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.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
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.