VATICAN CITY,  - Pope John Paul will  travel to the Portuguese shrine of Fatima on May 13 to beatify  two shepherd children believed to have been visited by the  Virgin Mary there, a Vatican official confirmed on Monday.
 
The Vatican last June cleared the way to the beatification  -- a stepping stone to sainthood -- of two of three children  said to have had visions at Fatima between May and October 1917,  when it recognised a miracle attributed to them.

Both Francisco and Giacinta Marto, who were brother and  sister, died of illnesses several years after the visions. The  only surviving member of the trio, Lucia dos Santos, is now 92  and lives in a convent near the Portuguese town of Coimbra.

Archbishop Cresenzio Sepe, secretary of the Vatican  committee planning events for the year 2000, confirmed that the  Pontiff would visit Fatima on May 13, as had been reported.

It will be the third time that the Pope has visited Fatima,  one of Catholicism's most revered sites.

May 13 has a double significance, marking not only the first  of the six days on which the Virgin is believed to have appeared  to the children, but also the date in 1981 when the Pope was  nearly killed in a assassination attempt.

Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot and severely wounded the  Pope in St Peter's Square, and the Pontiff believes it was the  Virgin who saved his life.

On a previous visit to the shrine, 130 km (80 miles) north  of Lisbon, the Pope left one of the bullets fired by Agca in the  crown of the statue of the Madonna there.
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