A Zenit story about the controversy over a purported interfaith space at Fatima:

According to the letter, the rector has been inundated by correspondence due to this “sensationalist news.”

The rector clarifies: “God willing, a religious space, will begin to be constructed very shortly, and though it is the presumption of some journalists that it will resemble a stadium, it will in fact be a church, with seating for 9,000; it will be exclusively destined to be a place of Catholic worship, located not next to the current basilica, but between the Cruz Alta and a national road and, when opportune, … can receive pilgrims of other convictions who wish to fraternally partake in our way of prayer.”

Regarding the controversy surrounding the building, the rector mentions specifically Father Nicholas Gruner, a Canadian priest who runs The Fatima Crusader, a quarterly newsletter.

What’s most interesting to me about the article is the rector’s understanding of Fatima:

The rector of the shrine contends that the Fatima apparitions were exhortations to ecumenical dialogue. His statement says that the Virgin Mary knew that her choice of the site in Portugal would one day be understood as a deliberate association with the daughter of the Islamic prophet Mohammed (whose name was Fatima).

Monsignor Guerra further suggests that in the Fatima apparitions there are “at least two implicit calls to the exercise of the spirit of dialogue with persons of other convictions.”