At the age of twenty, he joined the Order of Friars Minor at Montilla,[1] entering the novitiate at St. Lawrence Friary, which was located in a place of great natural beauty.

The community there belonged to the Reformed observance within the Order, following a very strict routine of prayer, silence and fasting.

Francis followed this regimen rigorously, always going barefoot, abstaining from meat, and wearing a hairshirt throughout that entire year.

After completing his final theological studies, Solano was assigned as an itinerant preacher to the surrounding villages of the region.

During this period, he requested that he might be allowed to go to North Africa, with the hope of achieving martyrdom for preaching the Catholic faith.

[3] Spanish King Philip II requested the Franciscans to send missionaries to preach the Gospel in the Americas.

In 1589 Solanus sailed from Spain to the New World, and having landed at Panama, crossed the isthmus and embarked on a vessel that was to convey him to Peru.

[3] For twenty years Solano worked at evangelizing the vast regions of Tucuman (present day northwestern Argentina) and Paraguay.

[6] In Humahuaca, every day at precisely 12 noon, on the city hall belltower, heavy copper doors slowly open and a life-sized animated wooden, dramatic-looking statue of San Francisco Solano appears for about two minutes and gives his benediction to the silent crowd amassed on the village plaza.