The Exhibition

In the third year of the celebration of the Centennial of the Apparitions of Fatima, the Shrine of Fatima inaugurated, on Saturday November 24, an exhibition recalling the apparition of June 1917. This exhibition, titled “To be, the secret of the Heart”, will stay open to the public until October 31, 2013.
It is composed of six sets of documents and works of art, which lead the visitor to an experience both physical and mental of the different themes relative to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These themes are treated in their historical and theological and spiritual aspects by means of the above mentioned documents and works of art.
Three artists (Cristina Leiria, Helena Langrouva and Ricardo Campos) were purposely invited to create works of art to be shown at this exhibition, together with the historico-artistic collection of the Shrine’s Museum, the collection of the Archives of the Diocese of Leiria-Fatima and pieces from private collections and collections from several religious and cultural institutions.
Amongst the most symbolic pieces, we find a sculpture of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, conceived by José Ferreira Thedim according to indications given by seer Lucia, which, for the first time, left the Carmelite Convent of St. Teresa of Coimbra, where it has remained since it was sculptured in 1948. It is also here that, for the first time, the original manuscripts of the Memoirs of Sister Lucia are being exhibited, open in the pages referring the apparition of June 1917. These pages contain the narration which makes known one of the most important chapters of the Message of Fatima, namely the first part of the Secret relative to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. “To be, the secret of the Heart” intends to give a contribution to the reflection on this Marian devotion, which, although it was already known by the faithful since the XVII century, gains a universal and contemporaneous reach from Fatima.

Marco Daniel Duarte
Curator