Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto

Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto were a brother and sister from the Portuguese village of Aljustrel near Fátima. Together with their cousin Lúcia dos Santos they witnessed the apparitions of Our Lady in 1917. Both died as children: he at the age of ten, she at nine. The Church commemorates them together on February 20, the day of Jacinta’s death.

Francisco was born on June 11, 1908, and Jacinta in March 1910. They were the youngest of the seven children of Manuel Pedro Marto and Olímpia de Jesus, farmers of modest means and people of lively faith. They did not go to school and could neither read nor write, and they learned the catechism at home. Francisco was calm and gentle and loved nature and silence. Jacinta was lively, affectionate, and a little capricious. When he was eight and she was six, they began to tend their parents’ sheep, together with Lúcia.

In 1916 the children saw an angel three times, who called them to prayer and adoration. From May 13 to October 13, 1917, at a place called Cova da Iria, Our Lady of the Rosary appeared to them six times: on the thirteenth day of each month, and in August on the nineteenth, because from August 13 to 15 the children were held in Ourém. Mary asked for prayer and penance for the conversion of sinners. Asked at the first meeting whether they were willing to offer themselves to God, the children answered that they were.

After the apparitions both changed in a way unusual for their age. Francisco wanted above all to console God, who was saddened by people’s sins. He sought solitude, prayed many rosaries, and spent long hours in the parish church by the tabernacle, near “the hidden Jesus.” In October 1918 he fell ill with bronchopneumonia during an epidemic. He bore his suffering without complaint. He received Holy Communion only once, as Viaticum, on April 3, 1919. The next day, April 4, he died peacefully in his family home.

Jacinta was moved most deeply by the fate of sinners and the sufferings of the Holy Father. She prayed for them, offered sacrifices for this intention, and shared her food with the poor. She fell ill at the end of 1918. In January 1920 she was taken to Lisbon, where she underwent a serious operation in the hospital. She offered to God the pains of her illness and her separation from her loved ones. She died late in the evening of February 20, 1920, alone, far from her family.

The beatification process of both was opened by the bishop of Leiria in 1952. John Paul II beatified them at Fátima on May 13, 2000, and set their common memorial on February 20. On that occasion he thanked Jacinta for her prayers and sacrifices for the Holy Father. Pope Francis canonized the brother and sister on May 13, 2017, also at Fátima, on the hundredth anniversary of the first apparition. The Roman Martyrology lists Jacinta on February 20 and Francisco on April 4, the days of their deaths. Both rest in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary in Fátima.