María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa
or
"Mama Antula"
will become the
first saint of Argentina
next Sunday , in a ceremony presided over by
Pope Francis
in St. Peter's Basilica, in the Vatican, which will be attended by President
Javier Milei
.
Mama Antula
, as she was popularly known,
was born in 1730 in Silipica, Santiago del Estero.
At the age of fifteen, as told in her biography "
The Most Rebellious Woman of Her Time
", she challenged her father and warned him that she would not marry or be a nun.
Thus, when she was twenty, she joined the Jesuits and became a saint, collaborating in the promotion and organization of the famous spiritual exercises of the founder of that religious order: Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
Mama Antula.
Woman, consecrated laywoman and now Saint
When the Jesuits who made up the so-called Company of Jesus were expelled from the Spanish empire,
Mama Antula began an exodus and traveled on foot almost 5,000 kilometers
through the viceroyalty of Peru - along the territory of the current provinces of Santiago del Estero, Tucumán, Salta, Jujuy, Catamarca, La Rioja and Córdoba - and, when Buenos Aires became the center of the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata,
he settled on the coasts of Buenos Aires
, where he "made spiritual exercises fashionable" and built one of the oldest buildings in the city:
the Santa Casa de Ejercicios, where he died
on March 7, 1799.
His remains rest in the church of Nuestra Señora de la Piedad, in the city of Buenos Aires
.
A Clarín
team
visited the Santa Casa, located at 1190 Independencia Avenue, and the church where his remains are.
We spoke with two historians who investigated the life, work and legacy of María Antonia, and also with one of her relatives and a devotee who frequently approaches the altar to give thanks.
“
She is exceptional, everywhere they are surprised and can believe that in Argentine history we have a woman like this ,”
Alicia Fraschina
, doctor in history and author of several books about the blessed,
highlights in the interview .
“That in the 18th century a woman has done what María Antonia did, there is no equal and now she is being known throughout the world,” she adds.
The history graduate
Graciela Ojeda de Río
assures that “
many cures are attributed to María Antonia
” and before the
Clarín
camera she details the two miracles that the church took to reach the canonization ceremony that will be held in Rome.
Mama Antula had been beatified in 2016 in Santiago del Estero
, after the Pope authorized the publication of a miracle for the healing of a nun of the Daughters of the Divine Savior, who would have recovered health in 1904 through the intercession of the founder and mother spiritual of this congregation.