Pope Francis canonizes children who reported visions of the Virgin Mary

Pope Francis in Fatima, Portugal
(Image credit: Francisco Leong/Getty Images)

Pope Francis on Saturday canonized two siblings from Fatima, Portugal, who reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary in 1917.

Francisco and Jacinta Marto were shepherd children aged 9 and 7 who said Mary repeatedly appeared and prophesied to them while they were grazing their sheep. As recorded by an older cousin, Lucia, who is also on track to become a saint, the children saw a vision of hell, the violent death of a pope, and Mary's prediction of the end of World War I and start of World War II.

Both Marto children died two years after their visionary experience in the Spanish flu epidemic. They are now the youngest saints in the Catholic canon who were not martyred. Their shrine in Portugal draws more than 5 million visitors annually, and their ceremony in Fatima on Saturday was expected to attract a million worshippers.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.