VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is making five more child saints: two Portuguese shepherd children who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in Fatima 100 years ago, and three Mexican adolescents who were killed for their Catholic faith in the 16th century.
Francis signed the decrees Thursday, raising the likelihood that he might canonize the Portuguese siblings Francisco and Jacinta Marto during his coming trip to the Fatima shrine.
In the case of the Mexicans, Francis declared the three Child Martyrs of Tlaxcala worthy of sainthood without having a miracle attributed to their intercession, once again sidestepping the Vatican’s typical saint-making process.
The boys, Cristobal, Antonio and Juan, were converted to Catholicism by missionaries in the early 1500s and were killed by their countrymen. St. John Paul II beatified them in 1990 during his second visit to Mexico. Francis followed the rules in approving a miracle for the Marto siblings, who died at age 9 and 11 of pneumonia. Church officials declined to detail the miracle in question.