Last of the Fatima visionaries dies

Sister Lucia Marto, the last of three children who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in a series of 1917 apparitions in Portuguese town of Fatima, has died at 97.

Sister Lucia, a Roman Catholic nun, who had been ill for the past three months, died at the Convent of Carmelitas in Coimbra, 120 miles north of Lisbon, TSF radio reported.

Lucia and two of her cousins, siblings Jacinta and Francisco, said in 1917 that the Virgin Mary had been appearing to them once a month and predicting events, such as world wars, the re-emergence of Christianity in Russia, and one that Church officials say foretold the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.