Columbus Our Lady of Guadalupe, Star of the New Evangelization Parish has received Vatican approval as a pilgrimage site for the Jubilee of the 100th anniversary of the first of two apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Venerable Sister Lucia dos Santos in Pontevedra, Spain.
Sister Lucia was one of the three child visionaries to whom Mary appeared at Fatima, Portugal six times between May and October 1917.
“I have been devoted to Our Lady of Fatima since my childhood. I learned the devotion from my family and it has strongly affected my faith through Our Lady’s promises of hope,” said Father Antonio Carvalho, the parish’s pastor.
Father Carvalho, 57, was ordained as a priest in 1993 in Italy and has been in the United States since 2000 and the Diocese of Columbus since 2006. On Aug. 15, 2025, he became national director of the Marian Movement of Priests, which promotes a devotion known as the Cenacle.
“I have come to know many people who also have been strongly impacted by the Fatima and Cenacle devotions throughout their lives, with the effects of their prayers resulting in great impact to their families,” he said,
Father Carvalho asked Columbus Bishop Earl Fernandes to request Vatican approval of Our Lady of Guadalupe as a pilgrimage site for the Pontevedra jubilee, which also is being observed at the Pontevedra shrine itself from Dec. 10, 2025, the anniversary of the first apparition, to the same date this year.
Approval from the Vatican’s Office of the Apostolic Penitentiary was received in March.
Anyone attending Mass in the Our Lady of Guadalupe church building at 143 E. Patterson Ave., also known as Holy Name Church, on the first Saturdays of five consecutive months from now through December 2026 will be granted a plenary indulgence, subject to the usual conditions of the indulgence.
These conditions include personal prayer, reception of sacramental confession and holy Communion within a month, and prayer for the pope’s intentions.
Conditions of the first Saturday devotion also include those of confession and communion, plus saying five decades of the Rosary and spending 15 minutes with the Virgin Mary while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary.
Mass is offered at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, which is a diocesan shrine, at 8:30 a.m. every Saturday, followed by Eucharistic Adoration and praying of the Rosary, with confessions from 11 a.m. to noon.
The Cenacle is prayed in the parish Adoration chapel between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on first Saturdays. The chapel is open day and night.
The Cenacle’s specific intention is offering reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, based on a request presented by the Infant Jesus and the Blessed Virgin at Pontevedra on Dec. 10, 1925 to Sister Lucia.
Mary said during her third 1917 Fatima apparition that she would return later to give specific instructions related to the first Saturday devotion and the conversion of Russia.
Sister Lucia entered the Institute of the Sisters of St. Dorothea at Pontevedra on Oct. 24, 1925. She said she Mary visited her on Dec. 10 of that year, with the Infant Jesus beside her on a cloud.
Mary placed one hand on her shoulder, with the other hand holding a heart surrounded by thorns.
The Child Jesus said to Sister Lucia, “Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.”
Then Mary said, “Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude.
“You at least try to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for 15 minutes while meditating on the 15 mysteries of the rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.”
Sister Lucia said Mary returned to visit her on Feb. 15, 1926. She wrote, “While returning as usual, to empty a garbage can outside of the yard, I found there a child who appeared to me to be the same (whom I met once before), and I then asked him: ‘Have you asked Our Heavenly Mother for the Child Jesus?’ The Child turned to me and said: ‘And have you revealed to the world what the Heavenly Mother has asked you?’”
The two Pontevedra apparitions have not received a formal decree of approval from the Vatican but are accepted as an integral part of the Fatima message, which was officially approved by the Church in 1930.
The Pontevedra events have received several forms of ecclesiastical recognition. The First Saturday devotion was officially approved at the diocesan level in Portugal by the bishop of Leiria-Fatima on Sept. 13, 1939. Pope St. John Paul II granted the Pontevedra site the status of a shrine in 2000 on the 75th anniversary of the apparitions.
There is disagreement over whether consecration of Russia to Mary by the pope and the world’s bishops, which Sister Lucia said was alluded to in 1917 and specifically requested by Mary in 1929, has occurred.
Consecrations by popes Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul II were said by some to have failed in fulfilling all the conditions. The most recent such prayer was a consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by Pope Francis on March 25, 2022, the feast of the Annunciation, at St. Peter’s Basilica.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish also was one of several diocesan pilgrimage sites where a plenary indulgence could be obtained during the worldwide Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee of Hope. “This Jubilee is different,” Father Carvalho said. “The indulgence is available only at this particular parish of the diocese, and only by completing the first Saturday devotion. It’s a great privilege for the parish to be able to offer the opportunity to anyone interested.”