Church/Portugal: Dynamitation of the Capela das Aparições, 100 years ago, is always linked to the birth of the «Voz da Fátima»
Carmo Rodeia recalls the need for publicity to publicize the events in Cova da Iria
Fátima, March 4, 2022 (Ecclesia) – The birth of the newspaper ‘Voz da Fátima’ is associated with the dynamiting of the Capelinha das Aparições, which took place on March 6, 1922, explains the Sanctuary’s press officer.
Carmo Rodeia told Agência ECCLESIA that following this episode, 100 years ago, D. José Alves Correia, then bishop of Leiria, “ends up appointing a commission of ecclesiastics to assess and study the phenomenon of the events of Fátima” and “in the first meeting decide to create a regular publication, ‘Voz da Fátima’”.
In the first editorial of this publication, Canon Manuel Nunes Formigão, who signed the editorials as Visconde de Montelo, wrote that “the Church has been silent, riots against the Church and against Fátima have been published and that the intention, through the publication, is to inform and the people of the whole truth”.
“There is a coincidence between the dynamiting of the Capelinha das Aparições and the need to create a canonical commission to study the events of Fátima”, stressed Carmo Rodeia.
The dynamiting of the chapel took place five years after the apparitions in Cova da Iria and as “the news of Fatima in the press were not published in Catholic publications”, although they published several publications.
The first ‘Voz da Fátima’ bulletin should have been published in June 1922, but canon Manuel Nunes Formigão said that he “did not have the conditions to be director of the newspaper”, since he did not have authorization from the Patriarch of Lisbon.
The first “was printed, in the amount of six thousand copies”, to be distributed to the pilgrims of Fátima, but “it never came out”, and was only released, “effectively, on October 13, 1922”.
To commemorate its centenary, the newspaper ‘A Voz da Fátima’ was “extremely important in disseminating the events” of Cova da Iria, but also “in reading the world”.
“This newspaper is a huge contributor to the affirmation of 100 years of the apparitions and of contemporary Portugal” because “it is an operation to say of several conversations, of Fátima that she wanted to the world”, indicated Carmo Rodeia.
With the current military conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the person responsible for the press at the Shrine of Fatima reports that “Eastern Europe was always present, even from a pedagogical perspective”, in the institution’s newspaper.
LFS/OC
Media: Sanctuary celebrates 100 years of the newspaper «Voz da Fátima»