The Origins of the Corpus Historicum Fatimae Criticum

The origins of the Corpus Historicum Fatimae Criticum lie in the 1,100-page doctoral research of its founder, historian Dr. Álvaro Albornoz Castro, dedicated to the critical biography of the principal seer of Fátima Sister Lúcia de Jesus.
During this work—supported by the methodology of the critical historical school in which he was trained—Dr. Albornoz identified a fundamental deficiency in existing studies on Fátima: the absence of a comprehensive and rigorous historical reconstruction, free from devotional or apologetic approaches.

To remedy this historiographical gap, Dr. Albornoz undertook the creation of what is today one of the most comprehensive and specialized private libraries on Fátima worldwide — the Bibliotheca Fatimologica, comprising works of unique scholarly value and assembling an extensive international collection of edited works, critical studies, and published documentation on the Fátima phenomenon in multiple languages.

This erudite collection, the fruit of systematic bibliographic work, enabled him to locate, compare, and analyze sources of great value — forgotten testimonies, critical inquiries, and pioneering studies — that had remained scattered or largely overlooked by conventional literature.

It was during this veritable “bibliophile’s odyssey” of total immersion in primary and secondary sources that the pressing need for a monumental project addressing the history of Fátima with the utmost critical rigor became evident. Thus was born the Corpus Historicum Fatimae Criticum: a rigorous research initiative founded upon the documentary base of Dr. Albornoz’s specialized Fátima library, the Bibliotheca Fatimologica, whose purpose is to analyze all aspects of the Fátima events.
Its first foundational milestone is the completion of the exhaustive critical biography of Sister Lúcia de Jesus (1921–1957), which establishes the methodological and documentary foundations for the remainder of the Corpus Historicum Fatimae Criticum project.