Pilgrims in Portugal Prepare for Pope’s Visit, and Canonization of Fátima Siblings
The children, along with an older cousin, Lucia de Jesus dos Santos, said they saw the apparitions six times between May 13, 1917,
and Oct. 13, 1917, when Jacinta was 7, Francisco was 9 and Lucia was 10, according the Vatican.
Thousands of Roman Catholics from around the world arrived this week on a pilgrimage to Fátima, the Portuguese
town where three poor shepherd children said, 100 years ago, that they saw a vision of the Virgin Mary.
Doctors said he had severe traumatic brain injury and a "loss of brain material." Mr. Baptista said he
and his wife, as well as Brazilian Carmelite nuns, prayed to the late shepherd children who saw the Virgin Mary in 1917.
Many of the pilgrims crawled the final yards to a shrine complex where Pope Francis planned
to make two of the shepherd children, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, saints on Saturday.
Lucia, who said she saw several subsequent visions of Mary
and later became a nun, wrote several memoirs in which she revealed the contents of the children’s visions, and the three secrets.
According to Pope Benedict XVI, the purpose of the Fátima visions, which he described as "private revelations"
and distinguished from a "public revelation" like the Bible, is "to help live more fully" in accordance with Christ’s teaching.