What is Reddit's opinion of Our Lady of Fatima?

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I think so, but I might suggest a book that explains it well, titled Our Lady of Fatima. It is a very moving story, one of my favorites.

Again, no citation ...

> I never referred to any 55 years late narrative.

You said:

> The common story of what happened didn't congeal until 30 years after [...] Father Jon De Marchi

He has a 1952 copyright for his narrative, 35 years after the event. I don't recall anything from him that contradicts William Walsh's 1954 account. Yet here you're saying "30 years after" -- 1982? What is your source? You're not communicating clearly. Are you saying I need to read de Marchi's account again, that he presents a far less flattering collection of testimonies? Skimming through the "Critical Note by Pio Scatizzi, S.J." there does not appear to be contradiction between the narratives, i.e. no support for your differing narrative.

By the way, Walsh also reports that different people saw different things, but that doesn't imply that nothing special happened. In context it appears explained by their circumstance (i.e. the event wasn't intended for them).

By the way, what you suggest (you imply that no one saw anything with your 'duck' rhetoric) isn't supported by de Marchi, either:

> And they gazed, of course, as the child directed. They saw no Lady, but many did see the radiant globule of light that marked her path from the wretched little oak tree to the firmament, of which she was the Queen. In wonder they watched the ball of light move down the valley, gradually rising until it appeared to have joined the light of the sun itself. After a silence, their emotions overflowed, and the crowd-noise poured like a wild surf over the parched heights of the serra. The children's parents struggled to salvage them from the pressing weight of the mob. Long hours after, until and beyond the welcome fall of night, the frantically faithful besieged the three small children in their homes at Aljustrel.

And I have never read anything to suggest they were staring at the sun for a long time before the miracle started.

> When Lucia cried, "Look at the sun!" the people responded. The rain at that moment had stopped; the sun was clearly seen. There was no cloud to obscure it, yet it did not strain the eyes of any man to look on its unveiled light. The people could see that the sun was strangely spinning. It began to revolve more rapidly, more frighteningly. It began to cast off beams of many-colored lights in all directions. Shafts of brilliant red came from the rim of the revolving star and fell across the earth, the people and the trees; and green lights came and violet and blue in mixed array. It is a story of wonder and of terror, too, as the great star challenges the discipline of all the ages it has known, and begins careening, trembling in the sky for seventy thousand witnesses to see. Now, horribly, it appears to plunge from its place in the heavens and fall upon the earth.

And regarding diverse reports, a brief excerpt:

> The 70,000 witnesses included believers and non-believers, pious old ladies and scoffing young men. Hundreds, from these mixed categories, have given formal testimony. Reports do vary; impressions are in minor details confused, but none to our knowledge has directly denied the visible prodigy of the sun's unscheduled behaviour in the sky. The special reporter for the Lisbon daily, O Dia, had this to report in the edition of October 17, 1917:

You can read more at the de Marchi link I gave, but I'm waiting to see your references.

lol, interestingly, in contradiction to your assertion "they were all just staring at the sun for a while":

> it is comforting to call as a witness Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho, who happened to be, of all convenient things, an eminent eye specialist. The following is from his report in the newspaper Ordem

You're misrepresenting the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, Portugal 1917. It was raining and they were all wet waiting for the miracle, and then <10 minutes later after the miracle had ended they were all dry, demonstrating it wasn't an optical illusion. Moreover, the rainclouds parted to reveal the sun when the miracle started: They weren't all staring at it for a long time.

William Walsh wrote a book interviewing eyewitnesses. Of course you're free to declare "they're all lying to promote tourism", or "he's lying to promote his faith", but you must recognize these to be ad hoc explanations to defend prejudice.