In March 1917, three Portuguese children declared that they had seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary in a meadow. The prophecies they received fuelled anti-communist sentiment in the Cold War – but one was kept secret. In 1992, a witness told the BBC about the "miracles". On 13 May 1917, 10-year-old Lucia dos Santos and her younger cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marta were tending sheep in a field in Fátima, Portugal when, they claimed, they saw a shining figure in an oak tree. They said that