.
Obviously words of a very holy girl, far more wise than her few years should allow.
During the operation she endured to have two ribs removed, her doctor later said he could hear her speaking with God while the operation was in progress. She offered up her sufferings for sinners, and for "the Holy Father" (without ever mentioning the name of a particular pope), "for he will have much to suffer."
No one has ever been able to say if this suffering would be on earth, in Purgatory or in hell. Maybe they were any of the three, depending on which pope it is.
Her surgeon (Dr. Castro Freire) said he heard Jacinta say, "Now you can save many sinners, dear Jesus, because I suffer much."
She had known in advance that she would suffer because Our Lady gave her the choice of dying earlier and going to heaven, or living longer and suffering more in the Lisbon hospital, when she would die alone. Jacinta chose the latter. She endured a lot of grief being separated from her mother, and this also she offered as a voluntary act of expiation for the conversion of sinners.
Dr. Freire's diagnosis was: "Osteitis of the 7th and 8th ribs, purulent pleurisy with fistula." Pleurisy is an infection of the membrane inside the rib cage that surrounds the lungs. This makes breathing very painful. Every breath she took she was offering to God for the Holy Father and for the conversion of sinners.
The surgery had to be done with only a local anaesthesia, but in those days it was not well developed and it did not work as intended, so she was conscious and alert the whole time, while these two infected ribs (osteitis) were removed. This would be as painful as any operation could be, even for an adult, but she was only 9 years old, suffering heroically, without question. Because she did not have to do this, and yet she chose to take it on, just as Our Lord did on the Cross.
And as if this was not enough, there was more. Before the operation she was very much afraid, and this great fear she also made into a perfect sacrifice to God. But it was not just the pain that she feared, rather it was something very different. And while she feared not having her mother there, it is true, that was also a willing offering to God. But she had three fears, for there was something much greater. She was willing to set aside her fear of the pain and her fear of not having her mother there, because there was a much greater fear she had, almost to the exclusion of other causes. Her greatest fear was that her body would be an occasion of sin to the hospital staff who would see her exposed in the preparation for surgery and during the operation.
The graces she called down from heaven for this offering of purity are so great that anyone today who has a problem with habitual sins of purity can find that by praying for the intercession of Blessed Jacinta of Fatima, their impure thoughts will vanish immediately. All you have to do is to desire to overcome your impurity, and to think about her most agonizing operation and her perfect example of voluntary atonement for the sins OF OTHERS, people who would not even be born for another 40 to 90 years, or more, and ask her for her intercessory grace to overcome your lustful desires, or whatever it is.
Jacinta did not suffer defending her faith, so she is not a martyr, but she is a blessed virgin and a very powerful patroness of sinners who would endeavor to overcome sins of the flesh.
And there is a terrible message here for sinners, for anyone who has a problem with habitual sins of the flesh, who says they want to be absolved and they are trying to overcome them, here is what they can do. But if such a person chooses NOT to invoke Bl. Jacinta, and chooses NOT to think about how she suffered, and instead of asking honestly for her intercession or perhaps pays mere lip service to her devotion as if it is some kind of vending machine that dispenses grace as if it were a candy bar, and then at the first temptation slides right back into the same old vice of impurity, such a person doesn't really want to overcome their sin. Such a one is more attached to their sin than they are to holiness, and such a person should take HEED of this problem, because it is a deadly problem.
One of the requirements for the reception of a plenary indulgence, for example, is that one must lose ALL ATTACHMENT TO SIN, or else no plenary indulgence is possible. I just spoke to a priest today who did not understand this at all. He was a NovusOrdo pastor. How many souls is he leading astray with his ignorance? “My godmother, pray much for sinners! Pray much for priests! Pray much for religious! Priests should only occupy themselves with the affairs of the Church. Priests should be pure, very pure. The disobedience of priests and religious to their superiors and to the Holy Father greatly offends Our Lord.” Any priest who says you shouldn't worry about indulgences and that "God knows your intention" -- all that matters is what you desire when you pray, or, whether or not your prayers abide by the rules of indulgences means nothing -- is a priest who is not occupying himself with the affairs of the Church but rather is diverting the faithful away from Church doctrine and toward their own whims and fantasies.
When Blessed Jacinta suffered she unleashed an avalanche of plenary indulgence that we can tap into if we would, but we must lose our attachment to sin before we can receive this grace. It requires an act of will, but the intellect must first make the decision because the will is obedient to the intellect when the intellect is strong. Modernism makes our intellects flabby and that's why they are not strong enough to direct our will. But we can whip our intellect into shape by making the decision that we are going to do this.
.