As the first pilgrims gathered one day last week for the annual month-long celebration at the village of Fatima, Portugal, they witnessed a moving ceremony. From Fatima's* cemetery, carrying two small coffins that had been reverently exhumed there, moved a solemn little procession. Slowly it wound its way through the streets to the basilica of Our Lady of Fatima. Inside, in the center of the chancel, were reburied the bones of Francisco Marto and his sister Jacinta.

The children's new resting place was close by the spot in the rocky Portuguese hills, 70 miles north of Lisbon, where they had reported seeing what has become the most famous apparition of the Virgin Mary since the visions of Bernadette at Lourdes (1858). Francisco was nine and Jacinta was seven on that May Sunday in 1917 when, playing with their cousin Lucia, ten, they saw "a lady all dressed in white" hovering over a small evergreen. In 1919 and 1920, Francisco and Jacinta died of influenza. Lucia has written down the Virgin's revelations; among them was a promise of Russia's ultimate conversion.

At last week's simple ceremony stood an old man & woman, the parents of Francisco and Jacinta. Lucia, now a Carmelite nun at a convent 40 miles away in Coimbra, did not leave her seclusion to come to the service.

* Ironically, the town which has now become one of the shrines of Roman Catholic Christendom bears the name of Mohamed's daughter.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.