Sandwiched between the brash novelties and love-dove schmalz on the bestseller lists last week was a prayer set to music. Its composer was no professional songwriter. She was a 42-year-old Cincinnati housewife named Gladys Gollahon, wife of a bus driver and mother of three children. Her song, Our Lady of Fatima, was the more-or-less accidental result of her own prayers.
Like many another American, Gladys Gollahon had been praying for peace. As a Roman Catholic, she offered her devotions especially to Our Lady of Fatima, to whom many Catholics have long addressed their prayers for the conversion of Soviet Russia. Mrs. Gollahon,...