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Interview with Professor Joaquim Fernandes, PhD in History, at the University Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal
1.What led you to the research of the Fatima Apparitions?
From long time the Fatima Apparitions story was considered controversial and a lot of authors and thinkers thought that they were supported more by political than religious reasons and motivations. Then, we wanted questioned what really had happen there by accessing the original archives and documents.
2. What kind of difficulties and obstacles did you find during the research?
The main obstacle was to access to the Fatima sanctuary documents, namely the so-called Formigao archive, that were classified until the end of the 1970’s when we proposed to study them. Following having the chance to read them, one of the authors (Fina d’Armada) was badly punished in her professional career.
3. Did you find any kind of surprises there?
The main surprise was that the extraordinary events could not gave been invented. In our opinion they occurred in fact. But more the original documents were emerging to our eyes more the events mimetic the ufological ground. Another surprise was the certification that Canon Formigao had modified the first historical description of the Fatima “Lady”: from a little girl with a skirt by the knees he changed to a adult lady with a long and shining skirt. We also discovered that the image that the people can see today ay the Sanctuary was inspired by an old image of a previous cult of Senhora da Lapa Lady. But, more surprisingly was finding witnesses that described the so-called “Sun Miracle” as an “disk-like metal object” with equidistant lights in the periphery, like the classical hard daylight UFO cases.
4. How reacted the Catholic believers and the religious authorities?
As a lot of us act grounded in “belief systems” and have a deep supernatural dependence many believers did not read our books. Others links their supernatural needs directly and exclusively with Fatima and are happy with their simplistic faith and badly knows the details of Fatima events. Others yet having read the books with critical mind or react with perplexity or deny all in the name of their faith. Then, a lot of members of the Catholic Church hierarchy avoid to discuss our views since they also need Fatima to keep on as a major financial source.
5. Do you plan continue looking for new clues to the Fatima events?
We keep always in our minds the urgency to rethink the religious personal experiences, like the “Marian apparitions” as a syndrome that calls for a deeper and deeper interest and research to find its origins and ways of expressions as a part of the Extraordinary Human Experiences in its totality. So, the different scientific disciplines and other cultural paranormal approaches must give attention to this aspect of the popular religion. Also, we urge the experimental and theoretical experts to look at these rich documents that we think can be a good exercise to discover and understand how our brain and spirit can be stimulated to surpass the ordinary limits of human perception, “tuning” new extensions of the consciousness.
The “Buzzing” sounds in Fatima Apparitions 1917
(excerpt from the book Heavenly lights. The Fatima Apparitions and the UFO Phenomenon, by Fina d' Armada and Joaquim Fernandes, translated from Portuguese and edited by Andrew D. Basiago and Eva M. Thompson, published by Anomalist Books, 2007. All the rights reserved, 2007.
Joaquim Fernandes*
“The buzzing of bees”
And the Being spoke. To Lúcia, it was not strange at all. They understood each other in Portuguese, as if Mary, the Mother of Jesus, had become a polyglot, or as if two thousand years of history had not altered the language of the people. The news spread throughout the village, and on June 13th, part of the neighborhood came to the site of the Apparitions.
They were not many. “I counted the people and saw that only 40 were present,” wrote Inácio António Marques. [1] And those people anxiously waited in that deserted place for the veritable Queen of Heaven to descend to the oak tree, in the hopes of contemplating her serene face, one popularly imagined being young, soft, and extraordinarily beautiful.
Stella [2], through the voice of writer Maria de Freitas (who behind the scenes wrote a great part of the book about Fátima attributed to Father João de Marchi), captured forever the impressions of that first day in which onlookers participated. Among them was Maria Carreira, who, in the language of a simple countrywoman, later described for the journalist her memories of the event:
At the same instant, Lúcia jumped up and exclaimed, ‘O, Jacinta, there she comes already, there was the lightning,” and then ran to kneel at the foot of the oak.’
“And you did not see anything?,” de Freitas asked.
“Me? No, ma’am. And no one boasted about having seen the lightning. We would follow the children and kneel in the middle of the field. Lúcia would raise her hands and say, “You bade me come here, what do you wish of me?” And then could be heard a buzzing that seemed to be that of a bee. I took care to discern whether it was the Lady speaking.”
“And everyone heard it?,” the reporter asked.
“Well, it could be heard very well!,” Carreira answered.
The buzzing of a bee – here is the voice attributed to Our Lady of Fátima by the miracle’s greatest publicist. She, and the other onlookers, did not hear a voice speaking Hebrew, Aramaic, or even Portuguese, but a voice like that of an insect.
This same witness recounted this same episode to Father João de Marchi. In his work, entitled Era uma Senhora Mais Brilhante que o Sol [It was a Lady More Brilliant than the Sun], we read [3]:
I had been sick, and was feeling very weak. It must have been around midday, when Lúcia was asked: “Will Our Lady be long delayed?”
“No, ma’am, she will not be long,” she responded.
The tiny child was watching for the signs.
We prayed the Rosary and, when the girl from Boleiros was going to begin the Litany, Lúcia interrupted her, saying that there was no longer sufficient time. She immediately rose to her feet and shouted:
“Jacinta, there comes Our Lady, the lightning has struck.”
All three children ran to the oak, as we ran behind them. We knelt upon the thickets and shrubs. Lúcia lifted her hands, as in prayer, and I heard her say:
“You bade me to come here, please tell me what you want.”
Then we began to hear something like this, in the manner of a very fine voice, but what it said could not be comprehended or put into words, for it was like the buzzing of a bee!
But that buzzing did not disturb the silence of the mountain only in June. The following month, word spread throughout the entire region and nearly four to five thousand people found their way to Cova da Iria. [4] Jacinto de Almeida Lopes, proprietor of the site of the Shrine later established by the parish of Fátima, was among them. He would be one of the eyewitnesses chosen by the parish priest to testify during the Inquiry. The parish priest, writing in the third person, related the evidence given by Lopes:
“Then what is it that you want of me?”
After this question, she waited in silence for a short period of time, the time of a brief response. And during this silence, he heard, as if coming from the oak tree, a faint voice, similar, he says, to the humming of a bee, but without distinguishing a single word.
In July, Manuel Marto, the father of Jacinta and Francisco, made his way to the site for the first time. Questioned as to what he experienced [5], he told João de Marchi:
“I heard a sound, a din, such as a great fly makes inside an empty water pot,” and wondered whether it was “far off or close by.”
Manuel Marto helped himself to odd comparisons. When interrogated about the same matter by the Italian priest Humberto Pasquale [6], he affirmed: “I heard something like the buzzing of a fly inside an empty barrel, but without articulation of words.” For his part, Pasquale added: “Mr. Manuel Marto explained to us that, during the entire duration of the appearance, those present heard an indefinable sound, like that which is heard next to a hive, but altogether more harmonious, even though words were not heard.”
In this same month, we find other testimony, however, which demonstrated that the buzzing must have been heard quite well, which, as a matter of fact, Maria Carreira stated. António Baptista, from Moita, in the parish of Fátima, was then 50 years old. When interviewed by the Viscount of Montelo on November 13, 1917, he declared, “on July 13th, I was at Cova da Iria. She (Lúcia) knelt. I thought I heard, at that moment, a little wind, a zoa-zoa sound. While Lúcia was listening to a response, it seemed there was a buzzing sound like that of a cicada.” [7]
“Many people say that when the Apparition was speaking, it could be heard,” wrote J. de S. Bento, in a letter possibly penned on October 13th of that year [8]. “But they could not distinguish what She was saying.” And another witness also made reference to the sounds of the “speech” of the Being. Manuel Gonçalves, Jr., a 30-year-old farmer from Montelo – the place name that the Canon Formigão adopted in his pseudonym [9] – also declared on October 11th “some people have affirmed that they hear the sound of the answers.”
Herewith we arrive at 1978. In July 18th of that year, the authors interviewed the relatives of the seers and eyewitnesses then still living. One of the people with whom we spoke was Lúcia’s sister, Maria dos Anjos. Sitting in an armchair, beside the house where she was born, living out the rest of her days, smiling to the daily visitors, she narrated for us once again the story that had forever altered the life of her family:
“Did you know Maria Carreira?,” we asked on that hot summer afternoon.
“I knew her as well as I knew my own mother.”
“She said that when Our Lady would speak, she would hear something like the humming of a bee...
I also heard that little buzz. I also got to hear it, but I know not what it was.”
“Was it as if there were many bees?,” we asked.
“No, only one,” she responded, categorically.”
“Do you recall what month that was?”
“At that time, I did not go there every month. It seemed as if a bee was around there whenever Lúcia was listening. But I have no idea what it was!”
“I have no idea what it was!” Her statement gives one pause to consider whether the event should have been given a Marian interpretation, if the sound that the Being made was not even understood. In truth, who can explain why her voice was comparable to the buzzing of a bee? Or yet to the buzz of a great fly inside a water pot, or of a fly inside an empty barrel? Have these sounds been heard solely in Fátima? Or have there been, in other parts of the world, other witnesses to identical sounds.
http://new-age-spirituality.com/wordpress/content/1288
A Voz de Fátima, no. 3, December 13, 1922.
Stella, no. 77, special edition about Fátima, May 1943.
8th ed., Fátima, 1966, pp. 97-98.
Parish Inquiry.
Era uma Senhora Mais Brilhante que o Sol, ob. cit., p. 114.
Eu Vi Nascer Fátima, Porto, ed. Salesianas, 1966, p. 31.
In the original, we found the word “guitar.” In light of the context, we think that could be an error, since it should mention the sound of an insect. This is part of the Arquivos Formigão.
Arquivos Formigão.
When he went to Fátima, Canon Formigão was received by relatives of this witness, who live in Montelo. MONTELO, Viscount of, As Grandes Maravilhas de Fátima, Lisbon, 1927, pp. 80-85.