A renovated Sanctuary of Senhora da Paz, with stone picnic tables offered by local inhabitants, received around 20,000 pilgrims during 2023. The site, located in Barral, parish of São João Vila Chã, in Ponte da Barca, has a lot to offer pilgrims, in exchange for a visit to that space where ancient reports report an apparition of Our Lady, to the young pastor Severino Alves, even before the media apparitions in Fátima.
Lady of Barral
The festivities of Senhora do Barral, as she is known, are scheduled for the last weekend of May, although the apparitions to the pastor were associated with the 10th and 11th. However, and taking into account the great strength that Fátima possesses In the national religious collective, the coincidence of dates prevents the brotherhood from marking the ‘miracle’ of the Barquense pastor with a party on the days it occurred.
Severino asked everyone to pray
Between the 10th and 11th of May 1917, the young pastor Severino Alves, resident in that parish, saw a flash of lightning when he was herding goats on that mountain, as reported by Luíz Arezes, historian who wrote the book “Centenário das Apparições no Barral”, published in 2017. You will then have heard a voice asking you not to be scared. Like Fátima, the Lady asked Severino to “pray” and tell everyone the “good news” that the place was sacred.
And so the young pastor did, receiving disbelief from some and devotion from others. The case quickly reached the archdiocese of Braga, but the archbishop at the time thought it best to do nothing and wait for the miracle to be proven. The story ended up falling into general oblivion and only the inhabitants of that small place were placing “a few candles” to remember the phenomenon, as the person responsible for the brotherhood explained to O MINHO.
50 years to build sanctuary
There are several theories to explain why these apparitions never gained media attention, as in other cases, but the most accepted is due to the late construction of a chapel or image that would mark them. The fact is that, although the Barral miracle occurred in 1917, in the middle of the Great War, the sanctuary was only built around 50 years later, in 1967, when an image of the Lady of Peace was placed. In 1969, a chapel was inaugurated (the little chapel, as the locals call it), and it was only in the 70s that the underground crypt that marks the exact location of the apparition was built.
More than 100 years after the apparitions, the population of Barral still feels a little ‘scalded’ by the Catholic Church, which points the finger at for not having done more to promote the space over the last century.
Miracle gained strength in Fátima
Barral’s ‘miracle’ only gained strength during the fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions of Fátima, when Canon Avelino Costa, a native of the parish, was invited by the sanctuary of Fátima to give a conference and was told there that there was a report in a newspaper at the time. which indicated that the apparition had first taken place in Ponte da Barca.
And only then did the whole process begin to turn the place of Barral into a new Marian route. During the 70s and 80s there was a large turnout, but at the turn of the millennium, it began to decrease, after the death of the canon.
From 2000 onwards, and after renewed insistence from local people, the sanctuary was publicized again, and thousands of pilgrims began to flock there every year, a number that grew until 2019, then stagnated with the pandemic.
The sanctuary of Senhora da Paz today has a chapel, a church, a museum, a picnic area and several images that remember Our Lady, Pastor Severino and Canon Avelino.
