Lucia dos Santos had foretold Pope's assassination attempt

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 had foretold the attempt to kill Pope John Paul.

Sr Dos Santos, 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 aged 97 at her Carmelite convent at Coimbra in central Portugal, 150 kilometres north of Lisbon.

"She had been weak for several weeks and had not left her cell," Coimbra Bishop Albino Cleto told the Church's Radio Renascenca.

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.

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.

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.

"One hand fired the bullet and another guided it," the Pope once said of Agca's attempt to kill him.

Sr Dos Santos was said by believers to be the main recipient of prophecies from the Virgin about key 20th century events.

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 Two.

But it was the third part, the so-called third secret of Fatima, which kept the world intrigued for more than 80 years. 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.

Sr 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".

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".

Before the Vatican unveiled the vision, papal envoys visited Sr Dos Santos in her cloistered convent to seek her opinion of the Vatican's interpretation and her permission to reveal it.

"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.

The document went on to say: "When asked: 'Is the principal figure in the vision the Pope?' Sr Lucia replied at once that it was.

Sr Dos Santos was born the youngest of seven children in a peasant family in Aljustrel, a village in central Portugal.

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.

In 1916 she experienced her first vision, when an angel appeared to the children, she wrote in her memoirs. 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 colours.

In her memoirs, Sr 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.

The two were beatified, the last step to sainthood, by Pope John Paul during his Fatima visit in 2000.

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.

Portugal declares day of mourning

Portugal declared today a day of mourning and politicians cut back election campaigning to mark the death of Lucia de Jesus dos Santos.

Sr Dos Santos is to be buried at the convent today and her remains will be transferred in a year to nearby Fatima, one of Catholicism's major pilgrimage sites.

Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes late on Sunday declared today a day of national mourning.

"I believe that Sister Lucia is a great figure in the recent history of Portugal," Santana Lopes said in remarks carried on TSF radio. A spokesman said he might attend the funeral.

Portugal holds snap elections on Sunday but Mr Santana Lopes's centre-right Social Democrats and their coalition partner the rightist Popular Party suspended their campaigns yesterday and today because of the death.

The opposition Socialists, who are well ahead in opinion polls, said they would scale back their campaign activities.

Sr Dos Santos was said by believers to be the main recipient of prophecies from the Virgin about key 20th century events.

The other two children, Sr dos Santos's cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto, died in 1919 and 1920. The two were beatified, the last step to sainthood, in 2000.