You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for May 12th, 2020. This week on the Catholic Sprouts

podcast, we are talking about our lady of Fatima and the three poor shepherd children

that she appear to, Lucia, Jacinta, and her brother, Francisco.

Now, yesterday we talked about how the year before Mary appeared.

At three different times, Mary sent an angel to the children.

The angel identified himself as the angel of peace and the protector of Portugal,

and he taught these children

three prayers to pray. One thing we didn't mention yesterday is the time period that this took place.

Like we said, it took place just over 100 years ago. So if you do the math, that is 1917, and the world was in the midst of a terrible war at that time.

They refer to it as the Great War, but we now call it World War I.

During that war, over 38 million people died.

That is horrifying, my friends. The whole world was involved in this war.

Many, many people died. And this is important because Mary appeared with the message of peace. And she spoke often when she was talking to the children about how to end this war,

how heaven so desperately wanted this war to end. Now, we're going to talk about that all

because today we are diving into the times when Mary appeared to these children. So here is what happened. On May 13th, 1917,

these three poor shepherd children, Lucia, Hacintha, and her brother Francisco were out in the

pasture with their sheep. Now the angel had been visiting them the year before and they were so

dedicated to the prayers

that he had taught them.

So they were in this pasture, and having just finished eating their lunch, they had kneeled

down and were reciting some of the prayers that the angel taught them.

All of a sudden, up above a small tree, they saw a brilliant light. And soon, as they looked into the

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