An interesting question (or perhaps better, a perennial point of confusion) which routinely surfaces among devotees of Our Lady of Fatima regards the Decade Prayer which Our Lady taught to the children in Her third apparition. Immediately after communicating to them by word and vision the Great Secret on July 13, 1917, She said:
“Do not tell this to anyone. Francisco, yes, you may tell him. When you pray the Rosary, say after each mystery: O my Jesus, forgive us, save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are most in need.”
It is customary among English speakers to complete the expression “forgive us” as “forgive us our sins.” Many people also add the words “of Thy mercy” to the end of the prayer, and we at The Fatima Center have no objection to this, although it is not our practice. It seems best to us to phrase this petition just as Our Lady instructed, but clearly those added words do not change the meaning of the prayer in any way. Souls who are “in need” must necessarily be in need of something. And given the preceding petitions – for forgiveness and to escape the punishment of hell which we deserve – one could hardly imagine a better choice of words to describe what it is that is needed than Our Savior’s mercy.
But historically there has been real confusion and dispute about the phrasing and object of this prayer at a much deeper level. Until the 1940s – that is, until the publication of Sister Lucia’s Memoirs – the preponderance of Fatima literature presented this prayer in a dramatically different form. And it was in this different form that pilgrims to the Fatima Shrine throughout those years were reciting the prayer in their public processions in the Cova da Iria:
“O my Jesus, forgive us our sins! Save us from the fires of hell! And relieve the souls in Purgatory, especially the most abandoned.”
We today, as faithful Catholics living in an age of revolution within the Church, are accustomed to questioning novelties and searching out the older, traditional ways. With such a mindset, one may even begin to question the current (correct!) form of the prayer as being a modernist dilution of the Catholic Faith toward notions of universal salvation. A few words on this allegation are in order.
In those early years after the Fatima apparitions, nothing was known of the content of the Great Secret. We are still today awaiting the publication of Our Lady’s words in the Third part of the Secret (beginning, “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved”), but we now know the elements which preceded it – the Vision of Hell, Our Lady’s words beginning “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go,” and the Vision of the Bishop Dressed in White. The context alone of that terrifying Vision of Hell makes it abundantly clear that the prayer which Our Lady then urged the children to pray could hardly have been focused on the plight of the faithful departed in Purgatory.
The larger context of the Fatima apparitions, as well, leads us to understand that the Fatima Decade Prayer concerns sinners – as yet unrepentant, in need of conversion, and in grave danger of taking their place among the countless droves falling into hell at every moment. This is seen from the very beginning in the exhortations and prayers of the Angel, and in the repeated pleas of Our Lady to pray and sacrifice ourselves on behalf of sinners. Recall especially Her poignant words in urging upon us the First Saturday reparatory devotions for the conversion of sinners, and especially for that definitive act of reparation to Her Immaculate Heart through the Consecration of Russia:
“So numerous are the souls which the Justice of God condemns for sins against Me that I come to ask for reparation.”
Those countless souls who are condemned for sins against the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as Father Alonso stresses, are predominantly non-Catholics. The five particular blasphemies which Our Lord named to Sister Lucia are militant denials of Catholic teaching and practice, now found as the actual tenets of Protestantism and even Orthodoxy to a lesser extent. Our Lady of Fatima’s solicitation for souls is clearly not just about Catholics who died in the state of grace and now find themselves abandoned in Purgatory.
The very words “universal salvation” are distasteful to us since we know them as an heretical affront to Catholic teaching – part and parcel with the “ecumania” of the post-conciliar years and particularly championed by John Paul II. We know from Our Lord’s own words on this subject that – tragically – relatively few souls are saved. But should we not desire the salvation of everyone? God Himself certainly desires it.
“[Let] supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men … for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, Who will have all men to be saved.” (1 Tim 2: 1, 3-4)
“The Lord … dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.” (2 Pet 3: 9)
When we recite the Our Father (the most perfect vocal prayer) and pray “Thy Kingdom come,” we are praying for the accomplishment of God’s will for the salvation of all men. The sentiments of the correct version of the Fatima Decade Prayer are no less Catholic!
But to return to the original question, how do we know which is the correct version?
Answer: Through Sister Lucia’s explicit clarification.
In a 1946 interview with Canon Barthas on this controversy, Sister Lucia set the record straight. The Fatima Decade Prayer does not refer to the Holy Souls in Purgatory at all, she assured him, since they are on a sure path to Heaven, but rather to unrepentant sinners since they are in grave danger of damnation. (See Frère Michel’s account of the interview linked below.)
Moreover, it was in the manner in which the prayer is currently recited that the child Lucia related it to her pastor, Father Ferreira, in an interrogation of August 21, 1917, only a little more than a month after Our Lady had taught it to the children. This is also the way Sister Lucia recorded it in her Third and Fourth Memoirs in 1941, noting explicitly in her Third Memoir, “Now Your Excellency will understand how my own impression was that the final words of this prayer refer to souls in greatest danger of damnation, or those who are nearest to it.” We reproduce here the relevant lines from the manuscript of the Fourth Memoir:
(See António Maria Martins, S.J., Memórias e Cartas da Irmã Lúcia, pp. 340-343.)
How, then, did the confusion arise? It was Canon Manuel Formigao who introduced the erroneous version, having mistakenly assumed from the Portuguese word “alminhas” [little souls] that the prayer’s object was the poor souls in Purgatory. With good intentions, he was led by this error to rephrase the prayer to reflect that meaning. In his book Os Episódios Maravilhosos de Fátima, published in 1921, he gave this (as he later admitted) skewed report of his interview with Lucia:
(Emphasis added. Our thanks to a native Portuguese friend of Our Lady’s Apostolate for translating the above excerpt into English.)
Once we understand that the confusion originated in 1921, it is easy to see why many of the pilgrims to Fatima in those early decades (20s and 30s) recited the prayer in an erroneous manner. Moreover, we can see why Sister Lucia deemed it important to make the necessary correction through her Memoirs and interviews. Finally, we can even understand how today, more than 100 years after Our Lady appeared at Fatima, researchers might uncover testimony from Portuguese faithful living in the 1920s or even the work of Canon Formigao, and mistakenly think that the inclusion of ‘Purgatory” is a more authentic rendition. Informed by this article, devotees of Our Lady of Fatima may with all charity correct these errors.
In addition, the eminent Fatima scholar Frère Michel gives a thorough account of how the confusion came about, and how the whole question was finally resolved, which is reproduced at our website article, “The Prayer for Souls.”