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LAST SECRET REVEALED

The Vatican revealed its interpretation of the vision during the Pope's visit to Fatima in May 2000 on the anniversary of the assassination attempt. One of her last public appearances was with the Pope at Fatima.

Dos Santos's recollection of the third part of the visions, which she wrote down in 1944, saw "a bishop dressed in white (and) we had the impression that it was the Holy Father".

As the vision continued, the children say the Pope reaching the top of a mountain where "he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him".

Before the Vatican unveiled the vision, papal envoys visited Dos Santos in her cloistered convent to seek her opinion of the Vatican's interpretation and her permission to reveal it.

"She repeated her conviction that the vision of Fatima concerns above all the struggle of atheistic communism against the Church and against Christians, and describes the terrible sufferings of the victims of the faith in 20th century," a Vatican document said in 2000.

The document went on to say: "When asked: 'Is the principal figure in the vision the Pope?' Sister Lucia replied at once that it was.

Dos Santos was born the youngest of seven children in a peasant family in Aljustrel, a village in central Portugal.

The events at Fatima unfolded against a backdrop of religious persecution under anti-clerical factions that ruled Portugal after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1910.

In 1916 she experienced her first vision, when an angel appeared to the children, she wrote in her memoirs.

On May 13, 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared to her and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marta on an oak tree. On her last appearance before an estimated 50,000 onlookers, witnesses claim to have experienced a 15-minute spectacle of bright lights and rainbow colours.

In her memoirs, dos Santos said the Virgin Mary appeared to the children six times in 1917. Jacinta and Francisco died in the influenza pandemic in 1919 and 1920.

The two were beatified, the last step to sainthood, by Pope John Paul during his Fatima visit in 2000.

One of her last visitors was actor Mel Gibson, director of the 2004 movie "The Passion of The Christ". He met her at the convent in July 2004 and gave her a DVD of his movie.