Francisco Rodrigues da Cruz

Francisco Rodrigues da Cruz, SJ (29 July 1859 – 1 October 1948), more commonly known as Father Cruz was a Portuguese Catholic priest. Revered in Portugal for his apostolic fervor and charity, he visited prisons and hospitals in every city, gave alms to the poor and ministered spiritually to all, achieving a great reputation for sanctity. Some called him "Blessed Father Cruz" and "Apostle of Charity" still in his lifetime.

Cruz expressed a desire to enter the Society of Jesus as early as 1880, but was unsuccessful; the Superior General of the Jesuits obtained permission first from Pope Pius XI in 1929 to allow Cruz to take vows as a Jesuit on his death bed, and then from Pope Pius XII in 1940 to take vows immediately and without the need to undergo a novitiate or of residing in a Jesuit community. He did pronounce his vows at the Costa Seminary in Guimarães on 3 December 1940 (the feast of Saint Francis Xavier, to whom he had great devotion). this was before the Bishop of Leiria, José Alves Correia da Silva, recognised them as worthy of belief in 1930.

The cause for his beatification was officially opened in 1951 and its diocesan phase took place until 1965; due to changes in the norms of beatification processes, a suppletory process was opened in the Patriarchate of Lisbon in September 2009 and was formally closed on 17 December 2020. The cause is now before the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Early life

Francisco Rodrigues da Cruz was born in Alcochete at 10 p.m. on 29 July 1859, the fourth The baptismal rites were only concluded on the next 25 February, in the Parish Church of Saint John the Baptist, when Manuel Teixeira Salgueiro anointed him with the oil of catechumens and pronounced the exorcism.

After concluding his secondary education in Lisbon, as he had expressed an interest in becoming a priest, his father sent him at age 16 to attend the Faculty of Theology of the University of Coimbra; he concluded his licentiate degree in 1880, aged 21. Shortly afterwards, the Cardinal-Patriarch Inácio do Nascimento de Morais Cardoso had him teaching philosophy in the Patriarchal Seminary in Santarém; he was ordained on 3 June 1882.

A nervous breakdown prevented him from continuing to teach. In 1886 he was invited instead to direct the College of Saint Cajetan (Colégio de São Caetano), an orphan school in Braga; for similar reasons he asked to be replaced in this position by the Salesian Fathers in 1894. From then until 1903, he acted as spiritual director of the minor seminary in Lisbon, in the Monastery of St. Vincent Outside the Walls.

In 1942, at age 83, he visited Madeira and the Azores at the request of the respective ordinaries.