Fatima Parent Guide

“Faith”, Sister Lucia de Jesus de dos Santos tells a visiting professor, “begins at the edges of understanding. What’s faith if not the search for truth?” Professor Nichols (played by Harvey Keitel) wants to learn more about Sister Lucia’s (Sonia Braga) role in the “miracle of Fatima”. He’s looking for truth (or to debunk Sister Lucia’s story) – and he’s not the first one to try.

In 1917, Lucia Santos (Stephanie Gil) is ten years old and is filled with awe when she sees an angel, who directs her to pray for peace. But there’s more to come. While herding sheep, Lucia and her younger cousins Jacinta and Francisco (Alejandra Howard and Jorge Lamelas), pray to the Virgin Mary, only to be astonished by a visitation from the Lady of the Rosary herself. She asks the children to return to the site every month and urges them to pray.

As word of the visitation spreads, the children are besieged by throngs of people seeking miracles. Despite their devout Catholicism, parents and clergy pressure the children to recant their story. Their concern is not just the local disruption and the children’s souls, but also their safety. Portugal has a staunchly anti-clerical government and as the children inspire fellow Catholics, the local mayor (Goran Visnjic) is ordered to bring an end to their religious activities. Fortunately, Mary has promised the children a miracle…

Fatima is clearly a movie for believers, telling the story from the children’s point of view. Devout Catholics will likely find the film faith-promoting but I’m not sure about other people of faith. Distinctive Catholic beliefs and iconography can feel unfamiliar to non-Catholics, even if they are Christians of other denominations. That said, there is considerable merit in learning more about other religions, especially from an inside perspective, and that makes Fatima worthwhile viewing for anyone who’s interested in examining miracles from a Catholic standpoint.

As expected in a religious film, there is no gratuitous negative content, but there is some plot-related violence, both war imagery, and some mildly gruesome religious scenes. Visions of hell and of future wars and assassinations are brief but might be disturbing to some viewers. I even thought that some of the movie’s more eerie moments, if set to a different soundtrack, would fit right into a horror movie (i.e. a child dreaming of a statue whispering to her and then ejecting a snake, a woman showing blood dripping from her pierced heart, visions of hell, a foretelling of children’s funerals).

Production quality is also good, avoiding the plastic-y feeling that religious movies often have, and the locations in Portugal are authentic. The child actors are a bit flat, but that’s more common than not, and not worth skipping the movie for.

Other issues aside, the best reason to watch Fatima is for the questions it raises. Do miracles happen? Why do some people receive miracles and others don’t? Do divine or saintly beings watch over humans? Why would God choose to work through small, powerless children? Why would God let people suffer when they are doing his will? And perhaps the biggest question of all – is seeing believing or is believing seeing?