(AP) – The parents of a Brazilian boy whose recovery from a severe brain injury is being cited by the Vatican as the “miracle” needed to canonize two Portuguese children are breaking their silence to share the story.

The boy’s father says his then-5-year-old son, Lucas, fell 6.5 meters (21 feet) from a window in 2013 and sustained head injuries that doctors predicted he had little chance of surviving.

Joao Baptista and his wife, Lucila Yuri, told reporters at the Catholic shrine in Fatima, Portugal, on Thursday that they and Brazilian nuns prayed to the late shepherd children who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in “visions” in 1917. Two of those children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, are due to be canonized by Pope Francis in Fatima on Saturday. </s> (FATIMA, Portugal) — Pope Francis added two Portuguese shepherd children to the roster of Catholic saints Saturday, honoring 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.

Francis 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 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.

At the time, Europe was in the throes of World War I, and the Portuguese church was suffering under anti-clerical laws from the republican government that had forced many bishops and priests into exile.

"Our Lady foretold, and warned us about, a way of life that is godless and indeed profanes God in his creatures," Francis said in his homily. "Such a life, frequently proposed and imposed, risks leading to hell."

He urged Catholics today to use the example of the Marto siblings and draw strength from God, even when adversity strikes. The children had been threatened by local civil authorities with death by boiling oil if they didn't recant their story. But they held fast and eventually the church recognized the apparitions as authentic in 1930.

"We can take as our examples Saint Francisco and Saint Jacinta, whom the Virgin Mary introduced into the immense ocean of God's light and taught to adore him," he said. "That was the source of their strength in overcoming opposition and suffering."

Before the Mass, 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, 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 meters (21 feet) 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 its terrifying contents: 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 canonization 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. </s> The parents of a Brazilian boy whose recovery from a severe brain injury is being cited by the Vatican as the "miracle" needed to canonize two Portuguese children are breaking their silence to share the story.

The boy's father says his then-5-year-old son, Lucas, fell 6.5 meters (21 feet) from a window in 2013 and sustained head injuries that doctors predicted he had little chance of surviving.

Joao Baptista and his wife, Lucila Yuri, told reporters at the Catholic shrine in Fatima, Portugal, on Thursday that they and Brazilian nuns prayed to the late shepherd children who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in "visions" in 1917.

Two of those children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, are due to be canonized by Pope Francis in Fatima on Saturday. </s> FATIMA, Portugal (AP) — The parents of a Brazilian boy whose recovery from a severe brain injury is being cited by the Vatican as the “miracle” needed to canonize two Portuguese children are breaking their silence to share the story.

The boy’s father says his then-5-year-old son, Lucas, fell 6.5 meters (21 feet) from a window in 2013 and sustained head injuries that doctors predicted he had little chance of surviving.

Joao Baptista and his wife, Lucila Yuri, told reporters at the Catholic shrine in Fatima, Portugal, on Thursday that they and Brazilian nuns prayed to the late shepherd children who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in “visions” in 1917.

Two of those children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, are due to be canonized by Pope Francis in Fatima on Saturday. </s> FATIMA, Portugal (AP) — Three shepherd children in Portugal were jailed and threatened with being boiled alive in olive oil when they claimed the Virgin Mary appeared to them 100 years ago. The Catholic Church doubted their story too.

From that unpromising start, the children’s reported visions would go on to strengthen the faith of Portugal’s persecuted Catholics and make the small farming town of Fatima one of the world’s foremost pilgrimage sites, with around 6 million visitors a year.

Now, the Portuguese youngsters’ long-ago testimony is giving the Catholic Church its youngest saints who did not die as martyrs. Pope Francis plans to observe the centenary of their visions by canonizing Francisco and Jacinta Marto this weekend when he makes his first pilgrimage to Fatima.

During the Friday-Saturday visit, Francis will also likely seek to make Fatima’s message of peace and prayer resonate today, church officials say. According to church lore, the Virgin Mary urged penance, sacrifice, and turning away from sin during her appearances to the children.

“At Fatima, the pope could make an appeal to humanity that ‘If you don’t change your criteria, be it political or economic, the world will suffer,’” said Monsignor Carlos Azevedo, who led the church commission that compiled the 15 volumes of documentation about the Fatima phenomenon.

Jacinta was 7 years old and Francisco 9 when they first witnessed the apparitions on May 13, 1917 along with their 10-year-old cousin, Lucia dos Santos. While the Marto siblings died two years later during the Spanish flu pandemic, Lucia became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005. Efforts are underway to beatify her, too, but couldn’t begin until after she died.

According to Dos Santos’ written accounts, the Virgin appeared to the three children six times in 1917 in a field near Fatima where they grazed their sheep. The visits culminated in October with the “Miracle of the Sun,” when others in Fatima at the time reported seeing the sun spinning in the sky. For believers, it was proof that the apparitions were authentic.

Three months after the first reported vision, with news of their claims spreading through word of mouth, local administrative officials placed the children in separate cells and attempted over three days to coerce them into recanting. They were told they would be fried in olive oil if they continued with their lies.

“Authorities said it was a prank,” said Francisco Marto, 78, whose father was Jacinta and Francisco’s older brother.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the retired head of the Vatican’s saint-making office, said the children’s steadfast faith and refusal to disavow their visions made them worthy of sainthood. Himself Portuguese, Saraiva Martins pushed through the Martos’ beatification in 2000 and will travel with the pope to Fatima to see them canonized.

“Before, we couldn’t even talk about the beatification of children in the history of the church because the principle prevailed that they didn’t yet have the skills to exercise the heroic level of Christian virtues,” required as a first step, Saraiva Martins said in an interview.

Portuguese history helps explain the authorities’ initial hostile reaction to the children’s story. The country was proclaimed a republic after the 1910 assassination of King Carlos I, and the first republican governments in Lisbon were determined to curb the Catholic Church’s influence. Religious teaching at schools was banned, and many bishops went into exile.

Portugal also had entered World War I in 1916. Food shortages brought widespread hardship, and people hungered for spiritual sustenance. The Fatima apparitions coincided with that need.

“It was a strong moment of an eruption of the supernatural, in that difficult moment,” said Azevedo, now a Vatican official.

The Virgin purportedly revealed three secrets to the children, containing apocalyptic warnings that seemed to foreshadow World War II and the rise of communism. The contents of the secrets went undisclosed for many years — the third secret wasn’t revealed until 2000. The mystery furthered Fatima’s appeal even as the government tried to curb its popularity.

In 1921, with crowds numbering in the tens of thousands turning up on apparition anniversaries, the government tried in vain to outlaw large-scale religious gatherings. After the church recognized the apparitions as authentic in 1930, people flocked in greater numbers to the site.

Eventually, church-friendly governments assumed power, the anti-clerical laws were rescinded and Portugal re-emerged as the mostly Catholic country that it is today.

Francisco, the 78-year-old nephew of the future saints, runs a souvenir store across the road from the tiny stone house where the Marto family lived in the secluded village of Aljustrel, about 2 kilometers (1 mile) outside Fatima. He remembers his grandfather sitting on the stone stoop and telling stories about his children to pilgrims visiting the shrine.

The old family house is well-preserved, with dry-stone walls, bare timber roofs, small windows and ill-fitting wooden doors. Some of the nine Marto children — Francisco and Jacinta had seven siblings — had to sleep in the barn with the farm animals. Only four would make it to adulthood.

The children’s parents didn’t seek out celebrity and were reluctant centers of attention. Lucia’s parents complained that pilgrims trampled their crops.

“Life didn’t change much. They kept on farming,” Francisco said. His father, though, did get a construction job at the Fatima basilica where the three seers are entombed.

The shrine, with its basilica overlooking a vast square, is now the economic lifeblood of this otherwise unremarkable town. Stores selling souvenirs — statues of the Virgin Mary, rosaries, even wax limbs — line the streets while hotels, restaurants and cafes rely on a steady parade of tourists and pilgrims, 1 million of whom are expected for Francis’ two-day visit. Many come to toss wax limbs into a huge fire pit as they pray for healings. The shrine’s Church of the Holy Trinity, dedicated in 2007, can seat 8,633 people.

“Everyone used to be poor and humble” in the town, said Antonio Vieira, 79 and another nephew of the new saints. “Who’d have guessed that Fatima would turn out like this?” </s> FATIMA, Portugal -- Three shepherd children in Portugal were jailed and threatened with being boiled alive in olive oil when they claimed the Virgin Mary appeared to them 100 years ago. The Catholic Church doubted their story, too.

From that unpromising start, the children's reported visions would go on to strengthen the faith of Portugal's persecuted Catholics and make the small farming town of Fatima one of the world's foremost pilgrimage sites, with around 6 million visitors a year.

Now, the Portuguese youngsters' long-ago testimony is giving the Catholic Church its youngest saints who did not die as martyrs. Pope Francis plans to observe the centenary of their visions by canonizing Francisco and Jacinta Marto this weekend when he makes his first pilgrimage to Fatima.

During the Friday and Saturday visit, Francis will seek to make Fatima's message of peace and prayer resonate to today's faithful, church officials say.

"At Fatima, the pope could make an appeal to humanity that 'If you don't change your criteria, be it political or economic, the world will suffer,'" said Monsignor Carlos Azevedo, who led the church commission that compiled the 15 volumes of documentation about the Fatima phenomenon.

Jacinta was 7 years old and Francisco 9 when they first witnessed the apparitions on May 13, 1917 along with their 10-year-old cousin, Lucia dos Santos. While the Marto siblings died two years later during the Spanish flu pandemic, Lucia became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005. Efforts are underway to beatify her, too, a process that couldn't begin until after she died.

According to Dos Santos' written accounts, the Virgin appeared to the three children six times in 1917, in a field near Fatima where they grazed their sheep. The visits culminated in October with the "Miracle of the Sun," when others in Fatima at the time reported seeing the sun spinning in the sky. For believers, it was proof that the apparitions were authentic.

Three months after the first reported vision, with news of their claims spreading through word of mouth, administrative officials placed the children in separate cells and attempted over three days to coerce them into recanting. They were told they would be fried in olive oil if they continued with their lies.

"Authorities said it was a prank," said Francisco Marto, 78, whose father was Jacinta and Francisco's older brother.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the retired head of the Vatican's saint-making office, said the children's steadfast faith and refusal to disavow their visions made them worthy of sainthood. Himself Portuguese, Saraiva Martins pushed through Francisco and Jacinta's beatification in 2000 and will travel with the pope to Fatima to see them canonized.

Information for this article was contributed by Nicole Winfield of The Associated Press. </s> Pope Francis has added two Portuguese shepherd children to the roster of Catholic saints at an open air Mass in Fatima.

The young siblings’ visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farm town into one of the world’s most important Catholic shrines.

Francis proclaimed Francisco and Jacinta Marto saints at the start of Mass on Saturday 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 in admiration after the pope recited the rite declaring the Martos saints.

The siblings and their cousin, Lucia, reported that on March 13 1917 the Virgin Mary appeared to them 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.

At the time, Europe was in the throes of the First World War and the Portuguese church was suffering under anti-clerical laws from the republican government that had forced many bishops and priests into exile.

“Our Lady foretold, and warned us about, a way of life that is godless and indeed profanes God in his creatures,” Francis said in his homily. “Such a life, frequently proposed and imposed, risks leading to hell.”

He urged Catholics today to use the example of the Marto siblings and draw strength from God, even when adversity strikes.

The children had been threatened by local civil authorities with death by boiling oil if they did not recant their story. But they held fast and eventually the church recognised the apparitions as authentic in 1930.

“We can take as our examples Saint Francisco and Saint Jacinta, whom the Virgin Mary introduced into the immense ocean of God’s light and taught to adore him,” he said. “That was the source of their strength in overcoming opposition and suffering.”

Before the Mass, 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 could not start until after her 2005 death. The Martos now become the youngest ever saints who did not die as martyrs.

At the end of the Mass, Francis offered 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. </s> Pope to make pilgrimage to the Portuguese town for the centenary of the Virgin Mary’s ‘apparition’, writes Barry Hatton.

Three shepherd children in Portugal were jailed and threatened with being boiled alive when they claimed 100 years ago that the Virgin Mary had appeared to them. The Catholic Church doubted them, too.

But the children’s visions would strengthen the faith of Portugal’s persecuted Catholics and make the small farming town of Fatima one of the world’s foremost pilgrimage sites. It has 6m visitors a year.

Now, two of three are about to become the Catholic Church’s youngest saints who did not die as martyrs. Today, Pope Francis plans to observe the centenary of their visions by canonising Francisco and Jacinta Marto when he makes his first pilgrimage to Fatima.

Francis will also likely seek to make Fatima’s message of peace and prayer relevant to today, church officials say. According to church lore, the Virgin Mary urged penance, sacrifice, and turning away from sin during her appearances to the children.

“At Fatima, the Pope could make an appeal to humanity that ‘if you don’t change your criteria, be it political or economic, the world will suffer’,” said Monsignor Carlos Azevedo, who led the Church commission that compiled the 15 volumes of documentation about the Fatima phenomenon.

Jacinta was seven years old, and Francisco nine, when they first witnessed the apparitions on May 13, 1917, along with their 10-year-old cousin, Lucia dos Santos. While the Marto siblings died two years later during the Spanish flu pandemic that followed the First World War, Lucia became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005, aged 97. Efforts are underway to beatify her, too, but couldn’t begin until after she had died.

According to Dos Santos’ written accounts, the Virgin Mary appeared to the three children six times in 1917, in a field near Fatima where they grazed their sheep. The visits culminated in October with the ‘Miracle of the Sun,’ when others in Fatima reported seeing the sun spinning in the sky. For believers, it was proof that the apparitions were authentic.

Three months after the first reported vision, with news of their claims spreading, local administrative officials placed the children in separate cells and attempted, over three days, to coerce them into recanting. They were told they would be fried in olive oil if they continued with their lies.

“Authorities said it was a prank,” said Francisco Marto, 78, whose father was Jacinta and Francisco’s older brother.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the retired head of the Vatican’s saint-making office, said the children’s steadfast faith, and refusal to disavow their visions, made them worthy of sainthood. Himself Portuguese, Cardinal Martins pushed through the Martos’ beatification in 2000, and will travel with the Pope to see them canonised.

“Before, we couldn’t even talk about the beatification of children in the history of the Church, because the principle prevailed that they didn’t yet have the skills to exercise the heroic level of Christian virtues” required as a first step, said Cardinal Martins.

Portuguese history helps explain the authorities’ initial hostility to the children’s story. The country was proclaimed a republic after the 1910 assassination of King Carlos I, and the first republican governments in Lisbon were determined to curb the Catholic Church’s influence. Religious teaching at schools was banned, and many bishops went into exile.

Portugal also had entered the First World War in 1916. Food shortages brought widespread hardship, and people yearned for spiritual sustenance. The Fatima apparitions coincided with that need.

“It was a strong moment of an eruption of the supernatural, in that difficult moment,” said Msgr Azevedo, now a Vatican official.

A nun waits in the rain for the arrival of Pope Francis in the Sanctuary of Fatima yesterday. Picture: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty

The Virgin purportedly revealed three secrets to the children, containing apocalyptic warnings that seemed to foreshadow the Second World War and the rise of communism. The contents of the secrets went undisclosed for many years, and the third secret wasn’t revealed until 2000 — a foretelling of the May 13, 1981 assassination attempt on St John Paul II in St Peter’s Square.

The mystery furthered Fatima’s appeal, even as the government tried to curb its popularity.

In 1921, with crowds numbering in the tens of thousands turning up on apparition anniversaries, the government tried in vain to outlaw large-scale religious gatherings. After the Church recognised the apparitions as authentic in 1930, people flocked in greater numbers to the site of the visions. Eventually, Church-friendly governments assumed power, the anti-clerical laws were rescinded, and Portugal re-emerged as the mostly Catholic country that it is today.

Francisco, the 78-year-old nephew of the future saints, runs a souvenir store across the road from the tiny stone house where the Marto family lived, in the secluded village of Aljustrel, about 2km outside Fatima. He still remembers his grandfather sitting on the stone stoop and telling stories about his children to pilgrims visiting the shrine.

The old family house is well-preserved, with dry-stone walls, bare timber roofs, small windows, and ill-fitting wooden doors. Some of the nine Marto children — Francisco and Jacinta had seven siblings — had to sleep in the barn with the farm animals. Only four would make it to adulthood.

The children’s parents didn’t seek out celebrity and were reluctant centres of attention.

“Life didn’t change much. They kept on farming,” Francisco said. His father, though, did get a construction job at the Fatima basilica, where the three seers are entombed.

The shrine, with its basilica overlooking a vast square, is now the economic lifeblood of this otherwise unremarkable town.

Stores selling souvenirs — statues of the Virgin Mary, rosaries, even wax limbs — line the streets, while hotels, restaurants, and cafes rely on a steady parade of tourists and pilgrims. One million of them are expected for Pope Francis’s visit.

Many come to toss wax limbs into a huge fire pit as they pray for healings. The shrine’s Church of the Holy Trinity, dedicated in 2007, can seat 8,633 people.

“Everyone used to be poor and humble” in the town, said Antonio Vieira, 79, and another nephew of the new saints. “Who’d have guessed that Fatima would turn out like this?” </s> Pope Francis added two Portuguese shepherd children to the roster of Catholic saints Saturday, honoring 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.

Francis 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 Francis read the proclamation aloud.

“It is amazing, it is like an answer to prayer because I felt that always they would be canonized,” said Agnes Walsh from Killarney, Ireland. She said she prayed to Francisco Marto for 20 years, hoping her four daughters would meet “nice boys like Francisco.” “The four of them have met boys that are just beautiful I couldn't ask for better, so he has answered all my prayers,” she said.

Francisco and Jacinta, ages 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.

At the time, Europe was in the throes of World War I, and the Portuguese church was suffering under anti-clerical laws from the republican government that had forced many bishops and priests into exile.

“Our Lady foretold, and warned us about, a way of life that is godless and indeed profanes God in his creatures,” Francis said in his homily. “Such a life, frequently proposed and imposed, risks leading to hell.”

He urged Catholics today to use the example of the Marto siblings and draw strength from God, even when adversity strikes. The children had been threatened by local civil authorities with death by boiling oil if they didn't recant their story. But they held fast and eventually the church recognized the apparitions as authentic in 1930.

“We can take as our examples Saint Francisco and Saint Jacinta, whom the Virgin Mary introduced into the immense ocean of God's light and taught to adore him,” he said. “That was the source of their strength in overcoming opposition and suffering.”

Before the Mass, 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, 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, age 5 at the time, had fallen 21 feet 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 its terrifying contents: 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 canonization 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.

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Pope Francis canonizes Jacinta and Francisco Marto, two of the three Fátima children who reported seeing the Virgin Mary in the spring and summer of 1917. The Martos, who died during the post-World War I international influenza pandemic, are the Catholic Church's youngest saints who did not die as martyrs. The other child, Lúcia de Jesus dos Santos, survived until the year 2005, when she was 97 years old.