Francisco Marto was born on 1908-06-11, the sixth child of Manuel Pedro Marto and Olimpia Marto, in the hamlet of Aljustrel Portugal, then part of the village of Fatima Portugal.12 His younger sister Jacinta Marto was born twenty-one months later, on 1910-03-11.3 In 1917, Francisco, Jacinta, and Lúcia (Fatima seer) became the three child seers of the 1917 Fatima Marian apparitions.4
The visions began the previous year. In the spring of 1916, while the three children were watching their family’s herds, they experienced the First apparition of the Angel of Peace (1916 spring).5 During a second appearance, Lúcia and Jacinta heard the angel speak, but Francisco did not hear his words and only saw him.6 Late in August 1916 the angel appeared to the three children for a third time, on the mountain slope overlooking Aljustrel.7 Lúcia later wrote that on this occasion the angel gave her the host and gave Jacinta and Francisco the contents of the chalice to drink, before disappearing.8
On 1917-05-13, after attending mass at the local church, the children took their sheep out to graze;9 at Portugal, Fatima, Cova da Iria they witnessed a dazzling flash of light which they initially took for lightning, in what became the First apparition of Our Lady of Fatima (1917-05-13).10 The apparition lasted about ten minutes; only Lúcia spoke to the Lady, Jacinta only listened, and Francisco saw her lips move without hearing anything.11 The Lady told the children they would all go to heaven, though Francisco would first have to pray many rosaries.12 Jacinta told their mother she really had seen the Lady and would pray the rosary with Francisco daily, as the Mother of God had told them to;13 Francisco later confirmed his sister’s account to the family.14 At the Second apparition of Our Lady of Fatima (1917-06-13), the children’s parents refused to accompany them for fear of embarrassment if the vision proved a fraud;15 when Olimpia Marto and Maria Rosa dos Santos found their children missing that day, they went with Manuel Pedro Marto to Cova da Iria and found the three surrounded by hundreds of people.16 Lúcia recalled that the Lady said she would take Jacinta and Francisco to heaven soon, while Lúcia herself would stay longer to help people understand and love her,17 and that when the Lady opened her hands a second time, Lúcia saw Jacinta and Francisco ascending to heaven in a beam of light, and herself in a beam of light pouring down onto the earth.18 Throughout the apparitions the Virgin Mary told the three children to say the rosary often.19 At the Third apparition of Our Lady of Fatima (1917-07-13) the children experienced a vision of hell and the revelation of what became known as the three secrets;20 the Lady instructed Lúcia not to disclose the Third Secret of Fatima to anyone except Francisco.21 Afterwards the children sat in uneasy silence for several minutes, overwhelmed by what they had been shown,22 and a photograph taken immediately after the apparition shows visible anxiety on their faces.23 The seers reported witnessing the Lady on six occasions in all during the Fatima apparitions (1917).24 As the promised further sign approached, fear spread among the families in Aljustrel that disappointed crowds might turn violent if it failed to occur.25 Louis Emrich’s account of an anonymous Vatican source held that the final apparition, on 1917-10-13, also delivered a further secret message to Lúcia warning that mankind must repent and that a severe punishment would come in the second half of the twentieth century.26 According to The Fatima Secret, during the same phenomenon, later called the Miracle of the Sun (1917-10-13), the three children reported seeing the Holy Family near the rotating sun.27
On 1917-08-13, the local administrator Artur Santos confronted Jacinta and Francisco at their home, again failing to get them to reveal the secret and trying to make them promise never to return to Cova da Iria.28 He then offered to take the children by carriage to Cova da Iria, claiming he wanted to see the vision himself, but the children distrusted his sudden change of manner and said they would rather walk.29 Instead he diverted the carriage and abducted them toward Ourém Portugal, in what is recorded as the Abduction of the Fatima children by Artur Santos (1917-08-13).30 Santos brought the children to his house, locked them in a room, and told them he would release them only once they told him the secret.31 He tried to bribe them and threatened to throw them into kettles of boiling oil, and they were held for two hours in a cell at the local prison.32 He falsely told Francisco that Jacinta had already been thrown into the oil, but Francisco told him he could not reveal the secret.33 On 1917-08-15, having failed, Santos returned the children by carriage to Father Ferreira at the rectory in Fatima.34
On 1917-09-27, the priest Manuel Formigao interviewed the three children separately and recorded their accounts.35 Francisco told him he had seen the Lady at the oak tree at Cova da Iria,36 arriving quickly from the direction of the rising sun and stopping near the tree.37 He said he had never spoken to her, since she spoke only to Lúcia,38 though she looked at all three children, longest at Lúcia.39 He described her as always very serious, never weeping or smiling,40 dressed in white with threads of gold and a cloak covering her head down to the hem of her dress,41 standing as if praying with her hands folded above her waist,42 carrying a rosary wound around the palm and back of her right hand,43 though he could not see her ears, covered by the cloak.44 Francisco said he considered her more beautiful than anyone he had ever seen.45 After the apparitions he and Jacinta grew pensive and withdrawn, giving up their former play in favour of religious observance;46 asked whether he wanted to become a priest, Francisco replied that he did not want to become anything at all, only to die and go to heaven.47 In late 1918, Francisco, Jacinta, and their mother fell ill with the Spanish flu then sweeping Europe.48 Jacinta later told Lúcia that Our Lady had visited her and said she would soon take Francisco to heaven, while Jacinta herself would go to hospital and suffer greatly.49 Francisco died on 1919-04-04 of a severe inflammation of the lungs, in the Death of Francisco Marto (1919-04-04).50 Two of the three seers died young, while Lucia dos Santos lived secluded in a convent to an advanced age.51
Francisco’s remains were reburied at the cemetery of Fatima on 1934-09-12,52 and in 1951, after the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima was built at the site of the apparitions, both his and Jacinta’s bodies were transferred there and buried close to the altar.53 In a 1967 declaration, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani referred to Jacinta and Francisco as Lúcia’s brother and sister;54 Michael Hesemann later argued that had Ottaviani actually read the Third Secret he would have known the three were cousins rather than siblings.55 Father Fuentes later reported that Sister Lúcia told him the Virgin had said many nations would vanish from the earth, and that Russia would be the instrument of punishment if the world did not convert.56 John Paul II later told the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori that it was impossible the children could have invented such statements, since they were ignorant of history, geography, and ideology, yet what they announced came to pass.57 According to The Fatima Secret, the rise of Communism could not have been foreseen by the three illiterate Portuguese peasant children, and its sudden fall came as a surprise to everyone.58 John Paul II beatified Jacinta and Francisco in the Beatification of Jacinta and Francisco Marto (2000);59 his visit to Fatima on 2000-05-13 was officially for this purpose,60 and the ceremony was held with their pictures displayed on both sides of the Basilica’s tower.61 A miracle attributed to the pair, documented by the Vatican Congregation for the Cause of the Saints, put them on the road to sainthood;62 Maria Emilia Santos, a sixty-nine-year-old Portuguese woman who had lain paralysed in bed for twenty-two years, reported that she could walk again after praying to Francisco and Jacinta.63