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Francis, who is due to leave on Sunday afternoon, started the day at the Catholic Shrine of Fatima, praying with about 200,000 people at the site where the Church says the Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children in 1917.
There, he skipped reading a speech that was on the program of his two-hour visit and that was expected to have been the centrepiece of the day.
The omission did not appear to indicate the Pope was experiencing any health issues. He later greeted dozens of people individually as an aide slowly pushed his wheelchair through the crowd.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Francis’ apparently last-minute decision to skip the speech had nothing to do with his eyesight.
The Pope has shortened several speeches or has chosen to speak instead off-script since the trip began on Wednesday. He said on one occasion that he was having trouble with his glasses.
Later, on Francis’ account on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, the Vatican published part of the unread speech, which was a peace appeal.
At the start of his visit to Fatima, a smoke cloud caused by a wildfire at Castelo Branco, about 100 kilometres east of Fatima, hovered over one side of the sanctuary and tiny specks of ash fell. It later mostly dissipated.
The three Fatima visionaries said the Madonna gave them three messages, the so-called Secrets of Fatima.
The first two were revealed soon after and concerned a vision of hell, seen by believers as a prediction of the outbreak of World War II, a warning that Russia would “spread her errors” in the world, and a need for general conversion to God and prayer.
The Vatican revealed the third secret in 2000, saying it was a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II on May 13, the same day of the first reported apparition in 1917.
Reuters
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