Why the Special Setup at Church?

Some of you might be wondering about the new devotional setup at church.  You can't miss it as you enter into the nave (the seating area).  It is an area that we have setup so that the parish can take some time to learn about and pray to our Blessed Mother Mary under the title of Our Lady of Fatima.  Last weekend we celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima at Mass and we also marked the 100 year anniversary of when our Blessed Mother Mary appeared to 3 peasant children in Fatima Portugal and 70,000 people witnessed the miracle of the sun.  The display will be up during the 6 months Mary appeared in Fatima 100 years ago - May through October.

Take a moment to read about the actual and Church confirmed events of Fatima and place them in your heart:

From Catholic News Agency:

May 13 is the anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady to three shepherd children in the small village of Fatima in Portugal in 1917.  She appeared six times to Lucia, 9, and her cousins Francisco, 8, and his sister Jacinta, 6, between May 13, 1917 and October 13, 1917.

The story of Fatima begins in 1916, when, against the backdrop of the First World War which had introduced Europe to the most horrific and powerful forms of warfare yet seen, and a year before the Communist revolution would plunge Russia and later Eastern Europe into six decades of oppression under militant atheistic governments, a resplendent figure appeared to the three children who were in the field tending the family sheep. “I am the Angel of Peace,” said the figure, who appeared to them two more times that year exhorting them to accept the sufferings that the Lord allowed them to undergo as an act of reparation for the sins which offend Him, and to pray constantly for the conversion of sinners.

Then, on the 13th day of the month of Our Lady, May 1917, an apparition of ‘a woman all in white, more brilliant than the sun’ presented itself to the three children saying “Please don’t be afraid of me, I’m not going to harm you.” Lucia asked her where she came from and she responded,  “I come from Heaven.”  The woman wore a white mantle edged with gold and held a rosary in her hand. The woman asked them to pray and devote themselves to the Holy Trinity and to “say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and an end to the war.”
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Read the rest here (OUR LADY OF FATIMA - Catholic News Agency - http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint.php?n=485)