Cardinal Tolentino Mendonça, the theologist and Vatican archivist who is presiding over the May international anniversary pilgrimage at the Catholic shrine at Fátima, in central Portugal, has warned about crises resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, such as job insecurity and poverty, calling for action to ensure that there is not also a crisis of hope.
“The health crisis has activated other crises, in the social field, in the precariousness of work, in the worsening of economic difficulties, in the poverty that grows and not only among the segments considered most fragile, in the weakening of the educational field, in the decrease of presences in Christian communities and in the uncertainty that weighs on the lives of so many,” said Tolentino Mendonça in his homily following the traditional candlelight procession on 12 May, Wednesday.
The cardinal recalled that the pandemic “has claimed lives and spread grief” and harked back to the events in 1917 on the site of the shrine in Cova da Iria, where three child shepherds reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary.
“Suddenly, we feel that we have been taken back to the time of the holy shepherds Francisco and Jacinta Marto, when the Spanish fever pandemic was claiming millions of victims,” said the cardinal, asking the Virgin of Fátima to “illuminate the pain of all, without borders or distinctions,” of those near and far, of believers and non-believers, “as if they were one”.
He called on her to “listen, in the silence of this night, to the fatigue and efforts, the loneliness and tears, the weariness and needs of all [and] watch over the great wounded human family and mobilise us all for the urgent challenge of consoling, caring and rebuilding.”
He also asked the Virgin of Fatima to ensure that the current crisis “not become a crisis of hope,” since hope is needed to “look more ahead, to gain trust and to share. We need hope to transform obstacles into paths and paths into new opportunities.”
Stressing that he had come to Fátima not only to ask but also to give thanks, the cardinal pointed out that if each person “has a story of suffering to tell, they also have stories of love, of meeting again, of mutual help and solidarity” and that “these stories constitute a legacy” that cannot be forgotten, as well as “the testimony of those who put the good of others above their own good.”
With 7,500 people present in the shrine – the maximum allowed due to the Covid-19 pandemic – the cardinal stressed that “the turbulence of the pandemic” helped to “identify the essential with greater clarity” and, turning again to the Virgin, asked that “this pain serve for something. May all this suffering make us better, more spiritual, more human and more fraternal.”
Last week, the authorities at the shrine, in the municipality of Ourém, in Santarém district, announced that the pilgrimage celebrations on 12 and 13 May would be limited to 7,500 people, given that the epidemiological situation “does not yet offer guarantees” to welcome “without reservation” all the faithful who might want to come.
In 2020, due to the pandemic, the 12 and 13 May celebrations took place in the absence of pilgrims for the first time in the shrine’s history. In the October pilgrimage last year – the last of the monthly series that runs from May – the stipulated limit of 6,000 people was not reached.
