Saint Francis Solano

Saint Francis Solano was a Spanish Franciscan and priest, a missionary in South America. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on July 14, the day of his death in Lima, and says that by preaching and miracles he taught the Christian way of life to the native peoples and to the Spanish colonists themselves.

He was born on March 10, 1549, in Montilla in Andalusia, into a wealthy and devout family. He studied at the Jesuit school in his hometown, and at the age of twenty he entered the Observant Franciscans. After his priestly ordination he served, among other offices, as master of novices in Córdoba and guardian of the friary in Granada, and he was a respected preacher.

When plague struck Andalusia, he cared for the sick, caught the disease himself, and recovered. To escape his growing fame, he asked to be sent to Africa, where he hoped to preach the Gospel even at the cost of martyrdom, but his superiors sent him to America instead. In 1589 he sailed from Spain, and on the voyage from Panama to Peru his ship was wrecked off the island of Gorgona. According to his biographers, when some of the castaways left in the only boat, Francis stayed behind with the African slaves, whom he would not abandon, and baptized them.

In November 1590 he reached Tucumán, in what is now northwestern Argentina. For about eight years he worked there as a missionary in Indigenous settlements and later as custos of the Franciscans in the region. He learned the local languages quickly. The bull of canonization relates that on Holy Thursday, when thousands of pagans meant to attack the Christians, he spoke to them in one language and people of different tongues understood him; according to the bull, more than nine thousand of them embraced the faith. He gladly made use of music: he played the rebec, a simple bowed instrument, and paintings often show him with a violin.

His superiors then called him to Lima, where he became guardian of the friary of Santa María de los Ángeles, and afterward he led the friary in Trujillo for three years. After returning to Lima, on December 21, 1604, he preached a sermon in the city’s main square calling the people to penance; deeply moved, the inhabitants spent the night praying in the churches. The Inquisition examined his words and found nothing in them contrary to the faith.

From 1605 he was seriously ill. He died on July 14, 1610, in the Franciscan friary in Lima. The bull of canonization notes that he died on the day then kept as the feast of Saint Bonaventure, to whom he had long entrusted himself. The people of Lima came in crowds to venerate his body. Because of the many miracles attributed to him, he was called the Wonder-worker of the New World.

Pope Clement X beatified him in 1675, and Benedict XIII canonized him on December 27, 1726, in Saint Peter’s Basilica. John Paul II, visiting Salta in Argentina in 1987, recalled his simple and joyful life, full of love for the Indigenous inhabitants of those lands.