Who were the Fatima visionaries?
As with LaSalette and Lourdes, the visionaries at Fatima were humble peasant children: eight-year old Lucia Santos and her two cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto. At the time, the Portuguese government was secular and antagonistic towards religion. Far from accepting the children’s reported apparitions, the government treated the children harshly, questioned them extensively, and even placed them in prison with the threat of boiling them in oil unless they confessed to having made up their story. In spite of this, the children never wavered. The three Fatima visionaries: Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta (left to right).
