The Fatima Prayer (O My Jesus)

This short and beloved prayer — often called the Fatima Prayer or the Decade Prayer — was given by the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. On 13 July 1917, in the third of her six apparitions at Fatima in Portugal, Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children, Lúcia, Francisco, and Jacinta. After showing them a vision of the reality of hell and the danger in which many souls stand, she asked that this prayer be added after each decade of the Holy Rosary: "When you pray the Rosary, say after each mystery: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins…"

The prayer holds the whole message of Fatima in a single breath. It begs pardon ("forgive us our sins"); it pleads for rescue from damnation ("save us from the fires of hell"); and above all it reaches out beyond oneself to every soul ("lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy"). This last petition is the missionary heart of Fatima: Our Lady came asking for prayer and sacrifice not merely for oneself but for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of the whole world.

The apparitions of Fatima, which culminated in the great "Miracle of the Sun" witnessed by tens of thousands on 13 October 1917, were declared worthy of belief by the Church in 1930. Since then the Fatima Prayer has become almost universal in the praying of the Rosary. The two youngest seers, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, were canonized in 2017; Sister Lúcia lived until 2005, faithfully spreading Our Lady’s request for the Rosary, reparation, and devotion to her Immaculate Heart.