Fatima

Chapter 67: The Aftermath

From May to October 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to the three shepherd children six times. On the thirteenth day of October 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary performed a miracle to more than thousands of people so everyone will believe in Her apparitions in Fatima, Portugal. After Her last and final apparition, the three shepherd children continue to do the Lady's request by praying the Holy Rosary every day.

The Lady from Heaven or the Blessed Virgin Mary told Francisco through Lucia that She would take him to Heaven soon but he must pray the Holy Rosary multiple times. Francisco never forget these words as he obeyed Her request by saying many Rosaries. He later became the Apostle of the Holy Rosary like Saint Dominic de Guzman. 

During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, the Marto siblings, Francisco and Jacinta, had been transmitted by A/HI1N1 virus and became victims of the Spanish flu. Around October 1918, Jacinta told Lucia that the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to her and promised to take them to Heaven soon. Before the day of his death, Francisco declined any hospital treatment. On the fourth day of April 1919, Francisco passed away at the age of ten. On the twentieth day of February 1920, Jacinta passed away at the age of nine. Both of them are both buried the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima.

Francisco and Jacinta Marto were both venerated by the Roman Catholic Church. On the thirteenth day of May 2000, they were beatified by Pope John Paul II in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima. On the thirteenth day of May 2017, they were canonized by Pope Francis in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima. They are patron saints of all captives, prisoners, Portuguese children, bodily ills, and sick people. Both of them are among the Catholic Church's youngest saints who did not suffer from martyrdom.

The Chapel, requested by the Lady from Heaven, was built on the site of the apparitions in the Cova da Iria. It began on the sixth day of August 1918. When the hostile government learns about this, they made many plans to destroy the Holy Place. 

On the sixth day of March 1922, two dynamites were placed at the Cova da Iria, one inside the chapel and one in the holm oak where the Lady from Heaven stood during the apparitions. When one dynamite exploded, it blown off the chapel's roof and shattered the chapel's walls. However, the other dynamite at holm oak miraculously failed to explode. The destruction of the chapel made the people protest to the government as they determined to make a great pilgrimage on the thirteenth day of May 1923 in order to make reparation to the Lady from Heaven for this terrible sin. Over sixty-thousand people attend the pilgrimage to pay homage to the Lady from Heaven. 

Lucia survived the 1918 Influenza Pandemic (never transmitted by A/H1N1 virus) and remained on Earth after the death of her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto. For more than seventy years, she spread the devotion of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. 

In 1925, Lucia entered the convent of the Institute of the Sisters of Saint Dorothy in Pontevedra, Spain where she became a postulant and received two visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She returned to Portugal in 1946.

In March 1948, she entered the Carmelite convent of Santa Teresa in Coimbra, Portugal. On the thirty-first day of May 1949, Lucia took her profession as a Discalced Carmelite where she took a religious name "Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart." On the thirteenth day of February 2005, Lucia died at the age of ninety-seven in the Carmelite convent of Santa Teresa in Coimbra, Portugal where she lived since 1948.

Lucia was honored in the Roman Catholic Church. On the thirteenth day of February 2017, they gave her the title Servant of God.

The Blessed Virgin Mary revealed three secrets. The first secret was the end of the First World War on the eleventh day of November 1918 and the beginning of the Second World War on the first day of September 1939 when Nazi Germany entered Poland and invaded Danzig. The second secret was the spreading of communism throughout the world, starting in 1917 when Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Provisional Government, and its defeat in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. The third secret concerned the assassination of the Holy Father which Pope John Paul II was shot by Mehmet Ali Ağca in St. Peter's Square on the thirteenth day of March 1981.

At the end of the First World War, the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved in Europe. Czechoslovakia and other countries were formed and declared their independence. Poland was formed when its country occupy half of the German and Russian border. Germany was divided by the Polish border in order to give Poland access to the sea. 

After a bloody civil war for five years in Russia, the Soviet Union or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) was established. 

On the first day of September 1939, the Nazi Germany entered Poland and invaded Danzig, starting the Second World War. Compared to the First World War which it took only four years. the Second World War took seven years. The Second World War ended when Japan surrendered in September 1945 after the nuclear bombing by the United States of America in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and the declaration of war by the Soviet Union against Japan.