COIMBRA, Portugal (CNS) — Most of Portugal's bishops joined Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, the papal envoy, in concelebrating the funeral Mass for Carmelite Sister Lucia dos Santos, the last of three Fatima visionaries.

Sister Lucia died Feb. 13 in her cloistered convent in Coimbra, Portugal, at the age of 97.

After the Feb. 15 Mass in the Coimbra cathedral, she was to be buried temporarily at the Carmelite convent while preparations were made for final burial alongside her two cousins, Blesseds Francisco and Jacinta Marto, at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima.

On May 13, 1917 — when Lucia was 10 years old, Francisco was 9 and Jacinta was 7 — the children claimed to have seen the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima, near their home.

The apparitions continued once a month until October 1917, and later were declared worthy of belief by the Roman Catholic Church.

Cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo of Lisbon, Portugal, told reporters before the funeral: "Fatima has lost the simple and direct witness of its last protagonist. Now it is up to us to consolidate this great message of faith."

Pope John Paul II sent a message, which was read at the funeral, saying, "I remember with emotion the various meetings I had with her and the bonds of spiritual friendship that intensified with the passing of time.

"I always felt supported by the daily gift of her prayers, especially in difficult moments of trial and suffering," the pope wrote.

"May the Lord repay her abundantly for the great and hidden service she gave the church," the pope wrote in the message, released Feb. 15 at the Vatican.

Cardinal Policarpo delivered the homily at the funeral, calling it "a special occasion because Sister Lucia was special."

The cardinal said the "extraordinary" gift Sister Lucia received of seeing and hearing the Blessed Virgin Mary would have had no meaning if Sister Lucia had not listened and lived the call to conversion and to following Jesus Christ at every moment of her life.

In the same way, he said, the extraordinary grace given to all the baptized is meaningless if they do not allow it to make a difference in their lives.

"God calls us and trusts us to fulfill our mission. Lucia recounts in her memoirs the apparition of the Madonna with the simplicity of a child. They received the totally unexpected visions as a mission, as something specific Our Lady was asking them to do," he said.

Sister Lucia's specific mission, the cardinal said, was to be "the spokeswoman, the messenger of the revelation. Francisco was a contemplative, he liked to be in silence. Jacinta, in the joy of her childhood, almost never spoke."

"Lucia was always faithful to her mission to spread the message of Fatima, which challenges people to penance, conversion and contemplation," Cardinal Policarpo said.

The cardinal said, "We are moved today, not so much because of her death, but because today between Fatima and heaven a new bridge has been built."

Pope John Paul had asked Cardinal Bertone to preside in his name at the nun's funeral. The cardinal, former secretary of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, met with Sister Lucia and discussed the apparitions with her several times in preparation for the 2000 publication of the so-called "third secret of Fatima."

While Francisco and Jacinta died at a young age — as Our Lady of Fatima apparently told them they would — it was left to Sister Lucia to transcribe the messages of Fatima, including the third section.

Sister Lucia wrote down the third part of the message, sealed it in an envelope and gave it to her local bishop. The message was sent to the Vatican in 1957, where successive popes read it, but decided not to reveal its contents.

Sister Lucia's last meeting with Pope John Paul was in May 2000, when he traveled to Fatima to beatify her cousins and to announce that he was revealing the final piece of the Fatima message.

Bishop Serafim de Sousa Ferreira Silva of Leiria-Fatima told Radio Renascenca, Portugal's main Catholic radio station, that Sister Lucia was exemplary for her "witness, vivacity, fidelity and courage."

The bishop said that to the very end of her life she was concerned about "the problems of humanity" and dedicated her life to praying for "reconciliation, conversion and peace."

Born March 22, 1907, in Aljustrel near Fatima, she and her cousins were caring for their family's sheep May 13, 1917. After reciting the rosary at midday, the children saw a "woman brighter than the sun" holding a rosary in her hand.

The woman told them they must pray much and they must return to that spot at the same hour on the 13th of each month.

With some 70,000 gathered around the children Oct. 15, 1917 — what was to be the final apparition — the woman told the three youngsters that she was Our Lady of the Rosary and asked that a chapel be built in her honor.

The three children had not been to school and could not read and write at the time of the apparitions. Lucia first went to school in 1921.

In 1928, she took first vows as a Religious of St. Dorothy and made her perpetual vows in 1934. She transferred to the Coimbra Carmel in 1948.

In the late 1930s, Sister Lucia made public the first two parts of the messages from Mary, which the children had kept secret.

The first two parts included a vision of hell shown to the children, along with prophecies concerning the outbreak of World War II, the rise of communism and the ultimate triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, including a triumph over Russia if the country were consecrated to her Immaculate Heart.

According to the Vatican's interpretation, the third part of the secret predicted the 1981 attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul.

The pope, in thanksgiving that his life was spared, had one of the bullets that wounded him embedded in the crown of the statue of Our Lady that stands at the shrine in Fatima.

Releasing the third part of the Fatima message in June 2000, Vatican officials said it described the violence and persecution that afflicted the church and individual Christians under Nazism, communism and other totalitarian systems.

At the time of the message's release, then-Archbishop Bertone revealed that he had met with Sister Lucia and that she "repeated her conviction that the vision of Fatima concerns, above all, the struggle of atheistic communism against the church and against Christians and describes the terrible sufferings of the victims of the faith in the 20th century."

Archbishop Bertone said he felt he had to ask Sister Lucia why she had given instructions that the secret should be revealed only after 1960, an instruction many people claimed was an order that it be published then.

Archbishop Bertone asked Sister Lucia if Mary had fixed the date.

"Sister Lucia replied: 'It was not Our Lady. I fixed the date because I had the intuition that before 1960 it would not be understood,'" the archbishop wrote.

Sister Lucia continued having visions of the Virgin Mary and hearing messages from her as late as the 1980s and perhaps beyond, the archbishop said in 2000.