PORTUGAL: In Fatima in 1917, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to three Portuguese children, Lucia dos Santos, Francisco Marta, and Jacinta Marta, and told them the three secrets of Fatima.
The first two secrets were revealed in 1937. The first part of the prophecies revealed a vision of hell to the children.
The second predicted the outbreak of the second World War 22 years before it started and asked that Russia be consecrated to the Virgin Mary. It foretold that otherwise there would be more wars and suffering and Russia would spread its errors throughout the world.
The third prediction was kept secret and intrigued the Roman Catholic world for decades. It was finally revealed in June 2000.
The third secret was interpreted by the Vatican as foretelling the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II and of Communism's persecution of Christianity and "war waged by atheist systems against the church and Christians" in the 20th century.
The Pope has never made any secret of his belief that the Virgin saved his life in 1981 when a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, attempted to kill him in St Peter's in Rome.
Two of the children - Francisco Marta and Jacinta Marta - died from complications following influenza at the ages of 10 and 11 in 1918. The third child, their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, became a Carmelite nun in the early 1930s.
It was Sister Lucia dos Santos who carried the third secret, which she wrote down in 1944. In this document, she said she saw "a bishop dressed in white [ and] we had the impression that it was the Holy Father".
A Vatican document in 2000 said after papal envoys visited her that 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 the 20th century".
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."
On May 2000, the Pope beatified Francisco Marta and Jacinta Marta in Fatima on the anniversary of the first of the apparitions.