ANTONIO FRANCO. — Hagiographical writer, Jesuit, b. 1662 at Montalvão in Portugal, d. 3 March 1732 at Evora.
Besides translating the *Indiculus universalis* of Francesco Pomey, he wrote several highly biographical philological works on Portuguese Jesuit confrères, including that on Bl. Ignatius de Azevedo (published at Lisbon only in 1800). He also composed the *Synopsis analisium Soc. Iesu in Lusitania* (Augsburg and Graz 1736), in which he records the chronicle of the Portuguese province from 1540 to 1725. A hundred of the most edifying lives he wrote were collected by F. Rodriguez in the work *Anno santo da Compania de Jesus* (Porto 1931).
BIBL.: Sommervogel, III, cols. 933-36. Arnaldo M. Lanz.