The Fifth Apparition of Fatima: The Thing She Told Them to Stop
On 13 September 1917 a crowd of twenty thousand stood in the Cova da Iria, one month before the miracle they had been promised. Our Lady said four things to the children that day. Three of them are quoted constantly. The fourth is a single clause about a piece of rope, and it is the one worth stopping on.
What the crowd saw
The phenomena were much as they had been at the earlier apparitions, and this time there was more of them.
The air cooled suddenly. The sun dimmed to the point where the stars could be seen. And a rain fell that witnesses described as iridescent petals, or as snowflakes, which disappeared before they touched the ground.[1]
This time a luminous globe was noticed as well. It moved slowly and majestically through the sky from east to west, and at the end of the apparition it moved back the way it had come.[1]
The children saw a light, and immediately after it they saw Our Lady over the holm oak.
Twenty thousand people saw the sky change. Three children saw her. That gap between what a crowd can witness and what is given to a few is present at every one of the apparitions, and it is worth sitting with, because most of us spend our lives on the crowd's side of it.
What she said
“Continue to pray the Rosary to obtain the end of the war. In October, Our Lord will also come, as well as Our Lady of Sorrows and Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and Saint Joseph with the Child Jesus, to bless the world. God is pleased with your sacrifices, but He does not want you to sleep with the ropes; wear them only during the day.”[1]
Four things in four sentences. Keep praying. Something is coming in October. God is pleased with what you are doing. And take the ropes off at night.
Keep praying the Rosary
She asked for the same thing she had asked for at every apparition, and she named the intention: the end of the war.
It is worth noticing what she did not do. She did not give them a new devotion for the fifth month running, or a longer one, or a harder one. She asked them to continue. The Rosary was already the instrument and it did not need replacing.
What she promised for October
She named who would come: Our Lord, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and Saint Joseph with the Child Jesus, to bless the world.
A month later, on the 13th of October, seventy thousand people stood in the rain at the Cova and the sun did what it did.
But on the 13th of September none of that had happened. There were twenty thousand people in a field, a rain of petals that touched nothing, and a promise.
The thing she told them to stop
Then the clause that almost nobody quotes.
God is pleased with your sacrifices, but He does not want you to sleep with the ropes; wear them only during the day.
The children had been wearing cords tied around their waists as a penance. That is the sacrifice she is speaking about, and she addresses it in a single sentence that does two things at once.
First she tells them God is pleased. She does not say the penance was excessive, or unnecessary, or the sort of thing children should not be doing. She says it pleased Him.
Then she tells them to stop wearing it at night.
Think about what almost anybody else would have said. Take it off. You are children. Find something gentler. Or, at the other extreme, say nothing at all and let them go on.
She did neither. She corrected the excess and left the sacrifice standing. The penance continues in the daytime. The sleep is given back.
It is the most maternal sentence at Fatima, and it is a correction most of us would be glad to receive: not that we are doing too much, but that we are doing it at the wrong hour.
I will cure some, others not
Lucia had been asked to bring the crowd's petitions, and she did.
“They have requested me to ask you for many things, for the cure of some sick persons, of a deaf-mute.”[1]
Our Lady answered: “Yes, I will cure some, others not. In October, I will perform a miracle for all to believe.”[1]
There is no softening of that in the record and there should not be. Anybody who has prayed hard for somebody who did not get better already knows it.
What the answer does give is that the petitions were heard. They were carried by a child who had been asked to carry them, they were put to Our Lady by name, and they were answered one by one rather than in a bundle. Some yes, some no, and no explanation offered for either.
And the promise of the miracle comes in the same breath as the refusals. She does not offer the miracle instead of an answer. She gives the answer first, including the part nobody wants, and then tells them what is coming.
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What the Church asks of us here
The Church proposes Fatima for our devotion rather than imposing it as an article of faith, and we should not press any of this further than it will bear. What Our Lady said on the 13th of September is recorded, and it is enough on its own.
What she asked for was not remarkable. Continue the Rosary. Keep the penance you have taken on, but sleep. Ask for what you want and accept the answer you are given. None of that requires a hillside in Portugal.
Four weeks from Saturday
Twenty thousand people stood in a field on a Thursday in 1917 because three children had said Our Lady would be there. Standing in public over something you believe cost them nothing in Portugal that year, since the whole district was doing it.
It costs more here. Nobody in this country is going to gaol you for saying the Rosary. What we have instead is milder and works better: a general expectation that faith is a private matter, best kept indoors and out of anybody's way. The pressure is a raised eyebrow, and most of us fold at it.
On Saturday the 10th of October, the nearest Saturday to the anniversary of the miracle she promised in that field, Australians will pray the Rosary out loud in streets and parks and public squares in towns all over this country.
It is a small thing next to what those three children were doing by September 1917. But it is the same act, and it is the thing she actually asked for.
What you can do today
Pray the Rosary, and name the intention as she did. She did not ask for prayer in general. She asked for prayer for the end of the war.
If you have taken on some penance, ask whether you are sleeping in the ropes. Her correction ran in one direction only. She did not ask for less. She asked for it to be survivable.
Ask her for something specific, and accept that the answer may be some yes and some no.
And if you can be at a public Rosary on the 10th of October, be at one.
A prayer for the anniversary
The prayer Our Lady taught the children at Fatima, to be said after each decade of the Rosary:
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy.
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
References
What Our Lady Said at Fatima on September 13, 1917, The American TFP.
Antonio A. Borelli, Our Lady at Fatima: Prophecies of Tragedy or Hope?
The prayer given by Our Lady at Fatima on 13 July 1917, in Sister Lucia, Fatima in Lucia's Own Words
Last updated: 9 September 2026 08:48