Spain and Portugal for Visitors

If any doubt existed that this kind of thing is the natural habitat of the screwball Catholic right, this website takes a staunchly anti-Vatican II stance. Barking.

Less offensive than the website above, but still barking.

In 1917, three peasant children claimed not only to have seen the Virgin of the Rosary, aka Our Lady of Fatima, but also that she had confided three secrets to them. Instead of giving them a clip around the ear, otherwise perfectly sane adults gave credence to this, and the cult that built up thereafter made Fátima a place of pilgrimage of considerable importance (like Lourdes, with which it is roughly contemporary). If this is your cup of spiritual tea, the main pilgrimages are the 12th and 13th of every month from May to November. It is said that "large torch-light processions in the evening are particularly impressive," and I say "it is said" because I would not go near this sort of thing personally if my life depended on it - I was duped once into visiting Lourdes, and found the torch-light procession stomach-churningly sinister (imagine a Neil Diamond concert in pre-war Nuremburg - not just frightening, but in the worst possible taste).