Growing up in a Catholic household, I periodically heard about various apparitions of the Virgin Mary around the world. And I’d heard the word Fatima mentioned many times without ever really knowing anything about what happened there. I still don’t know a ton, but here’s what I’ve managed to piece together so far:

1. Fatima is a small town in Portugal, which is named after the prophet Muhammad’s daughter.
2. According to some sources, Fatima was actually an Arabian goddess associated with the moon, which was incorporated into the legend of Muhammad to be his fictional daughter, Fatima Zahra.
3. Prior to being a Catholic holy site, I’ve read that the town of Fatima was actually a Muslim place of pilgrimage, and that supposedly people would experience visions of Fatima there.
4. The original Catholic apparitions at Fatima occurred in 1917 to three shepherd children.
5. Most of the apparitions instructed the children to do penance and sacrifice for others, and most importantly to pray the Rosary every day.
6. At her last visit, a crowd of 70,000 is said to have been gathered, and witnessed the sun doing all kinds of crazy things like “dancing” and shooting up and down in the sky. Of course, not everyone in the crowd saw this and photographers on the scene didn’t capture anything on film.
7. There are supposed to be “three secrets” of Fatima, besides all that stuff about praying the Rosary.
8. The first one deals with the nature of Hell. Which, to me personally is crap, because the Virgin Mary is supposed to be all about grace and gentleness and mercy. Why would she give a message of fear and authoritarian punishment? Smells like there’s an alternate agenda here.
9. The second secret deals more explicitly with that agenda, I think. Now, I had to look up the dates, but 1917 is coincidentally the year that the Tsar in Russia was overthrown. The Soviet Union wasn’t established for a few years yet, but I’m sure the political turmoil - and consequently possibility - was very evident to those in power in Europe. Anyway, COINCIDENTALLY the Virgin Mary’s second message at Fatima was that Russia must be consecrated by the Holy Father (the pope) to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And that if it was not, “Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will suffer much and various nations will be annihilated.” Cold War propaganda already, and from the Mother of Jesus, no less!
10. The third secret of Fatima wasn’t revealed until the year 2000. Supposedly the Virgin said that it could be revealed after 1940 but not later than 1960. It’s being withheld as long as it was caused great controversy and speculation. The Vatican has a page devoted to the third secret of Fatima where you can read it in more detail. It has to do with a vision of the Pope being murdered. In the vision, it’s by a group of soldiers. The Vatican’s interpretation however is that had to do with the 1981 assassination attempt on the Pope. The story goes that the Pope bent down to hug a little girl wearing a Fatima medal, and as a result the bullets hit him in the abdomen instead of the head, as planned. This explanation makes no sense of course. If you are aiming at somebody’s head, and then they duck down, you will miss them altogether, rather than hit them lower than you planned. Once again, it sounds to me like a fabrication of a magical story in order to explain events which took place, and give them a miraculous air of authenticity.
11. Another absolute crock of shit use of the Fatima story as propaganda has to do with the atomic bombing at Nagasaki in 1945. There is a legend that says a Jesuit church rectory only several hundred meters from the center of the explosion was not damaged, and that the 4-8 priests on the premises were completely unharmed. Magically, of course, the Father who ran the place is always quoted as saying that in this church, the “message of Fatima was being lived” and they were praying the Rosary every day, yadda yadda yadda. Of course, people have tried to track down the historical reality of what happened to the Jesuits at Nagasaki, and the truth of the situation is anything but clear or consistent. Here’s a website that does a detailed analysis of all the varying, inconsistent and unbelieved accounts.
12. Wikipedia also has a list of other Marian apparitions throughout history for further research.