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Francisco Marto

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The elder of the two Marto children who, with their cousin Lucia dos Santos, reported the Fatima apparitions of 1917. He was nine when they began and, by the account the three gave, saw the figure but did not hear her speak, so that the content of the apparitions reached him at second hand. He was held and questioned with the others by the district administrator in August 1917 and did not retract. He died of influenza at Aljustrel in 1919, aged ten, and was canonised with his sister in 2017.

Facts
Life
Lifespan or FloruitSourced to the subject's own account
1908 to 1919 1
Manner of Death
Died of natural causes 1
Sourced to the subject's own accountDied at Aljustrel on 4 April 1919, aged ten, in the influenza pandemic
Manner of Death DetailSourced to the subject's own account
He died at Aljustrel during the worldwide influenza pandemic of 1918 to 1919, the same epidemic that took his sister Jacinta the following year, and pious accounts of his final illness describe him declining relief his mother offered him in favor of offering the suffering itself, a detail the church's own canonization materials repeat as evidence of the spiritual maturity attributed to him. 1
Attestation
HistoricitySourced to the subject's own account
Historically attested 1
Traditions Revering This Figure
Christianity 2
Canonization
Formally canonized 3
Sourced to the subject's own accountBeatified in 2000 and canonised at Fatima on 13 May 2017
Identity
GenderSourced to the subject's own account
Male 1
Origins
Place of OriginSourced to the subject's own account
Aljustrel, in the parish of Fatima 1
Position Profile
Key TextSourced to the subject's own account
His cousin Lucia dos Santos's own memoirs, the primary written record of the Fatima apparitions, describe Francisco as able to see the vision but unable to hear the words the Virgin spoke, a distinction Lucia draws explicitly to separate his experience from her own and from that of his sister Jacinta. 1
Veneration
Shrine or Burial PlaceSourced to the subject's own account
His remains, together with his sister Jacinta's, were transferred to the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary at the Fatima shrine, where his tomb remains a site of pilgrimage devotion. 1
Learn More
The Boy Who Saw and Did Not Hear

Francisco Marto was nine in the summer of 1917, and he is the least documented of the three children, partly because of what the account itself says about his part in it.

What he reported

By the account the three of them gave, Francisco saw the figure at the Cova da Iria but did not hear her speak. Whatever was said reached him through his cousin Lucia dos Santos, and sometimes through his younger sister Jacinta, and was repeated to him afterwards. He is the one member of the group who took the whole content of the apparitions on somebody else's word.

What he did about it

The devotional literature is consistent that his response was to go off on his own and stay in the church at Fatima, and that where the other two spoke of converting sinners he spoke of consoling God. Whether the piety of a nine-year-old can be reported accurately by adults who already believed the apparitions is a fair question, and the answer is that most of what is known about him was written down after he was dead, by people who did.

The arrest

In August 1917 the administrator of the district, an official of an aggressively anticlerical republic, took the three children from their homes and held them. By every account, including hostile ones, none of them changed the story under it. Francisco was nine years old.

The end

He fell ill in the influenza pandemic and died at home in Aljustrel on 4 April 1919, ten years old, having said for some time that he expected to die.

The Pandemic That Took Both Children

Two of the three Fatima children were dead within three years of the apparitions, and the thing that killed them killed a very large number of Portuguese people in the same months.

The pandemic in Portugal

The influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919 reached Portugal in the summer of 1918 and moved through the rural interior in the autumn. Country parishes had almost no medical provision. In hamlets like Aljustrel the disease went through whole households at once, and the Marto family was one of the households it took.

Francisco

He fell ill in the autumn of 1918, recovered enough to be moved about the house, weakened again over the winter, and died on 4 April 1919 at Aljustrel, ten years old.

Jacinta

She was ill at the same time and did not recover. The infection settled in her chest and became a purulent pleurisy. She was taken to Lisbon, operated on, and died in hospital on 20 February 1920, nine years old, away from her family.

Why it matters to the account

The apparitions are said to have included a statement that two of the children would be taken soon and the third would remain. The difficulty is dating that claim. It reaches us through the memoirs Lucia dos Santos wrote from the 1930s onward, after both of her cousins were dead, and there is now no way to establish what was being said about it in 1917. That is not an accusation against anyone. It is the ordinary problem with the Fatima record, which is a record of what one surviving witness recalled rather than a record of the events.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Fátima, Sacred Sites

The Cova da Iria, in the parish of Fatima.

Mary, Figures

The figure the children reported is identified as Mary.

Miracle of the Sun, Miracles

One of the three visionaries who reported the promised sign.

The Apparitions at Fatima, Religious Events

One of the three children who reported the Fatima apparitions.

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity, Religions

Cousin Of

Lucia dos Santos, Figures

Sibling Of

Jacinta Marto, Figures

Brother and sister, both of Aljustrel.

Sources
1. The Message of Fatima
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000the holders' own accountView the Source
2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
3. Holy Mass and Canonization of the Blesseds Francisco Marto and Jacinta Marto, Fatima, 13 May 2017
Holy See Press Office, Holy See, 2017the holders' own accountView the Source
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