Ralph

I walked around looking through the little Fatima booklet. I don’t know what I was hoping to find—I didn’t really think it was going to tell you what to do if you come across a rock that looks like Jesus—but there was some pretty interesting stuff. “Listen to this,” I said, and read out loud to Lou, from a prayer to Mary: “The hope for peace you brought long ago to the children of Fatima is needed today more than ever.”

Lou agreed. She was still in front of the mirror, working on her veil.

The book went on about those three messages Mary gave the children. Sister told us about those.

The first one was about Hell and how we’re all going there if we don’t start behaving and saying the rosary every day to help us behave. Mary even gave the children a little glimpse of what it’s like down there. Sister said they couldn’t speak for three days afterwards, that’s how horrible it was, what they saw.

The second message was about Russia and how everyone has to pray for the Russians to believe in God instead of Communism. Sister said in Russia if they find out you believe in God they torture you to make you say you don’t believe. Kevin Bellamy asked her for an example and she said sometimes they pull out your fingernails, one by one with a pair of pliers, and nodded around at us, meaning yes, they really do that. Kevin Bellamy asked her for another example but she shook her head and said the important thing was, how many of us could stand being tortured like that without denying our faith? She told us to put our hands down, she wasn’t asking for a show of hands.

The children never told what the third message was. But the older one, Lucia, wrote it down for the Pope to open in 1960. So that was two years ago and everyone’s still waiting. I don’t know what’s keeping him.

The booklet had a picture of the Pope in a beanie praying to a statue of Mary in a crown, the Queen of Heaven. There was a dove down by her feet. That’s for peace, the dove, peace on earth. I couldn’t tell if it was a real dove or part of the statue.