Mama Antula, the first 100% Argentinean saintOn February 11, the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes, the Holy Father Francis will canonize one of the most famous women in the world. woman born in a place far away from the port of Buenos AiresSantiago de Estero, the first diocese of Argentina.
Thus, a Jesuit Pope will canonize a woman who made the Ignatian spirit her path to holiness. Like Cura Brochero, a holy priest from the Cordoba mountains of Argentina, "Mama Antula" made the Spiritual Exercises the way to encounter God, working tirelessly to evangelize from the experience of seeking and finding the will of God as taught by the saint from Loyola.
Historical and religious researchers assured, in dialogue with the media covering the canonization, that María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa tried to "reach out to all the needy, summoning all social classes" and described her work as one of the "strongest expressions of popular evangelization in the country".
Born in 1730 in Santiago del Estero, Mama Antula was a descendant of a prominent family who began her religious practice by approaching the Jesuits "with a free and spontaneous decision that sprang from love as a result of her Christian vocation," according to historian Graciela Ojeda de Río, who since 1980 has been dedicated to spreading the life of this Blessed.
"She is a woman of faith, lay, committed to the church. Like the first blessed women in history, very cultured, who read, educated themselves and served society without looking at whom, and tried to reach all those in need, calling on all social classes," said the historian.
After a process that began in 1767, the Jesuits were expelled from the region. However, Mama Antula continued her preaching in several provinces of the country, in a journey that required her to walk more than 5,000 kilometers.
We can never forget the historical and geographical context of each saint. Mama Antula began her work in an inhospitable reality, lacking in means and with the sole conviction that her faith and her awareness of the mission she had received gave her. She did not become bourgeois in her life, but "went out to the peripheries of her time" to bring God closer to all the men and women of her time.
Mama Antula's preaching
He began his preaching at the age of 49 years and "she walked thousands of kilometers through fields, hamlets and cities, villages and suburbs looking for hearts," says Aldo Marcos de Castro Paz, member of the Board of Ecclesiastical History of Argentina, who wrote the documentary portrait of the Blessed. "Her work is one of the strongest expressions of popular evangelization in our country. In a time that was ruled by the honors of lineage, etiquette, inheritances and hierarchies, she managed that both men and women attended the same retreats, that everyone ate the same bread," adds de Castro Paz.
Likewise, this expert on the saint comments that "she helped the native communities to build their own sense of national identity", at the same time that "she promoted the dignity of work", by instructing women in labor and men in the construction of their own homes.
In Mama Antula we see a foretaste of the protagonism of women in society and in the Church. With her feminine genius, as St. John Paul II used to say, women sustain the values and traditions of the people. We must not forget that Mama Antula takes that "determined determination" of which St. Ignatius speaks after the Jesuits were expelled. In the Church it is women who sustain the faith and traditions.
A woman of prayer
Mama Antula is canonized in the framework of the "Year of Prayer" that the Pope initiated in January 2024. Her great apostolate through the Spiritual Exercises constitutes her effective way of evangelization. The Exercises, even in very simple people, are a close experience with God himself. He never ceased to work for men and women to meet the merciful Father.
With her arrival in Buenos Aires in 1779, the construction of the Holy House of Spiritual Exercises was one of the main objectives of the Blessed. Cintia Suárez, researcher of the saint, points out that she managed to build it on donated land and with funds from alms from the faithful.
"She wanted to help, to serve a deprived and forgotten sector of society, but not as a nun. In fact, she did not take a vow of obedience, she did take a vow of chastity and poverty, but not of obedience in any order," Suarez explains.
The spiritual exercises consist of meditations that include silence, readings and talks with a priest.
"This is because the Jesuits were certain that God worked in a personal way with each person, and that men and women had the possibility of communicating directly with him through their spirit and intellect," says Ojeda de Río, who is in charge of the guided tours of the Holy House of Spiritual Exercises.
Committed to its people
Mama Antula "was a pioneer in the defense of human rights. because he mobilized in favor of the people, the Indians, the mulattos, at a time when social classes did not mix and the slave did not walk down the main street," says historian Suarez.
She also refers to the orphans that the Blessed took in, to whom she gave the surname "St. Joseph", the same name she took when she began her ecclesiastical career. "She managed to make retreats for those people who in civil life were separated by the caste system: skin color, different trades, functions and dignities of the American 18th century".
The saints have always been witnesses to the principle of the Incarnation: they knew how to unite the presence of God with the dignification of the human and to take the human as mediation to the divine.
May this Argentinean saint be an instrument to value more the feminine presence in the Church, in history and in the world.
