Fatima - Miracle of the Sun

On 13 October 1917 a crowd of about 70,000 people gathered on the Cova da Iria fields outside the village of Aljustrel near Fatima, Portugal, to witness a divine miracle. There were varrying reports, but the general consensus was they saw unusual colours in the sky and sunrays, the sun seemed to be dancing in the sky, then falling from the filament, growing larger as it got nearer. It then moved in a zig-zag manner back to it's original position. The vision lasted about ten minutes. It had rained earlier and the ground was wet, and the peope were soaked. After the vision, the Earth was dry and so were their clothings.

There were believers and non-believers, lawyers, scientists, skeptics and secular reporters in the crowd. None saw the apparition of the Immaculate Mary, but they believed they witnessed a supernatural event, a miracle.

"The sun’s disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible." ..... scientist witness Dr. Almeida Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University

It is obvious the sun never moved since that would have been noticed all over the world and none was reported. Whatever happened, it was a local phenomenon, seen only by the crowd at Fatima. There has never been a Marian miracle witnessed by such a large crowd. Canonical investigation took a long while and it was only in 1930 that the Catholic Church accepted the event as a miracle.

The Guardian Angel of Portugal:

In Spring of 1916, 3 shepherd children Lucia de Santon aged 9, cousins Francisco Marto aged 8 and Jacinto Marto aged 6, were in the Corva da Iria fieds tending to their sheep when they were visited by an apparition. Lucia wrote, the apparition was "a light whiter than snow in the shape of a transparent young man who was more brilliant than a crystal struck by the rays of the sun." The figure told the children not to be afraid and introduced himself as the Angel of Peace, the Angel of Portugal. In that year, the angel appeared to them 3 times,

The children did not know then that the angel's mission was to prepare them for the visit by the Blessed Mary. There is much that we can learn from what the angel taught the chidren.

• How to pray. Kneel down, bow forward until forehead and palms touch the ground and say “My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love Thee. I beg Thee forgiveness for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love Thee.” Repeat the words. 
• The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of  our supplications.
• Offer prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Most High.
• Sacrifice for sinners; can be anything one forgoes.
• Sacrifice is an act of reparation for the sins with which He is offended.
• Sacrifice as a supplication for the conversion of sinners. 
• Above all, accept and endure with submission whatever the Lord sends us. Suffering purifies our soul.

On the final visit, the angel conducted Mass with the children. He came with a chalice, and as he handed the contents to the chidren, he said: "Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, who is horribly insulted by ungrateful men. Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.” This is most profound for it underlines Catholic belief of the presence of Christ at the Eucharist, and the sacramental bread is not a representation, but the body of Christ.

The children felt great peace and happiness and became very prayerful. They practiced sacrifices in their litte ways, like giving up their lunches to the birds. They did penance by wearing tight ropes round their bodies.

Our Lady Of The Rosary :

The first apparition appeared to the chidren on 13 May 1917. They were out in the fields when there were 2 streaks of lightning on a clear day. Then they saw the apparition of a beautiful lady on the top of a holmoak tree. She was radiant in the bright and dazzling  rays. (Coincidentally, holmoak is the ancient name of "holy oak" tree).

The children were told she came from heaven, not to be afraid of her, and she want them to come to the field on the 15th of the next 5 months. She will tell them who she is in future.

The lady asked if they wish to give themseves to God, for which they will have to endure sufferings as an act of reparation for the sins for which He is offended, and to ask for the conversion of sinners. This the children agreed. She told them they will have to suffer, but the Grace of God will be with them

They were told to recite the rosary everyday to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war. The lady then floated up into the air, moved east and disappeared.

The visitation continued on the 13th of the next 5 months at the same place and time, except for 13 August when the children could not go to the fields as they were detained by the authorities. The Lady appeared before them on the 19 August instead, when the children were at another place called Valinho.

Her consistent requests to the children :

• Say the rosary for world peace and end of war which only the Lady of The Rosary can obtain. 
• Make sacrifices, and when making sacrifices to say " O Jesus, this is for love of thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for offenses committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
• Pray thus : "O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of hell. Take all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need."

When Lucia asked if they can go to heaven, the Lady said : "I shall take Jacinta and Francisco [to heaven] soon, but you  will remain a little longer, since Jesus wishes you to make me known and loved on earth. He wishes also for you to establish devotion in the world to my Immaculate Heart. … My child … you must not be sad. I will be with you always, and my Immaculate Heart will be your comfort and the way which will lead you to God.”

When Lucia petitioned for cures for the sick, the Lady said she will cure some, but not for others.

She told the children the world war is ending soon.

When she saw the robes on the children's bodies, she told them that they should take them off at night when they sleep. It suggests that it is not necessaty to go extreme in sacrifices or penance.

She said in October she will reveal who she is, what she wants, and perform a miracle so all may believe.

The Miracle of the Sun : 

The youngest child Jacinta could not contain her excitement and she told her mother of the apparition. Soon the word spread and crowds began to gather, ever growing in size at each visitation. In all the visitations, the vision of the Lady could only be seen by the 3 itte seers.. The crowd could see the children kneeling, fixated and speaking to nothing above the holmoak tree. A few in the crowd caught a glimps of the flash of light and tiny clouds lift off the holmoak tree when the Lady made her exit. Neither could the crowd hear anything. Francisco could see, but strangely he could not hear the Lady who told Lucia to tell her cousin all that she had said.

Word had spread about a miracle to be performed on 13th October. A huge crowd of people, including many from faraway cities, had gathered at Corva da Iria and it had rained in the morning.  In the afternoon, at the same appointed time as for all previous visitations, Lucia suddenly pointed to the sky and said "Look at the sun". The crowd looked up and could see strange colours in the sky, the sun, spinning like a disc and growing larger as it seemed to fall onto Earth. The crowd was terrified and thought the sun was going to crash. Then it started to move in zig-zag fashion back to its original position.

At this point, unseen by the crowd, the Lady, as promised to the children, revealed herself.  She asked that a chapel be built at the site for her. They saw up in the clouds, St Joseph carrying a baby in one arm, and the Lady of the Rosary by his side. St Joseph made the sign of the cross and blessed the crowd. The vision then disappeared.

Hoax or True Miracle :

Naysayers point to pareidolia (the tendency for incorrect perception of a stimulus as an object, pattern or meaning known to the observer). We look at the clouds, in the water, in the forest, etc, see some patterns and thought we see something we know there. Instead of the Blessed Virgin, a Chinese may see Kuan Yin, and a Roman see Diana. Did the chidren see the Blessed Virgin? The apparition was not a blurred vision. The children could make out details clearly - facial features (she was beautiful), like on 13th September when she appeared sorrowful, her dress, rosary, bare feet. There was communication and the apparition identified hersef.

Jacques Fabrice Vallee, a computer scientist and ufologist, was the first to suggest many religious apparitions, such as Fatima, are UFO visitations. Many religious skeptics are persuaded by this suggestion, without evidentiary basis. The facts actually work against this idea. By 1917, UFO sightings have already been publicised. The Fatima crowd should have been able to distinguish a manufactured flying object in the clear afternoon sky. No one reported any other sensation that seem to accompany a UFO in close range, such as electromagnetic interference. If it was an UFO, it would have been a world first and only ever, for extra-terrestrials to put on a public display in front of 70,000 crowd in broad daylight.

Could it be hallucination, taking into consideration the religious fervour amongst the crowd. This is hardly conceivable as there were many skeptics amongst the crowd. It is possible for a person to be hallucinated, but for a mass hallucination of 70,000 and for everyone to have imagined the same vision is just impossible. Two facts completely demolish this argument. The ground was wet and peoples' clothes were wet. As the sun supposedly came near, everything dried up. That was physical manifestation, not imagination. The miracle was observed by some peope as far away as 40km from the Corva da Iria. It was impossible for these off-site observers to be under any hallucination.

The shepherd children were very young, innocent and not educated. There is neither motivation nor capability to perpetrate such a massive hoax. Their sudden dedication to prayers, saying rosary, sacrifice and penance for sinners can only be explained by the impact of the experience of the apparition on them. Lucia went on to dedicate her life as a nun in a Carmelite monastery where she stayed for most of her adult life, seldom leaving the compounds.

The sun obviously never moved as no one else in other parts of the world reported such an event. Some scientists suggest some sort of atmospheric disturbance may have occured, such as sun dogs. If the causation was atmospheric disturbance, it must be localised since no similar visions appeared in other regions.  Attributing the miracle to atmospheric phenomenon requires of the hoaxer the impossible capability to trigger a natural event to occur at a predetermined time.

The canonical investigation is a very long process where the miracle must stand up to scientific inquiry from religious and non-reigious scientists. The Church is extremely careful and more stringent for a Marian miracle as any false declaration may destroy the credibility of the Blessed Virgin. After working through thousands and thousands of testimonies, interviews, interrogations, the Pope finally approved the Miracle of Fatima in 1930.

True to the predictions of the Blessed Virgin, World War I ended on 11 Nov 1918. Both the Marto siblings died of the Spanish flu, Francisco died in 1919 and Jacinto in the folowing year. Lucia lived a long life and died in 2005 age 97. To protect her from the immense publicity and visitors, Lucia was moved to Porto in 1921. In 1924 she joined the Sisters of Dorothy, a convent in Tui, Spain. In 1948 she joined a Discalced Camerlite Convent in Coimbra, Spain, where as a cloistered nun, she spent the rest of her life in prayers and had practically no contact with the outside world. After Fatima, the Blessed Virgin Mary did appear to Lucia again, as she said she would.

The 3 Secrets of Fatima : 

On the 13th July appearance, the Lady told the children 3 secrets. The First Secret was a revelation of Hell. She lowered her hands and light flowed downwards which seemed to open up the ground to show many terrible sufferings of souls burning in the inferno. The sight of the lost souls of sinners suffering terrified the children.

The Second and Third Secrets are great mysteries in themseves of which the three young seers were told not to reveal until such time as the Blessed Virgin will let them know. These are of great concern to humanity generally and Catholics specifically. They are profoundly related to our times and explain a lot of the crisis in the world and the one apostolic true church. These two secrets are covered separately in the following blogs. The faithful Catholics may want to try to comprehend the circumstances of their church which is under attack from within by Satanic forces. My triology on Fatima actually has the higher objective of helping to raise alarm bells on the dangers faced by Catholics imposed by renegade cleric that is leading the flock away from salvation.

The context of Fatima :

The beginning of the 20th century was a time of turmoil in the world. World War 1 was raging. Portugal was under the short-lived First Republic which was persecuting Catholics. Tsar Nichoas II had just lost his throne in Febuary 1917 and Russia was on its way to becoming a communist state. Margaret Sanger, the activitist who coined the term "birth control", had just opened her first birth control clinic in the US which later evolved to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (Sanger herself was actually against abortion).

Due to anti-clerical policies, the Fatima event was viewed with suspicion by Portuguese authorities.  The children's parents were understandbly skeptical and unhappy with their claims. So too were villagers, The children faced ridicule, On the 12 August, the 3 chidren were kidnapped by the local mayor, detained and told to recant their story under threat of being boiled in burning oil. They steadfastly refused to cave in to official demands. .

Pope Benedic XV made great efforts to prevent the war and bring peace but papal diplomacy was unable to stop the carnage of World War I. In a 5 May 1917 letter for peace, he ordered that the invocation "Queen of Peace, pray for us" be permanently added to the Litany of Loreto. He placed the peace of the world in Her hands and made the appeal:

"To Mary, then, who is the Mother of Mercy and omnipotent by grace, let loving and devout appeal go up from every corner of the earth – from noble temples and tiniest chapels, from royal palaces and mansions of the rich as from the poorest hut – from blood-drenched plains and seas. Let it bear to Her the anguished cry of mothers and wives, the wailing of innocent little ones, the sighs of every generous heart: that Her most tender and benign solicitude may be moved and the peace we ask for be obtained for our agitated world."

One week after that, on 13 May 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in Fatima to the 3 little sheperd children.

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A different take on the Disciplinary Tribunal case against daughter-in-law of Lee Kuan Yew

The First Family of Singapore has been embroiled in a feud over the 7th and last Will of Lee Kuan Yew after his death on March 2015. The main dispute is over the fate of his house 38 Oxley Road.  LKYs wish, which he has made known publicly, is for the house to be demonished. Younger son Lee Hsien Yang and daughter Dr Lee Weiling wants to honour their father's last wish. Elder son PM Lee Hsien Loong wants to preserve it as a heritage site.

In all, LKY executed 7 Wills. The first 6 Wills were prepared by his lawyer Kwa Kim Li, a cousin. In Kwa's absence, lawyer Lee Suet Fern, who is the wife of Yang, drafted the last will which LKY signed 17 Dec 2013.. The demolition clause was in the 1st Will and lifted in the 5th and 6th Wills. It was re-inserted in the final Will.

For her role in the final Will, Fern faced the Disciplinary Tribunal for professional misconduct and was found guilty on Feb 2020. Fern has widespread public sympathy. Social media is full of angry arguments that LKY had full mental faculties and knew exactly what he was doing. The public is barking up wrong trees because the validity of the last Will is not challenged. There are questions that need to be asked, but it's not about the mental capacity of LKY.


The complainant :

Any one can bring a complaint of misconduct against a lawyer to the Singapore Law Society. A complaint is normally routed through 3 levels -- Committee of Inquiry, Review Committee, and finally a Disciplinary Tribunal. Each level increasing in severity of penalties.

Legal Professional Act section 85 (3) (b) empowers the Attorney General to refer a complaint of misconduct by a legal practitioner to the Singapore Law Society. The AG may request the complaint to be referred to a Disciplinary Tribunal.

The Deputy AG lodged the complaint on Dec 2018, He went for the jugular, requesting that the complaint be referred to the Disciplinary Tribunal directly. It's an indication the government is going for the heaviest penalty - disbarment,

The complainant is not an aggrieved party of the Will, but the government. This is nothing out of the ordinary as the AG has to act against erring lawyers from time to time. In this instance, it does raise some questions :

• LPA section 83(3)(b) specifically mentions AG, not the Deputy AG nor the AG Chambers. The Deputy AG does not seem to have locus standi,
• The AG Lucien Wong recused himself as he had been personal lawyer of  PM Lee, who is an interested party in the Will. Its hard to convince that the Deputy has no undue infuence from the AG and thus the PM. The recusal is just smokescreen.
• Did complainant rely on any information from lawyer Kwa with possible breach of client  confidentiality?

The Complaints:

The Deputy AG's complaints are possible breaches of duty under the Legal Profession (Professional Conduct) Rules (Revised) 2010, namely :

• Conflict of interest
  Section 25: During the course of a retainer, an advocate and solicitor shall advance the client’s interest unaffected by (a) any interest of the advocate and solicitor; (b) any interest of any other person

• Receipt of Gift  :
  Section 46 :Where a client intends to make a significant gift by will or inter vivos, or in any other manner, to any member of the family of the advocate and solicitor, the advocate and solicitor (1) shall not act for the client and (2)shall advise the client to be independently advised in respect of the gift.

On confict of interests, other jurisdictions such as US, allow lawyers to act for a testator in preparing a Will for which they have beneficiary interests, PROVIDED they are related. The rationale is people tend to go to those they trust for legal matters. If the lawyer is not related, he cannot prepare a will in which he has beneficiary interest. The Singapore approach is not universal practice.

The words "shall" and "shall not" are the most litigated words in legal history. They denote future intention which does not imply absoute obligation. However any attempt to challenge the government to interpretation of this will be banging heads against wall in the context of Singapore.

The Legal Profession (Professional Conduct) Rules (Revised) 2010 has been superseded by Rules 2015. where the words "shall and "shall not"" have been changed to "must" and "must not" which are absolute obligation or mandatory. The complaints are based on Rules 2010 which was current when the offences were committed.


The charges :

The onus for framing the charges falls on the Law Society. They do so mindful that the charges must reflect the gravamen of the complaint, ie as befits the most serious part of the accusation. Basically the charge is :

Respondent has been guilty of fraudulent or grossly improper conduct in the discharge of her professional duty under the Legal Profession Act 2009 Section 83(2)(b)

The Law Society provides the prosecutorial team in the Disciplinary Tribunal hearing. Which means they have internally processed and concuded there is a prima facie case to proceed. Their process remains confidential and so the question of fair and indepedent deliberation remains in the air, fueled by latent thoughts that the Law Society has never been the same post-Francis Seow presidency when it was cowed and subjucated to a "Yes Sir" agency.


What the complaint did and did not claim :

Social media went bombastic over the guilty findings of the Disciplinary Tribunal without understanding, or accepting, what exactly the complaint claim and did not claim.

The complaint claims Fern, as LKYs daughter-in-law, (1) acted as his lawyer in drafting his final will in which her husband is a beneficiary, and (2) did not advise LKY to seek an independent attorney.

Many took issue with the suggestion that LKY, frail and week at 91, was mentally incapable of understanding the will. Social media went berserk to establish that LKY's mental faculties remained unquestionable to his final days - he was taking Chinese lessons, had various activities, wrote an article for a western media, wrote another codicil to the last Will, etc.  Fern herself said LKY was no  "ignorant-minded dotard" who needed the Will explained to him. Witnesses said LKY was lucid, read and signed every page of the Will. All these were excellent defence of an issue that nobody raised.

LKY's mental capacity is not an issue in the complaint. The Deputy AG made no claims that LKY was uduely influenced because of diminished mental faculty.

The complaint also has nothing to do with, nor is it a challenge, against the validity of the will. Probate for the will was given in October 2015 and there has been no challenge by any party. All the arguments, documentation, emails etc pertaining to what was or was not changed in the last Will, who benefitted etc, are irrelevant and serve only to contribute to clouding the public's mind.


So is Fern guilty? :

The Discipinary Tribunal found her guilty. The facts of the case are so plain and obvious. Kwa has been LKY's lawyer for the first 6 Wills. Fern had in the past, contributed her inputs to the earlier Wills, but she has no retainer. Circumstances entrusted her to draft the final Will -  Travel commitment of Kwa, her own and her husband Yang's travel plans, and LKY's wish to have the Will done fast.

Fern was caught by a legality that she cannot deny, much as she wants to. She prepared the final Will and it follows she is the lawyer for LKY in the eyes of the law.  In June 2017, Fern stepped down as managing partner of her own law firm, an obvious acknowledgement of the legal ramifications of her role in the Will.  Her defence that it was an act of a dutiful wife in obliging the husband in a chore asked of by a father, cannot stand. The circumstances of what LKY asked of Yang and why the Will was changed is unclear,  and what has been changed, these are all completey irrelevant to the charge.

One can only wonder how 3 luminuous minds of the Lee family, LKY himself, son Yang and Fern, could have overlooked the illegality of having a testator's daughter-in-law to draft the Will..


What is the purpose of the complaint then :

Cynics wonder if there were no family feud, would anyone have raised any complaint.

Yang had claimed PM Lee lied to LKY that the government was going to gazette the house as a heritage site or that it has already been gazetted. There was undue influence for LKY to lift the demolition clause in the 5th and 6th Will. Yang raised concern that PM Lee abused his power to have it his way regarding the fate of the house. Eyebrows were raised in public, forcing PM Lee to table for discussion in Pariament on 3 Jul 2017 where he will come clean. A PAP-dominated parliament exonerated him of any wrongdoing, a charade where no one doubted what the outcome will be. The feud is politically damaging for the PM who has been tainted with power abuse. A related libel suit by the government against Yang's son for some private Facebook posting, for which he is in self-exile in UK, goes to further reinforce the power abuse image.

"The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions" ... Dwight D. Eisenhower

Exposing Fern's breach of the law and carefully crafted language -- '"deceitful", "gross misconduct", "his <Yang's> share increased in the will" (but silent on PM Lee's share increased similary), "deceitful witness, who tailored her evidence to portray herself as an innocent victim who had been maligned", "unsavoury", "rushed through the execution of the last Will" - all emotionally charged for maximum effect for public consumption.

Certainly LKY was in poor health and advanced age. But physical weakness does not mean diminished mental faculty. The complaint and Tribunal's findings consistently mention the frailty and weak disposition of LKY. They have been careful not to suggest LKY was not lucid, but they have been attacked for something they never mentioned. However, the consistent mention of "frailty" serves the purpose of letting the public suggest to themselves that LKY was not lucid. It serves to normalise the idea that LKY was "frail" and thus not lucid, and it was the younger sibings who took advantage and unduely influenced the old man to make those changes in the last Will. This has nothing to do with the complaint and charges, but everything to do with political capital for the PM.

The timing of the hearing with a looming election leaves no doubt the course of action was to water-down the negative publicity of the famiy feud on the Prime Minister who has been seen as abusing his power and lying to his father. This is evidently so as the proceedings treaded carefuy away from the big white elephant in the room.


The elephant in the room :

The crux of the feud is PM Lee does not want the house demolished against the father's wish. Yang claimed PM Lee lied to the father that the house will be, or has been gazetted for preservation which influenced LKY to lift the demolition clause in the 5th Will (4 Oct 2012) and 6th Will (2 Nov 2012).

The Tribunal Committee avoided deliberation on this knowing the damning evidence of 2 emails written by LKY:

• Email dd 3 Oct 2011 to PM Lee's wife Ho Ching and copied to al 3 children, in which LKY wrote " Loong as PM has indicated that he will declare it a heritage site."\
• Email dd 6 Sep 2012 to his lawyer Kwa Kim Li, LKY wrote "Although it has been gazetted a heritage house, it is still mine as owner... Cabinet has opposed tearing it down and rebuilding, because 2 PMs have lived in the house, me and Loong."

A Ministerial Committee to look into the matter of the house was formed only on 1 Jun 2016. It is clear someone lied. It also suggests lawyer Kwa was remiss in her duty to advise LKY the fact that no gazatte has been passed, tantamount to negligence under the same code of conduct that Fern has been charged with.


Conclusion :

LKY had left a codicil for Will #6 with lawyer Kwa who left it unattended due to travels. Everyone knows the way LKY works. It's chop chop double quick time. He was anxious and it is probable in the 4 days of Kwa's absence, LKY spoke to son Yang who thought his wife Fern could facilitate the matter of the will. At this juncture, it is possible that LKY became aware the house has not been gazetted and thus re-inserted the demolition clause, as has been his wish all along. Thus Fern took it as a chore and drafted the 7th and last will which LKY signed on 17 Dec 2013. LKY died on 23 Mar 2015 and unfortunately, dead man tell no tales, so the Truth will never be out. All we are left with are just opinions, and the one that counts belongs to the Disciplinary Tribunal. The case goes to a special Court of Three Judges for finality and sentencing. In the court of public opinion, the severest penalty of disbarment proves the vindictiveness of the political elite, the lowest penalty of a fine or short suspension shows the whole process is just a political exercise. Which will it be?