Two of the three children who reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Fátima one hundred years ago are to be declared saints when the Pope visits on May 13th.
Pope Francis announced the canonisation of Jacinta and Francisco Marto which will take place during his visit to a Catholic shrine.
Jacinta was seven, her brother Francisco was nine and their cousin, Lúcia dos Santos, was ten when they say they saw the Virgin Mary who is said to have appeared to the children repeatedly over a six-month period.
Tens of thousands of people gathered for the final apparition on October 13th, 1917, with many present saying they had witnessed the sun “dance in the sky.” Francisco died two years later and Jacinta in 1920 during the Spanish ‘Flu epidemic.
Believers say the children showed forbearance in their illnesses because the Virgin Mary had told them they would join her in heaven at a young age.
Buried at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima, the two children will be the youngest non-martyrs ever to be canonised.
The third child, Lúcia dos Santos, became a nun and reported in 1941 that the three had been given three secrets by the Virgin Mary. The first was a vision of Hell and the second was a warning that another war was looming, in fact WWII already been raging for two years.
The third secret was published in 2000 and described a vision of the death of a man in a white robe. This was interpreted as a prediction that John Paul II would assassinated in 1981.
Lúcia dos Santos died in 2005 at the ripe old age of 97 and a process that might lead to her canonisation also has been opened.
The eighty-year-old Pope Francis is the fourth pope to visit Fátima, after Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
It was John Paul II who beatified Jacinta and Francisco in 2000 following years of debate about the Fátima events and their meaning.
The canonisation of the children needed another miracle so a second one has been attributed to Francisco and Jacinta. This is the inexplicable 2013 healing of a six-year-old Brazilian child who survived after falling seven metres and suffering serious head injuries.
The pair’s beatification chances were boosted by the 1999 approval of an account of wheelchair-using Maria Emilia Santos who regained her ability to walk on February 20, 1989, the anniversary of Jacinta’s death, after praying to her.
Talk of Fátima and miracles is played down by the Vatican and comments normally are limited to the children’s virtue rather than any miracles they may have performed.
The Church recognised the Fátima visions as “worthy of belief” in 1930 and authorised the veneration of Our Lady of Fátima despite never recognising the “dancing sun” as a miracle.
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