De Fatima numquam satis
By Roberto de Mattei | 13 May 2026
De Maria numquam satis — so runs a saying attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. An international conference will be held on this theme in Rome this October, with the aim of deepening the unfathomable mystery of the greatness of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary.
But 13 May reminds us that 109 years have passed since the apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima, which began on 13 May 1917 and concluded on 13 October of the same year. In these apparitions, Our Lady entrusted a prophetic message addressed to all humanity to three little shepherds: Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. The message contained the announcement of a series of catastrophes that would befall the world, should it fail to return to the respect for and love of the law of the Lord. The spirit of prayer and penance, the practice of reparatory Communion on the First Saturdays of the month, and the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart were the conditions explicitly required in order to avert the chastisement hanging over the world on account of the sins of men. The message was therefore conditional — yet its conclusion was unconditional: the final triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
One hundred and nine years have passed, and yet we, paraphrasing Saint Bernard, might say, De Fatima numquam satis. Enough has not been said, and enough can never be said, about Fatima — not least because it is an “open” prophecy, which still awaits its fulfilment.
Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort opens his celebrated Treatise on True Devotion to Mary with these words: “Through the most holy Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ came into the world; through her again he must reign in the world.”
The entire theology of Mary’s universal mediation is contained within this axiom, which the saint develops at length throughout his Treatise. It is the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, which divides humanity into two epochs: before and after the coming of Jesus Christ. No one, like Mary — the most pure daughter of Saints Joachim and Anne — knew the biblical prophecies and the divine promise of the Old Testament, which foretold the coming of a Messiah, the Redeemer of humanity. Mary had not pursued theological studies, yet the depth of her intellect and the ardour of her Immaculate Heart immersed her ever more deeply, day by day, in humble contemplation of the mystery which the Lord concealed from the minds of the proud.
Mary had before her eyes the moral decadence of the Roman Empire and the tragedy of her own people — that of Israel — hardened and unfaithful to its mission. Yet she never doubted the fulfilment of the ancient promises. A Saviour would come, differently from what his people expected, and through his sacrifice he would redeem the world. All the evils of the earth were a consequence of the original sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve. She would be the new Eve, chosen to be associated with the new Adam, Christ the Redeemer. Death, says Saint Jerome, came through Eve; life would come through Mary.
This mystery was revealed by the Archangel Gabriel to the Most Blessed Virgin at Nazareth, on the night of the Annunciation, and She, with her Fiat, consented to the Incarnation of the Word. Thus it was that, through her, Jesus Christ came into the world. How then will Jesus, through her, reign over the world? The Treatise on True Devotion explains that the reign of Jesus Christ over the world is not a kingship of right — which already belongs to him — but a kingship of fact, a historical kingship, which he has not yet exercised in its fullness. This second event remains shrouded in mystery, but, as in the Incarnation of the Word, Mary will play a decisive role within it. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira wrote seventy years ago:
“The Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, what else can it be, if not the Kingdom of the Most Blessed Virgin prophesied by Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort? And this Kingdom — what else can it be, if not that age of virtue in which humanity, reconciled with God in the bosom of the Church, will live upon earth according to the Law, preparing itself for the glories of Heaven?”1
Fatima’s message confirms this. It will be through devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that Christ will reign over the world; and the Kingdom of Christ over the world will be likewise the Kingdom of Mary — the resplendent triumph of her Immaculate Heart. After the apparitions at Fatima, both Our Lady and Jesus himself confirmed on numerous occasions to Saint Jacinta Marto — who died at the age of nine on 20 February 1920 — and to Sister Lucia dos Santos — who died at the age of ninety-seven on 13 February 2005 — the urgency and meaning of this theology of history. On 3 January 1944, at Tuy, before writing down the Third Secret, Sister Lucia had a vision of a terrible cosmic catastrophe, but then felt within her heart, like an infallible presentiment, “a gentle voice that said: In time, one faith, one baptism, one Church, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic. In eternity, Heaven!”
All the Popes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have reaffirmed the authenticity of this Message. Over the course of the 109 years that have elapsed, a great devotion to Fatima has grown and spread. Statues of the Pilgrim Madonna have travelled to every corner of the earth; countless books have been printed, reaching print runs of millions of copies; conferences and congresses have been organised, the most recent in 2017, the centenary year. So many prayers have been raised to Heaven. And yet, today, Our Lady of Fatima appears as the great forgotten. Never before, as at this moment, have international events — in all their dramatic gravity — rendered so relevant what Our Lady announced in 1917; and never before has it been more important to nourish hope in the final triumph that she has promised. Yet confidence in this triumph appears to have languished in souls, who too often lack true supernatural spirit and ground their devotion to Our Lady in fragile and wavering sentiments.
And yet this is the hour of the theological virtue of hope — founded not on sentiment, but on reason and faith. Not everything has been said about Fatima, and not everything has yet come to pass: De Fatima numquam satis. This is not the hour of weariness and flight; it is the hour of the great return to Fatima, of confident struggle for the victory of Mary — Mediatrix, Co-Redemptrix, triumphant Queen of Heaven and earth — because “through her Jesus Christ came into the world, and through her again he must reign in the world”.
Notes
- Catolicismo, n. 84, December 1957) ↩︎