The theme of World Youth Day 2023 inspires the image of the Easter candle lit in the Shrine of Fatima

The theme of World Youth Day 2023 inspires the image of the Easter candle lit in the Shrine of Fatima

The illustration is by Sílvia Patrício, with an iconographic pattern by Marco Daniel Duarte.

The Easter candle that will be lit in the Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity this Saturday at 10pm during the Easter Vigil will recall the theme that the Shrine of Fatima has chosen for 2022/23: “Mary arose and went in haste” (Lk 1:39). It is the same theme as the World Youth Day, that will be held this year in Lisbon, during the first week of August.

“In addition to the specific symbols associated with the ritual of preparing the candle – the cross, the alpha and the omega, the year – [the illustration] shows, next to Elizabeth, the pregnant Mary who, in a clearly paschal posture, makes herself the bearer of Christ, the light of the world that the Easter candle announces”, reads the note from the Museum of the Shrine of Fatima.

“Designed by Sílvia Patrício, (...) it represents the moment of the Visitation wrapped in a theological reading made in the light of Easter, illustrating the meeting of Mary (who keeps everything in her heart) and Elizabeth and, at the same time, the meeting of the children in their mother's wombs. John, who rejoices (dances) in his mother's womb, is treated with the typical iconography of the Baptist (dressed in camel skin), and the amniotic fluid that surrounding him is represented as the waters of the Jordan. The Divine Child appears wrapped in warm colours, because He comes to baptise in the Spirit. His hand breaks the temporal horizon of the scene and, with the mark of the Passion (carnation), already holds the flag of Easter triumph, which rises to the top of the candle,” explains the descriptive memory of the candle, which uses the same chromatic range as the graphic image of the Day (green, red and yellow) in a mixed technique on wax.

The work, which is 90 centimetres high and 10 centimetres in diameter, presents an iconographic pattern defined by Marco Daniel Duarte, Director of the Museum of the Shrine of Fatima.

The candle will be lit at the beginning of the Easter Vigil this Saturday at 10pm in the Basilica of the Blessed Trinity, in a ceremony presided over by the Rector of the Shrine of Fatima, Father Carlos Cabecinhas. It will be broadcast live on the digital channels of the Shrine.