Francisco de São Luís

Francisco Manuel Justiniano Saraiva was the son of notary Manuel José Saraiva and his wife Leonor Maria Teodora Correia; born on 26 January 1766 in Rua das Flores, Ponte de Lima, he was baptized on 9 February in the town's Parish Church of Our Lady of the Angels (Nossa Senhora dos Anjos).[1]

At age 14, he joined the Monastery of São Martinho de Tibães, mother house of the Benedictines in Portugal, due to his "gifts of organ and plainsong".[2] He made his religious vows on 29 January 1782, adopting the religious name Francisco de São Luís (Francis of Saint Louis). He was transferred to the Monastery of Santo André de Rendufe to carry on his studies in Philosophy. He earned a degree in Theology from the University of Coimbra in 1791, and soon after started teaching there.[2][3]

Saraiva was an advocate of the ideals of Liberalism and Enlightenment. While it is often said that he had become a Freemason (historian Oliveira Marques has written that Saraiva was initiated in a Coimbra lodge sometime before 1821, having adopted Condorcet as his symbolic name), Saraiva himself has left texts denying any association.[3]

Francisco de São Luís as Bishop-Count and Rector of the University of Coimbra

In 1808, following the French invasion of Portugal, he was named part of the patriotic Junta that was established to administer the Minho region while the Council of Regency was not re-established in Lisbon.[3] In 1820, as the Liberal Revolution erupted in the city of Porto, calling for a constitutional monarchy and the return of King John VI from Brazil, Francisco de São Luís was called to be part of the revolutionary Provisional Junta of the Supreme Government of the Kingdom and its successor, the 1821 Regency named by the elected General and Extraordinary Cortes.[3]

As a result of the political instability of the time, the 1822 Constitution was suspended just one year later, following the Vilafrancada uprising. Saraiva renounced his public and ecclesiastical offices (he had been elected Deputy of the Nation and made Bishop-Count of Coimbra, as well as Rector of the University of Coimbra) and retired to the Batalha Monastery. He would only return to politics in 1826, after the King granted a new Constitutional Charter, having been again elected to the Chamber of Deputies. When the absolutist Miguel I seized power in 1828, Saraiva once again retreated to monastic life, in the Convent of Serra de Ossa in the Alentejo, where he remained until the end of the Portuguese Civil War.[3]

After the civil war ended in 1834 and constitutional monarchy was established, Saraiva was once again actively involved in politics: he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1834, 1836, and 1838; from 1834 to 1835 he was made Minister of the Kingdom in the Duke of Palmela's first constitutional cabinet.[3]

In the aftermath of the civil war the liberal regime stripped many privileges away from the Church, and Saraiva had an important role in the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Saraiva was appointed Patriarch of Lisbon by Queen Maria II in 1840; the appointment was preconised by Pope Gregory XVI by the bull Onerosa pastoralis on 3 April 1843. Later that same year, on 19 June 1843, Saraiva was made a Cardinal.[2]