Maria Emilia Santos and the Beatification of Francisco and Jacinta

The fake visions of Mary at Fatima in 1917 were reported by Francisco and Jacinta and Lucia. They died soon after but Lucia lived on and became a nun.
 
Francisco and Jacinta were beatified by Pope John Paul 2 in 2000. That is the last step before they can be declared saints. They needed to do a healing beforehand to justify this beatification.
 
Maria Emilia Santos is the lady whose alleged miraculous healing was the prime reason the pope beatified them.
 
Santos testified that a prayer to Jacinta for a cure healed her of a twenty-two year long paralysis. She said that she prayed to Francisco too though she only spoke to Jacinta. That the pope threw Francisco into this whole affair shows that if anything strange happens the Church will pretend it verifies the sainthood of any person it wants. It is illegitimate to beatify Francisco when there is no reason to think he played a role in the cure and yet the Church says that miracles are necessary to prove a person a saint.
 
The woman admitted that her own brothers were sceptical of the miracle and that they suggested she was exaggerating about how long she was paralysed. She explained that one of them hadn’t seen her when she was paralysed but we are not told his side of the story and she ignores the other. Also many of the medical records were lost. The decision that it was indeed a miracle was made as a result of investigations by two Vatican appointed medical teams. The dishonesty of depending on them when the records were missing and when they would have to depend mostly on her word of mouth is apparent. Many Catholics believe that the Church is infallible in its beatifications and canonisations. The Fatima visions then have led to an invalid beatification and a triumph of the Devil over the Church. The Church will say these are the mistakes of men and not God but when the Devil has some part in it they cannot have the right to say that. Maybe he was setting the stage meaning the apparitions of Fatima were part of the scheme.

It is noteworthy too that the important mystic, Alexandrina da Costa, who was supposedly surrounded by miracles and who allegedly miraculously but temporarily recovered from paralysis to experience the crucifixion of Jesus many times, confirmed by her visions and experiences that the Fatima events were real. That says a lot about her (Alexandrina The Agony and the Glory).
 
In Fatima Revealed and Discarded we read that a young woman, Maria do Carmo, with tuberculosis who was dying walked several times in 1917 all the thirty-five kilometres from her home to Fatima to implore the Virgin to cure her (page 40). The cure happened but despite the fact that it was not an instant cure the Church accepted it as genuine.

I agree with the more sensible element in the Church that a real miracle would be instant.  And how sick was the young lady really when she was able to walk like that when she was supposed to be dying? She sounds like a hypochondriac who convinced her doctor that she really was dying when he told her she had only two weeks to live. The girl believed she was dying and by curing her as a reward for being willing to torment her relations and kill herself by attempting the walk the Virgin was encouraging that kind of attitude. The real Virgin, if good, could not sanction such fanaticism. The girl could have killed herself over looking for a miracle that the Virgin might not have the will to give. She abused herself and was rewarded by a cure! It wasn’t God who rewarded her but the Devil who would like the bad example. The importance of this non-miraculous event is that it was defended by Canon Formigao who was the first to record the alleged events at Fatima (page 38). Reliable and unbiased he wasn’t!
 
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible
 
BOOKS CONSULTED
 
Alexandrina The Agony and the Glory, Francis Johnson, TAN, Illinois, 1979
Celestial Secrets, The Hidden History Of The Fatima Incident, Anomalist Books, San Antonio, New York, 2007
Fatima – in Lucia’s own words, Sr Lucia, Postulation Centre Fatima, 1976
Fatima Revealed and Discarded, Bro Michael of the Holy Trinity, Augustine, Devon, 1988
Is This The Third Secret? IF Colquhoun, 45 Nicholas Court, Swansea, 1995
Looking for a Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, New York, 1993
New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
Os Mouros Fatimidas e as Aparicoes de Fatima  
Queen of Peace (Newspaper), Fall 1995, Pittsburgh Center for Peace
Reason and Belief, Bland Blanschard, London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
The Book of Miracles, Stuart Gordon, Headline, London, 1996
The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary, Kevin McClure, Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, 1985
The Rosary and the Crisis of Faith, Msgr. Joseph a. Cirrincione and Thomas A. Nelson, Tan, Illinois, 1986
The Third Secret of Fatima, Brother Michael of the Holy Trinity CRC, Tan, Illinois, 1991
The Thunder of Justice, Ted and Maureen Flynn, Maxcol Communications Inc. Sterling VA, 1993
What Happened at Fatima? Leo Madigan, Catholic Truth Society, London, 2000
 
THE WEB

An Agnostic Looks at Fatima,
http://www.portcult.com/index.fat.htm

Where is the Conversion of Russia? John Vennari
www.dailycatholic.org/issue/2002Mar/mar22fat.htm