Movie-making friars re-create message of Our Lady of Fatima (November 18, 2016)
By Katie Breidenbach (Special to The Criterion)
MONROE COUNTY—A small helicopter-like drone follows three children dressed in the garb of the early 1900s as they run through a field on the outskirts of Bloomington. Adding to the incongruity of the spectacle, a gray-habited friar holds the drone’s remote control.
The friar behind the drone is Brother Didacus Maria Cortes of the Franciscans of the Immaculate. He and his fellow friar, Brother Gabriel Cortes, are using the latest video technology to re-create a story that is a century old.
“We’re heading into the 100-year anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima,” Brother Didacus explained, “and right now there are so many wars going on. And the answer to these wars is to go back to the message of Our Lady of Fatima.”
The friars who made the film live and minister from a friary adjacent to the Our Lady of the Redeemer Retreat Center in Monroe County.
In 1917, as World War I raged across Europe, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal. She instructed them, and the world, to pray and make sacrifices for the conversion of sinners and the end of the war. During the preceding year, to prepare Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco Marto for this message, an angel calling himself “the Angel of Peace” appeared to the children three times and taught them how to pray.
The friars are re-creating these three angelic visits, with the accompanying call to prayer and penance, for a 15-minute film.
Source: Movie-making friars re-create message of Our Lady of Fatima (November 18, 2016)
