- LISBON (Reuters) - Lucia
de Jesus dos Santos, the last of three children who claimed to see the
Virgin at Fatima and who revealed a vision the Catholic Church said foretold
the attempt to kill Pope John Paul, died on Sunday, the Church said.
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- 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.
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- "She had been weak for several weeks and had not
left her cell," Coimbra Bishop Albino Cleto told the Church's Radio
Renascenca.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "One hand fired the bullet and another guided it,"
the Pope once said of Agca's attempt to kill him.
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- Dos Santos was said by believers to be the main recipient
of prophecies from the Virgin about key 20th century events.
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- 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 II.
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- But it was the third part, the so-called third secret
of Fatima, which kept the world intrigued for more than 80 years.
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- LAST SECRET REVEALED
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- Dos Santos was born the youngest of seven children in
a peasant family in Aljustrel, a village in central Portugal.
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- 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.
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- In 1916 she experienced her first vision, when an angel
appeared to the children, she wrote in her memoirs.
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- 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 colors.
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- 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.
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- The two were beatified, the last step to sainthood, by
Pope John Paul during his Fatima visit in 2000.
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- 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.
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