By Sergio Goncalves and Miguel Pereira
LISBON (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of devotees of the Virgin Mary on Monday gathered at the sanctuary of Fatima in Portugal to pray for newly-appointed Pope Leo XIV and global peace.
Church officials said around 270,000 pilgrims came from all over Portugal, Spain, Poland and from further afield nations such as the U.S., Paraguay, Mauritius and Taiwan, packing one of Catholicism’s most famous shrines located less than 150 kilometres (95 miles) north of Lisbon.
In his first Sunday address to crowds in St. Peter’s Square since his election, Pope Leo appealed to the world’s major powers for “no more war”, while on Monday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had spoken by phone with the pontiff about ceasefire proposals to end its war with Russia.
Portuguese pilgrim Conceicao Teixeira, 77, said she hoped Leo would continue his predecessor Pope Francis’ legacy of “humanity and sincerity.”
“The hearts (of men) are very hard, people do not stop to think and there is so much inhumanity, indifference and iniquity,” she told Reuters, just before the candlelight procession, the highlight of the evening, began.
Christel, a 41-year-old pilgrim for Mauritius, said Pope Leo “seems like someone who will make peace and try to get everyone along with him”.
Every May 12 and 13, thousands of pilgrims head to the Fatima sanctuary, many of them walking long distances, to celebrate the first of the reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary to three shepherd children in 1917.
The Catholic Church believes she appeared six times that year to the children, revealing to them the so-called three secrets of Fatima.
The Vatican later interpreted the prophecies as foretelling Communism’s persecution of Christianity, including the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Paraguayan Oscar Guarin, 52, said he saw Leo as a pope “very close to the poor and very simple” in the same way as Pope Francis.
“We already like him,” he said.
(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves and Miguel Pereira; editing by Charlie Devereux and Bill Berkrot)
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