Saint Francisco Marto

Francisco was born on June 11, 1908, the sixth of seven children of Manuel and Olimpia Marto, the older brother of Jacinta and cousin to Lucia. He was a handsome boy, with light hair and dark eyes. He loved games and other children, yet without the spirit of competition. He would not complain when treated unfairly. He was a peacemaker, but courageous, had a love for nature, and animals in particular. He played with lizards and snakes, and would bring them home, to his mother’s dismay. Once he gave a penny, all the money he had, to a friend for a captured bird, only to set the bird free. He played a reed pipe, to which Lucia and his sister Jacinta would sing and dance.

Francisco never heard Our Lady speak, although he saw her and felt her presence. After the first apparition, Lucia conveyed Our Lady’s message to him that he would go to heaven if he prayed many Rosaries. After Our Lady’s appeal to the children to offer themselves to God and submit to suffering in reparation for sins, Francisco made it clear that he wanted to suffer as Our Lady requested. He resisted the attempts of the parish priest to make him deny what had happened. He deprived himself of food and drink for days at a time during hot weather and wore a thick rope round his waist. On one occasion when he went missing and was found praying behind a rock, Lucia asked him what he was doing. “I was thinking of God Who is so sad because of all the sins: if only I could comfort Him!”

Francisco showed his courage when the Mayor of the district tried to bully them into admitting they lied, threatened to boil them in oil if they withheld the Lady’s “Secret” and jailed them to keep them from their appointment with Our Lady on the day of the fourth apparition. While in jail, the children knelt down to say the Rosary together. Other inmates joined them, one of whom kept his hat on. “When you pray,” Francisco admonished him, “you should take your hat off.” The man threw it down and Francisco put it on a bench. Threatened with being boiled alive, Jacinta was taken away first. Francisco said a Hail Mary for her so she wouldn’t be frightened.

After the apparitions ended, Francisco was enrolled in school but he preferred to spend time praying to the “Hidden Jesus” in the Tabernacle. He prayed to console God and honor the Heart of His Mother, gradually progressing along the path of sanctity. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Francisco answered, “I don’t want to be anything. I want to die and go to heaven.”

In August 1918, Francisco contracted influenza. In April of 1919, knowing his time was short, Francisco asked to receive the Hidden Jesus for the first time in Holy Communion. A priest heard Francisco’s confession on the evening of April 2nd and brought Holy Communion to him the next morning. Unable to sit up, he received his first and last Communion lying down. Opening his eyes, he asked: “When will you bring me the Hidden Jesus again?” Lucia remained with him all day. During the night he called to his mother: “Look at that lovely light by the door.” And then, “Now I can’t see it anymore.”

On April 4th, at 10:00 in the morning, his face lit up, he smiled, and then died without any effort. Francisco was 10 years old. On May 13, 1989, Pope John Paul II approved the decree on the Heroic Virtues of the two Servants of God, Francisco and Jacinta, granting each of them the title of “Venerable”. Francisco was beatified along with his sister Jacinta on May 13, 2000, at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, Portugal, by Pope John Paul II. Saint Francisco Marto was canonized on May 13, 2017, at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fátima, Portugal, by Pope Francis.