The Vatican said the pope had signed decrees recognizing a miracle attributed to Francisco Marto and his sister, Giacinta, meaning that the two would be beatified soon.
Beatification is the penultimate step before sainthood in the church.
Francisco died in 1919 at the age of 10, and Giacinta died in 1920 at age 9, both of the flu. A third visionary, Lucia Dos Santos is now Sister Lucia, a 92-year-old nun living in a cloistered convent in the Portuguese city of Coimbra.
The miracle attributed to the two dead children is the unexplained healing of Maria Emilia Dos Santos, 69, a Portuguese woman who was crippled for 22 years and began walking again after praying to the two shepherds.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, is said to have revealed three secrets to the children during the six visions, which first occurred on May 13, 1917, and again on the 13th of each month for the following five months.
The first two secrets referred to God's punishment for man's sins, a vision of hell, the need for repentance and a prediction of Russia's future attempts to eradicate religion.
But the third has never been revealed. Only three people in the world know the so-called Third Secret of Fatima: Sister Lucia, the pope and German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In a rare interview in 1996, Ratzinger said the third secret was not an apocalyptic prediction.
Miracle Attributed to Dead Fatima Children
VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II on Monday set on the road to sainthood two Portuguese shepherd children whose reported visions of the madonna in 1917 made the Portuguese village of Fatima one of the world's most popular Roman Catholic pilgrimage centers.
[DFP headline: Young siblings will be saints: Dead pair credited with healing woman ]
[Source: Detroit Free Press / MI - July 29 1999]
