Pope St John Paul II celebrates Mass at Fatima on 12 May 1991. It was the day before the tenth anniversary of the assassination attempt, when the Virgin "deflected the bullet" and saved his life (Derrick CEeyrack/AFP via Getty Images)
Hell is real. That is one of the key takeaways from the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. It’s because of this part of the Fatima message I’m still Catholic.
My Portuguese-American maternal grandmother taught me from the time I was a toddler to believe in Jesus and His Mother. It was an idiosyncratic religious education. She read the Golden Children’s Bible to me so often I memorized the stories. But she mostly read the Old Testament, perhaps out of concern for my father, who was Jewish.
