Every Ascension Thursday, nearly 20,000 faithful, most of them from the Portuguese immigrant community, take part in the pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima above Wiltz, in the northern part of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
They thus pay homage to Our Lady of Fatima, the Virgin Mary who appeared six times in 1917 to three children in Fatima, a small village in central Portugal.
The sanctuary was set up in 1951 by a group of Wiltz parishioners, who, having taken refuge in a cave during the Battle of the Ardennes in the winter of 1944-45, promised to erect a sanctuary after the war if they survived unharmed. (from site of Luxembourg government)