Sister Lúcia dos Santos

Last of the visionaries of Fatima

Lúcia de Jesus dos Santos, shepherdess and nun: born Aljustrel, Portugal 22 March 1907; professed a nun of the order of St Dorothy 1928, of the Carmelite order 1948; died Coimbra, Portugal 13 February 2005.

Sister Lúcia dos Santos was the eldest, and the last surviving, of three shepherd children who claimed to see the Virgin several times at the Portuguese town of Fatima, in visions that gave rise to one of the most fervent cults of Marian Catholicism.

Lúcia was 10 when she swore that she had seen the Virgin on 13 May 1917 in the remote spot of Cova de Iria - Irene's Grotto - whilst guarding sheep in the fields with her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto, aged nine and seven. Lúcia described how they saw, in an oak tree, "a lady dressed in white, brighter than the sun, radiating light clearer and more intense than the rays of the sun burning through a glass of clear water". The visions were repeated on the 13th of each subsequent month until the Virgin's last apparition on 13 October 1917, when Lúcia swore that "the sun moved in all directions . . . it danced."

Lúcia was the most forward of the trio, the only one to swear that the Virgin had talked to them and confessed a secret divided into three parts. The first and second secret appeared to prophesy the end of the First World War and the outbreak of a second, and the eventual re-emergence of Christianity in Russia after Communist persecution.

In 1948, Lúcia wrote down the so-called "third secret of Fatima", which intrigued the Catholic world for decades, but was revealed on 13 May 2000, while the Pope visited Fatima to declare Jacinta and Francisco saints. The secret "spoke of a bishop clothed in white who walks towards the cross amidst the corpses of martyrs and falls to the ground, apparently dead, attacked by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him", according to the Pope's spokesman. Lúcia apparently confirmed that "the bishop" referred to the Pope, in a prophecy of the assassination attempt.

The Portuguese clergy were initially sceptical about the children's testimony. Their terrified parents beat them to try to make them retract, and the authorities imprisoned them and threatened them with burning oil. But Catholics began to make pilgrimages to the spot, which grew into one of the Church's most important shrines.

To flee persecution, Lúcia abandoned Portugal in 1921 for the Spanish border town of Tuy, where she took vows as a nun and adopted the name of María de los Dolores. By then Lúcia was the only survivor, Jacinta and Francisco having died of pneumonia in 1919 and 1920.

Not until 1930 did the bishop of the nearby town of Leiria give credence to the children's tale, enabling the clergy to keep control over the phenomenon and, critics say, strengthening their hand at a moment of social turmoil in Portugal.

The bishop gave his blessing to the now thriving cult of the Virgin of Fatima, where a vast sanctuary was built during the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar. Portuguese say that their life for decades that followed was dominated by "football, fado and Fatima". The country's Fascist authorities energetically promoted Fatima as a mass pilgrimage destination, and the site is visited annually by millions of pilgrims. Many inch their way forward for long distances on their knees.

The Pope, long a devotee of the Virgin of Fatima, is convinced she saved his life when the Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot him three times in St Peter's Square on 13 May 1981. "One hand fired the bullet and another guided it," the Pope said.

Sceptics say that the children's visions were probably the effects of electric storms common in the region upon frightened, malnourished children who were very likely groggy with alcohol. They were sent to watch sheep on a bare mountain from dawn to dusk having breakfasted on nothing but the local broth of bread, sugar and wine, known as "the soup of the tired horse".

Sister Lúcia returned to Portugal on the order of the Vatican to take vows as a Carmelite nun in 1948, and lived until her death in the closed convent of Carmel de Santa Teresa in Coimbra. For the final two years of her life she was deaf and blind. One of her last visitors was Mel Gibson, director of The Passion of Christ. He met her at the convent in July 2004 and gave her a DVD of the movie.

Elizabeth Nash