FATIMA, PORTUGAL (Reuters) - Pope Francis will make two Portuguese shepherd children saints this week, crowning a belief that started with reported visions of the Madonna 100 years ago that have turned the Shrine of Fatima into one of the most famous in Christianity.

Up to a million people are expected to attend the canonisation mass on Saturday at the shrine for the children, who the Vatican believes received messages from the Madonna that have become known as the three secrets of Fatima.

"For this blessed moment that culminates a century of blessed moments, I rejoice in your preparations of intense prayer," the pope said in a message to the Portuguese people ahead of his two-day visit.

Fatima is a town in central Portugal where the apparitions were recorded. "I think it has a very big importance for the whole world,"said Vanessa, a worshipper who had made the pilgrimage to the shrine from the Philippines.

She called the canonisation "historic" in recognizing the impact of Fatima.

For Portugal, one of Europe's most Catholic countries with 81 percent of the population describing themselves as belonging to the faith, the event is a big deal and the story of Fatima is universally known.

"Welcome Pope Francis," read a huge poster with images of the pope and the shepherd children hung up on Lisbon's main traffic intersection.

Father Vitor Coutinho, deputy head of the sanctuary of Fatima, said the pope was showing the importance of Fatima to the church by carrying out the canonisation there rather than in Rome, where they are usually done.

"Therefore he is confirming that a life lived in the light of the spirituality of Fatima can lead to sainthood," Coutinho said.

The story of the shepherd children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, has captivated Catholics ever since their first reported vision on May 13, 1917. Their first vision was of hell and a call to prayer and conversion, which if not heeded would lead to another world war.

The second was a warning that Russia would "spread her errors" in the world if people did not turn to God.

The third secret intrigued the world for nearly three-quarters of a century, inspiring books and cults.

Only in 2000 did the Vatican say the third secret was a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, who survived and subsequently gave the bullet that hit him to the bishop of Fatima.

It was later put into the crown of the statue of Fatima and many Portuguese say the bullet was a perfect fit, providing evidence of the vision.

The Catholic Church posthumously confers sainthood on people considered so holy during their lives that they are now believed to be with God and can intercede with him to perform miracles.

Francisco and Jacinta's miracle is linked to the inexplicable healing from a terrible head injury of a Brazilian child, whose parents prayed to the siblings.

The child's parents are due to make a statement to the press at Fatima on Thursday.

Francisco died in 1919 and Jacinta died a year later, both of pneumonia, when they were still just 9 and 10-years-old. The third sibling, Lucia, became a nun and died in 2005 at 97.

Portugal has taken a series of security measures for the pope's visit, including by reinstating border controls for a few days by suspending the Schengen Europe-wide free travel agreement.

In the large, open space around Fatima special cement blocks have been put in place to avoid the possibility of militant attacks such as those in Stockholm and Nice.</s>The parents of a Brazilian boy whose recovery from a severe brain injury is being cited by the Vatican as the "miracle" needed to canonize two Portuguese children are breaking their silence to share the story.

The boy's father says his then-5-year-old son, Lucas, fell 6.5 meters (21 feet) from a window in 2013 and sustained head injuries that doctors predicted he had little chance of surviving.

Joao Baptista and his wife, Lucila Yuri, told reporters at the Catholic shrine in Fatima, Portugal, on Thursday that they and Brazilian nuns prayed to the late shepherd children who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in "visions" in 1917.

Two of those children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, are due to be canonized by Pope Francis in Fatima on Saturday.</s>Pope Francis prays in front of a statue of Our Lady of Fatima on the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima, May 13, 2015, in St. Peter's Square. (© L'Osservatore Romano)

Pope Francis and the Unexpired Call of Fatima

On May 12-13, the focus of the Catholic world will be on Portugal, as Pope Francis heads to Fatima to lead the celebration of the centenary of the apparitions of Our Lady to the three shepherd children.

It will be an opportunity for the Holy Father to reinforce the continued relevance and summons of Fatima and link it to four of his most prominent pastoral priorities: mercy and conversion, peace, Marian devotion and children.

First, mercy and conversion. From his papal motto Miserando Atque Eligendo (“With Mercy Chosen”), pointing to how God chooses through mercy, to the words of his inaugural Angelus meditation in 2013 — stressing that we should never tire of asking for the forgiveness that God never tires to give — to the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy he convoked, his 2016 apostolic letter Misericordia et Misera (“Mercy and Misery”), and more, Pope Francis’ priority for a pontifical theme has been the merciful love of God, our need to receive it and to pray for others to receive it, and our call to become merciful like the Father in sharing it.

Mary’s main message to the pastorinhos was a maternal echo of her Son’s call to conversion. She asked Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto if they were willing to offer themselves to God in reparation for sins and for the conversion of sinners.

She showed them three visions — one of hell, another about world wars, and the third about the persecution of the Church — indelibly illustrating for them the consequences of sin. She urged them to turn to her Son and beg, “Forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of your mercy.”

When St. John Paul II first went to Fatima in 1982, he summarized Mary’s entreaty as a reiteration of her Son’s call to repent and believe: “The message of Fatima is, in its basic nucleus, a call to conversion and repentance, as in the Gospel.”

For that reason, he said, her maternal reiteration “remains ever relevant” and is even “more relevant … and urgent” than it was in 1917. Writing in 2000, the future Pope Benedict likewise underlined, “Our Lady's call to conversion and penance, issued at the start of the twentieth century, remains timely and urgent today,” stressing that her “insistent invitation” to penance “is nothing but the manifestation of her maternal concern for the fate of the human family, in need of conversion and forgiveness.”

The second priority Pope Francis will be able to pray for and articulate in Fatima is the pressing need for peace.

Because of a failure of persons and peoples to convert and forgive, the world is exploding with conflicts, what Pope Francis has called a third world war “fought piecemeal.” Syria, Iraq, North Korea, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are among the most noteworthy ones, but terrorist networks and attacks, murderous drug cartels and organized crime, totalitarian crackdowns and various national insurgencies have made most of the world a battlefield.

Our Lady appeared in Fatima to help lead the world on the path of peace. “If what I say to you is done,” she said to the three children, “many souls will be saved, and there will be peace. The war [World War I] will end, but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out.”

With prophetic prescience, she called us to pray for and consecrate Russia, because if it were not converted from the totalitarian communist atheistic path it had begun a few months earlier with the Bolshevik Revolution, it would “spread its errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions [and] … various nations will be annihilated.”

Twentieth-century history has verified her admonition. Even though the consecration was eventually done, prayer for peace in the world, and especially for countries that continue to seek to subjugate other lands under dehumanizing utopian lies, remains ever needed.

When Blessed Paul VI visited Fatima for the 50th anniversary of the apparitions in 1967, he said he had come to pray for peace in the world, so that through prayer and penance under Mary’s direction, we would see the triumph of love and the victory of peace. When St. John Paul II came in 1991, two years after the fall of the Soviet communist bloc, he thanked Mary for “having guided with maternal tenderness peoples to freedom” and said that Mary’s “palpable, penetrating call” for peace remains insistent.

The third pastoral priority Fatima gives Pope Francis is the opportunity to emphasize true devotion to Mary, especially through the Rosary and consecration. It’s noteworthy that before and after every foreign trip Pope Francis goes to St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome to beg for Mary’s prayers. He has repeatedly encouraged all people to pray the Rosary, calling it a “school of prayer” and “school of faith,” and exhorting us, “Please pray the Rosary. … Do not neglect it!”

During the Year of Consecrated Life, he spoke regularly about the meaning of Mary’s consecration and how we are called to imitate it and enter into it.

In Fatima, Mary taught the three children how to pray the Rosary properly, because they were used to saying just the first words of each prayer. She identified herself to them as “Our Lady of the Rosary,” and in every appearance, she asked them to “pray the Rosary every day.”

She revealed: “To save [poor sinners on the path to hell], God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart,” a heart that is pure and sees God, treasures his word, says fiat to what he asks, and loves both him and others.

The day Blessed Paul VI visited Fatima, he released an apostolic exhortation focused on the devotion we should all have to Mary as a spiritual mother, describing her as the model of how to enflesh and live by God’s word. In Rome and Fatima, St. John Paul II led the Church throughout the world in consecrating itself to Mary’s Immaculate Heart. And during his visit, Pope Benedict emphasized, “Fatima and the Rosary are practically synonymous,” urging us, in praying the Rosary, to imitate the entrustment of the shepherds to Mary and allowing her to help us fix the gaze of our hearts on the blessed Fruit of her womb.

The fourth pastoral priority is about young people and the call to spiritual greatness.

Whenever Pope Francis visits a parish, he always has a special meeting with young children to answer their questions, to inspire them in simple ways to say “Yes” to God, and to help them to grow in love of God, the Blessed Mother, their faith and others. With youth and young adults at World Youth Day, he has summoned them to the fullness of the Christian life. “God calls each of us to be holy, to live his life,” he said in Brazil at World Youth Day 2013. In Krakow in 2016, he challenged them, “Leave your mark on history” by following Jesus all the way.

When he reaches Fatima this week, Pope Francis will have a chance to illustrate these truths as he canonizes Francisco and Jacinta, who will become the youngest non-martyred canonized saints in history. When John Paul visited in 2000 to beatify Francisco and Jacinta in the presence of Lucia, he said that the means by which they were able to become “saints so quickly” was that they had enrolled in Mary’s “school” and had learned from her, through prayer and loving reparation, the way to holiness, happiness and heaven.

Pope Francis will have a chance to call all children of God, no matter how young, to learn from the same Mother and teacher and offer Sts. Francisco and Jacinta to the children of the world as heroes who truly left their mark on history.

During the last papal visit in 2010, Pope Benedict said that the message of Fatima “imposed itself on the Church.” Its centenary is not principally about looking backward, because “Fatima’s prophetic message” is, he said, not complete, but is something that all of us are meant to actualize.

Our Lady’s message doesn’t chiefly concern secrets or “particular devotions,” but, rather, he underlined, a “fundamental response” that involves persistent prayer, conversion, penance, forgiveness, Marian piety and consecration, faith, hope, justice and charity. For the years leading up to the centenary and beyond, he called all of us through those practices to help hasten the fulfillment of the prophecy of the triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart and to the peace, holiness and salvation it brings.

As Pope Francis visits Fatima, he will help the Church, through the example of the docility and devotion of the new saints, to enter Mary’s school and learn there not just the lessons of the past century and about the foundation for peace on earth, but, most important of all, the path to salvation and eternal happiness, where Our Lady and the shepherd children continue to pray for the bishop in white and for all of us.

Father Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, and national chaplain of Catholic Voices USA.</s>A life-sized mural that shows Donald Trump kissing Pope Francis on the lips has appeared on a wall near the Vatican.

The painting, which depicts the pontiff with a halo around his head while the American president sports devilish horns, was created in Rome on Thursday.

The caption on the sash of the pope's cassock reads 'the good forgives the evil.'

The mural - painted less than two weeks before the pair are due to meet - is signed 'TVBoy,' who is believed to be Italian street artist Salvatore Benintende.

The mural, which was painted on paper and pasted on to the wall during the night, was the latest work by street artists depicting the pope to appear in Rome in recent months.

This one shows Francis, wearing a simple crucifix around his neck, embracing Trump, who wears a gold watch and sports a pistol in a holster.

The pope's halo is the same bright yellow colour as Trump's hair. The two are locked in a mouth-to-mouth kiss.

'It is very provocative but not too shocking for someone coming from America,' said a Californian tourist who gave only his first name, Victor.

The mural was pasted on a wall on a street named 'Way of the Bank of Holy Spirit' across the Tiber River from the Vatican.

Francis and Trump are due to meet at the Vatican on May 24 while the president is on a tour of Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy and Belgium.

In February the Pope repeated his appeal for people to build bridges not walls amid a global backlash over the Trump administration's attempts to impose a travel ban on seven mostly Muslim countries.

The pope did not overtly refer to Trump in his comments but spoke on the feast day of St. Josephine Bakhita - a 19th-century Sudanese slave who became a nun after migrating to Europe.

Sudan is one of the seven countries on the US travel ban list.

'In the social and civil context as well, I appeal not to create walls but to build bridges,' he said. 'To not respond to evil with evil. To defeat evil with good, the offence with forgiveness. A Christian would never say "You will pay for that." Never.'

Such murals depicting the pope eventually are taken down by a special group of Rome sanitation workers known as 'The Decorum Squad'.

In the past, the squad has erased a mural depicting the pope as a sneaky graffiti artist painting peace signs on walls and another showing him as the comic book hero Superman.

Local media have criticised the unit for removing popular art while unsightly graffiti blights many buildings and heaps of garbage pile up on sidewalks because of a collection backlog.</s>According to Dos Santos' written accounts, the Virgin appeared to the three children six times in 1917 in a field near Fatima where they grazed their sheep. The visits culminated in October with the "Miracle of the Sun," when others in Fatima at the time reported seeing the sun spinning in the sky. For believers, it was proof that the apparitions were authentic.</s>(AP) – The parents of a Brazilian boy whose recovery from a severe brain injury is being cited by the Vatican as the “miracle” needed to canonize two Portuguese children are breaking their silence to share the story.

The boy’s father says his then-5-year-old son, Lucas, fell 6.5 meters (21 feet) from a window in 2013 and sustained head injuries that doctors predicted he had little chance of surviving.

Joao Baptista and his wife, Lucila Yuri, told reporters at the Catholic shrine in Fatima, Portugal, on Thursday that they and Brazilian nuns prayed to the late shepherd children who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in “visions” in 1917. Two of those children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, are due to be canonized by Pope Francis in Fatima on Saturday.</s>FATIMA, Portugal (AP) — Three shepherd children in Portugal were jailed and threatened with being boiled alive in olive oil when they claimed the Virgin Mary appeared to them 100 years ago. The Catholic Church doubted their story too.

From that unpromising start, the children’s reported visions would go on to strengthen the faith of Portugal’s persecuted Catholics and make the small farming town of Fatima one of the world’s foremost pilgrimage sites, with around 6 million visitors a year.

Now, the Portuguese youngsters’ long-ago testimony is giving the Catholic Church its youngest saints who did not die as martyrs. Pope Francis plans to observe the centenary of their visions by canonizing Francisco and Jacinta Marto this weekend when he makes his first pilgrimage to Fatima.

During the Friday-Saturday visit, Francis will also likely seek to make Fatima’s message of peace and prayer resonate today, church officials say. According to church lore, the Virgin Mary urged penance, sacrifice, and turning away from sin during her appearances to the children.

“At Fatima, the pope could make an appeal to humanity that ‘If you don’t change your criteria, be it political or economic, the world will suffer,’” said Monsignor Carlos Azevedo, who led the church commission that compiled the 15 volumes of documentation about the Fatima phenomenon.

Jacinta was 7 years old and Francisco 9 when they first witnessed the apparitions on May 13, 1917 along with their 10-year-old cousin, Lucia dos Santos. While the Marto siblings died two years later during the Spanish flu pandemic, Lucia became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005. Efforts are underway to beatify her, too, but couldn’t begin until after she died.

According to Dos Santos’ written accounts, the Virgin appeared to the three children six times in 1917 in a field near Fatima where they grazed their sheep. The visits culminated in October with the “Miracle of the Sun,” when others in Fatima at the time reported seeing the sun spinning in the sky. For believers, it was proof that the apparitions were authentic.

Three months after the first reported vision, with news of their claims spreading through word of mouth, local administrative officials placed the children in separate cells and attempted over three days to coerce them into recanting. They were told they would be fried in olive oil if they continued with their lies.

“Authorities said it was a prank,” said Francisco Marto, 78, whose father was Jacinta and Francisco’s older brother.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the retired head of the Vatican’s saint-making office, said the children’s steadfast faith and refusal to disavow their visions made them worthy of sainthood. Himself Portuguese, Saraiva Martins pushed through the Martos’ beatification in 2000 and will travel with the pope to Fatima to see them canonized.

“Before, we couldn’t even talk about the beatification of children in the history of the church because the principle prevailed that they didn’t yet have the skills to exercise the heroic level of Christian virtues,” required as a first step, Saraiva Martins said in an interview.

Portuguese history helps explain the authorities’ initial hostile reaction to the children’s story. The country was proclaimed a republic after the 1910 assassination of King Carlos I, and the first republican governments in Lisbon were determined to curb the Catholic Church’s influence. Religious teaching at schools was banned, and many bishops went into exile.

Portugal also had entered World War I in 1916. Food shortages brought widespread hardship, and people hungered for spiritual sustenance. The Fatima apparitions coincided with that need.

“It was a strong moment of an eruption of the supernatural, in that difficult moment,” said Azevedo, now a Vatican official.

The Virgin purportedly revealed three secrets to the children, containing apocalyptic warnings that seemed to foreshadow World War II and the rise of communism. The contents of the secrets went undisclosed for many years — the third secret wasn’t revealed until 2000. The mystery furthered Fatima’s appeal even as the government tried to curb its popularity.

In 1921, with crowds numbering in the tens of thousands turning up on apparition anniversaries, the government tried in vain to outlaw large-scale religious gatherings. After the church recognized the apparitions as authentic in 1930, people flocked in greater numbers to the site.

Eventually, church-friendly governments assumed power, the anti-clerical laws were rescinded and Portugal re-emerged as the mostly Catholic country that it is today.

Francisco, the 78-year-old nephew of the future saints, runs a souvenir store across the road from the tiny stone house where the Marto family lived in the secluded village of Aljustrel, about 2 kilometers (1 mile) outside Fatima. He remembers his grandfather sitting on the stone stoop and telling stories about his children to pilgrims visiting the shrine.

The old family house is well-preserved, with dry-stone walls, bare timber roofs, small windows and ill-fitting wooden doors. Some of the nine Marto children — Francisco and Jacinta had seven siblings — had to sleep in the barn with the farm animals. Only four would make it to adulthood.

The children’s parents didn’t seek out celebrity and were reluctant centers of attention. Lucia’s parents complained that pilgrims trampled their crops.

“Life didn’t change much. They kept on farming,” Francisco said. His father, though, did get a construction job at the Fatima basilica where the three seers are entombed.

The shrine, with its basilica overlooking a vast square, is now the economic lifeblood of this otherwise unremarkable town. Stores selling souvenirs — statues of the Virgin Mary, rosaries, even wax limbs — line the streets while hotels, restaurants and cafes rely on a steady parade of tourists and pilgrims, 1 million of whom are expected for Francis’ two-day visit. Many come to toss wax limbs into a huge fire pit as they pray for healings. The shrine’s Church of the Holy Trinity, dedicated in 2007, can seat 8,633 people.

“Everyone used to be poor and humble” in the town, said Antonio Vieira, 79 and another nephew of the new saints. “Who’d have guessed that Fatima would turn out like this?”</s>FATIMA, Portugal -- Three shepherd children in Portugal were jailed and threatened with being boiled alive in olive oil when they claimed the Virgin Mary appeared to them 100 years ago. The Catholic Church doubted their story, too.

From that unpromising start, the children's reported visions would go on to strengthen the faith of Portugal's persecuted Catholics and make the small farming town of Fatima one of the world's foremost pilgrimage sites, with around 6 million visitors a year.

Now, the Portuguese youngsters' long-ago testimony is giving the Catholic Church its youngest saints who did not die as martyrs. Pope Francis plans to observe the centenary of their visions by canonizing Francisco and Jacinta Marto this weekend when he makes his first pilgrimage to Fatima.

During the Friday and Saturday visit, Francis will seek to make Fatima's message of peace and prayer resonate to today's faithful, church officials say.

"At Fatima, the pope could make an appeal to humanity that 'If you don't change your criteria, be it political or economic, the world will suffer,'" said Monsignor Carlos Azevedo, who led the church commission that compiled the 15 volumes of documentation about the Fatima phenomenon.

Jacinta was 7 years old and Francisco 9 when they first witnessed the apparitions on May 13, 1917 along with their 10-year-old cousin, Lucia dos Santos. While the Marto siblings died two years later during the Spanish flu pandemic, Lucia became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005. Efforts are underway to beatify her, too, a process that couldn't begin until after she died.

According to Dos Santos' written accounts, the Virgin appeared to the three children six times in 1917, in a field near Fatima where they grazed their sheep. The visits culminated in October with the "Miracle of the Sun," when others in Fatima at the time reported seeing the sun spinning in the sky. For believers, it was proof that the apparitions were authentic.

Three months after the first reported vision, with news of their claims spreading through word of mouth, administrative officials placed the children in separate cells and attempted over three days to coerce them into recanting. They were told they would be fried in olive oil if they continued with their lies.

"Authorities said it was a prank," said Francisco Marto, 78, whose father was Jacinta and Francisco's older brother.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the retired head of the Vatican's saint-making office, said the children's steadfast faith and refusal to disavow their visions made them worthy of sainthood. Himself Portuguese, Saraiva Martins pushed through Francisco and Jacinta's beatification in 2000 and will travel with the pope to Fatima to see them canonized.

Information for this article was contributed by Nicole Winfield of The Associated Press.</s>Join us on our podcast each weekday for an interesting story, well told, from Charisma News. Listen at charismapodcastnetwork.com.

A life-size mural depicting Pope Francis with a saintly halo kissing U.S. President Donald Trump sprouting devil's horns appeared on a wall near the Vatican on Thursday, less than two weeks before they are due to meet.

The mural, which was painted on paper and pasted on to the wall during the night, was the latest work by street artists depicting the pope to appear in Rome in recent months.

This one shows Francis, wearing a simple crucifix around his neck, embracing Trump, who wears a gold watch and sports a pistol in a holster. The pope's halo is the same bright yellow color as Trump's hair. The two are locked in a mouth-to-mouth kiss.

The caption written on the sash of the pope's cassock reads "The Good Forgives the Evil." It is signed "TVBoy," who is believed to be Italian street artist Salvatore Benintende.

"It is very provocative but not too shocking for someone coming from America," said a tourist from Burbank, California who gave only his first name, Victor.

The mural was pasted on a wall on a street named "Way of the Bank of Holy Spirit" across the Tiber River from the Vatican.

Francis and Trump are due to meet at the Vatican on May 24 while the president is on a tour Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy and Belgium.

Such murals depicting the pope eventually are taken down by a special group of Rome sanitation workers known as "The Decorum Squad".

In the past, the squad has erased a mural depicting the pope as a sneaky graffiti artist painting peace signs on walls and another showing him as the comic book hero Superman.

Local media have criticized the unit for removing popular art while unsightly graffiti blights many buildings and heaps of garbage pile up on sidewalks because of a collection backlog.

Leaders are readers! Subscribe now and get 3 magazines for the price of 1. Get Ministry Today, Charisma and SpiritLed Woman all for $24. YES - Sign me up!

3 Reasons Why you should read Life in the Spirit. 1) Get to know the Holy Spirit. 2) Learn to enter God's presence 3) Hear God's voice clearly! Click Here to draw closer to God!</s>FATIMA, Portugal, May 11 (Reuters) - Pope Francis will make two Portuguese shepherd children saints this week, crowning a belief that started with reported visions of the Madonna 100 years ago that have turned the Shrine of Fatima into one of the most famous in Christianity.

Up to a million people are expected to attend the canonisation mass on Saturday at the shrine for the children, who the Vatican believes received messages from the Madonna that have become known as the three secrets of Fatima.

"For this blessed moment that culminates a century of blessed moments, I rejoice in your preparations of intense prayer," the pope said in a message to the Portuguese people ahead of his two-day visit.

Fatima is a town in central Portugal where the apparitions were recorded.

"I think it has a very big importance for the whole world," said Vanessa, a worshipper who had made the pilgrimage to the shrine from the Philippines.

She called the canonisation "historic" in recognizing the impact of Fatima.

For Portugal, one of Europe's most Catholic countries with 81 percent of the population describing themselves as belonging to the faith, the event is a big deal and the story of Fatima is universally known.

"Welcome Pope Francis," read a huge poster with images of the pope and the shepherd children hung up on Lisbon's main traffic intersection.

Father Vitor Coutinho, deputy head of the sanctuary of Fatima, said the pope was showing the importance of Fatima to the church by carrying out the canonisation there rather than in Rome, where they are usually done.

"Therefore he is confirming that a life lived in the light of the spirituality of Fatima can lead to sainthood," Coutinho said.

The story of the shepherd children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, has captivated Catholics ever since their first reported vision on May 13, 1917. Their first vision was of hell and a call to prayer and conversion, which if not heeded would lead to another world war.

The second was a warning that Russia would "spread her errors" in the world if people did not turn to God.

The third secret intrigued the world for nearly three-quarters of a century, inspiring books and cults.

Only in 2000 did the Vatican say the third secret was a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, who survived and subsequently gave the bullet that hit him to the bishop of Fatima.

It was later put into the crown of the statue of Fatima and many Portuguese say the bullet was a perfect fit, providing evidence of the vision.

The Catholic Church posthumously confers sainthood on people considered so holy during their lives that they are now believed to be with God and can intercede with him to perform miracles.

Francisco and Jacinta's miracle is linked to the inexplicable healing from a terrible head injury of a Brazilian child, whose parents prayed to the siblings.

The child's parents are due to make a statement to the press at Fatima on Thursday.

Francisco died in 1919 and Jacinta died a year later, both of pneumonia, when they were still just 9 and 10-years-old. The third sibling, Lucia, became a nun and died in 2005 at 97.

Portugal has taken a series of security measures for the pope's visit, including by reinstating border controls for a few days by suspending the Schengen Europe-wide free travel agreement.

In the large, open space around Fatima special cement blocks have been put in place to avoid the possibility of militant attacks such as those in Stockholm and Nice. (Additional reporting by Miguel Pereira, writing By Axel Bugge, Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Pope Francis intends to canonize two of the children who had visions at Fatima.