The reading
How it began
On 10 December 1925, in Pontevedra, Lúcia sees the Virgin with the Child, and a heart ringed with thorns. The Child: “Have pity on the heart of your Mother.” The First Saturdays are spelled out. In 1926 the Child comes again in the garden, about the confessors who make it hard.
The day itself
This is not a second Fátima for the crowds. It is the seer, now in a convent, being given the pastoral shape of what 1917 asked. The Church has received the First Saturdays as the ordinary way to do what Fátima said.
Reading
How to read The Apparitions of Pontevedra
Private revelation, when it is healthy, becomes a practice, not a souvenir. Five Saturdays. A rosary. Company with Mary for fifteen minutes. The apocalypse, if there is one, is that small.
Church status
How this sign has been received
Church-approved
Received as part of the Fátima message. Pius XII and later popes have encouraged the First Saturdays. The Pontevedra visions are in Lúcia’s memoirs, which the Church has allowed to be published.
Sources
- Memoirs of Sister Lúcia
- Dorothean convent, Pontevedra; later Coimbra Carmel
For the classroom
The Apparitions of Pontevedra (1925–1926, Pontevedra, Galicia). Grade in this encyclopedia: Church-approved. Sister Lúcia, already a Dorothean novice, sees Mary and the Child in her cell. They ask for the First Saturdays of reparation — confession, communion, rosary, a quarter-hour of company. Fátima’s program gets its weekday.
