Years later, Lucia (who became a nun) would under obedience to her bishop, Jose Alves Correira da Silva, write a series of memoirs, which were later published as a collection under the title, “Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words.” The Bishop of Leira made this request when, in 1935, the body of her younger cousin, the child Jacinta, was exhumed from the grave and her face was found incorrupt. After the bishop sent a photograph of Jacinta’s opened casket to Lucia in the convent, Lucia sent a letter of thanks that also humbly declared her own conviction of Jacinta’s holiness.
According to Fr. Thomas McGlynn, O.P. who, under Lucia’s direction, made a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, Lucia’s thank-you letter “aroused the Bishop’s curiosity−perhaps many graces given to the children had been hidden all these years. He, therefore, commanded Lucia to write her memoirs.” Each memoir led to a further order to write another, resulting in four memoirs, all written in a diary-like form but addressed to the bishop. These memoirs were written between 1936 and 1941 (Memoir I was written in 1936; Memoir II was written in 1937; Memoirs III and IV were both written in 1941).
Another interesting detail became known…When assisting Fr. Thomas McGlynn, O.P., who sculpted the first statue of Our Lady of Fatima, Lucia told him, “She always had a star on her tunic” and “She always had a cord with a little ball of light.” As he asked for details of color, Lucia said, “The light of Our Lady was white, and the star was yellow…She was all of light. The light had various tones, yellow and white and various other colors. It was more intense and less intense. It was by the different tones and by the differences of intensity that one saw what was hand and what was mantle and what was face and what was tunic.”
Questioned again at a later point, she thrice confirmed to Fr. McGlynn that the star and the cord were yellow, not the color of gold. Lucia, incidentally, described both the cord and the star as a more intense and yellow light.
The yellow star that shone between the knee and hem of the Fatima Virgin’s tunic is known as the “Star of Esther,” a symbolic reference to the Old Testament history of Queen Esther, the Jewish queen of pagan Persia, who saved her people from total annihilation on the 13thday of Adar…The Fatima apparitions reveal so much more of this typology that my study on Queen Esther and the date of 13 Adar (according to the ancient Hebrew calendar) and their varied links to Our Lady of Fatima resulted in my 2008 [Fatima] series of articles, initially published in Catholic Family News and…now featured in my book, Fatima: The Signs and Secrets.
That said, in these accounts, Lucia wrote about her cousins’ lives, her own, the angelic portents of 1915 followed by angelic visitations in 1916, sacrifices her cousins offered to God, the apparitions of Our Lady in 1917, and a few later appendices about apparitions and locutions she received as a nun. The memoirs are in addition to other correspondence to her superiors regarding the apparitions and the “Great Secret” of Fatima, in its three distinct parts. (Strikingly, there is a very important addition in the Fourth Memoir, one that is too easily overlooked, wherein for the first time Sr. Lucia wrote the opening lines to the Third Secret’s Message which either introduces, accompanies, or immediately follows the Third Secret Vision: “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, etc.”)
Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the brother and sister visionaries who, as Our Lady foretold, died so young, were beatified by the Church on May 13, 2001. Their elder cousin, Sister Lucia, lived many years longer, and passed from this world on February 13, 2005. Three years later, on the same date, the cause for her canonization was opened. Currently, the cause remains in the initial stage.
It is my ardent hope that these memoirs of Sr. Lucia, Servant of God, draw the reader to a greater devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who promised all of us through the three chosen children of Fatima: “Don’t lose heart. I will never forsake you. My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the path that leads you to God.”
In the love of Christ and His Virgin Mother,
Marianna Bartold
Author, Fatima: The Signs and Secrets
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Publisher’s Note: For the readers’ ease-of-use, subtitles are added that do not appear in Sister Lucia’s manuscript. At the time Sister Lucia wrote these reminiscences, she was still a Dorothean nun and her religious name during those years was Maria Dolores. Later, she would seek and be granted permission to become a Carmelite sister, where her name in religion was Sister Maria Lucia of the Immaculate Heart. Also added is an additional Appendix (III), with clarifying information on the Five First Saturdays, all of the Fatima Prayers taught by Our Lady and St. Michael, the “Fatima Morning Offering” which was composed by Sister Lucia, the 15 Rosary Promises, and how to pray the Rosary, with the meditations for each mystery by St. Louis Marie de Montfort, known as the “apostle” of True Devotion to Mary.