The fate of the three children
Lúcia reported
seeing the Virgin again in 1925 at the Dorothean convent
at Pontevedra, Galicia
(Spain). This time, she said she was asked to convey the message
of the First
Saturday Devotions. A subsequent vision of the Christ Child Himself
reiterated this request, by her account.
Lúcia was transferred to another convent in Tui or
Tuy, Galicia in
1928. In 1929, Lúcia reported that Mary returned and repeated
her request for the Consecration of Russia to
her Immaculate
Heart.
Lúcia reportedly saw Mary in private visions periodically throughout
her life. Most significant was the apparition in Rianxo, Galicia in
1931, in which Sister Lúcia said that Jesus visited her, taught
her two prayers, and delivered a message to give to the hierarchy of
the Church.
In 1947, Sister Lúcia left the Dorothean order and joined the
Carmelite order
in a convent in Coimbra,
Portugal. Lúcia died on February
13, 2005, at the age of 97.
After her death, the Vatican,
specifically Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger (at that time, still head of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith) ordered her cell sealed off. It is
believed this was because Sister Lúcia had continued to receive
more revelations, and the evidence needed to be examined in the course
of proceedings for Lúcia's canonization.
Lúcia's cousins, the siblings Francisco (1908–1919)
and Jacinta Marto (1910–1920),
were both victims of the Great Spanish
Flu Epidemic of 1919.
Francisco and Jacinta were declared venerable by
Pope John Paul II in a public ceremony at Fatima on May
13, 1989. John Paul returned
there on May 13, 2000,
to declare them 'blessed'.
Jacinta is the youngest non-martyred child ever to be beatified.
In 1941, Lúcia claimed that the Virgin Mary had predicted the
deaths of two of the children during the second apparition on June
13, 1917. Some accounts, including
the testimony of Olímpia Marto (mother of the two younger children)
state that her children did not keep this information secret and ecstatically
predicted their own deaths many times to her and to curious pilgrims.
According to the 1941 account, on June
13, Lúcia asked the Virgin if the three children would go
to heaven when they died. She heard Mary reply, "Yes, I shall take Francisco
and Jacinta soon, but you will remain a little longer, since Jesus wishes
you to make me known and loved on earth. He wishes also for you to establish
devotion in the world to my Immaculate Heart. Jacinta,
in fact, accurately foretold the time and detailed circumstances of her
death, according to Lúcia and hospital staff.
Exhumed in 1935 and again in 1951, Jacinta's body was found incorrupt.
Francisco's had decomposed. |
