Nossa Senhora do Rosario da Fatima (the Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima) is a sacred shrine in central Portugual, 123 km north of Lisbon. It stands on the spot where, in 1917, three shepherd children are reported to have witnessed an appearance of the Virgin Mary, `more brilliant than the sun`. According to their story, Mary bade them to do penance: they should wear tight cords around their waists in order to understand suffering, to abstain from drinking on hot days, and to repeat the rosary daily. During a second apparition later that year, the Virgin predicted the deaths of two of the children, Franciso and Jacinta Marto, who subsequently died in the great Iberian flu epidemic of 1919. When Jacinta`s corpse was exhumed in 1935 and again in 1951, it was found incorrupt and she was beatified by Pope John Paul II on a visit to Fatima in 2000. Lucia, the third child, who entered a Dorothean convent in Spain, claimed to have seen the Virgin again in 1925. She died, aged 97, in 2005, and proceedings are underway for her canonisation. Our Lady of Fatima is one of the most famous Marian shrines in the world and is visited by thousands of pilgrims throughout the year. The most devout do penance by crawling on their knees down the slope towards the shrine. The economy of Fatima is based on religious tourism and the town has many hotels to accommodate pilgrims.