2 Fatima Children Are Declared Blessed

Pope John Paul II agreed Monday to declare blessed two of the young Portuguese shepherd children whose reports of seeing visions of the Virgin Mary have drawn many millions of pilgrims to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima over the last eight decades.

The pope, who has a special devotion to the Madonna of Fatima and gave thanks to her for saving him from assassination, signed a decree stating that the children were responsible for the miraculous healing of a paralyzed Portuguese woman two years ago.

A panel of medical experts certified that there was no scientific explanation for the miracle attributed to the children’s intervention--restoring the power to walk to a paraplegic woman in the city of Leira.

Giacinta and Francesco Marto are the youngest candidates of John Paul’s pontificate to qualify for beatification through a miracle rather than martyrdom. The church requires another miracle after beatification for sainthood.

John Paul did not immediately set a date for the beatifications, but Vatican sources said they expected him to travel to Fatima for a ceremony at the shrine Oct. 13, the 82nd anniversary of the final apparition.

Giacinta Marto was 7 and her brother 9 when--along with Lucia dos Santos, 10--they saw the first vision of the Virgin Mary in a field called Cova da Iria near Fatima. They said the virgin appeared to them six times. Francesco died in 1919 and Giacinta in 1920 in the epidemic of Spanish flu that swept Europe after World War I.