Saint Who?
Saints Who Performed Great Miracles
Saint Francis Solano
Priest and religious († 1610)Feast: July 14
Francis was born in Spain in 1549. Though his family held a high position, he was unassuming and kind. As a student he was a peacemaker among his fellows. And when he became a Franciscan, he served with joy. Even in the midst of a terrible plague, he was known to dance with happiness before the image of the Madonna and Child.
Hoping to escape the great admiration his work received, he requested a missionary assignment. En route, his ship was wrecked. But Francis refused to escape, remaining to catechize, baptize, and console the slaves who were being abandoned. After three days, he and the survivors were rescued.
Dubbed the “Wonderworker of the New World,” Francis labored there for twenty years and won many thousands of hearts. He mastered languages with miraculous ease, and is thought to have possessed the gift of tongues (whereby he could be understood in the native language of his hearers). He was also credited with the ability to speak with animals, including taming a killer bull and instructing a swarm of locusts to leave a tribe’s newly planted field. Francis died in Lima at the age of sixty-one and was canonized in 1726. His final words: “Glory to God.”
Father of wonders, through the prayers of
Saint Francis Solano, may our words
be miracles of charity and truth.
