Collection: 📚 Venerable Lucia dos Santos

Venerable Lúcia dos Santos was a Portuguese Carmelite nun and one of the three children who witnessed the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fátima in 1917. Born in Aljustrel, Portugal, she was the youngest of seven children and, together with her cousins St. Francisco Marto and St. Jacinta Marto, reported six apparitions of Our Lady between May and October 1917. The Catholic Church recognizes the Fátima apparitions as worthy of belief.

After the deaths of Francisco and Jacinta, Lúcia devoted herself increasingly to prayer and religious life. She entered the Institute of the Sisters of St. Dorothy in 1925 and later entered the Carmelite convent of St. Teresa in Coimbra in 1948, taking the religious name Sister Maria Lúcia of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart. She spent the remainder of her life in the cloister, writing about the Fátima apparitions and living a life of prayer and sacrifice.

Lúcia died on February 13, 2005, at the age of 97. Her cause for beatification was opened in 2008 after Pope Benedict XVI dispensed with the usual five-year waiting period. In 2023, Pope Francis approved the decree recognizing her heroic virtue, and she was consequently declared Venerable.

Lived: March 28, 1907 – February 13, 2005 | Feast Day: February 13 | Declared Venerable: June 22, 2023, by Pope Francis