Feast day: February 20
Sts. Francisco & Jacinta Marto
A young brother and sister of Fátima, Portugal, who with their cousin Lúcia reported visions of Mary in 1917 and died as children soon after in the influenza pandemic.
Francisco and Jacinta Marto were a young brother and sister, born in 1908 and 1910, the children of a farming family in the village of Aljustrel near Fátima, Portugal. They tended their family's sheep in the fields with their older cousin Lúcia, ordinary country children who could not read and knew only the simple faith of their home.
In 1917, when Francisco was nine and Jacinta only seven, the three children reported that a radiant Lady — whom they came to know as the Mother of God — appeared to them six times in a field called the Cova da Iria, asking them to pray the Rosary daily, to do penance for sinners, and to trust in her Immaculate Heart. The children were mocked, interrogated, and even imprisoned and threatened by local officials, but they never changed their story.
The two little ones took the Lady's call to prayer and sacrifice with astonishing seriousness. Francisco, who saw the vision but did not hear the words, gave himself above all to quiet prayer, longing 'to console the hidden Jesus.' Jacinta, deeply moved by a vision of souls in danger, offered her small sufferings constantly for sinners and for the Holy Father.
The Lady had told them that she would soon take Francisco and Jacinta to heaven, and so it happened: both were swept up in the great influenza epidemic that followed the First World War. Francisco died in 1919 and Jacinta in 1920, bearing their illnesses with a patience beyond their years. Canonized in 2017, they are among the youngest non-martyrs ever declared saints.
Canonized in 2017, they are among the youngest non-martyr saints ever — a shepherd boy and girl who saw Our Lady of Fátima and offered their short lives in prayer.
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