[Deathwatch] Lucia de Jesus dos Santos,last of the 'Fatima vision' trio, 97

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Last of 'Fatima vision' trio dies
Sunday, February 13, 2005 Posted: 6:31 PM EST (2331 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/02/13/portugal.fatima.reut/index.h
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LISBON, Portugal (Reuters) -- 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, 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 her last public appearances was with the pope at
Fatima.

Dos Santos's recollection of the third part of the visions, which she
wrote down in 1944, saw "a bishop dressed in white (and) we had the
impression that it was the Holy Father."

As the vision continued, the children say the pope reaching the top of
a mountain where "he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired
bullets and arrows at him."

Before the Vatican unveiled the vision, papal envoys visited Dos Santos
in her cloistered convent to seek her opinion of the Vatican's
interpretation and her permission to reveal it.

"She repeated her conviction that the vision of Fatima concerns above
all the struggle of atheistic communism against the Church and against
Christians, and describes the terrible sufferings of the victims of the
faith in 20th century," a Vatican document said in 2000.

The document went on to say: "When asked: 'Is the principal figure in
the vision the Pope?' Sister Lucia replied at once that it was.

Dos Santos was born the youngest of seven children in a peasant family
in Aljustrel, a village in central Portugal.

The events at Fatima unfolded against a backdrop of religious
persecution under anti-clerical factions that ruled Portugal after the
overthrow of the monarchy in 1910.

In 1916 she experienced her first vision, when an angel appeared to the
children, she wrote in her memoirs.

On May 13, 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared to her and her cousins
Jacinta and Francisco Marta on an oak tree. On her last appearance
before an estimated 50,000 onlookers, witnesses claim to have
experienced a 15-minute spectacle of bright lights and rainbow colours.


In her memoirs, dos Santos said the Virgin Mary appeared to the
children six times in 1917. Jacinta and Francisco died in the influenza
pandemic in 1919 and 1920.

The two were beatified, the last step to sainthood, by Pope John Paul
during his Fatima visit in 2000.

One of her last visitors was actor Mel Gibson, director of the 2004
movie "The Passion of The Christ." He met her at the convent in July
2004 and gave her a DVD of his movie.