Two young children who had visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago in Fatima have been declared saints by Pope Francis.
An estimated 500,000 people attended the canonisation mass at the shrine for the children.
The crowds broke into applause as the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics proclaimed Francisco and Jacinta Marto the newest of the church's saints.
The siblings died at the ages of ten and nine years old, within three years of the 1917 apparitions, making them the youngest saints of the church who were not martyrs.
"We declare the blissful Francisco Marto and Jacinta Marto saints, and we register them on the list of saints, declaring that they must be venerated as such by the Church," he said in Portugal.
In the homily of a huge outdoor mass, Francis prayed that the Madonna would protect the most vulnerable members of society, "especially the sick and the disabled, prisoners and the unemployed, the poor and the abandoned".
The Vatican believes the children received messages from the Madonna that have become known as the three secrets of Fatima.
Fatima is a town in central Portugal where the apparitions were recorded.
The story of shepherd children Francisco and Jacinta Marto has captivated Catholics since their first reported vision on 13 May 1917.
Their first vision was of hell and a call to prayer and conversion, which if not heeded would lead to another world war.
The second was a warning that Russia would "spread her errors" in the world if people did not turn to God.
The third secret intrigued the world for nearly three-quarters of a century, inspiring books and cults.
Only in 2000 did the Vatican say the third secret was a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, who survived and gave the bullet that hit him to the bishop of Fatima.
It was later put into the crown of the statue of Fatima and many Portuguese say the bullet was a perfect fit, providing evidence of the vision.
The Catholic Church posthumously confers sainthood on people considered so holy during their lives that they are now believed to be with God and can intercede with him to perform miracles.
The miracle performed by Francisco and Jacinta is believed to be saving a Brazilian boy, Lucas, who fell out of a window in 2013 and suffered life-threatening head injuries.
"All of us in the family started to pray to the shepherd children and, two days later, Lucas woke up and started to speak, asking about his sister," the boy's father, Joao Batista, told reporters.
Lucas was discharged from hospital days later after making a complete recovery.
Francisco died in 1919 and Jacinta died a year later, both of pneumonia.
Meanwhile, Ireland's first beatification ceremony took place in Dublin this morning.
