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All Things Considered

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Religious affairs programme, tackling thorny issues in a thought-provoking manner

Religious affairs programme, tackling the thornier issues of the day in a thought-provoking manner

All Things Considered: Marian Apparitions

Marian Apparitions

07/05/2017

BBC Radio Wales - All Things Considered, Marian Apparitions

Roy Jenkins asks if apparitions of the Virgin Mary are divine interventions or delusions.

Roy Jenkins asks whether such apparitions as the reported appearances of the Virgin Mary in Fatima in 1917 are divine interventions or delusions.

A hundred years ago this week (13th May), three children reported seeing an apparition of the Virgin Mary while they were playing on a hillside. The oldest of them was only ten. Yet so convincing was their account that soon crowds were gathering at the site of the event, near the small Portuguese town of Fatima.
It's now one of the most important centres of Catholic pilgrimage in the world, with millions of visitors each year, and two of those three children are being canonised - recognised as saints - when Pope Francis visits the town this week. Catholics in Wales are marking the centenary with services and processions across the country featuring a statue of the Virgin Mary - and relics of the two youngest children.
Fatima is just one of many shrines around the world where pilgrims flock to take inspiration from similar apparition events - from Lourdes in France to Knock on the west coast of Ireland and Guadelupe in Mexico. But what are we to make of claims of such appearances? Are they real ... or the product of hallucinations or other psychological factors? And what does it say about the place of the Virgin Mary in the church.
Photo: (c)2017 Shrine of Fatima.

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