Last of Fatima visions children dies aged 97

LUCIA de Jesus dos Santos, the last of three children who claimed to see the Virgin Mary at Fatima and who revealed a vision the Catholic Church said foretold the attempt to kill Pope John Paul II, died on Sunday, the Church said.

Dos Santos, aged 97, who later became a nun, was the eldest of the shepherd children who in 1917 told of seeing apparitions of the Virgin Mary six times. She died at her Carmelite convent at Coimbra in central Portugal.

“She had been weak for several weeks and had not left her cell,” Coimbra Bishop Albino Cleto told the Church’s Radio Renascenca.

The Vatican interpreted one part of the visions as foretelling the attempt to kill the pope and Communism’s persecution of Christianity. The apparitions took place the same year as the Russian Revolution.

The Pope believes the Madonna of Fatima saved his life on May 13, 1981, when Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca nearly killed him in St Peter’s Square.

The shooting took place on one of the anniversaries of the 1917 apparitions.

In a sign of gratitude a year after the assassination attempt, the pope had one of the 9mm bullets which Agca fired at him placed in the crown of the statue at Fatima.

“One hand fired the bullet and another guided it,” the pope once said of Agca’s attempt to kill him.

Dos Santos was said by believers to be the main recipient of prophecies from the Virgin about key 20th century events.

The first two parts of the prophecies were known for decades. The first saw a vision of hell, the second predicted the outbreak of World War Two.

But it was the third part, the so-called third secret of Fatima, which kept the world intrigued for more than 80 years.

The Vatican revealed its interpretation of the vision during the pope’s visit to Fatima in May 2000 on the anniversary of the assassination attempt.

One of dos Santos’s last public appearances was with the pope at Fatima.