“The small chapel in which we find ourselves is like a beautiful image of the Church: welcoming, without doors. The Church has no doors, so that everyone can enter. […] Because this is the mother’s house, and a mother’s heart is always open to all her children. Everyone, everyone, everyone. Without exclusion.”
Not only the Chapel of the Apparitions, but the entire space of the Prayer Area of the Shrine of Fátima is perceived by those who visit it as a church without doors where everyone, without exception, can enter and leave freely. Whoever comes, with more or less faith, or even no faith at all, whether they practice religious regularly, occasionally or residually, whether they belong to the Church to a greater or lesser extent, whatever their history and representations of God, can enter and leave freely.
In this place there is no doorman, no one is asked for credentials, nothing is asked of them in return — neither that they return nor that they start living in a different way. The experience of coming to the Shrine of Fátima offers an unconditional and free possibility of contact with the transcendent. Anonymity, which in ordinary life is a depersonalizing factor, in the experience of the Shrine is often synonymous with discretion, making each person, regardless of their status quo, a member of a people, a pilgrim and a brother to all in the awareness of their own fragility and in the search for the face of God. All are children in search.
In the face of the crowds that visit the Shrine and the decreasing number of parish assemblies, some present their criticisms. It may be that, for many, the experience of Fátima satisfies a comfortable à la carte Christian practice, accentuating the deep-seated individualism that characterizes Western societies of our century: consumer, without commitment, when they want, if they want and how they want.