Jacinta and Francisco Marto

Francisco de Jesus Marto and his sister Jacinta de Jesus Marto were Portuguese shepherd children whose reported visions of the Virgin Mary at Fátima in 1917 became one of the most widely known Marian apparitions of the twentieth century. Francisco was born on 11 June 1908 and Jacinta on 11 March 1910 in the hamlet of Aljustrel, in the parish of Fátima in central Portugal. They were among the children of Manuel Pedro Marto, known locally as Ti Marto, and Olímpia de Jesus. The family lived by small-scale farming and shepherding. With their cousin Lúcia de Jesus dos Santos, who was a few years older, Francisco and Jacinta regularly took the family flock to pasture in the fields around Fátima, including the Cova da Iria.

In 1916 the three children later recounted three apparitions of an angel who called himself the Angel of Peace and the Guardian Angel of Portugal. The angel taught them prayers of adoration and reparation and urged them to offer sacrifices. From 13 May through 13 October 1917 they reported six apparitions of a lady brighter than the sun, who asked that they pray the rosary every day for peace and the conversion of sinners, that a chapel be built at the site, and that they accept suffering in reparation for sin. The lady is said to have shown them a vision of hell and to have confided what later became known as the three secrets of Fátima. Francisco, quieter and more contemplative, said he wished above all to console Jesus, who seemed to him so sad. Jacinta was more outgoing in her concern for sinners and later reported further private apparitions, including of the Virgin and of the Holy Father suffering. On 13 October 1917 a large crowd assembled at the Cova da Iria in rainy weather; many of those present reported seeing the sun appear to dance or spin in the sky, an event popularly called the Miracle of the Sun. Civil and ecclesiastical authorities initially treated the children with skepticism, and they were briefly detained by the local administrator in August 1917.

Both children fell ill during the influenza pandemic that swept Portugal in 1918. Francisco's condition declined at home. He received his First Communion on 3 April 1919 and died the following day, 4 April 1919, in Aljustrel, at the age of ten. Jacinta suffered a longer illness that developed into purulent pleurisy and pneumonia. She was treated in a hospital at Vila Nova de Ourém and later transferred to Lisbon, where she underwent surgery at the Hospital Dona Estefânia. She died there on 20 February 1920, aged nine, away from her family, as she had reportedly foretold. Francisco was buried in the parish cemetery of Fátima. Jacinta was first buried at Vila Nova de Ourém. In the mid-twentieth century their remains were translated to the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary at the shrine of Fátima, Jacinta in 1951 and Francisco in 1952, where they remain.

The cause for their canonization advanced in the later twentieth century. Pope John Paul II beatified Francisco and Jacinta Marto on 13 May 2000 during a ceremony at Fátima. Pope Francis canonized them on 13 May 2017 at Fátima, on the hundredth anniversary of the first reported apparition of 1917. They are among the youngest persons recognized as saints by the Catholic Church who did not die as martyrs. Their memorial in the liturgical calendar is kept on 20 February, the anniversary of Jacinta's death. Devotion to the siblings is closely bound to the shrine of Our Lady of Fátima and to the messages of prayer, penance, and peace associated with the 1917 apparitions.