Five Reasons Why Our Lady of Fatima is More Important Than Ever

October 13 marks the anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun, the culmination of Our Lady’s apparitions to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. This great miracle, witnessed by more than 70,000 people, was the first time since the Resurrection of Our Lord that God performed a public miracle that was announced beforehand to take place on a specific date.

One of the seers, Lucia dos Santos, described the sun transformed into an "immense silver disk" that shone with an "intensity never seen before, yet it was not blinding." It zig-zagged across the sky, shooting streams of flames, then seemed to fall to the earth. Eyewitnesses said that they thought it was the end of the world, and many confessed their sins out loud. Finally, the sun returned to its normal place and became tranquil and brilliant as ever. The Holy Family and the Infant Jesus appeared inside it, blessing the world. The apparition began during a torrential rainstorm, but after the miracle, the people saw that their clothes and the muddy ground had become completely dry.

But more than one century later, are the Fatima apparitions still relevant? The answer is a resounding yes!

1. Mankind Is More Sinful Than Ever

The main reason why Our Lady appeared in 1917 was to call the world away from sin. By today’s standards, 1917 seems like a much more moral and virtuous time. Fashions were still modest, and most people across the Western world, if they didn’t actively go to church, at least professed to be Christian.

This external appearance, however, was a veneer covering a profound moral rot. Many ideologies at war with the Church had become widespread, such as atheism, materialism, Darwinism, Marxism, socialism, and communism. Fascination for the occult had become widespread in all social classes. Political revolutions such as the Paris Commune attempted to overthrow the Catholic church and social order, while masonic governments passed laws that banned or greatly restricted the freedom of the Church. Christian morals were in sharp decline thanks to an explosion of divorce, pornography, and obscenity.

The world was so sinful, in fact, that Our Lady revealed that the First World War then raging was allowed by God as a punishment for sin, a war that would eventually result in 40 million casualties. If the world in 1917 was sufficiently sinful to merit the coming of the Mother of God to warn mankind, how much more is it today? Abortion, the “LGBT” revolution, mass apostasy from the Faith, wokeism, Gender Ideology, pornography…the list goes on. Worst of all is the avalanche of blasphemy, like the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, which mocked the Last Supper.

2. Our Lady's Requests Were not Heeded

Our Lady of Fatima made several requests. To the Pope, she asked for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, in union with all the world's bishops.

To the faithful, she asked for prayer, penance, and amendment of life. More specifically, she wanted everyone to pray the rosary daily in reparation for sin and for the conversion of sinners. She also asked Catholics to pray the Five First Saturdays devotion in order to make reparation for the sins committed against her Immaculate Heart.

Although many Catholics heeded Our Lady’s call for prayer and penance, many more did not. The crisis in the Catholic Church—with rampant immorality, heresy, and doctrinal confusion—is a bitter fruit of this refusal to heed Our Lady's requests. More than ever, Catholics today need to obey Our Lady of Fatima's requests to hasten the triumph of her Immaculate Heart and end this period of confusion and sin.

3. Russia’s errors are more widespread than ever before

On July 13, 1917, Our Lady gave a stark warning to the children. If the world did not heed her requests, “Russia will scatter her errors throughout the world, provoking wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be annihilated.”

That prophecy was fulfilled in November of that same year, when the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin took power in Russia. The Soviet Union began to spread the errors of communism to every country on earth. Scholars estimate that in the years between 1917 and 2017, communism killed an estimated 75-80 million people.

Even worse than the direct deaths was the ideological and moral corruption of communism. Communist, socialist, and Marxist doctrines can be found at the root of the sexual revolution, the “LGBT” movement, gender ideology, and wokeism. Indeed, the breakup of the family with abortion, pornography, divorce, the destruction of Western nations' traditions and culture, and the war on private property are direct consequences of communist ideology. In an interview with Sister Lucia in 1946, William Thomas Walsh asked her if communism would conquer every country without exception. She answered “yes.”

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is evidence that Russia continues to spread her errors even after the collapse of the USSR. Vladimir Putin has revived the cult of personality of Josef Stalin and repeatedly lamented the fall of the Soviet Union. His nuclear threats against America and other European nations are proof that Our Lady’s warning is as relevant as ever.

4. She Predicted Another Great War That Has not yet Come

In 1917, Our Lady said the First World War would end soon. But if mankind did not stop offending God, another even worse war would come. She even named the future Pope under whose reign the war would begin. This Second World War was the deadliest war in history, vastly exceeding the scale and destruction of the First. Seventy-five million people were killed, about 3% of the world’s entire population in 1940.

However, Our Lady predicted a Third World War that would follow the Second and First, in which "nations would be annihilated.” Even though the two world wars were the worst conflicts in the history of the world, it cannot be said that nations were annihilated. Therefore, the world wars were just a foretaste of an even greater chastisement that would come before Our Lady’s final triumph.

5. Our Lady Gives us Hope in This Hopeless World

But perhaps the most important reason why Fatima is more important than ever in our times is that Our Lady came to bring a message of hope for the world. Many countries are more divided than ever. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is just one example of the extreme political and social polarization dividing many countries. The wars in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and the rumors of wars in Asia and elsewhere seem to point to a looming Third World War. Catholics are jailed, tortured, or killed for their faith by the hundreds of thousands in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

God in His justice will punish the world for its sins, but in His mercy, He sent His Most Holy Mother to announce a future conversion and era of peace. After the chastisement will come the reign of Her Immaculate Heart, or the Reign of Mary, as Saint Louis de Montfort called it. As Our Lady herself said at Fatima, “Finally, My Immaculate Heart will Triumph!”