It was promoted as a fact-based treatment of the events surrounding the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima in 1917.
It starred Susan Whitney as Lucia dos Santos, Sammy Ogg as Francisco Marto, and Sherry Jackson, as Jacinta Marto, with Gilbert Roland as a fictional character named Hugo, a kindly but agnostic friend of the three children, who rediscovered his faith in God through the Solar Miracle of Fatima. The musical score by Max Steiner received an Academy Award nomination. The film was released on DVD on April 4, 2006.
Story
It is 1917, and Portugal is feeling the aftereffects of a storm of Masonic, anti-religious sentiment and the violent overthrow of the government by socialist forces in its October 5, 1910 revolution. Churches in Lisbon are boarded up. Many priests, monks and friars are shown being fingerprinted, photographed and registered as (possible) criminals before being jailed. The rural town of Fatima is small enough to have escaped much of this persecution; their church remains open, and most of the people are reasonably devout.
Watching their flocks and playing in a field outside town on May 16 (the actual date of the first apparition was May 13), Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto decide to pray their version of the Rosary by yelling out, "Hail Mary!" but not finishing the prayer. In the midst of this activity they hear a clap of thunder and see a flash of lightning. Thinking it is about to rainm, the children gather their sheep and head for home. Another flash of lightning causes them to run straight into an unusual "cloud of light" surrounding a little tree on which a lady stands. Speaking slowly and gently, the lady asks them to return on the 13th of each month and to offer their sufferings to God for the salvation of sinners. She entreats them to say the Rosary for world peace. Later, they encounter their agnostic friend Hugo who tells them it is