On Sunday, May 13, 1917, at Fątima, Portugal, three young shepherds, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, brother and sister, ages 7 and 9; and Lucia dos Santos, their cousin, a girl of ten years old, saw a brilliant flash of lightning with thunder. They thought a sudden storm was about to break, but there were no clouds in the blue sky!
Quickly gathering their sheep, they headed for home. But, no sooner than they did, another more brilliant flash held them in awe. A few feet in from of them, on top of a sapling holm oak tree, stood a Lady more dazzling than the sun. She would appear to them six more times, once a month on the 13th of each month.
She would tell them many things, some that involved the immediate future of the world and that of our time. World War I would end soon, she said--it did. But, she continued, if men do not stop offending God, a new and more terrible war would come upon the earth....
This most beautiful Lady also gave a message against war, famine, disease, and natural disasters that beset man. She said to live a life of prayer, penance, and reparation to the great offended God, Who is already too much offended.
...on Aug. 6, 1945, shortly after 8:15 a.m., the future of the world and hundreds of thousands of lives were about to change forever. That morning, eight men were in a small house, and one, Hubert Schiffer, had come downstairs and was reading the morning paper, when suddenly, he was enveloped in a blinding white light--unlike anything he'd ever experienced then, or since.
Father Schiffer, a German-born Jesuit missionary, earlier had said Mass, and now was in the rectory of the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady. He had recently been ordained a Catholic priest and had been sent to this quiet town because of the bombings in other cities nearby. His companions rushed down from upstairs to find him on the floor dazed and bleeding. They decided this small quiet town was no longer out of the bombers reach.
However, there was something unusual about this bomb. In previous bombings, you could hear explosions in the distance as the planes passed from you. You heard also sirens wailing, screams of terror, and cries from injured people. But this time, only this awful silence.
At this point, no one understood what had happened. One of the other priests, Father Lasalle, said "Come with me." There was a doctor's office just down the street where Father Schiffer could get medical treatment. Fr. Lasalle asked, "Do you know where the doctor lives?"
Upon opening the door to the street, Fr. Lasalle said, "You go down the street..." They found no street. In fact, they found no city. Hiroshima, Japan had been totally annihilated! Only the rectory remained standing in the midst of fire and rubble.
A few moments before, Bombardier Tom Ferebee released "Little Boy" from the B-29, Enola Gay's bomb bay, using his Norden bombsight. From 30,000 feet and 43 seconds after 8:15 a.m., the first A-bomb exploded 1,800 feet above ground, called ground zero. The blast was so powerful, the crew members of the bomber were hit by two ozone slaps, generated by the nuclear explosion. Copilot Robert A. Lewis, said, "My God! I felt a flash through my whole body..." Everywhere they looked below, they saw fire. Everything was disappearing or had disappeared!
These eight men were living only eight blocks from the blast center of the nuclear explosion! Fifty years later, scientists, doctors, and researchers are still lost for words as to why they and their rectory survived the blast with no side effects. They have been examined by over two-hundred scientists. Yet others, further from the blast, are still dying and suffering from its effects.
Father Shiffer, on American TV, gave years later, the startling reason why they were saved from the nuclear holocaust: "In that house the rosary was prayed every day. In that house, we were living the message of Fątima."