Throughout history, young girls from poor rural backgrounds have been particularly likely candidates for extra-sensory experiences, seeing visions and hearing voices that no-one else has been able to detect. Whatever the origins of these experiences, their effects cannot easily be disputed.

In the summer of 1425, Joan of Arc, the 13-year-old daughter of a French peasant, heard voices that she identified as those of St Michael, St Gabriel, St Marguerite and St Catherine. A blaze of light accompanied their spiritual counsel. Four years later, guided by the same voices, she led the French army against the English and their military occupation of her country, winning a major victory at Orleans. She was eventually captured by the English and put on trial – her voices and visions were declared 'false and diabolical'. She was burned at the stake in 1431, at the age of only 19.

In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, eldest daughter of an impoverished French farming family in Lourdes, was playing by a local river when she heard 'a kind of rustling sound'. She looked up and saw a bright vision of a woman who would later identify herself as the Immaculate Conception. Under the vision's guidance, Bernadette uncovered a hidden spring reported to have miraculous healing powers. To this day, thousands of people still make the pilgrimage to Lourdes in search of both medical and spiritual succour.

On 13 May 1917, 10-year-old Lucy Dos Santos and 7-year-old Jacinta Martos, together with her brother Francisco, were tending sheep near the Portuguese town of Fatima when they had a vision of a 'young beautiful being in the sky'. The Lady of the Rosary, as the vision identified herself, continued to appear in the same place on the 13th of each month until October that year, when the visions ceased. Although thousands of people attended this final appearance, only the three young shepherds ever saw and heard her.

Top of page