Shrine of Fatima challenges young adults to experience volunteer work by welcoming pilgrims and disabled people

Shrine of Fatima challenges young adults to experience volunteer work by welcoming pilgrims and disabled people

Project SETE and the “Come to the Middle Week” are the two volunteering suggestions for this summer. Until then, a preparation meeting is planned to be held in April

This year the Shrine of Fatima, once again, challenges young adults to experience volunteer work in two different initiatives:  the “SETE Project”, an experience to participate in the welcoming of pilgrims and immersion in the Message of Fatima; and in the context of the “Come to the Middle Week”, an initiative that offers vacations to disable people and their parents. As a preparation moment for the interested ones in volunteering in Cova da Iria, is the Easter Meeting to be held from the 25th to the 28th of April.

The SETE Project, through which, last year, more than 80 young adults welcomed pilgrims while they deepened their knowledge of the Message of Fatima, repeats itself this year in the same terms.  During five shifts, weekly or biweekly, between July 29th and September 1st, the volunteers, aged 16 to 35, will participate in several welcoming, praying and sharing experiences in the different spaces of the Shrine of Fatima.

Between the 20th and 30th of August, there is also the possibility to experience volunteer work in the “Come to the Middle Week”, in which, on weekly shifts, the same age range is invited to participate by welcoming the beneficiaries of the Shrine´s initiative, which provides a resting time to disabled people and their parents. More than a volunteer proposal, this week is presented as “an experience of self-deliver, donation and self-implication on behalf of other”, in which these young adults are invited to “leave the centrality of ´me´ to enhance the ´you´, to the other, discovering a unique richness in him”.

Applications are already in motion for both experiences and, for the interested, the Shrine also offers a preparation meeting, between April 25th and 28th, where the experience of a possible volunteer work in Fatima is properly prepared, with visits to the spaces and knowledge of the place´s charisma. 

Fatima (En)contraste fourth edition on April 26th

Also included in this preparation week, is the Fatima (En)contraste, a proposal to deepening the Message of Fatima, which, in its forth edition, will be centred in the light that St. Francisco refers to describe his perception of God, during the Apparitions. “I felt God was in me, but I didn´t know how”, is the theme of the meeting, to be held on April 26th in the Retreat House of Our Lady of Sorrows, which will embrace the contemplative contribute of Fr. Rui Santiago and the illustrations of Miguel Cardoso.