San Francisco Solano was a Franciscan friar who lived in Peru for many years, stay with our article to learn all about this great saint, known as the Saint of South America.
Biography of Saint Francis Solano
This saint was born in 1549 in Montilla, in the province of Andalusia, studied at the Jesuit school and joined the Franciscan Observance (Order of St. Francis of Assisi) in his birthplace in 1569.
St Francis Solano entered the Friars Minor at the age of 20. His zeal had to be controlled rather than stimulated, for he knew no bounds in the practice of the most rigorous exercises of penance.
In all things he chose the worst for himself and spent most of the night in prayer; he was duly professed and ordained a priest in 1576.
After his studies and ordination, he showed an untiring zeal for souls. The heroic sacrifices he made during an epidemic were particularly admirable. He ministered to the physical and spiritual needs of the sick without fear of infection.
He was afflicted with illness, but miraculously restored to health. On every side, the name of Father Francis was spoken with the utmost reverence and he was regarded as a saint.
Such veneration offended his humility and he asked his superiors to send him to the missions in Africa, but he was assigned to another area of missionary activity.
Filled with zeal and charity and an ardent desire for the salvation of souls, he divided his time between silent retreat and preaching. Francis ministered for many years in the south of Spain, and during the plague of 1583 in Granada, when he himself contracted the disease, he heroically and quickly recovered.
Since the discovery of the New World by Columbus, the sons of St Francis of Assisi had been active in preaching the Gospel in the Americas. The intrepid missionaries went further and further in their efforts to bring the message of salvation to the savage Indians.
In 1589, after the epidemic had passed, Father Francisco Solano was sent to South America with several members of his order. The provinces of Tucuman (Argentina), Gran Chaco (Bolivia) and Paraguay fell to his lot.
Despite the many difficulties he encountered, he began his missionary work with great zeal. He approached the Indians with such courtesy and kindness that they were pleased to see him.
Francisco was chosen to go to Peru with Father Baltasar Navarro. The missionaries reached Panama, crossed the Isthmus and took ship again on the other side. Almighty God helped St Francis Solano in an extraordinary way.
He learned the difficult language of the Indians in a very short time and they understood him wherever he went, even in the places he first visited, from where he began to teach the Holy Scriptures (See: Catholic Holy Scriptures). But as they approached Peru, they ran into a bad storm and were stranded on a sandbank.
The ship appeared to be breaking up and the captain ordered it to be abandoned, leaving on board several black slaves for whom there was no room in the lifeboat. Francis was in charge of these men and refused to leave them, so he remained on the ship as it broke up.
He gathered them around him, encouraged them to trust in the mercy of God and the merits of Jesus Christ, and then baptised them. No sooner had he done this than the ship broke in two and some of the blacks drowned. The rest were trapped in the part of the hull that had run aground, where they remained for three days.
San Francisco Solano kept his courage and showed signs of distress. When the weather cleared, the boat from the ship returned and took him to safety with the others, eventually taking him to Lima, Peru. From there he began twenty years of tireless work among the Indians and Spanish settlers.
St Francis is said to have had the “gift of tongues”, and for his miracles he was called the “Wonderworker of the New World”; in his funeral homily, Father Sabastiani said that God had chosen him to be “the hope and edification of all Peru, the example and glory of Lima, the splendour of the Seraphic Order”.
God also gave St Francis a wonderful power over hearts. Once, when he was in the city of La Rioja, a horde of thousands of armed Indians came to kill all the Europeans and the Christianised Indians.
St Francis went out to meet them. His words immediately disarmed them. They all understood what he was saying, even though they spoke different languages. They asked him for instructions and 9,000 Indians were baptised.
St Francis threw his cloak over the roaring rivers and sailed to the opposite shore. He put his rope around the neck of a mad bull that had everyone in a panic, and led him away like a lamb.
Once, when a swarm of wild locusts came up and hovered like a black cloud over the fields of the poor Indians, threatening to destroy all their crops, he ordered that none of them should come down, but that they should go to the mountains; they retired at once.
Such miracles and benefits opened the hearts of all; they loved and venerated him as their common Father.
During the holy time of Christmas, St Francis would gather his Indians around the crib and teach them to sing the most beautiful hymns to the Child Jesus, himself accompanying them on the violin.
He often cheered the sick with songs and music. Once they saw him sitting under a tree, playing his beloved violin, and the birds gathered around him and sang. After working among the Indians for 12 years and winning countless heathens to Christianity, Father Francis was called to the city of Lima in Peru.
Christianity had been established there for a long time, and there were many Spaniards living there, but there was great debauchery and immorality in the great city.
One day, guided by divine inspiration, St Francis, like the prophet Jonah in Nineveh (see: How many prophets wrote the Bible), passed through the city and announced to the inhabitants the judgments of God if they did not convert.
They were all gripped with fear. He cried out to God for mercy and asked for the Holy Sacrament of Penance. The worst sinners publicly declared their determination to reform.
The saint thanked God for these fruits of grace and praised the Mother of Mercy in devout hymns on his altar.
St Francis Solano had worked tirelessly for the salvation of souls in South America for twenty years when God called him to Himself on the feast of his special patron, St Bonaventure, on 14 July 1610. The viceroy and the most distinguished people of Lima carried the body of the poor younger brother to the tomb.
Almighty God glorified St Francis after his death by many miracles, especially for sick children; yes, even dead children were brought back to life at his tomb. Pope Benedict XIII canonised St Francis Solanus with great solemnity in 1726.
One of his habits, like that of his religious father and namesake, was to take a lute and sing to the Virgin Mary before her altar. He died on 14 July 1610, while his brothers were singing the Conventual Mass, at the moment of consecration, saying with his last breath: “Glory to God”.
His whole life, according to Alvarez de Paz, was a holy and uninterrupted course of zealous action, but at the same time a continuous prayer. Saint Francis Solano was canonised in 1726. His feast day is 13 July.
Prayer to St Francis Solano
“O mighty Saint Francis Solano, you who explored and evangelised in the wilderness of South America, help me in the wilderness of this world and grant me the grace I ask of you through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen”.
(Specify your petition and then say a Hail Mary in honour of St Francis Solano).
Novena to St. Francis Solano
Dear Lord, you chose St. Francis Solano, just as you chose St. Rose of Lima, to bring your Word and the Christian faith to those most in need. Help me to be touched by them so that I may be saved before God. Help us to meditate on the greatness of our God and our faith. St Francis Solano, pray for us and ask the Lord to respond to the intentions we are about to ask (write your intentions here).
Second day: Dear Lord, who chose St Francis Solano, we ask you to pray that the Church will grow and that there will be more priests, religious and lay people who live authentic Christian lives. Strengthen the Pope, theologians and missionaries as they work to spread the Gospel.
Third day: Dear Lord, you chose St. Francis Solanus to teach many natives to pray before the altars so that they might obtain the blessing of God and Jesus Christ. Pray that I may love and respect the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.
Help me to know deeply that each time I receive the Eucharist, I am receiving Jesus Christ in the flesh within me.
Fourth day: Dear Lord, you chose St Francis Solano as a young man to follow in the footsteps of St Francis of Assisi. Help us to meditate on the greatness of our God and our faith. Pray for us and ask the Lord to respond to the intentions we are about to ask. (Write your intentions here…)
Fifth day: Dear Lord, you chose St Francis Solano, knowing that God would call him to the priesthood early in his life and that with patience he would arrive where you wanted him to go. Pray that all people may be patient in discerning their vocation in life. May the vocations of priests, religious, married couples and single people strengthen the Church through their lived examples of patience, love and faith.
Day 6: Dear Lord, you chose St Francis Solano and saved him from a violent storm out of love for the natives who stayed there and received baptism. Pray for me that I may be more like you, always seeking God’s guidance through prayer.
Seventh day: Dear Lord, you chose St Francis Solano to cross the river alone in his cassock to help others in need out of love. Help me to be more loving like you, so that I may treat my family, friends and acquaintances with the same holy love.
Eighth day: Dear Lord, you chose St Francis Solano to teach God’s truth in South America. Help me to be more like you, so that I too may seek the truth in all things. Pray also for those who are lost in lies and lead them to the truth of the Gospel.
Ninth day: Dear Lord, you chose St. Francis Solano to care for many sick people and to lead people out of a life of sin. Help us not to fall into sin in our secular society. Pray for an end to abortion, abuse and pornography. Protect marriages from infidelity and help Christians to be defenders of the dignity of all.
After each daily prayer, end with the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
Get to know the Peruvian Saint Francis Solano:
Saint Francis Solanus Day
The feast day of Saint Francis Solanus is 13 July. St Francis Solano lived from 1549 to 1610. He was a Spanish Franciscan missionary to South America.
Although St. Francis Solano is not well known in the United States, he is actually one of the extraordinary saints.
St Francis was gifted with an abundance of miracles. St Francis converted and baptised many natives and explored the uncultivated regions of Peru, where St Martin de Porres also came from.
In this video we give you an explanation of the calendar of Saint Francis Solano:
The miracle of St. Francis Solano
Saint Francis Solano miraculously healed the broken face of a five-year-old girl and brought her back to life: the story goes that the girl, named Maria Monroy, was five years old and had fallen from the first floor of her parents’ house.
An iron grate, washed away by the autumn rains, had become lodged in one of the girl’s eyes, smashing her face and fracturing her skull. By the time she was picked up, she was dead.
The desperate cries of the grieving mother immediately brought the whole neighbourhood to the scene, but nothing anyone could do or say could comfort the woman or soften the shock of seeing her baby’s head wounds and features.
An image of St Francis Solanus hung above the dead child’s bed. It was only when the mother’s eyes fell on this image that she calmed down a little. As she began to pray before it, the mother experienced a sudden, wild hope.
In a loud voice she demanded that someone bring her the oil from Father Solano’s lamps at once. It seemed desperate enough to the onlookers, but in order to calm the poor mother, the oil was brought and applied to her injured face and head.
The miracle that followed worked immediately! The eye returned to its socket, the wound in the head closed and little Mary came to life with the exclamation, “Jesus, stay with me!
St Francis Solano miraculously crosses a river: The river was wide and there was no boat to take him to the other side. How happy his Indians were, thinking that this would keep their father with them for a little longer.
But he seemed to hear the voices calling to him from the other side. For the last time he exhorted his beloved Indians to persevere in seeking God’s grace, in faith and in charity, and he gave them his blessing.
Then, raising his eyes to heaven, he was lifted up in ecstasy. Spreading his cloak over the water, he stepped into it without fear and crossed to the opposite shore, leaving those who had accompanied him to the river in utter amazement.
The extraordinary travels of St. Francis Solanus: The industrious apostle was not content to minister to his own converts, the thousands of Christians around Socothonius and Magdalene.
As soon as he was sure that his feet were firmly planted on the path of Christian life, he set off on another immense journey, which, because of the harshness of the terrain he chose to penetrate, was to become a classic chapter in the wonderful epic of record-breaking travel and spiritual adventure.
He evangelised and taught the natives he could find in the great deserts that stretched between the heroically founded stations. But so much of this journey was devoted to the Gran Chaco that one imagines that he must have known from the start that this vast and unexplored region was the prize for which he would compete, alone and without any provisions.
Witnesses to his miracles: Eight hundred witnesses had come forward to testify under oath to the miracles of Saint Francis Solano. Five hundred and twenty of them were Limnos. The list included prelates, scholars, doctors, high-ranking army officers, religious and ladies of high social standing. Also present was the temporary ruler of them all, the Marquis of Montesclaros, viceroy of Peru.
Learn more about the spirituality of San Francisco Solano in this video:
St Francis Solano believed that no one could be saved without the sacrament of Baptism (See: Who Instituted Baptism). In his life, there is a story about a ship on which St Francis was travelling that was hit by a terrible storm. There were many religious on board, as well as natives who had received some instruction from him but had not yet been baptised.
They ran headlong into a violent hurricane. Almost immediately, the heavy wooden ship spun out of control and became a mere splinter in the raging sea.
Water now flowed freely through the hold. In the fury of the storm, the ship was falling apart beneath them; and with only one lifeboat on board, disaster could only mean death for most of the company.
The captain hurried to pull the Franciscans and some of the more prominent passengers overboard to give them a last chance of survival in a lifeboat. When Fray Francisco Solano made no move to join his brothers in the boat, Juan de Morgana begged him to hurry.
There was room for one more. But the missionary had already decided that he could not allow his negritos, the natives and slaves, to die abandoned in their agony. Who was to say he could not be given time to baptise some of them?
He said that God would not allow me to be saved by letting his poor brethren lose not only the life of the body, but also the life of the soul, which is eternal.
Therefore, St Francis clearly believed that they would not be saved without baptism, despite their knowledge or “desire”. So he risked his life to stay and make sure that they were convinced of the faith and baptised.
The priest immediately set to work baptising these slaves, praying to God for time to complete his holy mission. There were so many to whom he had to administer the Sacrament of Baptism, and in circumstances that would have been impossible for almost anyone else!
As St Francis continued to baptise, the ship was actually torn in two by the hurricane. As the ship split in two, Fray Francisco, or St Francis Solano, was hastily baptising his Negritos.
He scarcely looked up when he heard the noise, and of course there were many who were still hysterical from the shock and misery of being half-submerged.
But Fray Francisco was perfectly calm; and as the fragment of the ship miraculously continued to float, the frightened men lined up one by one in front of it and the crucifix, still held up by an arm that should have broken beneath it.
The hours went by in this way, and finally the Sacrament was administered to all who wished to receive it. After days of struggling at sea in the face of the hurricane, God intervened with a series of extraordinary events that allowed all the people to survive.
It is said that Francisco Solano had the gift of tongues and was able to speak to tribes of different languages in their own language and still be understood by all. As a musician, Francisco Solano often played the lute or violin for the natives.
He was known to sing hymns to the Virgin Mary before her altar while playing the lute. Although cheerful, he was also an ascetic who often fasted and participated in frequent acts of penance.
Like his namesake, St Francis of Assisi or St Anthony of Padua, St Francis Solano could communicate with animals and is said to have ordered a swarm of locusts to leave a field recently planted by a native tribe.
He was extremely careful about his chastity and had a rule that women could not come within a hundred paces of his personal dwelling.
In 1610, San Francisco Solano is said to have predicted the devastating earthquake of 1618 in Trujillo, Peru.
He is also said to have foretold his own death, which occurred in Lima in 1610. Remarkably, he died at the moment of the consecration of the Eucharist and his last words were “Glory to God”.
See how in Argentina there is an image of St Francis Solano that moves:
Sentences of Saint Francis Solano
- Patience in work and in adversity is granted by the hand of God.
- Prayer fills the soul with joy
- To be with the sick and to help them is one of the precepts of the Rule; out of obedience I am with them and by the will of prayer.
- Look how well the Child Jesus is treated in the arms of the Virgin Mary, this is how he lived on earth! Let us be happy!
Watch the video of the procession of San Francisco Solano in Peru:
The legacy of Saint Francis Solano
Francis’s spirituality was already legendary in the mid-17th century, as the painting of Saint Francis and the Bull (1645) clearly shows. Just nine years later, one of the South Sea Navy’s galleons was named after him.
San Francisco Solano was beatified by Pope Clement X in 1675 and canonised by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726. He is the patron saint of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Peru. His feast day in the Catholic Church (See: Who founded the Catholic Church) is 14 July.
St Francis was particularly popular with the Spanish Franciscans who worked in the Americas. He is said to have been the favourite saint of Father Junipero Sera, the founder of the Franciscan missions in California.
One of these missions, in the Sonoma Valley, is named after Francisco Solano. The Franciscan friars grew grapes and produced sacramental wine from the first vineyard in the area. Today, the region is a world-renowned producer of California wines.
Another mission was named after Francisco Solano in Coahuila, Mexico. Many schools and churches are also named after him. Solano County, California, is indirectly named after him, as it derives its name directly from Chief Solano of the Sisun tribe, who in turn was named after the saint.
Finally, listen to this hymn to St Francis Solano, which we know you will enjoy:
