The Miracle of the Sun (Portuguese: Milagre do Sol), also called the Miracle of Fátima, is a series of events that happened on 13 October 1917. A large group of people, estimated to be in the high tens of thousands, gathered in Fátima, Portugal, because three shepherd children—Lúcia Santos, Francisco, and Jacinta Marto—had predicted that the Virgin Mary (known as Our Lady of Fátima) would appear and perform miracles on that day. Newspapers reported that witnesses saw unusual activity in the sky, such as the Sun appearing to move in unusual patterns, come closer to Earth, or shine with many colors. These reports said the event lasted about ten minutes.
After the event, the local bishop started an official investigation in November 1917 to examine witness accounts and determine if the reported visions of Mary were in line with Catholic teachings. The priest leading the investigation was convinced by the agreement among witnesses, including secular reporters, government officials, and others who did not believe in miracles, that they saw unusual solar activity. Bishop José da Silva declared the miracle "worthy of belief" on 13 October 1930, allowing the Catholic Church to officially honor Our Lady of Fátima.
On 13 October 1951, a papal legate, Cardinal Federico Tedeschini, told about one million people gathered in Fátima that Pope Pius XII had seen the miracle of the Sun from the Vatican gardens on four dates in October and November 1950. The long-term interest in the miracle and its related prophecies has greatly influenced the religious practices of many Catholics.
Many scientists and sociologists have studied the event. Critics say the witness accounts are not consistent or clear. Some suggest that people may have been tricked by their eyes after looking at the Sun for a long time and then seeing something unusual.
Background
In the spring of 1916, three Catholic children who were shepherds near Fátima saw an angel in a vision. Starting in May 1917, they also saw the Virgin Mary, whom they called the Lady of the Rosary. The children said the Lady predicted that prayer could end the Great War and that on October 13 of that year, she would reveal her identity and perform a miracle "so that all may believe." Newspapers shared these predictions, and many people traveled to the area as pilgrims. The children's stories caused strong disagreement, with both local non-religious and religious officials criticizing them. A temporary official briefly took the children into care, believing the prophecies were connected to political issues and opposed to the officially non-religious First Portuguese Republic, which began in 1910.
The event
Various reports describe what happened during the event. Many people said that after rain stopped, dark clouds moved apart, showing the Sun as a dark, spinning disc in the sky. The Sun appeared much duller than normal, creating colorful lights over the land, people, and clouds. Witnesses claimed the Sun then moved quickly toward Earth before moving back to its usual place. Some said their wet clothes and the wet, muddy ground dried completely and quickly. Not all people saw the Sun move. Some only saw bright colors, and others saw nothing. Estimates say about 70,000 people were present, though other sources say 50,000 witnesses were there.
Skeptic Brian Dunning noted that a black-and-white photo often mistaken for a picture of the Sun during the event shows dark clouds behind trees and the Sun shining through. He said the photo does not show anything unusual, but photographs cannot capture moving events. The photo, first published in 1951 by L'Osservatore Romano, was later found to have been taken about eight years later in a different town in Portugal, showing a different solar event. Despite this, the incorrect photo is still shared online.
Three children—Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto—who first claimed to see Our Lady of Fátima also said they saw visions of Jesus, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and Saint Joseph blessing people. In her fourth memoir, written in 1941, Lúcia wrote that during their third visit to Cova da Iria on July 13, 1917, she asked the Lady who she was and requested a miracle to prove her identity. The Lady told them to return each month until October, when the miracle would happen.
Father John De Marchi, an Italian Catholic priest and researcher, collected descriptions of the event. He lived in Fátima from 1943 to 1950, interviewing people involved. In his book The Immaculate Heart (1952), he wrote, "Those present on October 13 included believers and non-believers, pious older women and skeptical young men. Many from these groups gave official testimony. Reports differ slightly, but no one denied the visible miracle of the Sun."
De Marchi wrote several books on the topic, including The True Story of Fátima, which include witness accounts. He also used a newspaper article by Avelino de Almeida, a journalist from O Século, who described the crowd’s reactions in detail.
Catholic Church recognition
The event was called a "supernatural occurrence" by the Catholic Church in 1930. A shrine was built near the location in Fátima, and many people have visited it since.
In 1940, Pope Pius XII officially recognized the "Fatima apparitions." Four times during the week when he declared the dogma of the Assumption of Mary (33 years after the event in Fátima), Pope Pius XII said he saw the same "Miracle of the Sun." On October 30, 1950, while walking in the Vatican gardens, he reached the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes and saw the miracle. He wrote in his own notes that he felt "very impressed." He saw the miracle again on October 31, November 1 (the day the dogma was defined), and November 8. He also tried to see the miracle on other days around the same time but was not able to. He shared this information with several Vatican cardinals, with Sr. Pascalina Lehnert (a nun who managed the papal apartments and was his secretary), and in handwritten notes (found in 2008) that were later displayed at the Vatican.
In March 2017, Pope Francis approved the recognition of a miracle involving two children from the Fátima event, Francisco and Jacinta Marto. This approval led to their canonization in May 2017. The third person who saw the apparition, Lúcia Santos, was given the title "Servant of God" in 2017 and was declared "venerable" by Pope Francis on June 22, 2023.
Believers' explanations
Within Catholicism, the event is viewed as Mary, mother of Jesus, fulfilling a promise she made to shepherd children who claimed she appeared to them before October 13, 1917. According to the children’s accounts, Mary, known as the “Lady of Fátima,” promised to perform a miracle to prove the truth of their story. This caused crowds to witness the Sun moving in unusual ways in the sky. For centuries, Catholics have believed Mary to be a powerful “miracle worker,” and this belief continues today. Some theologians and scientists who support religious explanations have discussed the difficulty of explaining the event using science and suggested ways divine action might have caused the solar phenomenon.
Fr. Andrew Pinsent, a research director at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford University, explains that science does not rule out miracles. He says the event at Fátima is seen by many as highly credible. He notes that a common misunderstanding is the belief that scientific laws explain everything, but these laws only describe natural systems when free agents (like humans) are not involved. He concludes that the event was a public miracle of great importance and credibility. He also connects the year 1917 to major historical events, such as the start of Protestantism in 1517, Freemasonry in 1717, and atheistic Communism in 1917, suggesting these events relate to Fátima’s message of repentance.
Stanley L. Jaki, a theologian, physicist, and priest, agrees that divine intervention caused a combination of natural weather events and ice crystals in the air to create the miracle at the exact time predicted. He described how a sudden temperature change might have caused a rotating air lens to move in an oval path, with ice crystals bending sunlight. He noted that one witness later described the movement as oval with small circles, a pattern familiar to those who study fluid dynamics or boomerangs. Jaki argues that the miracle involved a rare coordination of natural factors, which could itself be seen as a miracle. He also says the event was not a common weather occurrence, as it would have been noticed before and after if it were. He believes God often uses natural processes to create miracles.
Jaki encourages believers to trust that a miracle occurred at Fátima and says those who follow Christ should pay attention to evidence supporting miracles. De Marchi, another researcher, believed related events, such as the Sun’s effect on water from heavy rain before the miracle, were genuine. He noted that engineers estimated an enormous amount of energy would be needed to dry the water quickly, as witnesses reported. He also said the event’s sudden start and end, the diverse religious backgrounds of witnesses, the large number of people present, sightings up to 18 kilometers away, and the lack of a known scientific cause make mass hallucination or hysteria unlikely. De Marchi concluded that the miracle must be attributed to God.
Leo Madigan, a former psychiatric nurse and journalist in Fátima, dismissed claims of mass hypnosis. He believed the spiritual nature of the event, along with emotions like fear and awe, explained differences in witness descriptions. He wrote that people saw “the reflection of the Lady’s own light projected on the Sun itself.”
Philippe Dalleur, a priest and philosophy professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, studied photographs of the crowd taken by photographer Judah Ruah. He found evidence of two light sources, one being the “silver sun” described by witnesses, but at an incorrect height to be the real Sun. He noted that witnesses from far away saw the “silver sun” not in the direction of the real Sun but toward Fátima, suggesting it was a real glowing object above the town.
Skeptical explanations
Scientists, religious experts, and people who question unusual events have discussed claims about the Sun's unusual behavior. Science writer Benjamin Radford explains that the Sun did not actually move or dance in the sky. He says that if the Sun had changed its movement, people around the world would have noticed it. Radford suggests that psychological factors, such as the power of suggestion and seeing patterns where there are none, may explain why some people reported unusual events. He notes that people who claimed to see the Miracle of the Sun or other miracles likely saw something real, but their experiences were mostly in their minds. Radford also says it is unclear what the weather was like during the miracle, and old photographs from the event do not show heavy rain as reported.
In a book called The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary (1983), Kevin McClure, a former editor of a journal, wrote that Marian apparition events are hard to explain and are different from other strange events like UFO sightings. McClure says that while it is possible a miraculous event happened, the accounts of the Miracle of the Sun are not consistent. He explains that during confusing events, people's memories and perceptions may become unclear, which makes it hard to trust the details of what was seen. McClure was not talking about the Miracle of the Sun when he said he had never seen such conflicting reports before, but rather about other visions.
Professor Lisa J. Schwebel, a religion expert, says that claims about the miracle are hard to believe. She points out that no one who was present saw the miracle, and witnesses gave different descriptions of what they saw. Schwebel also notes that no real photograph of the event exists, even though many reporters and photographers were there. One photo often shown as proof is actually a picture of a solar eclipse taken in another part of the world before 1917. Some witnesses said they expected the miracle to happen because they had heard earlier that the Sun’s light might change. For example, a witness named Joaquim Gregório Tavares said people were thinking about possible changes in the Sun’s color. Villagers in Alburitel also prepared for the miracle by darkening glass with candle smoke so they could look at the Sun safely.
Some people, like Father Pio Scatizzi, suggest that the miracle was not a trick or a natural event but a divine occurrence. However, critics say that people could have been tricked by their senses or seen a natural phenomenon. Benjamin Radford explains that staring at the Sun for a long time can cause the eyes to tire, making the Sun appear to move. Physicist Auguste Meessen says that optical effects from the human eye, such as images left on the eyes after looking at the Sun, could explain the reported dancing of the Sun. Meessen also says that changes in the Sun’s color were likely caused by the eyes’ sensitivity to light. A lawyer named Coelho reported seeing the same movements and colors in the Sun a few days later, which made him question whether the event was truly unusual.
Meessen notes that similar "Sun miracles" have been reported in other places where large groups of religious people stared at the Sun. He gives an example from Germany in 1949, where over 10,000 people saw similar effects. Meessen also mentions a scientific article that discusses modern examples of such events. Meteorologist Prof. Stöckl proposed a similar idea about natural causes.
Some scientists think that clouds, dust in the air, and sunlight could have created the visual effects. In 1989, Steuart Campbell suggested that a cloud of dust in the sky on October 13 changed the Sun’s appearance, making it look yellow, blue, or violet and causing it to seem like it was spinning. Campbell supports this by mentioning that a similar blue and red Sun was reported in China in 1983. Paul Simons wrote that dust from the Sahara might have caused some of the effects seen at Fátima.
Skeptical investigator Joe Nickell says that the "dancing Sun" effects were likely caused by a mix of optical effects and weather conditions, such as seeing the Sun through thin clouds, which can make it look like a silver disc. Other possibilities include changes in cloud density making the Sun appear to brighten and dim, or dust and moisture in the air creating unusual visual effects.