Cristina Siccardi pointed out on Correspondenza Romana a strange coincidence. While the world is fighting the coronavirus, on February 20, the centenary of the death of Saint Jacinta Marto was celebrated, one of the seers of Fatima. She died at the age of ten because of the Spanish flue, the coronavirus of her time. Her brother Francisco had died ten months earlier also at the age of 10.
A Pandemia
Between 1918 and 1920, the virus of the Spanish flue infected about 500 million people, including some inhabitants of remote islands in the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Ocean, causing the deaths of 50 to 100 million people, three to five percent of the world population at the time. It caused more victims than the 14th century Black Plague. Before Jacinta died she spent almost seven months in hospital.
Dramatic Words
Speaking about the people who are far away from God, the ten-year-old Jacinta exclaimed: “If they only knew that the acts of this earthly life have eternal value.” She said that this is the big problem of modern man, “He no longer knows what he is doing in this world, and thus searches hard for the meaning of things, without ever finding it.” Jacinta died completely alone in a Lisbon hospital.
Signs of Times
The centenary of Jacinta’s death coincides with a time when Mass is suspended in big parts of Italy, the country where the Vatican is located. Italy is among the countries most infected by the coronavirus. Lent begins with the quarantine of many. Never before as now, the Church keeps speaking about the signs of the times, and never before it was so unwilling to see and listen to them.
