POPE DECLARES TWO FATIMA CHILDREN SAINTS
FATIMA, PORTUGAL— Pope Francis declared two Portuguese children saints, 100 years after they reported visions of the Virgin Mary. Hundreds of thousands of people broke into applause as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics announced the Church’s newest saints.
Pope Francis added two Portuguese shepherd children to the roster of Catholic saints on Saturday, honoring the young siblings whose reported visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the Portuguese farm town of Fatima into one of the world’s most important Catholic shrines.
Francis proclaimed Francisco and Jacinta Marto saints at the start of Mass marking the centenary of their visions. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom slept outdoors to hold their places, broke into applause as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics proclaimed the siblings the newest of the Church’s saints.
Francisco and Jacinta, aged 9 and 7, and their 10-year-old cousin, Lucia Dos Santos, reported that on May 13, 1917, the Virgin Mary made the first of a halfdozen appearances to them here while they grazed their sheep.
They said she confided in them three secrets, the socalled secrets of Fatima.
The first two were revealed soon and concerned a vision of hell, seen by believers as a prediction of the outbreak of World War II, a warning that Russia would “spread her errors” in the world and a need for general conversion to God and prayer.
The “third secret” intrigued the world for more than threequarters of a century, inspiring books and cults convinced that it predicted the end of the world.
In 2000, the Vatican said it was a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II on May 13, the same day of the first reported apparition in 1917.
At the time of the apparition, Europe was in the throes of World War I, and the Portuguese church was suffering under anticlerical laws from the republican government that had driven many bishops and priests into exile.
“Our Lady foretold, and warned us about, a way of life that is godless and indeed profanes God in his creatures,” Francis said in his homily. “Such a life, frequently proposed and imposed, risks leading to hell.”
He urged Catholics today to use the example of the Marto siblings and draw strength from God, even when adversity strikes. The children had been threatened by local civil authorities with death by boiling oil if they didn’t recant their story. But they held fast and eventually the Church recognized the apparitions as authentic in 1930.
“We can take as our examples Saint Francisco and Saint Jacinta, whom the Virgin Mary introduced into the immense ocean of God’s light and taught to adore him,” he said. “That was the source of their strength in overcoming opposition and suffering.”
Francis prayed that the Madonna would protect the most vulnerable members of society, “especially the sick and the disabled, prisoners and the unemployed, the poor and the abandoned.”
Two huge tapestries made from century-old photographs of the children dressed in the traditional peasant garb of the times hung from the church that is now the focal point of the sanctuary visited by about seven million people each year.
The Martos now become the youngest-ever saints who didn’t die as martyrs.
The third visionary, Lucia, became a nun and died in 2005 at the age of 97. Lucia, who wrote of the children’s experiences, is on track for beatification, the first step toward becoming a saint. Her case couldn’t begin until after her death.
At the end of the Mass, Francis was to offer a special greeting to the many faithful who flock to Fatima in hopes of healing. Many tossed wax body parts—hands, hearts, livers and limbs—into a giant fire pit at the shrine as an offering.
In Fatima for the occasion were Joao Baptista and his wife, Lucila Yurie, of Brazil. The medically inexplicable healing of their son, Lucas, was one “miracle” needed for the Marto siblings to be declared saints.
The boy, aged 5 at the time, had fallen 6.5 meters (21 feet) from a window in 2013 and suffered such severe head trauma that his doctors said he would be severely mentally disabled or in a vegetative state if he even survived. The boy not only survived but has no signs of any aftereffects.
Another miracle was wheelchair-bound Maria Emilia Santos who said she regained the ability to walk on February 20, 1989, the anniversary of Jacinta’s death, after praying to her.
Marie Chantal, 57, a lifelong devotee, travelled more than 9,000 kilometers from the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean to attend the ceremony.
“I am very emotional because this Pope is truly merciful and close to the people and I think he will bring us many good things,” she said.
Gracinda Vieira, 57, slept outside during the chill night in Fatima to hold her place near the front of the crowd.
“It was not a great sacrifice ... it is very important for me and for the Church,” said Vieira, who had travelled from her home 250 km north of Fatima in central Portugal.
“This Pope is different in everything, I like him a lot. He is closer to us, the people,” she said.
In 2000, St. John Paul II beatified the Marto siblings during a Mass at Fatima and used the occasion of the new millennium to reveal the third “secret” that the children reported they had received from the Madonna.
The text, written by Lucia, had been kept in a sealed envelope inside the Vatican for decades, with no Pope daring to reveal it because of its terrifying contents: a “bishop dressed in white”—the Pope—on his knees at the foot of a cross, killed in a hail of bullets and arrows, along with other bishops, priests and various lay Catholics.
The message featured an angel crying out “penance, penance, penance!”
The impending canonization of the children had led to speculation that a fourth “secret” remained, but the Vatican has insisted there are no more secrets related to the Fatima revelations.