd. This “flash,” seen only by the three children, served as the sign of the Virgin’s approach. In August, when the children were not present, it was the crowd who perceived it.
• Immediately after the “flash,” a little cloud, described as very delicate and very white, appeared and hovered over the little holmoak tree for a few minutes, “and then rose in the air and disappeared.”
• Simultaneously, there was a change of atmosphere, in which people saw “all the colors of the rainbow, pink, red, blue….The trees seemed to be made not of leaves but of flowers…The ground came out in colors and so did our clothes. The lanterns fixed to the arch looked like gold.” (At the initiative of Signora Maria Carreira, the villager who since June 1917 came to the Cova on the 13th of the month, a humble wooden arch, to which was added on each side a plain lantern, was erected over the holmoak tree.)
“When the signs disappeared, the people seemed to realize that Our Lady had come and, not finding the children, had returned,” as Maria Carreira would later say. “They felt that Our Lady was disappointed and hence they were exceedingly upset.”
Among themselves, the awed people agreed that the Lady had indeed come−with many incensed “against those who had the audacity to deprive the Most Holy Virgin of her usual confidents.” In fact, history records that a group of pilgrims went in search of the perpetrator or suspected accomplices, demanding the children’s return.
Meanwhile, over the course of three days (August 13-15, 1917), the young ones endured a roller-coaster of interrogation, enticing promises, a malicious charade of facing death should they refuse to deny seeing the Lady from Heaven, and finally, imprisonment with adult malefactors. Through it all, the three children remained faithful to what they had earlier reported, but they refused to divulge anything pertaining to the Secret.
The little ones were released to their parents on August 15, the very day on which the Church celebrates the Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into Heaven. (In 1917, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary was a Church doctrine. It was not solemnly defined as a dogma until 1950.) Our Lady unexpectedly appeared to the children on Sunday, August 19. She again promised a miracle in the last month “so that all may believe.” She also told the children, “If you had not been taken away to the City, the miracle would have been greater,” thus emphasizing God’s revealed truth that all people are affected by every sin that wounds the Mystical Body of Christ.