Mama Antula: Remembering Argentina’s first female saint as Pope Francis breathes his last
In 1767, when King Charles III of Spain expelled the Jesuits from his empire, a laywoman in Argentina (which was then under Spanish rule) made it her mission to spread the Ignatian spirituality throughout the country, defying the opposition of political honchos.
María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa travelled through villages and towns organizing retreats to protect and promote the Jesuits’ belief and value systems.
As Pope Francis—who himself is an Argentinian and belongs to the Jesuit order—breathed his last, the name of this 18th century nun is also grabbing eyeballs. She became the first female saint in the Latina American country when the Pope canonized her on February 11, 2024, describing her as a “wayfarer of the spirit”.
Popularly known as Mama Antula, María Antonia was a pioneer of human rights and spread the Gospel among the poor while working along with the Jesuits.
“She was a wayfarer of the Spirit. She travelled thousand of kilometres on foot, crossing deserts and taking dangerous paths, bringing God with her,” Francis had said on the occasion.
Born in 1730 to a wealthy family at Silipica town in Santiago del Estero, she left home at the age of 15 and started working along with the Jesuits.
She became a consecrated laywoman when a the fairer sex had only two options in their life—be either a wife or a nun. In her spiritual journey, she took everybody along, regardless of her social status and class.
Neither the hostile political climate nor the threat of imprisonment acted as a deterrent as she founded the House of Spiritual Exercise in Buenos Aires, which is still in operation.
Acknowledging her care and devotion to the local people, the indigenous community of Quechua fondly called her ‘Mama Antula’(Little mother Antonia).
The nun breathed her last on March 7, 1799 at the age of 69. Several pilgrims still visit her tomb at Recoleta cemetery.
Mama Antula’s beatification was held on August 27, 2016 after Pope Francis approved a decree on a miracle attributed to her intercession. Sr María Rosa Vanina, a thirty-one-year-old professed religious of the Daughters of the Divine Savior, was healed from acute lithiasic cholecystitis with septic complications in 1904.
On October 24, 2023, the Pope approved another decree on another miracle attributed to her intercession—Claudio Perusini a sixty-year-old father of a family was healed rapidly and permanently from ischemic stroke with hemorrhagic infarction in July 2017. This led to the canonization of Mama Antula.
“Mama Antula experienced what God wants of each one of us, that we may discover His call, each in our own state of life,” Pope Francis said as he met a group of pilgrims from Argentina who had arrived in Rome for her canonisation.
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