On May 13, 1917, Lucia dos Santos, aged ten, and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, nine and seven, were grazing sheep at the Cova da Iria near the village of Aljustrel when they reported seeing a lady brighter than the sun above a small holm oak. She asked them to return on the thirteenth of each month. On October 13 a crowd estimated at 70,000 witnessed the event known as the miracle of the sun.
The message was simple: pray the Rosary daily, do penance for sinners, and the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Francisco died in 1919 and Jacinta in 1920, in the influenza epidemic; Lucia became a Carmelite in Coimbra and died in 2005. The bishop of Leiria declared the apparitions worthy of belief in 1930.
The Chapel of the Apparitions stands on the site of the oak; the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, consecrated in 1953, holds the tombs of the three children; the vast Basilica of the Holy Trinity across the esplanade opened in 2007. Pope Francis canonized Francisco and Jacinta at the shrine on May 13, 2017, the centenary of the first apparition. St. John Paul II, shot on May 13, 1981, placed the bullet in the crown of the statue.
