Sister Lucia at the center of a new summer course at the Sanctuary of Fatima

The figure of Sister Lucia, seer of Fatima, will be at the center of the ninth edition of the Sanctuary’s Summer Courses, scheduled for the beginning of July, announced those responsible for the largest Marian place of prayer in the country.

In this edition, to be held between July 3 and 5, “the aim is to deepen the biography and the historical context in which the seer of Fatima lived, with special attention to the religious institutions to which she belonged, as well as her biographical path during the period in which she was linked to them,” the Sanctuary said in a note published on its website.

The analysis of the “prolific written production of this important protagonist of Fatima” and the “way in which her figure, in different ideological contexts (…) was and is the target of clear instrumentalization” is another objective of the course aimed primarily at researchers who want to study the phenomenon of Fatima.

In June 2023, Pope Francis approved the publication of the decree recognizing the heroic virtues of Sister Lucia de Jesus, paving the way for her beatification.

Carlos Cabecinhas, rector of the Sanctuary of Fatima, Marco Daniel Duarte, director of the Department of Studies of the Sanctuary of Fatima, António Araújo, from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New University of Lisbon, Manuela Mendonça, from the Portuguese Academy of History, and Maria José Azevedo Santos, from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, are some of the speakers at this summer course.

The program includes topics such as “The time of Lucia de Jesus”, “The Institute of Saint Dorothy: history and spirituality”, “Memoirs of Sister Lucia: observation of the original manuscripts on deposit in the Archives of the Sanctuary of Fatima”, “Lucia de Jesus in the Carmel of Saint Teresa of Coimbra” or “The political-ideological world in the writings of Lucia de Jesus”.

Lucia de Jesus was the eldest of the three seers of Fatima in 1917 and died on February 13, 2005, at the age of 97.