PORTUGAL: POPE JOHN PAUL II VISIT

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More than half a (m) million pilgrims gathered in the Portuguese town of Fatima to attend the pope's beatification of a shepherd boy and girl whom he credits with a miracle that saved his life in a 1981 assassination attempt.

The crowds watched the pope beatify Jacinta Marto and her brother Francisco, who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them and their cousin Lucia dos Santos above an olive tree six times in 1917 and told them three secrets.

Dos Santos, who is now 93 and the only one of the three still alive, met the pope in Fatima on Saturday.

Pope John Paul the Second weaved through the cheering throng in Fatima for 40 minutes in his popemobile before the beatification.

The pope is said to have a special fondness for Fatima since 1981, when he was wounded in an assassination attempt in St. Peter's Square.

The shooting happened on May 13, the anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin in Fatima, 110 kilometres (70 miles) north of Lisbon.

One of the two bullets that hit the pope is placed in a statue of the Virgin Mary at Fatima - a town of 8-thousand people.

When he came to Fatima on May 12 the following year to thank the Virgin, he survived another assassination attempt by a fundamentalist Spanish priest who lunged at him with a bayonet, accusing him of betraying the Church.

On Saturday, the crowds watched the pope beatify Jacinta Marto and her brother Francisco, who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them and their cousin Lucia dos Santos above an olive tree six times in 1917 and told them three secrets.

Many pilgrims hoped the pope would reveal the last of three secrets the shepherd children said the Virgin told them.

The first two foretold the end of World War I and the rise and fall of Communism.

Dos Santos, who is now 93, has told the third secret to the Vatican but successive popes have refused to disclose it.

She sat in silent prayer beside the tombs of her cousins before joining the beatification ceremony in Fatima's neo-Baroque basilica and meeting the pope.

The beatified shepherd children died of pneumonia two years after the visions, at the ages of 9 and 11.

The pope's visit to Fatima was expected to be his last foreign trip this year amid a heavy agenda of 2000 Holy Year commitments.


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