Saint Jacinta Marto

Jacinta Marto died at nine years and eleven months old, and she is one of the youngest saints in the Church. She was born in 1910 in Aljustrel, Portugal, the youngest of seven children in a farming family. She and her brother Francisco never went to school and couldn’t read or write: what they knew about religion they had learned at home and from their aunt, the mother of their cousin Lúcia. By the age of six she was already looking after her parents’ flock together with her brother and her cousin. It was there, at pasture, on May 13, 1917, in a place called Cova da Iria, that the three children said they had seen a “lady.” The apparitions would continue until October 13 of that year, when, in front of an enormous crowd, what everyone called the Miracle of the Sun took place. The loveliest testimony about Jacinta comes from her cousin Lúcia, and it doesn’t speak of visions: she says that before, Jacinta was a little girl like many others, who loved to play and dance and was a bit touchy too. Afterward, she changed her habits and began to pray a great deal. In December 1918 she and Francisco came down with the Spanish flu, the epidemic that carried off millions of people in those years. Jacinta died in Lisbon on February 20, 1920. Pope Francis declared her a saint in 2017. If your name is Jacinta, today is your name day: a rare and beautiful name that is also a flower (the hyacinth). A little girl who never learned to read and didn’t have time to grow up. What remains of her is a cousin’s memory: that she loved to dance.