Biography
Francis Ferdinand de Capillas
About Francis Ferdinand de Capillas
Francis Ferdinand de Capillas, known in Spanish as Francisco Fernández de Capillas, was born in Baquerín de Campos on 15 August 1607. He entered the Dominicans at Valladolid, traveled through Mexico to Manila, and was ordained a priest there in 1632. He served in the Philippines before reaching Fujian in China in 1642. His movements are documented by the Dominican order, although accounts of the exact year of his later arrest differ within its own page.
In Fujian, Capillas served Christian communities under difficult conditions. Dominican accounts connect his arrest with a return from visiting the sick, but give conflicting dates for the imprisonment. The Vatican’s account states that Manchu forces killed him on 15 January 1648 after imprisonment and torture. This record retains that date, supported by the Holy See and the Dominican proper calendar, while avoiding a more exact arrest chronology.
The Holy See calls him a protomartyr of China. He was beatified in 1909 and canonized with the Chinese martyrs in 2000. Spanish Dominicans commemorate him on 15 January. An older Dominican biography calls him a missionary with strong concern for the sick and imprisoned, but a devotional description should not substitute for evidence about his exact words at death. The broad historical claim is his missionary priesthood and martyrdom in Fujian.
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