FALL RIVER, Mass. — When Katrina Pacheco first learned that the Virgin Mary had appeared in 1917 to three children in Fatima, Portugal, the story stirred a desire to imitate their courage under fire. 

“They were vulnerable — they were poor, and they were children, but they followed Mary’s call to share her message of faith and peace,” Pacheco, 23, who works as a phlebotomist at a local hospital, told the Register.

“Those kids were so brave and had so much courage, even as they were called liars by people in their town. It made me feel that I could make a difference; I could be a saint, too,” she added. 

Fatima’s invitation to holiness was part of the air Pacheco breathed as a Portuguese-American student attending Espirito Santo Catholic School in Fall River, Massachusetts, where stories about Fatima and Marian processions marking the May 13 feast day of the first apparition were woven into the fabric of community life.

The grandchild of Portuguese immigrants who clung to their faith in their adopted land, Pacheco was deeply moved that the Virgin Mary had appeared in the land of her ancestors, making the story of the three children, Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, “very personal.” 

Now as a young adult who will join the Diocese of Fall River’s upcoming pilgrimage to World Youth Day Aug. 1-6 in Lisbon, Portugal, the Massachusetts native will be able to visit the shrine at Fatima for the first time and ponder anew the miraculous events that continue to reverberate in her own faith journey. 

Indeed, Pacheco enrolled in the pilgrimage at the very time that many young cradle Catholics in the United States are drifting away from the faith, or actively rejecting its countercultural teachings on hot-button issues like abortion and gender identity. Thus, the decision by a young adult to take part in the 2023 event, and embrace the opportunity to strengthen her relationship with the Lord and his Mother Mary, holds greater significance today perhaps than at any time since Pope St. John Paul II announced the first World Youth Day in 1986. 

 

Historical Context

At the same time, Oscar Rivera, director of youth ministry for the Diocese of Fall River, believes that the rich historical context of the Fatima apparitions, Our Lady’s call for peace and her prescient warnings of coming global conflicts, provide fertile soil for young Catholics who have bucked the trend toward religious disaffiliation and look to the Church to find a worthy purpose for their life. 

World Youth Day, Rivera told the Register, can help pilgrims “see where they can insert themselves within the greater story of the Catholic Church.” 

Twenty-three Catholics, ages 18-25, have signed up for the Fall River pilgrimage, which Rivera will lead. 

The group will visit Fatima, where Pope Francis is scheduled to celebrate Mass and speak with young Catholics, as well as Lisbon, Santarém, the site of a 13th-century Eucharistic miracle, and the Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal composed of nine volcanic islands about 870 miles west of Lisbon. Massachusetts, California and Rhode Island have the largest population of Portuguese Americans in the U.S. 

All of the Fall River pilgrims were raised speaking Portuguese, with parents or grandparents emigrating from Portugal, the Azores, Cape Verde, or Brazil. 

But for most of the group, this year’s pilgrimage is their first opportunity to explore their ancestral roots, said Rivera. 

And to prepare the group to make the most of their time together, Rivera has hosted social gatherings, Eucharistic adoration and presentations on the Fatima apparitions, while encouraging each member to take time for personal reflection and prayer. 

 

A Pivotal Moment

Bishop Edgar da Cunha of Fall River, who will attend World Youth Day and celebrate Mass with the diocese’s pilgrims, told the Register that this year’s event comes at a pivotal moment for the Church in the West, with falling rates of Mass attendance among the young, even as many struggle with mental-health issues like anxiety and depression. 

The Brazilian-born bishop was installed in Fall River in 2014. By then, he had already attended World Youth Day the previous year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he served as a bishop-catechist.

“I could see the enthusiasm, hope and joy of the young people,” he said, adding that the global gathering has helped young Catholics reject the false message of the secular world that “being faithful is just for older people.” 

As he headed to Portugal, the bishop said he prays that the young pilgrims from his diocese “will be awakened to live and share their faith.” 

But he is leaving nothing to chance and has directed the diocese’s assistant vocations director, a newly ordained priest, to join the group, provide encouragement, and get to know the pilgrims. 

“We have to make sure there is follow-up that we can build on, so the enthusiasm of World Youth Day is not forgotten,” and these young people will step up and become “missionaries” to their peers, he said.

The diocese’s vocations office and youth ministry office both operate under the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for the New Evangelization, signaling the local Church’s sharper focus on engaging the young and coordinating that effort across various departments.

As he explained this effort, the bishop acknowledged the difficulty of overcoming a legacy of weak catechetical and intellectual formation. These problems, he said, make young Catholics “more vulnerable to secular” influences in the culture and in higher education. 

At the same time, he greatly values the spiritual power of ethnic traditions that have helped immigrant families “preserve the faith” in a foreign land and inspire their offspring to stick with the faith and even embrace the chance to join a pilgrimage to World Youth Day. 

 

‘Bathtub Mary’

Joe Silveira, a 25-year-old engineer specializing in solar energy, told the Register he went to public school during his childhood and adolescence. 

But his Catholic parents emigrated from the Azores, and the family prayed the Rosary daily, while many in the neighborhood built outdoor shrines celebrating their devotion to Our Lady.

“In the Diocese of Fall River, a pretty good way of knowing if someone is Portuguese is to see whether they have what we sometimes call a ‘bathtub Mary,’” reported Silveira, a young Catholic from Taunton, Massachusetts, who will join the pilgrimage. “This is a statue of Our Lady inside of an old bathtub that has been converted into a shrine with bricks around it.” 

When Silveira signed up for World Youth Day, his initial impulse was “partly motivated by a desire to see Portugal and Fatima.” It took time, he admitted, to accept that he needed to become more intentional about his involvement with the group. 

His spiritual reading in preparation for the trip has included a memoir by Sister Lucia, who Pope Francis declared “Venerable” June 22. 

“She speaks about what she and her cousins went through, how they were visited by Our Lady, told to pray without ceasing and to make sacrifices for the conversion of sinners,” he said.

The memoir also touches on “a private revelation, basically the idea that the world was headed in a downward spiral and there would be great pain in the 20th century, which is still going on.”

The sweeping spiritual and global events addressed in the memoir have led Silveira to reflect on the contrasting concerns of his own generation, exposing a stark disconnect between two different visions of life.

“My generation is worried about what is in front of them: themselves, their future, what they want,” he said. “They have no time to look at the past, which is a shame.”

Likewise, he and his friends have been formed by new technologies unknown in Venerable Lucia’s day.

Digital media and the smartphone provide instant gratification, said Silveira, but leave many of his peers with “no time to reflect and find deeper truths.” As a result, they may cling to “their truth.”

The pilgrimage will offer a fresh perspective on that pattern of behavior, and he welcomes the time set aside for Christian fellowship and for personal prayer that will help him to confirm God’s will for his life.

 

Daughter of Immigrants

Larissa Feitosa, age 19, a student at the Community College of Rhode Island and the daughter of Brazilian immigrants, didn’t grow up with a special devotion to Our Lady of Fatima and initially resisted a friend’s effort to “rope” her into the pilgrimage. 

But her mother, a hardworking housecleaner and a committed Catholic, spoke often of her devotion to Our Lady of the Conception Aparecida, proclaimed queen and patron of Brazil by Pope Pius XI in 1930.

The story of the Brazilian fisherman who pulled from the water a statue of Our Lady with a black face that looked like the people of that area was at the core of the family’s faith life. 

The statue is venerated by Brazilian Catholics and many other Latin Americans who seek the Virgin’s aid and celebrate her miraculous intercession. And Feitosa’s mother often pointed to Our Lady of Aparecida to remind the family that the “faith isn’t just a religion for white people or those born in Israel,” but for people like them.

And though her mother would not be able to leave her children “money and jewels” when she died, she often repeated her pledge to give them a spiritual inheritance, a deep, loving relationship with the Lord, which would guide their lives and give them strength in hard times.

During her mid-teens, Feitosa said she briefly distanced herself from her mother’s passion for the faith, but she has slowly come back. The next step on her journey is the pilgrimage to Portugal. She is looking forward to the time she will have with other young adults and hopes that the global gathering of joyful young Catholics will inspire the curiosity and interest of peers who believe that Christ has nothing to offer them and maybe bring them back to Mass.

“This isn’t just our grandparents’ faith,” she said. “It is for all of us who are children of God.”

 

Maturing of Faith

Katrina Pacheco echoed this hope, as she considered the steady maturing of a childhood faith enlivened by the witness of three brave shepherd children from Fatima. 

“Sometimes it is difficult to be part of my generation, when not everyone feels the same way I do,” she admitted. 

Sometimes she fears that peers will judge her “harshly” for being a practicing Catholic. But then she pauses to remember that such treatment is part of the Christian vocation and must be accepted. 

For now, however, she is devoting more time to daily prayer and reading spiritual works provided by Rivera.

“It is helping me focus on trusting God and being joyful, no matter what,” said Pacheco.

Looking ahead, she is gearing up to apply to a physician assistant program, but is equally concerned with passing on the faith to the next generation. 

“I do hope,” she said, “that if we continue to pray, and start from a young age to teach children about Jesus and God’s love, it will make a difference.”

And for this Fall River Catholic, the Fatima story offers real inspiration for the renewal of faith in a hostile and indifferent world. 

Despite the many hurdles faced by Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, the children “were still able to get Our Lady’s message across,” said Pacheco. “It is important for us to remember that even those in such a vulnerable position were heard. We can do this.”