The Sixth Apparition of Fatima: The Last Thing She Asked

This article was originally published by America Needs Fatima

It had rained since the night before. By the morning of 13th October 1917, the tracks leading to the Cova da Iria, a hollow of pasture and holm oaks outside the village of Fatima, had turned to mud, and still the crowds kept coming. Believers and unbelievers came together to see a promised miracle or to watch it fail. Three shepherd children had said that the Lady who had appeared to them each month since May would work a miracle there that day.

The eldest of the three was Lucia dos Santos. She was ten years old. Her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, were nine and seven.

The crowd came to see a miracle. Before the miracle, Our Lady made one last request.

A promise made in July

The promise came from the Lady herself, three months earlier, on 13th July: “Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I wish, and I will perform a miracle that everyone shall see so as to believe.”

In the same apparition she asked the children to keep praying the Rosary “every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, for she alone can be of any avail.” She spoke of Our Lady of the Rosary as if of someone else. The children did not yet know her name.

In August, at Valinhos, she repeated the promise: in the last month she would perform a miracle so that all might believe. In September she told them who else would come in October: Our Lord, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Joseph with the Child Jesus. We wrote about both apparitions in Our Lady at Valinhos: The Apparition They Could Not Prevent and The Fifth Apparition of Fatima: The Thing She Told Them to Stop.

The morning of the thirteenth

Lucia’s mother, Maria Rosa, did not believe in the apparitions. On the morning of the thirteenth she was afraid for her daughter’s life. Lucia later wrote: “My mother, her heart torn with uncertainty as to what was going to happen, and fearing it would be the last day of my life, wanted to accompany me.”

Jacinta said before they set out: “If they hurt us, we are going to heaven. But those that hurt us, poor people, are going to hell.”

“The rain fell in torrents,” Lucia remembered. On the way, scoffers shouted insults at the children, and others knelt in the road before them: “Not even the muddy roads could prevent these people from kneeling in the most humble and suppliant of attitudes.”

Antonio Borelli’s account of the apparitions, published by the American TFP, puts the crowd at about seventy thousand people. Among those who came was Avelino de Almeida, the chief editor of O Século, Portugal’s largest newspaper and one known for its liberal and anticlerical stance.

Shut your umbrellas

When the children reached the holm oak where the Lady appeared, they knelt at its foot, as they had at the earlier apparitions there. Lucia turned to the crowd. “I asked the people to shut their umbrellas and say the Rosary,” she wrote. In the pouring rain, a ten-year-old girl asked tens of thousands of people to give up their only shelter and pray.

Then the Lady was there, above the little holm oak, as she had been in May, June, July and September.

“I am the Lady of the Rosary”

As always, it was Lucia who spoke. “What do you want of me?” she asked.

“I wish to tell you that I want a chapel built here in my honour,” the Lady answered. “I am the Lady of the Rosary. Continue to pray the Rosary every day. The war is going to end, and the soldiers will soon return to their homes.”

In July she had asked the children to pray the Rosary in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary. In October she told them who that was. She had asked for the Rosary in every apparition since May, and when at last she gave her name, it was a title drawn from the Rosary. It is the title the Church honours in the feast of 7th October, whose story we told in Our Lady of the Rosary: The Pope at the Window.

Some yes, others no

Lucia had come with petitions from the people, for the sick and for sinners. “I have many things to ask you,” she said, “if you would cure some sick persons, and if you would convert some sinners.”

“Some yes, others no,” Our Lady replied. “They must amend their lives and ask forgiveness for their sins.”

The answer is plain to the point of severity. Some petitions would be granted and some would not, and she named a condition: amendment of life and the asking of forgiveness.

Anyone who has prayed for a sick parent or friend who was not healed knows how hard that answer is. At Fatima, Our Lady gave it in person, to a child who had come with the people’s petitions, and she did not soften it.

The last thing she asked

Then Our Lady grew sadder and added one more sentence. It was the last request she made in the six apparitions of 1917.

Lucia never forgot it. Years later, writing her memoirs, she set it apart from everything else said that day:

“Of all the words spoken at this apparition, the ones most deeply engraved upon my heart were those of the request made by our heavenly Mother: ‘Do not offend Our Lord and God any more, because He is already so much offended!’ How loving a complaint, how tender a request!”

The miracle had not yet begun. Before the sun moved, before the crowd saw anything at all, Our Lady’s last request of 1917 was made quietly, in the rain, at a little holm oak. She asked that the offences against God should stop.

Look at the sun

Our Lady then opened her hands, and the light from them shone onto the sun. As she rose, her own radiance went on falling on the sun.

At that moment Lucia cried out: “Look at the sun!” Afterwards she explained why: “My aim was not to call their attention to the sun, because I was not even aware of their presence. I was moved to do so under the guidance of an interior impulse.”

The clouds parted, and the crowd looked up.

A plate of silver

Avelino de Almeida watched from the road, where the carriages had stopped and hundreds of people had stayed back from the mud. This is what he reported in O Século:

“We saw the huge crowd turn towards the sun which appeared at its zenith, clear of the clouds. It resembled a flat plate of silver, and it was possible to stare at it without the least discomfort. It did not burn the eyes. It did not blind. Then a tremendous cry rang out, and the crowd nearest us were heard to shout: ‘Miracle! Miracle! Marvel! Marvel!’ Before the dazzled eyes of the people, whose attitude transported us to biblical times, and who, dumb-founded, heads uncovered, contemplated the blue of the sky, the sun trembled, it made strange and abrupt movements, outside of all cosmic laws, ‘the sun danced,’ according to the typical expression of the peasants.”

He was attacked in the press for printing it. In reply, about a fortnight later, he published his account again.

The sun seemed to fall

Manuel Marto, the father of Francisco and Jacinta, said: “We looked easily at the sun, which for some reason did not blind us. It cast its rays in many directions and painted everything in different colours: the trees, the people, the air and the ground. The sun appeared to stop spinning. It then began to move and to dance in the sky until it seemed to detach itself from its place and fall upon us. It was a terrible moment.”

The miracle was seen far beyond the Cova da Iria. In Alburitel, about eighteen kilometres from Fatima, a boy of nine named Inácio Lourenço watched it. He later became a priest and described what he saw: “Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment.”

The miracle lasted about ten minutes. When it was over, the sun was back in its place, and many in the crowd found that their clothes and the ground around them, soaked by the morning’s rain, had suddenly dried.

What Lucia saw beside the sun

While the crowd watched the sun, Lucia was looking at something else. Three scenes followed one another beside the sun, and they match the three sets of mysteries of the Rosary: the joyful, the sorrowful and the glorious. Lucia alone saw all three. Francisco and Jacinta saw only the first.

In the first, Saint Joseph appeared with the Child Jesus and Our Lady of the Rosary: the Holy Family. Our Lady was dressed in white, with a blue mantle. Saint Joseph was also in white, and the Child Jesus in light red. Saint Joseph blessed the crowd, making the Sign of the Cross three times, and the Child Jesus did the same.

In the second, Lucia saw Our Lady of Sorrows, without the sword in her breast, and Our Lord overwhelmed with sorrow on the way to Calvary. She could see only the upper part of His body as He made the Sign of the Cross over the people.

In the third, Our Lady of Mount Carmel appeared, crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth, holding the Child Jesus near her heart. Every visitor promised in September had come.

Lucia saw Our Lady beside the sun. Saint John saw her clothed with it, in the vision that opens the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse: “And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” Pope Saint Pius X wrote of that verse in his encyclical Ad diem illum: “Everyone knows that this woman signified the Virgin Mary, the stainless one who brought forth our Head.”

The chapel she asked for

Our Lady had asked for a chapel, and she was given one. It was built between 28th April and 15th June 1919 by Joaquim Barbeiro, a mason from the village of Santa Catarina da Serra. On 13th October 1921, the Bishop of Leiria authorised the first Mass there.

On 6th March 1922, anticlerical men planted a bomb inside the chapel, and the explosion heavily damaged it. On 13th May that year, sixty thousand people came from all over Portugal on a pilgrimage of reparation. In December, the rebuilding began.

On 13th October 1930, thirteen years to the day after the miracle, the Bishop of Leiria, José Alves Correia da Silva, gave his judgement in a pastoral letter. He declared the visions of the shepherd children “worthy of belief” and officially permitted devotion to Our Lady of Fatima. Since then, the Church has proposed Fatima to the faithful for their devotion.

Three days after the Public Rosary

On Saturday 10th October, three days before this anniversary, Catholics gathered in public places around Australia to pray the Rosary aloud, where anyone passing could hear the Hail Mary.

On 13th October 1917, the Lady of the Rosary asked for four things: a chapel in her honour, the Rosary every day, the amendment of our lives and an end to the offences against God. The chapel was built long ago. The other three are asked of every Catholic, and each of them can be answered this week, without a crowd.

What you can do today

Pray the Rosary today, on the anniversary of the day Our Lady said at Fatima, “I am the Lady of the Rosary.”

Go to Confession soon, in answer to her words: “They must amend their lives and ask forgiveness for their sins.”

Offer one sacrifice today in reparation for the offences against God. An end to those offences was the last thing she asked in 1917.

Keep the Five First Saturdays of reparation to her Immaculate Heart. Our article on the devotion explains how.

A prayer for the anniversary

The prayer the Angel of Peace taught the three children at Fatima in 1916, in reparation for the offences against God:

O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly and offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the insults, sacrileges and indifference with which He is offended. And through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee for the conversion of poor sinners.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

References

[1] The Miracle of the Sun - America Needs Fatima

[2] Crowd looking at the sun at Fatima, 13th October 1917 - Wikimedia Commons. For the header image, a detail of a photograph by Judah Bento Ruah. Public domain.

[3] What Our Lady Said at Fatima on October 13, 1917 - The American TFP. For the size of the crowd, the length of the miracle and the second scene beside the sun.

[4] What Our Lady Said About Hell at Fatima on July 13, 1917 - The American TFP. For Our Lady’s words of 13th July 1917.

[5] The Apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima - America Needs Fatima. For Our Lady’s words of 19th August 1917.

[6] Sister Lucia, Fourth Memoir, in Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, as quoted in October 13, 1917 in Fatima: The miracle of the sun - Marie de Nazareth. For the morning of 13th October, the umbrellas and why she cried out to look at the sun.

[7] The last words of Our Lady of Fatima - World Apostolate of Fatima Genesee County. For Lucia’s words on the request most deeply engraved on her heart.

[8] Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum - The Holy See. For Pope Saint Pius X on the woman clothed with the sun (2nd February 1904, paragraph 24).

[9] Chapel of the Apparitions - Wikipedia. For the building of the chapel and the bomb of 1922.

[10] Our Lady of Fátima - Wikipedia. For the Bishop of Leiria’s declaration of 1930.

[11] Prayers taught by the Angel of Peace - Australia Needs Fatima. For the text of the prayer above.

Last updated: 13 October 2026 03:48