Millions of pilgrims flocked to this small town in Portugal.
Was a vision of the Virgin Mary really seen here?
In Ireland, believers and non-believers
say they see this statue move.
Is it a miracle or does science have an explanation?
An apparition of the Virgin Mary on a church wall.
But has an investigator unlocked its secrets?
Mysteries from the files of Arthur C. Clarke,
author of 2001 and inventor of the communications satellite.
Now in retreat in Sri Lanka, he ponders the riddles
of this and other worlds.
This fishing harbor at Negombo has a special significance
in the history of Sri Lanka.
It's here that Portuguese colonists first made
landfall in the 16th century.
They were after the spices that grow wild in the jungle,
especially the cinnamon.
The Portuguese rule was brief, only 60 years.
But they left this island one enduring
legacy, a network of magnificent Roman Catholic churches.
Like all Catholics, the worshipers of Negombo
have a special reverence for the blessed Virgin
Mary, the mother of Christ.
Back in Europe, over the centuries,
a tiny handful of her followers have claimed
that she has actually appeared to them in person,
usually with a message for mankind.
Such visions inspire both extraordinary mass
devotion and controversy.
The faithful accept them as miracles
while skeptics probe for more down to earth explanations.
By unique coincidence, the answers
may be found in the homeland of those who brought
the Roman Catholic faith here. Portugal.
They come from nearby, they come from far away.
In their stockinged feet, in walking boots, and finally,
on their knees.
From all over the world, four million
pilgrims a year flock to Fatima.
The pilgrims are drawn here because, in 1917, some children
said they saw a vision.
The faithful believe that Fatima is the site of a true miracle.
Today, Fatima welcomes pilgrims in their hundreds of thousands.
The shrine is a far cry from the simple pastures that lay here
in 1917 when the three young visionaries
came out to graze their sheep.
Lucia de Jesus who was 10 came here with her cousins
Francisco and Jacinta who were nine and seven years old.
It was May to 13th.
At mid-day, the children said, a bright light heralded
a vision of the Virgin.
She told them to return on the 13th day
of the next five months.
I think they saw because they were sincere.
They had no influence from their parents, from other persons.
So they were alone in their sincerity.
I think they have clearly seen a vision.
Yes.
Across Europe, shrines have been established
where children had visions.
At Lourdes in France, Bernadette Soubirous claims
she saw the Virgin in 1879.
In 1961, youngsters at Garabandal in Spain
proclaimed that the Virgin Mary was appearing to them.
And in 1981, six children at Medjugorje in Bosnia
said that Virgin was bringing than messages of hope.
At Fatima, the highlight of each day
is the evening precession when the Virgin
is paraded among the pilgrims.
It was on this spot in 1917 that the Virgin
promised the children a miracle for all to see.
[SINGING HYMNS]
100,000 people turned up on October the 13th.
[SINGING HYMNS]
The day started with heavy rain.
Those that had come to scoff mocked
the faithful for expecting to see
anything in such conditions.
But just before noon the downpour stopped
and the sun appeared.
Father Guerra's predecessor as parish priest
wrote down this testimony.
It's noon now.
It's the time of apparition.
And that time I began seeing the sun who turned, turned around,
turned around, come down, and just touched against me so
that I have only the time to kneel on the mat
and to ask God, my God, pardon me because I die here.
Every person there, believer or non-believer,
saw the same thing.
The sun appeared to move in the sky.
There was a blue quality to the light.
The sun appeared to get larger and larger.
They thought it was coming right at them.
Many feared for their lives.
The newspaper headlines reported the sun dancing in the sky.
Thousands of witnesses, they said,
had seen a miracle at Fatima.
Can science explain why the sun danced that day?
Dr. Stuart Campbell thinks the crowd
saw not a miracle but a rarely observed
atmospheric phenomenon.
Naturally, I was looking for a logical, rational
scientific explanation.
But I was aware that dust in the atmosphere
can cause the sun and sometimes the moon to change color.
In fact, a blue sun was recorded in September 1950
at the site where Campbell now stands.
Scientists at the Royal Scottish Observatory
discovered it was caused by a cloud of tiny smoke particles.
These came from a forest fire in Canada.
They'd been carried thousands of miles to Britain by the wind.
I concluded that the same cause must have
caused the blue sun at Fatima.
And the only reason they could be fine particles above Fatima
at the time would be a cloud, a fairly large cloud
of fine particles moving across Portugal--
western Portugal at that time.
Campbell believes the crowds at Fatima
saw the sun through a dust thrown up by a volcano
thousands of miles away.
I looked at all the explosions of volcanoes--
it has to be a explosive volcano for the dust
be thrown up in the atmosphere-- and there was a Costa Rican
explosion-- volcano in Costa Rica that exploded about
a few weeks before this event.
Although, it's only about 10 degrees north of the equator.
And it could be dust from that explosion
that caused this event.
Campbell's suspicions were confirmed
when he checked the winds prevailing at the time.
They were blowing in the right direction from Costa Rica
to have created a blue sun in Portugal.
It's a simple meteorological phenomenon.
The reason people thought the sun was advancing
towards them was as the cloud got thinner
the sun would get brighter.
And people often mistake a brightening object for
an object moving towards them.
So there were used to this dull, bluish sun.
Suddenly gets brighter and yellow and comes--
seems to come advancing towards the earth.
Which is what they described.
But it was just the sun returning
to its normal brightness.
But Dr. Campbell agrees one mystery remains.
He can not explain how the miracle occurred exactly
when the children predicted.
Why it happened just when these children were saying,
look at the sun, I can't really say except that it
was a remarkable coincidence that just as they were claiming
that there was going to be a miracle
there was a rare phenomenon occurring
right above their heads.
It was a remarkable coincidence.
In Fatima, four million pilgrims a year
believe the explanation lies in more than coincidence
and not in the realm of science.
I think it's a question of faith even for scientists.
They cannot prove that it was really a natural event.
They can not prove it.
So if they cannot prove it, they believe it.
They believe it natural, I believe it supernatural.
It's a question of faith.
[SINGING HYMNS]
I've noticed two things that most
reports of sightings of the Virgin Mary have in common.
The first is that they usually come
from children, some so young that we should
be wary of their testimony.
The second is that they occur in very
remote places such as the village of Knock
in the far west of Ireland.
In 1979, the world's press landed on the vast runway
at Ireland's newest international airport.
It was built thanks to a campaign
by this man, Father James Horan.
He persuaded the Irish government
that Horan International was the only place that
could accommodate the jet loads of pilgrims that
flew in to visit his parish.
For it was here, a century before,
that an extraordinary vision of the Virgin
was seen on the wall of his church.
100 years ago, Knock had a modest church.
It's south gable was plain with just a single window.
But at 8 o'clock on the 21st of August during a rainstorm,
the was is said to have shown with an apparition
of the Virgin Mary flanked by two saints.
Soon after, Knock became a place of pilgrimage,
especially for the disabled.
Today an investigator has commissioned
an exact replica of the gable end
wall of Knock parish church.
He needs it for an experiment which
he believes will explain what was really going
on when the Virgin appeared.
Melvin Harris insists the measurements of this replica
must be exact.
For this experiment, the position of the window
is crucial.
And he needs everything in place as he believes it was
on the night of the apparition.
Most important of all, he needs a magical lantern.
It's the forerunner of today's slide projector,
and Harris believes it holds the key to unlock the mystery.
He also needs darkness and he needs rain
to create the exact conditions of the night
the vision was seen.
Melvin Harris looked at reports from the time.
He discovered that the local priest
was unpopular with his parishioners.
The miracle at the church would have changed everything.
Harris believes the priest acquired
a magic lantern and a mirror.
He used the lantern to project a slide through the window.
The mirror then deflected the image down to the wall below.
The result, an apparition seemingly
from nowhere and with no detectable beam
of light in front.
Water, please.
Harris is a stickler for detail.
He's ordered a rainstorm from the local firemen.
Everything must be exactly as it was on the night
of the vision of Knock.
Now the image Harris has reproduced on the wall
can be compared with the testimony
of the original eye witnesses.
They describe the figure as being life
sized and, say, about 5 feet 5.
They also said that there were lines around the figures.
There was no question of them being flesh and blood.
Statues from beginning to end.
No one ever said that they saw a movement and no one
ever said this or anything that resembled a human being.
It was this testimony that convinced Harris
that the priest had used a magic lantern
slide to create the apparition.
Evidence from witnesses further away
added support to his theory.
One or two witnesses from a long way
off spoke of a great circle of light on the gable end.
And that itself inside a magic lantern.
And eye witnesses nearer the church
found they could stand next to the gable
without casting shadows.
Harris says that proves that a mirror was used to throw
the image down onto the wall and the magic lantern
would have been hidden behind the church window.
I think that today we've solved the mystery of Knock
in the most efficient way possible.
With the right equipment and the right time,
one can create-- recreate the images
that were seen by the people at Knock all those years ago.
And it can be done.
Miraculous manifestations of the Virgin Mary
don't seem to be confined to visions.
Sometimes statues of her are said to move
in the most mysterious ways.
In the south of Ireland, a wayside shrine regularly
attracts crowds of awestruck pilgrims
amazed because in the evening the figure seems to come alive.
Ballinspittle stands on the coast
in the southwest of Ireland.
For years this tiny hub of the local farming community
buzzed with nothing more than the sound of tractors.
But in 1985 all that changed and the world
beat a path to Ballinspittle.
The object of their attention, the Virgin
Mary in this hillside grotto outside the village.
By day, the people of this community
tend the grotto and it's garden lovingly.
They believe the place has a unique quality.
You can't put a finger on it, like,
but there's something special about the place.
It's just like praying, really, when
you're working for our Lady.
Want to make the place beautiful for her
and she's been very good to us.
Came here and visited us in 1985 and she's here with us
all the time in a very special way.
That special way is the belief held by hundreds of thousands
who've been here.
That the statue actually moves at night.
In Cork city, Sergeant John Murray
has seen many things in his lifetime as a policeman,
but none so strange as his experience the first time
he went to the grotto.
As I faced the grotto, the statue
appeared to actually leave the grotto and move to my left.
And I would say, and again I have to-- it's something
that I will never forget because it's
deeply embedded in my mind.
It was such a definite movement that it-- the people all gasped
as one and they stopped in mid sentence and then
when it stopped they carried on again.
But it was a very frightening, very
definite and positive movement.
On the following morning I stopped at the grotto.
And I said, if there's something wrong
here I want to know about it.
I expected to find that somebody had interfered with it,
that there was some sort of trick wiring or something
going on.
So I climbed the grotto and I caught the statue
by the shoulders-- and it's a man
sized or woman sized statue-- and I
shook-- tried to shake it.
And there was no indication, no sign of any interference
or anything unusual.
It was plainly and simply a statue set in a grotto.
And very, very much permanently fixed.
John Murray has been back to the shrine many times
since then, drawn there by what he saw that night.
[SINGING HYMNS]
First to observe it back in 1985,
was Cathy O'Mahoney and her children.
They were out one evening for a walk.
As dusk fell, they stopped at the grotto.
It kind of shimmered in and out.
It was as if she'd waved that way
and then just waved that way.
I saw it move back and forth like that and from side
to side. The top half of the statue.
You don't have to be Catholic to see the statue move.
And we don't think we're special because we saw it move.
I mean, thousands of people have seen it move
and our Lady speaks to everybody in different ways, you know?
At Cork University, Jurek Kirakowski was intrigued
by the mystery on his doorstep.
He interviewed eyewitnesses and went to Ballinspittle.
He, too, saw the Virgin move but that
guessed that physical factors must lie behind the phenomenon.
Firmly stuck down is it?
Yep.
Good.
Dont' want it moving.
In a laboratory with a statue, some fairy
lights, and some human guinea pigs, he set to work.
---the lights now please.
Natalie, I think we'll start with you.
Can you look at the base of the statue?
OK. Now--
There are two essential aspects to this phenomenon.
One is, most people don't realize it,
but they move a lot.
Especially if they haven't got a visual reference.
So if you're standing in a dark field,
in a darkened environment, you will
sway more than if you're standing
in a lightened environment.
In daylight or in a lightened room.
The second item is that we know that our eyes react very
quickly to bright light and they react
a lot more slowly to dim light.
If you put these two together, what
you see is these people standing in a darkened environment,
they're swaying around, they most probably
don't realize they're swaying.
The image of the statue is going backwards and forwards
on the back of their eye.
The lightened portions of the image-- the bright portions
of the image-- actually seemed to be going
faster in the darker portions.
Which gives rise to, if someone is swaying
backwards and forwards like this, precisely
a gentle swaying motion.
Right.
Do you want me to try.
[INAUDIBLE] How is that?
Well, the halo is moving again a little more.
But the body moved a small bit in comparison
to the dark areas.
Right.
Once you know that it's a combination of the movement
and the light from the statue, we
can simulate both of these effects
in a laboratory to give the Ballinspittle effect.
Even at the height of the war tearing apart
the former Yugoslavia, the cameras
proved that pilgrims would defy shells
and sniper bullets to visit the shrine at Medjugorje.
They've congregated here through bad times and good.
Indeed, in 1992, when shells hit the church
but failed to explode, Medjugorje's reputation
grew still further as a place of miracles.
In 1985 six young children came down from this hill
and announced that they'd seen a vision of the Virgin Mary.
She appeared again to them on consecutive Fridays
and the word spread.
As at Fatima 60 years before, a vision by a group of children
made the place a magnet for the faithful.
It was said that during their visions
the children were truly entranced.
They claimed to hear nothing and to be totally
unaware of their surroundings.
But in Montreal, Canada, a professor of parapsychology
decided to investigate.
Louis Belanger took a video camera to record the children
in their regular trance.
But he says what he recorded calls
into question the state of ecstasy the children
experienced.
When they see the Vision Mary, the visionaries
claim that they are totally disconnected
from the environment.
That they don't hear other people,
that they don't see other people,
that they are completely concentrated on the apparition
of the Virgin Mary.
Every week the Virgin is said to appear
to the young visionaries at a Friday service.
Belanger set up his camera and sat back to watch.
They made the sign of the cross and they
begin the prayer Our Father.
And during that prayer, suddenly, there is
the beginning of the ecstasy.
They kneel down and they are in contact with the Virgin Mary.
If they're truly in ecstasy, nothing
should distract the children.
But suddenly, to Belanger's later amazement,
an onlooker called Jean-Louis jabs his hand
towards Vicka on the right.
At the moment of filming I did not see that.
Just afterwards I saw that there was a commotion in the chapel.
Everybody was disturbed because Vicka had reacted.
Jean-Louis made a threat gesture against the eyes of Victsa--
towards the eyes of Vicka.
And she reacted.
And it was for Jean-Louis an important disappointment.
Still frames from Belanger's video at the moment of the hand
lunging at Vicka, show her clearly
recoiling from the jabbing fingers.
Then the fingers of Jean-Louis are going back.
Still no reaction from Vicka.
Slight reaction, closing of her eyes.
And then on the next picture you'll
have the spectacular movement of the face of Vicka.
She is reacting and going back.
After the ecstasy, I had forgotten to stop the camera
and suddenly Vicka comes in with somebody else.
She wanted to explain why she'd moved.
In her trance she'd been trying to prevent the Virgin
from dropping the infant Jesus.
She said, when I arrived in the chapel and everything was OK.
When the ecstasy again I saw nobody
and I heard nobody except the Virgin Mary.
And the Virgin Mary had the infant Jesus in her arms.
And suddenly I thought, said Vicka, that the infant Jesus
would fall on the floor.
So to impeach that, I made a gesture to impeach infant
Jesus to fall on the floor.
And she thought that it would explain
the reaction that she had against the threat gesture
made by Jean-Louis.
But in the end, does it really matter
whether visions of the Virgin Mary are genuine or not?
Because to millions they bring comfort and hope
in an otherwise bleak and painful world.