From 1646 till Manuel 11 was deposed in 1910 no Portuguese monarch has ever worn a crown. And the reason is this. In 1646 King João 1V, before the entire court at Vila Viçosa, took the crown from his own head and placed it at the feet of a statue of the Blessed Virgin and declared that she was to be the Queen and Patroness of Portugal under the title of the Immaculate Conception.
Then, by oath, he bound himself and his successors to defend the dogma that the Blessed Virgin was conceived free from original sin. The event was inscribed on stone tablets in every town in the land and Portugal became A Terra de Nossa Senhora.
1946 marked the third centenary of the reign of Our Blessed Lady over the country and there were festivities up and down the land. There were two high points to these celebrations. The first was on May 13th when it is estimated that up to, and perhaps over, a million pilgrims gathered at Cova da Iria to witness the personal Legate of Pope Pius X11, Cardinal Aloisio Benedetto Masella, place a precious crown on the head of the little statue of Our Lady of Fatima. The gold and the precious stones that went into the making of the crown, as we have seen, were freely given by the women of Portugal from their personal jewel caskets. The kings no longer sat on the thrones but the Immaculate Conception, the Queen of Portugal, still reigned, under the additional title of Our Lady of Fatima.
The second high point was on December 8th 1946, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It was decided that the statue would be taken from Fatima to Lisbon in solemn procession. In Lisbon, in the ancient cathedral, the Sé, in the name of the hierarchy, the Government of the Republic and the People of Portugal, the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon would formally renew the consecration of the nation to the Immaculate Conception.
The procession started out from Fatima on November 22nd. The platform that bore the statue was two metres long and one metre wide. On it steps were built up to a height of 1.3 metres where the statue was secured. The whole platform was covered with white flowers and it was carried for the whole fifteen days of its ninety mile journey on the shoulders of willing men.
All along the route there were demonstrations of homage, affection and loyalty. Each town staged formal receptions, both civil and religious. The statue spent the nights in churches where it was venerated in all-night vigils. Each morning, after Mass, its journey was resumed.
Today a fine motorway links Fatima with Lisbon and a car journey takes little over an hour. But in 1946 the road was a tortuous one, zigzagging down to Batalha, south west to the magnificent old Cistercian Monastery of Alcobaca, further south to Caldas da Raínha - the Queen’s thermal spa - on to Obidos and then to Bombarral which is on a level with the city of Santarem, but near the Atlantic coast.
A lady who lived in Bombarral, Dona Maria Emilia Martins Campos, had planned a special personal welcome which involved a triumphal arch across the street, bedecked with flowers and surmounted by a crown. Inside the crown were to be six white doves and at the moment of the statues passing beneath the arch the doves would be released by means of a connecting cord. It would be a charming tribute to the Queen of Portugal.
Dona Maria wrote to a friend in Lisbon asking her to buy six white doves. The friend bought the doves for 78 escudos in the Praça da Figuera in Central Lisbon and sent them on the 29th.
The procession was to reach Bombarral on December 1st. Because of time and various circumstances the arch could not be built. Furthermore one of the doves had died in transit. Ever resourceful Dona Maria dressed two little girls fittingly and had them go out before the statue and set the five doves free. One of them flew away. The other four flew to the statue and settled in the flowers at its feet.
The statue bearers tried to shoo the birds away, fearing they might soil the statue and disarrange the flowers.When they were flushed out they simply circled the statue and returned. Eventually their persistence won out and they were permitted to remain without interference though another flew off near Torres Vedras and did not return.
The remaining three stayed on the steps at the foot of the statue for the five days it took to travel from Bombarral to Lisbon. Occasionally one would fly off to find food but very soon it would be back nestling among the flowers. Nothing disturbed them, not the noise of the jubilant crowds, the fire-crackers (a mandatory feature of any Portuguese festivity), the rain, the wind, the December cold or the aeroplanes that swooped down from on the outskirts of Lisbon to shower the statue with petals.
Initially the statue was taken to the then new church of Our Lady of Fatima which can be found off the Avenida de Berna between the Gulbenkian Museum and the Campo Pequeno bullring. The Cardinal met the procession at the door and inside delivered an address welcoming the Queen of Portugal to the Capital. For the first time the doves left the statue together, flew over to where the Cardinal stood and remained there looking at him and listening to his words as if they understood them.
After the welcoming ceremony the birds enjoyed the freedom of the church. Mostly they were to be found on the platform but it wasn’t unusual for worshippers to find them flying between their nest of flowers and the patriarchal throne. During the distribution of Holy Communion on December 7th one flew to the crown on the head of the staute and perched there with its wings extended until the last recipient had taken the Sacrament. The other two flew to the top of the ceiling during this time and could not be seen.
At ten o’clock that same evening the three-mile procession from the church of Our Lady of Fatima to the Cathedral began. As the platform was about to be lifted onto the shoulders of the men two of the doves flew to the edge of a stained-glass window which surrounds the Throne of Exposition and poised there, their heads turned towards the departing statue. The third dove remained among the flowers at Our Lady’s feet.
Outside it was raining heavily but when the statue emerged from the church the rain stopped, the clouds rolled back and the moon appeared.
Along the route most of the population of the city lined the streets, strewing flowers, singing hymns, letting off fireworks and baring candles. The two doves from the stained-glass window rejoined their companion early in the procession and all three remained with the statue till it reached the cathedral, around 1.00am. At the doors one of the doves suddenly left the platform and flew up to the topmost pinnacle of the ancient Sé where it perched, according to witnesses, for at least an hour.
Two doves remained with the statue during its night-long vigil in the cathedral, the Pontifical High Mass for the feast of the Immaculate Conception the following day, the solemn Te Deum and the renewal of the Act of Consecration of Portugal to the Immaculate Conception. Only one dove, however, was reported to have been with the statue when it was taken from the cathedral to the Praça do Comércio, transferred to a fishing boat, and taken across the Tagus on its long way around back to Fatima.
After that reports vary. Some say that one dove was with the statue, and photographed, in Setúbal on the December 13th. The press reported “doves” with it in Entrocamento on the 22nd. The procession arrived back in Fatima on Christmas Eve.
For a long time a cote was kept beneath the eaves of the Capelinha das Aparições and still today there is always a dove colony in the Santuário though one of the Servitas assures me that there are no cotes now, that the doves, with some pigeon cousins, which perch above the colonnade and invariably attend the 1100 Recinto Mass in summer, live wild.
It is non-productive to argue whether this presence of the doves during the triumphal procession of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima was the result of divine direction or not. Believers will want to think it was, non believers that it wasn’t. One way or the other it was a phenomenon and, as Fr. Thomas McGlynn O.P., the sculptor of the statue of the Immaculate Heart in the niche in the Fatima Basilica façade, pointed out, even unbelievers must admit that Dona Maria Emilia Martins Campos of Bombarral got a great bargain for her 78 escudos.
A pilgrim's handbook to Fatima
Leo Madigan
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