PORTUGAL: Lucia dos Santos, the last of three children who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary at Fatima in 1917, was buried yesterday after a procession marked by tears, flowers and white handkerchiefs.
Thousands of mourners packed Coimbra's cobblestoned streets at twilight as the Carmelite nun's hearse passed, led by white-robed priests bearing a crucifix.
Sr Lucia, who as a child in 1917 described visions which, decades later, the Catholic Church said foretold the attempt to kill Pope John Paul in 1981, died aged 97 on Sunday at her convent in Coimbra, 150 km north of Lisbon.
"I recall with emotion the various meetings I had with her and the links of spiritual friendship that intensified through time," the Pope said in a message read to hundreds of mourners who jammed Coimbra's cathedral for the funeral Mass.
Mourners including university students in traditional black capes showered the coffin with flowers and waved handkerchiefs as it left the cathedral.
Sr Lucia was buried at her convent in a private ceremony. Her remains will be transferred in a year to nearby Fatima, one of Catholicism's major pilgrimage sites.
"I was very glad to see Sr Lucia. She looked like a saint, it really looked like she was sleeping," said Maria do Lurdes, a woman of about 70 who passed the coffin.
Sr Lucia was said by believers to be the main recipient of prophecies from the Virgin about key 20th century events. The first part of the prophecies saw a vision of hell, the second predicted the outbreak of the second World War.
The Vatican interpreted a third part of the visions as foretelling the attempt to kill the Pope, and communism's persecution of Christianity.
The church kept the details secret for decades until they were revealed during the Pope's visit to Fatima in 2000.
The other two children, Sr Lucia's cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto, died of Spanish influenza in 1919 and 1920. They were beatified, the last step to sainthood, in 2000. Portugal declared Tuesday a national day of mourning.