The Miracle of the Sun, October 13, 1917.

Yesterday we reported on the soggy First Battle of Passchendael, an event so wet that artillery fire proved ineffective and the New Zealand army accordingly had the worst day in its history.

I don't know how widespread the October rains were in 1917, but I do know that it had been wet in Portugal as well, as that's well recorded in regards to the Miracle of the Sun, the final 1917 event associated with the Marian apparitions at Fatima, Portugal, that year.

 

As noted here earlier, there had been an entire series of reports of Marian Apparitions in 1917, most of which occurred at Fatima but one report of which occurred in Russia.   This event is distinctly different from the earlier events as it was widely viewed by numerous people and came on the date that had been predicted by the three peasant children who had been reporting the Portuguese apparitions.

By this point, the Fatima apparitions had been receiving press reports and accordingly it had been reported that the peasant children had related that the vision of the Lady they had been seeing had promised a miracle so that "all may believe".  Large crowed accordingly gathered on the day of the predicted miracle.  The day was rainy but the clouds broke and the sun appeared to dance in the sky, an event reported by thousands of people.  People whose clothes had been sodden found their clothes dry, and clean, immediately after the event, a phenomenon even experienced by residents of a nearby village who had not attended the gathering.  A pile of rosaries that had become entangled on the ground near where the children reported the Marian apparition had appeared earlier were picked up immediately after and were untangled.

There are of course skeptics concerning the event and while even Catholics are not obligated to believe that it occurred, it is unique due to being experienced on a very widespread basis and, further, to have included more than a visual apprehension that something was occurring and to be experienced by people nearby who were not part of the gathering and who had even been inattentive to it.  Portuguese poet Afonso Lopes Vieira reported, for example, "On that day of October 13, 1917, without remembering the predictions of the children, I was enchanted by a remarkable spectacle in the sky of a kind I had never seen before. I saw it from this veranda".  It was also unique in not being limited to merely a visual experience, but to also feature numerous and distinct physical expressions.  If it was a mass hallucination, as some have claimed, it was an odd one indeed being experienced by over 10,000 people and to include their sight, smell and their clothing.