In the account that I have written about my cousin, I have already told Your Excellency how two holy priests came and spoke to us about His Holiness, and told us of his great need of prayers. From that time on, there was not a prayer or a sacrifice that we offered God which did not include an invocation for His Holiness. We grew to love the Holy Father so deeply, that when the parish priest told my mother I would probably have to go to Rome to be interrogated by His Holiness, I clapped my hands with joy and said to my cousins: “Won’t it be wonderful if I can go and see the Holy Father!” They burst into tears and said: “We can’t go, but we can offer this sacrifice for him.”
The parish priest questioned me for the last time. The events had duly come to an end at the appointed time, and still His Reverence did not know what to say about the whole affair. He was also beginning to show his displeasure. “Why are all those people going to prostrate themselves in prayer in a deserted spot like that, while here the living God of our altars, in the Blessed Sacrament, is left all alone, abandoned, in the Tabernacle? What’s all the money for, the money they leave under the holm oak, while the church, which is under repairs, cannot be completed for lack of funds?” I understood perfectly why he spoke like that, but what could I do! If I had been given the authority over the hearts of those people, I would certainly have lead them to the parish church, but as I had not, I offered God yet another sacrifice.
As Jacinta was in the habit of putting her head down, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground and scarcely uttering a word during the interrogations, I was usually called upon to satisfy the curiosity of the pilgrims. For that reason, I was continually being summoned to the house of the parish priest. On one occasion, a priest from Torres Novas came to question me. When he did so, he went into such minute details, and tried so hard to trip me up, that afterwards I felt some scruples about having concealed certain things from him. I consulted my cousin on the matter:
“I don’t know,” I asked them, “if we are doing wrong by not telling them everything, when they ask us if Our Lady told us anything else, when we just say that she told us a secret. I don’t know whether we are lying or not, by saying nothing about the rest.”
“I don’t know,” replied Jacinta. “That is up to you! You’re the one who does not want us to say anything.”
“Of course I don’t want you to say anything.” I answered. “Why, they’ll start asking us what sort of mortifications we are practicing! And that would be the last straw! Listen! If you had kept quiet, and not said a word, nobody would have known by now that we saw Our Lady, or spoke to her, or to the Angel, and nobody needed to know it anyway!”
The poor child had no sooner heard my arguments than she started to cry. Just as she did in May, she asked for my forgiveness in the way I have already described in my account of her life. So I was left with my scruple, and had no idea how I was to resolve my doubt.
A while later, another priest appeared: he was from Santarem. He looked like a brother of the first I’ve just spoken of, or at least they seemed to have rehearsed things together, asking the same questions, making the same attempts to trip me up, laughing and making fun of me in the same way; in fact their very height and features were almost identical. After the interrogation, my doubt was stronger than ever, and I really did not know what course of action to follow. I constantly pleaded with Our Lord and Our Lady to tell me what to do. “O my God and my dearest Mother in Heaven, you know that I do not want to offend You by telling lies, but you know that it would not be right to tell them all that you told me!”
In the midst of this perplexity, I had the happiness of speaking to the Vicar of Olival. I do not know why, but His Reverence inspired me with confidence, and I confided my doubt to him. I have already explained, in my account of Jacinta, how he taught us to keep our secret. He also gave us some further instructions on the spiritual life. Above all, he taught us to give pleasure to Our Lord in everything, and how to offer Him countless little sacrifices. “If you feel like eating something my children,” he would say: “leave it and eat something else instead: and thus offer a sacrifice to God. If you feel inclined to play, do not do so, and offer to God another sacrifice. If people question you, and you cannot avoid answering them, it is God who wills it so: offer this sacrifice too.”
This holy priest spoke a language that I could really understand, and I loved him dearly. From then on, he never lost sight of my soul. Now and then, he called in to see me, or kept in touch with me through a pious widow called Senhora Emillia, who lived in a little hamlet near Olival! She was very devout and often went to pray at the Cova da Iria. After that, she used to come to our house and ask them to let me go and spend a few days with her. Then we paid a visit to the Reverend Vicar who was kind enough to invite me to remain for two or three days as company for one of his sisters. At such times, he was patient enough to spend whole hours alone with me, teaching me the practice of virtue and guiding me with his own wise counsels. Even at the time I did not understand anything about spiritual direction, I can truly say, that he was my first spiritual director. I cherish, therefore, grateful and holy memories of this saintly priest.