As the Sanctuary of Fátima gears up for its centenary celebrations, veteran Catholic retreat organiser Anthony Weaver offers his thoughts on places of escape and rejuvenation in Portugal

As we begin 2017, Portugal is very much in the news. The centenary of the apparitions of Our Lady to the three shepherd children, Lúcia, Jacinta and Francisco, at Fátima will be celebrated throughout the world, and her appeal for peace and reconciliation, made in the middle of the horrors of the First World War, is more needed than ever.

António Guterres, a devout Portuguese Catholic aged 67, who served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from June 2005 to December 2015, has been appointed by acclamation at the General Assembly of the UN as its new Secretary-General, succeeding the South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon.

And there is the new film, Silence, by the American director Martin Scorsese, that opened to great critical acclaim on 1 January. Based on the novel from 1966 by the Japanese convert to Catholicism Shusaku Endo, the plot follows two seventeenth-century Portuguese Jesuits who travel to Japan to locate their missing confrère – rumoured to have apostasised under torture – confirming the local people in their faith as they themselves face probable capture and martyrdom.