The Intimate Life of Sister Lucia by Fr. Robert J. Fox
“What I recommend to you above all else is that you get close to the tabernacle and pray. In this you will find the light, the strength, and the grace that you can pass on to others. . . . For this reason they need more and more to pray . . . . Let time be lacking for everything else but never for prayer and you will experience the fact that after prayer you will accomplish a lot in a short period of time” ( p. 317-31 
Lúcia de Jesus Rosa Santos – Sister Lúcia of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart, better known as Sister Lúcia of Jesus and was a Portuguese visionary and Roman Catholic Discalced Carmelite nun. She was one of the three children who experienced a series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Fátima, Portugal in 1917.
Lucia de Jesus dos Santos was born in Aljustrel, a village in the parish of Fátima, Portugal. Her parents were Antonio and Maria Rosa dos Santos. She was the youngest of seven children, six girls and a boy. By 8 she was occupied with the tending of the family’s sheep, accompanied by other boys and girls of the village.
It was while in the company of her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, that the first heavenly apparition occurred, that of the Angel of Portugal, come to prepare the young trio for their mission and for an even greater visitor.
On May 13, 1917, when Lucia was 10 years old and while tending the sheep in the Cova de Iria, a woman, who later identified herself as the Blessed Virgin Mary, appeared to the children. The apparition would continue monthly on the 13th of the month until October 1917, excepts in August, when imprisonment by the anti-clerical authorities prevented it. During each month’s apparition, the Virgin encouraged prayer, especially the rosary, and sacrifice. She also communicated certain prophecies of the future (the end of World War I, the rise of error in Russia (communism) and its propagation throughout the world, the annihilation of nations, another war preceded by a heavenly sign if men did not convert, and the suffering and persecution of the good, especially the Holy Father). On Oct. 13, 1930, the bishop of Leiria-Fátima, José Alves Correia da Silva, declared the apparitions of Fátima worthy of credibility and allowed public devotion to the Virgin under the title of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fátima.
This book of The Intimate Life of Sister Lucia will stir the hearts of many with new documents on Sister Lucia. Never, ever before, in the 2000 year history of the Church has God required a humble Sister, with little formal education, to call the Pope and the Bishops of the World to an action which would change the direction of the world. Such was the misson given Lucia, one of the little shepherds of Fatima. What has the intimate life of Lucia of Fatima been like these long decades since? Fr. Martins, who in 1973 first gave us the Memoirs and Letters of Sr. Lucia in Portuguese, French and English, now gives us, through the Fatima Family Apostolate, documents which have waited until the Third Millenium before they could be published.
