Saint Jacinta Marto

Then that tender heart opened wide to people she had never once met: sinners who had strayed far from home, people suffering in war, and even the faraway Pope in Rome. The world’s pain found a warm refuge in the prayers of a girl not yet ten years old.

As the youngest in a poor farming family with many children, Jacinta was loved and cherished by her parents and her older siblings. Her brother Francisco was nearly two years older, and her cousin Lucia, three years older, was her closest friend. Every morning, while the dew still lay on the grass, the three children led the sheep out, and filled the bare hillsides with laughter. The Marto family’s simple stone house in Aljustrel — just a few steps from Lucia’s home — still stands almost unchanged today, and there pilgrims can picture the poor life of a farming family in the hills of Portugal at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Lucia remembered that Jacinta loved to hug the little white lambs, loved to tuck wild lilies into her hair, and loved to gaze at the moon at night, which she called “Our Lady’s lamp”. Her childhood faith was woven into nature and into the stories her mother told by the fire. Her innocent heart took in the holy mysteries in a child’s way, long before she could think in big ideas.

Jacinta saw Our Lady and heard every word she said. Though the three children had agreed to keep it secret, when she got home, her heart bursting with joy, Jacinta could not hold back and ran into her mother’s arms crying out:

“Mother, today I saw Our Lady at Cova da Iria!”

From that moment, their simple life with the sheep vanished. The curious and the skeptical streamed into the poor hamlet of Aljustrel, and the authorities began to watch closely. A seven-year-old had to face a barrage of questions and the suspicious eyes of adults.

Some believed at once without a shadow of doubt; some mocked, and even the parish priest was at first very cautious, unwilling to rush to accept it. Jacinta, though far too young to understand the complicated motives of adults, still felt the weight of a whole community’s eyes turned on her. But instead of shrinking back in fear, she became all the more convinced: what she had seen was real, and no slander could shake it.

Through Our Lady’s apparitions in June and July, the call to conversion and the vision of the suffering of sinful souls left a deep mark on Jacinta’s soul. She did not keep that vision as a fear with which to frighten others. On the contrary, a burning compassion rose up in her. How could souls be saved from being lost? How could people stop wounding the Hearts of Jesus and Mary?

Yet even in tears, she steadfastly refused to betray the truth. The three children knelt down and prayed the Rosary right in the jail cell, and the prisoners joined in. Unable to break them, the administrator returned them to their families on August 15.

After October 13, 1917, when tens of thousands witnessed the miracle of the sun, Jacinta gave herself more and more to quiet sacrifice. She gave her lunch to poor children who came begging, and ate bitter acorns as penance.

Those sacrifices belong to the simple fervor of a child of her time. What is worth treasuring and handing on today is her generous heart that knew how to share; children today still need proper nutrition and care for their health so they can grow up.

From July 1 to August 31, 1919, she had to stay for treatment in the hospital at Ourém. Her illness did not improve, and the wound in her chest festered painfully. Early in 1920, she was taken to Lisbon in the hope that specialists could cure her, staying for a time at an orphanage named for Our Lady of Miracles before being admitted to hospital.

On February 2, 1920, Jacinta was admitted to the Dona Estefânia hospital in Lisbon with a diagnosis of purulent pleurisy and infection of two ribs. On February 10, she had to undergo a painful operation to remove those two ribs. Because she was so weak, the doctors did not dare give her general anesthesia, and could only inject a little local anesthetic that was hardly enough to ease the pain — meaning the nine-year-old had to endure almost the whole operation fully awake. Hundreds of kilometers from her family, the searing pain and utter loneliness inside those stark white hospital walls were a terrible trial for a girl not yet ten.

On May 13, 2000, Pope Saint John Paul II beatified the brother and sister Francisco and Jacinta. On May 13, 2017, Pope Francis solemnly canonized them right in the square at Fátima. The Church celebrates the two young saints on February 20 each year.

In Vietnamese homes, a mother praying at night for a child working in a foreign land, or a family sharing part of a meager income with flood victims far away, has a heart that beats like Jacinta’s.