Miracle of the Sun

The sun miracle is a phenomenon in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal was observed by at least 30,000 people on 13 October 1917 and is partly classified as a miracle. Those in attendance had assembled to witness the opposite Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos announced last visit Mary.

Events

According to many witness statements should set out the clouds after a rainstorm and have appeared as an opaque, spinning disc in the sky the sun. It was reported that she was considerably less bright than usual and have been thrown colored lights on landscape, Present, clouds and shadows. The sun was then tilted and moved to the side in a zigzag course for Earth, what some of those present so terrified that they thought the end of the world was imminent. Eyewitnesses reported that the wet from the rain the ground and her clothes had become dry within about ten minutes of where the event took place.

Estimates of the number of witnesses ranging between 30,000 to 40,000 people by Avelino de Almeida, writing for the Portuguese newspaper O Século, up to 100,000, estimated by Joseph Garrett, a professor of natural sciences at the University of Coimbra, both of which were present on this day.

The miracle was attributed by believers of Nossa Senhora de Fátima (Our Lady of Fatima ), an apparition of the Virgin Mary to three young shepherd children in 1917, which - as predicted the three children - July 13, August 19 and September 13 took place. The children reported that the Lady had promised them, da Iria their identity to reveal at noon on October 13 at Cova towards them and provide a miracle " so that all may believe. "

The three shepherd children should have in addition to activities of the sun seen on that day also a panorama of visions of Jesus of Nazareth, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph the blessing of the crowd present.

Descriptions

The most widely cited descriptions of the events that are reported to Fatima, come from texts by John De Marchi, an Italian Catholic priest and researcher. De Marchi spent seven years in Fátima, from 1943 to 1950, where he conducted research and interviews origin of the main characters in an unlimited length. In The Immaculate Heart, published in 1952, De Marchi reports that " their status ( those present on 13 October ) included believers and non-believers, pious old ladies and scoffing young men. Hundreds, from these mixed groups, have given formal testimony. Reports vary; Impressions are confused in smaller details, but none to our knowledge directly denied the visible sun miracle. " Is contradicted by Kevin McClure and indicates that he had never seen such a collection of contradictory accounts of a case in any research he in the previous ten years have made.

Some of the witness statements follow below. They are taken from John De Marchi's several books on the matter.

• Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose sight was biblical as they stood bareheaded, eagerly absuchend the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws - the sun ' danced ' according the typical expression of the people. - Avelino de Almeida, writing for O Século ( Portugal most widespread and most influential newspaper, which was pro-government and anti-clerical at the time Almeida's previous articles had been derisively to the previously reported cases in Fatima. ).
• The sun, at one moment surrounded by a scarlet flame, at another haloed in yellow and deep purple, seemed in a very fast and whirling movement to be, sometimes they seemed to be detached from the sky and get closer to the earth, radiating great heat. - Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho, writing for the newspaper Ordem.
• The silver sun, enveloped in the same florartig gray light, was seen whirling and twirling in a circle of broken clouds ... The light changed into a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained- glass window of a cathedral, and spread all over the people who knelt with outstretched hands ... people wept and prayed bareheaded, in the presence of a miracle that they had expected. The seconds seemed like hours, so vivid they were. - Reporter for the Lisbon newspaper O Dia.
• The solar disk was not immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, as she whirled around him in a wild whirl, when suddenly a noise was heard by all people. The sun seemed whirling to solve from the firmament and threatening zuzurücken to the earth, as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible. - Dr. Almeida Garrett, professor of natural sciences at the University of Coimbra.
• Like a bolt from the blue, the clouds were torn aside and the sun appeared at the zenith in all their glory. She began swirling on its axis to rotate as the greatest wheel of fire, that you could imagine, all the colors of the rainbow and adopting multi-colored flashes of light sending out the most striking effect of producing. This sublime and incomparable spectacle, which was repeated three distinct times, lasted for about ten minutes. The tremendous amount overwhelmed by the evidence of such a tremendous miracle, threw herself on her knees. - Dr. Formigão, a professor at the seminary of Santarém, and a priest.
• I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked steadfastly to the sun, which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a snowball to be rotating, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, the earth -threatening. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people who were crying and the end of the world expected at any moment. - Rev. Joaquim Lourenço, his youthful experience in Alburitel descriptive eighteen kilometers from Fatima.
• On this day, the 13th October 1917 without reminding me of the predictions of the children, I was enchanted by a remarkable spectacle in the sky in a way that I had never seen before. I saw it from this veranda. - Afonso Lopes Vieira, Portuguese poet.

Critical evaluation of the event

There are no scientific representations of any unusual solar or astronomic activity during the time in which the sun " danced " as reported have, and there is no eye-witness reports of any unusual solar phenomenon further than forty miles from the Cova da Iria away.

The fact that an unspecified miracle had been predicted, sudden beginning and end of the extraordinary activity of the sun as it was visible for those up to 18 kilometers away people, the varied nature of the observer - which included both skeptics as believers - that mere numbers of people present and the lack of any causative factor closes after a view measured overall theory of a mass or Kollektivhalluzination, suggestion or mass hysteria.

Visionaries claimed that the Mother of God under which ereignenden in July, August and September 1917 Marian apparitions, now known as Our Lady of Fatima, had promised that a miracle would happen on October 13, 1917 " so that all might believe [t ] s ". Pio Scatizzi (SJ ) describes the events of Fátima and concludes:

" The [ ... ] solar phenomena were not observed in any observatory. Impossible, that the message should miss so many astronomers and of course the other inhabitants of the hemisphere [ ... ]; it is unquestionably an astronomical or meteorological phenomenon itself ereignendes [ ... ]. Either all the observers in Fátima were collectively deceived and erred in their testimony, or we must assume a supernatural intervention. "

Stewart Campbell, writing for the 1989 issue of the Journal of Meteorology, postulated that a cloud of stratospheric dust have changed the appearance of the sun on 13 October, what did it slightly to look at them, and have caused to yellow, blue and violet looked and seemed to turn. To support his hypothesis points Campbell that was reported in 1983 on a blue and reddened sun in China.

Joe Nickell argues that the position of the phenomenon, as described by the various witnesses at the wrong azimuth and elevation was wrong to have been the sun. He suggests that the cause may have been a sundog. Occasionally referred to as Parhelion or pseudo - sun, a sun dog is a relatively common atmospheric optical phenomenon associated with the reflection or refraction of sunlight by the numerous small ice crystals that make up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. However, no objection against this that a Sundog represents a stationary phenomenon, and would not explain the reported appearance of the "dancing sun ". Nickell suggests that an explanation for this and other similar phenomena in the temporary retinal distortion caused back and forth shooting eyes by staring in intense light and / or by the effect could be to avoid completely fixed gazing - image after image and movement thus combining. Nickell concludes without any empirical basis that it was " probably a combination of factors [ were ], including optical and meteorological phenomena (the sun, seen through thin clouds, which cause let its appearance in a silver disc, a change in the density of the passing clouds, so that the sun would lighten and darken alternately and move forward in this way and to withdraw coupons; dust or moisture droplets in the atmosphere, the sunlight a variety of colors giving ) ".

Paul Simon is in an article published in the Times, that some of the optical effects could be caused by dust clouds from the Sahara at Fátima, but without any evidence for the presence to deliver the same at the time of publication.

Kevin McClure claims that the crowd at Cova da Iria may have been expecting to see signs in the sun, because similar phenomena in the leading up to the wonder weeks had been reported. On this basis, he believes that the crowd saw what they wanted to see. However, it was rightly objected that McClure's presentation can not explain similar reports of people miles away who did not think according to their own statements at the time of the event, or the sudden drying of soggy rain soaked clothes of the people.

Leo Madigan believes that the reports of the eyewitnesses were of a miracle subjectively true, but not in agreement and says that astonishment, fear, exaltation, and imagination must have shaped perceptions and reports. Madigan compares the experiences with prayers and accordingly sees the experience as spiritual, and therefore subjectively and individually.

Writer Lisa Schwebel claimed that the event was a supernatural except sensuous phenomenon. She noted that the solar phenomenon reported at Fátima is not unique, because there had been some reports of meetings of believers with similarly high expectations in which unusual light phenomena had occurred in the sky.

It has been argued that the Fatima phenomenon and many UFO sightings share a common cause, or even that the phenomenon was an alien vehicle.

Protestant commentators generally take no miraculous nature of the phenomenon; some take on a supernatural process, but write him Satan instead of God.

Many years after the events in question struck Stanley L. Jaki, a Benedictine priest and author of a number of books on the compatibility of science and Catholicism, a theory about the supposed miracle. Jaki believes that the event was natural and meteorological in nature, but that it was a miracle, because the fact of the event to the exact predicted time occurred.

Recognition

The event was officially accepted as a miracle by the Roman Catholic Church on 13 October 1930. On October 13, 1951, the papal legate and Cardinal Federico Tedeschini the crowd gathered in Fatima explained that on October 30, October 31, November 1 and November 8, 1950 Pope Pius XII. even saw the sun miracle of the Vatican gardens.