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Published: June 26th 2012
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Fatima
The Shrine Shopping Mall Fatima
Today will be a long bus ride day as we depart Portugal and head back to Spain. Our journey is coming close to the end with only 3 days left before we bid adieu and return to our normal lives back home.
Today we visit the Shrine of Fatima, a holy site sanctioned by the Holy Sea. You may recall that it was here is 1920 that three young children, a brother and sister and their cousin, were visited by the Virgin Mary as the children tended their goats. The Virgin appeared to the children a number of times and revealed to the visionaries several prophesies. There were a total of three major prophesies revealed to the children to be shared with the world. If anyone is interested in the prophesies and their meaning there are many fine books on the subject, I suggest you study one of those.
Before we arrived at the shrine we detoured to the Official Shrine of Fatima store. This had to be new as we did not see this the last time we were here. They had every religious article you could imagine from simple key chains to vestment for a
Fatima
Burial site of the Visionaries priest all the way up to golden cups with which to celebrate the mass. The store was filled with statues and rosaries made from many different materials from rose petals to stones. I purchased a Fatima key chain and a bottle of fine Port Wine (Ginja flavored) for Chris. This is a dry deep flavored red port that we all agreed would be perfect for him. We shopped here for ½ hour and were rewarded for our efforts by a gift from the store of a bottle of port to raffle off in the bus! We all were given a ticket with a number on it and one was pulled and they won the port. It was fun but I lost! Next we drove the 10 minutes to the actual shrine.
The location of the shrine is now a bit of a tourist trap. Surrounding the location are many shops selling trinkets and religious articles. The shops all have the exact same items and the same price so the selection is very limited.
Once you got past the chintzy area you were treated to a vast open space with a church at one end with a huge plaza out front. The plaza was designed to hold thousands of the faithful as they came to ask the Virgin for help or to heal their affliction. The huge church, although impressive, is not the site where the visionaries met the virgin. That site is off to the left in a small grotto over which they built a small altar where mass is celebrated every hour on the hour. I was able to receive communion at the altar of the Virgin, something I missed last time we were here. I also had time to light a candle in honor of the Virgin Mary. After saying a few prayers we left.
The large church was built to house the remains of the three visionaries. Their resting place is impressive, but Cathy and I saw it on the last visit so we headed into town instead for some rest and shopping. The shopping was meager but the ice cream was cold and since it was a hot day, about 107, we stayed in the shade and enjoyed our treat. Soon it was time to get back on the bus and head toward Salamanca. We still had 5 hours or more before we got to the hotel.
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