This Thursday, February 20, the Catholic Church celebrates the Liturgical Festival of Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto. But the date is particularly important in the life of Santa Jacinta, since it also marks the day that the shepherd died in Lisbon, in bed nº 38 of Hospital D. Estefânia.
And because the saints are from the place where they die and not from the place where they are born, the hospital decided to mark the date – although the Shrine of Fátima also marks the centenary in its program throughout the year, because “holiness is not incompatible with childhood”.
In Lisbon, in turn, a conference was organized today at the hospital, which took place in the Lídia Gama room. Present were Fr. Carlos Cabecinhas, rector of the Sanctuary of Fátima, Fr. Carlos Azevedo, chaplain of D. Estefânia, Sister Ângela Coelho, postulator for the cause of canonization of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, Carla Afonso Rocha, responsible for the conferences on Santa Jacinta on Rua da Estrela and Paulo Barroso, a theology student in Toulouse. Outside the room, an exhibition organized by Francisco Noronha de Andrade, served in the Sanctuary, with several elements related to Fátima and the little shepherds.
The first part of the conference was the responsibility of Carla Afonso Rocha, with whom SAPO24 talked about history of Santa Jacinta in Lisbon. Highlighting the importance of the shepherdess in the hospital, Carla remembers the entrance to that space, on February 2, 1920. “Jacinta was in this hospital, after coming from Estrela. The entry document has the address Rua da Estrela nº25, but today it is numbered like 17, since the building had attached another one that was later demolished “, he explains.
In the hospital, however, the girl’s physical space no longer exists. Yes, there is an approximate place, with a memorial (now renovated) that recalls the event and that is visited by devotees all year round – just as Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon, D. Manuel Clemente, did this afternoon to write a message that marks his presence at the centenary mass, which followed the conference.
For Carla, “Jacinta, when she came to the city, brought Our Lady to Lisbon with her”. The person responsible for the conferences takes advantage of the cue to make a parallel with what has also marked today. “Without getting into politics, the house where Santa Jacinta was in Lisbon, at the time an orphanage and today the Monastery of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, belongs to the same parish and parish as the ‘house’ where today we have to decide to [despenalização] euthanasia “. At the same time, he projected behind him the message that Our Lady left to Jacinta when she appeared in that room in Estrela, where it is said that” the capital will become a true image of hell “.
Manuel Tavares, 83, is well aware of the value of Jacinta’s presence in that place, having experienced it in the first person.
“I occupied Jacinta’s bed 20 years after she died. I went to the hospital on December 24, 1940, I was four years old at the time. I was here until 1953, I was in the hospital for 13 years”, she starts by telling to SAPO24. “I had osteomyelitis [infeção da medula óssea], which at the time was one of the bone diseases that existed. It was bone tuberculosis, the bones were weak “, he simplifies.
About the hospital, he recalls that “the infirmary had kids until seven years old”, but Manuel was hospitalized longer, until 17. The marks of that period are still remembered. “Bone tuberculosis made holes – I still have four in my body, everything is healed. As the bones were weak, plaster devices were used at the time. For seven years, at the time of growth, I used one. There was no physical therapy, no there were none of those things and I still got bad “, he says.
“Those years were terrible. Everyone had big fistulas, rotten bones, and we lived on plaster devices, so as not to break the bones. When it was time to make dressings it was horrible. We were 51 patients in the infirmary, of whom 45 were sick with bone tuberculosis. They spent the rest of their lives there. Then there were cases of appendicitis, who were there for a month or two and left. “
But not everything was complicated, despite the disease. “I was here in Estefânia and we were happy. We knew what happiness or unhappiness was, but we were very happy in the hospital. We were here for 10 or 15 years and it was that group, we all knew each other, we had our games” .
Regarding his relationship with Santa Jacinta, Manuel Tavares recalls that he started by not being obvious – after all, he was still a very small child.
“I went to the bed that had been Jacinta’s in the first days in the hospital and those Jesuits and those big-bearded priests showed up there. That was really complicated for me. At the time I was known as a ‘crying baby’, because that I’m afraid. At a certain point they had to change their bed, because at that time the visits were daily. They arrived at the foot of the bed and knelt to pray. I didn’t understand anything of what was happening “, he says.
“I only learned that I was in Jacinta’s bed a few years later, when I started to understand life. Of course, we had already thought that there was someone there in that bed, since he called people. Priests and others, of all nationalities”, he says .
But at a certain point, the visits gained another relevance with the constant presence, from 1945 onwards, of “a very small priest – we were kids but he was really small. We would pull his cassock and go after him to make some malice, playing. Only when I left the hospital did I realize who it was: it was Father Cruz, who went there every Sunday “.
Known as “the dumb priest”, because he entered and left the hospital without leaving a single word, the Jesuit “apostle of charity” the beatification process started in 1951.
Even after leaving the hospital, Manuel continued to feel that there was something different about that place. Already grown up and married, he went to Fátima. “One day I went to the Wax Museum, I go in and see that [uma das cenas do museu] it’s just like it was in the hospital, with the nurses and stuff. The bed was the same. I even told my wife that I felt a strange thing, a shiver, “he confides.” I have stories that I can’t even divulge because I don’t have anyone who confirms them so differently “, he shoots without giving further details.
Life, however, was smiling at him, despite the troubled beginning – and he smiles when he asks if he had the hand of Santa Jacinta. “There was something in my life. I never went to school, but I was a high-level employee and today I have a company of mine, leader in Portugal. I never studied, I never entered a school. In 1956 I had my first job, at Metropolitano de I slept in a barracks, the music I heard was tired men who snored after working all day at the pick because there were no machines. But I always did everything, everything went well and here I am “, he says smiling.
Jacinta Marto – protagonist of the events that took place in Cova da Iria in 1917, with her brother Francisco and cousin Lúcia – died at the age of nine at Hospital D. Estefânia, in Lisbon. A hundred years have passed, but history is still alive and, they say, changing lives.
–
