The month of Mary in Fatima starts with the Feast of Saint Joseph, the Worker - May 1^st. This is also May Day for Communists and Socialists, who gained power by exploiting the problems of the workers. For this reason the Holy Father offered Saint Joseph as an alternative philosophy for the plight of the working man in the 20^th Century. On the First Saturday of May at the Cova (where most of the apparitions took place in 1917), the crowds of people start to be almost unbearable. This is when the traffic becomes a problem to just move from one place to another. This is when the otherwise happy, smiling waitresses start pulling their hair out trying to wait on more people than seats and/or time to do so. This is when every park, tree, or open peace of land becomes a place to put up a tent or picnic table and barbecue.

The days are starting to get warm but the nights are still cold. In a few days will be the biggest day of the year for Fatima, May 13, 2002. Last year it landed on a Sunday and 1,400,000 people came to the Cova for Mass and to wave goodbye to Our Lady with white handkerchiefs as her Statue is taken from the altar through the crowds back to the Cova. At this moment many people are crying with joy for their love of Her and Her love of them. Most of them have had a miracle of grace because of Our Lady of Fatima some time in their life.

I have lived in Fatima more that a year now and I go to mass at the Cova everyday. However, now that the great crowds are starting to come, I will go to another Church. These crowds are too much for me. I love to see the holiness of the people and their love of Our Lady, but it becomes very difficult to pray during the Mass.

The candle lighting is kind of funny. People come to make a prayer and light a candle and this is very traditional in the Church as our Guardian Angles will keep this prayer going as long as the candle burns. But as time went on here at Fatima so many people lit candles they could not get close enough to the fire to set the candle up so they just threw it into the fire. This cause the fire to get even bigger and bigger and as a result, today it is just a big bonfire sometimes with flames up 10 feet high. The only benefit I see out of all of this is that on cold days I can keep warm by the fire. I am sure God hears the prayers anyway, but it is a funny distortion of a true devotion.

The pilgrims who walk to Fatima are already starting. In time they well be in the thousands per day and coming from as far away as Spain and France. They sleep on the ground at night or in homes where people along the way have been taking in total strangers for years. Even here at Fatima there are many homes when total strangers are welcomed in for food and a place to sleep out of the cold. Among the Portuguese houses almost no one is ever turned away.

The penitential walk is getting crowded already, but will reach the point of pilgrims walking on their knees to the Cova all through the night until morning. Most of these people are making this walk on their knees because of a prayer that has already been answered. Some will carry the very baby in their arms that was cured by the prayers of Our Lady. Some of them are too old to do this on their knees so they do it on their hands and knees. Some even crawl on their bellies.

Candle light processions from the Cova to the Children's village, where I live, will be every night starting May 13^th. They continue all year as the Sun goes down but only around the Cova with the statue of Our Lady singing songs and praying the Rosary. Now it will last longer.

At the Village of the Children, the local people have their own daily devotion. Every night they go to the one place where Our Lady appeared in the village in August. After the sun goes down they all light candles and sing songs and pray a rosary together. Children from 1 to 18 pray with them. This goes on all year by the people who have been born and raised in the Village. I do not have the spirit of sacrifice it takes to do this in the cold winter, but as it starts getting warmer I will join them.

Because of the terrorist scare flights to Fatima are expected to be down this year. Most of the pilgrims will be coming by Bus, car or walking from Europe. We are starting to get more and more from the former Soviet Block. Many Ukrainians and many Russian have come already.

The Five First Saturdays is my favorite devotion and I just finished another one - maybe my 20^th. Part of this devotion is meditation on the mysteries, so I am working on a Newsletter that will teach people how to meditate and will use the revelations of the mystics on the mysteries.

I am still writing a constitution on A Catholic Government and could use any advise you have. I have no illusions as to where this could be, but I do know that if we had a truly Catholic government somewhere in the world, millions of Catholics would move into it. It would not have to be any larger than Hong Kong or Madeira and it would still become on of the most prosperous countries in the world in a very short time.