In May 1917, three children in Portugal announced that they had witnessed an apparition of the Virgin Mary in a rural field. The messages they said they received would later be interpreted as prophecies that shaped anti-communist feeling during the Cold War. Decades later, in 1992, a witness described the reported “miracles” to the BBC. On 13 May 1917, 10-year-old Lucia dos Santos and her younger cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, were tending sheep near Fátima when they claimed to see a