Our Lady of Faitma's an Alien?

If you thought the DaVinci Code took liberties with history, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

From Earthfiles.com (needs subscription):
Eighty-nine years ago on May 13, 1917, three children watching sheep in Fatima, Portugal, saw lightning. Then a “small, pretty lady” appeared, suspended in the air at the top of an oak tree.

The lady told them she would return to the same oak grove every month for six months. Her last visit would be October 13, 1917. Then she would tell the children who she was and what she wanted.

The lady did appear on the 13th of each month after that. As word spread that a miracle was happening in Fatima, Portugal, an estimated crowd of 50,000 people were gathered on October 13, 1917, for the sixth and final appearance. By then, the Catholic Jesuits in the parish said it was the Virgin Mary, even though the apparition suspended at the top of the oak tree never called herself that.

[…] But what exactly did the three children – Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco – say they saw at the top of an oak tree?

• She was an apparently feminine and very beautiful figure.


• She was wrapped in a light “that blinded.”


• She measured approximately 3 ½ feet tall.


• She appeared to be between 12 and 15 years old.


• She wore a skirt, a coat, and maybe a cape, which were white.


• Her skirt and robe had a checkered pattern of gold thread.


• She had two or three cords at her waist.


• She wore something on her head that covered her ears and hair.


• She had black eyes.


• She had a strand of beads resembling a rosary, some type of hoop earrings at her neck, and a luminous ball at her waist.


• She came from above and disappeared, little by little, back up into the sky.


• She made no facial movements and did not move her legs.


• She spoke without moving her lips.


• She moved only her hands, once in a while.


• She turned her back to the children when she rose up in the sky.

[...] Furthermore, in the “Official Interrogations of 1923” by the formal Catholic Fatima Parochial Inquiry, Lucia did not say the apparition was the Virgin Mary. Lucia told Church investigators that when she asked the small, glowing, young lady suspended at the top of the oak where she was from, the lady “pointed to the sky, saying she was from there.”

The historians were intrigued by the strong UFO phenomenon link to Fatima. In fact, the cover of their first book, Heavenly Lights, The Apparitions of Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon, has a photograph of the three child eyewitnesses above a graphic image of three grey aliens with large black, slanted eyes.

[...] Now in their second latest book in a trilogy about the Fatima events of 1917, the historians focus on a “conspiracy to cover-up the true origins of the Fatima prophesies.”

You had to know that was coming.

The two Portuguese authors formally asked Catholic Church authority for access to the original records of the Fatima incident, which had been held secretly by the Church in archives located at the Sanctuary of Fatima since 1917. Quoting from their press release about the new book:

“For the first time, they tell the esoteric history of the ‘cover story’ concocted by the Church, which has both shaped our modern view of the Fatima incident and obscured its true significance as the first major UFO close encounter case of the 20th Century. At the heart of the matter, lies a conspiracy by the Jesuits to suppress the fact that the entities encountered by the children at Fatima were not deities descending from Heaven, but rather were alien beings visiting our planet from ‘elsewhere’ in the vast cosmos.”

A conspiracy by the Jesuits? The Jesuits would be more likely to conspire to trash the heavenly origins of the apparitions than to defend them.

A man walked up to a Franciscan and a Jesuit and asked, "How many novenas must you say to get a Mercedes Benz?" The Franciscan asked, "What's a Mercedes Benz?" The Jesuit asked, "What's a novena?"

The Dominicans were established to combat the Albigensian heresy, the Jesuits were established to fight the Protestant heresy. So what’s the difference? Well, have you met any Albigensians lately?

Chesterton is supposed to have said, "When men stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing. They believe in anything." Even if he never said it, it still remains true.