It’s official: the canonization of two of the little shepherds who witnessed the apparitions of Fatima will be on May 13, 2017, in the Portuguese sanctuary. Pope Francis made the announcement during the public consistory that took place today in the Vatican.
Thus, Francisco and Jacinta Marto will be the youngest, non-martyr canonized saints in the history of the Catholic Church.
The three visionaries of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Fatima were 10-year-old Lucía dos Santos, 9-year-old Francisco, and 7-year-old Jacinta. Lucía later became a Carmelite religious and died on February 13, 2005. The cause for her beatification has opened at the diocesan level.
Francis makes an apostolic visit to Fatima to commemorate the centenary of the Marian apparitions on May 12-13.
A Public Consistory is a meeting of the College of Cardinals, called by the Pope in the Vatican, to help him in the government of the Church. At this meeting, the Cardinals give their “placet” to the Holy Father for the Causes of Canonization. In this case, it is an Ordinary Consistory, that is, it convokes the cardinals who reside in Rome.
The Pope also announced that the following other blesseds will be canonized, Oct. 15, 2017: Brazil’s proto-martyrs Father Andrea Soveral and Father Ambrogio Francesco Ferro, layman Mateus Moreira and 27 other companion martyrs; Cristobal, Antonio and Juan, the “Children Martyrs of Tlaxcala,” killed in Mexico out of hatred for the faith between 1527 and 1529; Faustino Miguez, Religious of the Order of Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools will also be canonized, who, ordained priest, founded the Calasanctius Institute of Daughters of the Divine Shepherdess, for the integral education of women; Angelo Acri (Luca Falcone) priest of the Order of the Friars Minor Capuchin.
