Lúcia Santos

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Lúcia de Jesus Rosa Santos – "Sister Lúcia of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart", better known as Sister Lúcia of Jesus – (March 22, 1907 – February 13, 2005) was a Portuguese visionary and Roman Catholic Carmelite nun.

At the age of ten she claimed to have witnessed visions and to have conversed with the Virgin Mary in Cova da Iria, near the village of Aljustrel, about a mile from Fátima, Portugal. Her two cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto also claimed to have witnessed the visions but only Lúcia claimed to converse directly with her. Among the messages Lúcia supposedly relayed from the Virgin were the Three Secrets of Fatima.

The Catholic Church approved the visions as "worthy of belief" in the 1930s, and today the children's experience is known to millions as Fátima.

In March 1948, she joined the Carmel of St. Teresa at Coimbra, where she lived until her death at the age of almost 98. She had been suffering prolonged colds and flu in an unheated cell. She died of cardio-respiratory failure, due to her advanced age.

She wrote six memoirs over the years from 1935 to 1993. The first five are published under the name Fatima in Lucia's Own Words, and the fifth and six are published under the name Fatima in Lucia's Own Words II. She wrote a book entitled 'Calls' From the Message of Fatima published in 2000, and she published a book in 2001, entitled Appeals of the Fatima Message.

The day of her funeral, February 15, 2005, was declared a day of national mourning in Portugal; even campaigning for the national parliamentary election scheduled for Sunday, February 20, was interrupted.

While most historical accounts correctly refer to Lucia as Lucia Santos, some of the more modern accounts refer to Lucia as Lucia dos Santos. This confusion likely arose with the publication of her first book of memoirs, wherein the editor states that the parish register lists her father's name as Antonio dos Santos. Lucia clarifies the matter as to her family name of Santos in her fifth and six memoirs, published under the title Fatima in Lucia's Own Words II, on pages 9 and 68.^[1]

[edit] External links

• Marian Horvat on The Two Sister Lucys Controversy
• Readers Concur on The Two Sister Lucys Controversy
• Lucia's book
• The Fatima Center offers a detailed analysis of the Fatima event
• Contains the classic "The True Story of Fatima" by John De Marchi; contains direct quotations from Lucia about the Fatima apparitions