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Pope makes two Fatima children saints on centenary of visions

Francisco and Jacinta are the youngest-ever saints who didn’t die as martyrs

Pope Francis added two Portuguese shepherd children to the roster of Catholic saints on Saturday, honouring 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.

The Pope proclaimed Francisco and Jacinta Marto saints at the start of Mass marking the centenary of their visions.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were on hand, many of whom had spent days at Fatima in quiet prayer, reciting rosaries before a statue of the Madonna. They clapped as soon as Pope Francis read the proclamation aloud.

Francisco and Jacinta, aged 9 and 7, and their 10-year-old cousin, Lucia, reported that on March 13, 1917, the Virgin Mary made the first of a half-dozen appearances to them here while they grazed their sheep.

They said she confided in them three secrets foretelling apocalyptic visions of hell, war, communism and the death of a Pope and urged them to pray for peace and a conversion away from sin.

Before the Mass, Pope Francis prayed at the tombs of each of the Fatima visionaries. The Marto siblings died two years after the visions during Europe’s Spanish flu pandemic. Lucia is on track for possible beatification, but her process couldn’t start until after her 2005 death.

The Martos now become the youngest-ever saints who didn’t die as martyrs.

At the end of the Mass, Pope Francis was to offer a special greeting to the many faithful who flock to Fatima in hopes of healing. Many toss 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 the “miracle” needed for the Marto siblings to be declared saints.

The boy, aged 5 at the time, had fallen 6.5 metres 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 after-effects.

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 the terrifying vision it reported: 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 canonisation 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.