Jesuit woman will become Argentina’s first female saint

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A Catholic laywoman who lived in 18th-century Argentina and joined the Jesuits in their evangelical mission throughout the South American country will become the first female saint from the home country of Pope Francis on Sunday.

María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa, more commonly known by her Quechua name, “Mama Antula,” was born in 1730 into a wealthy family in Santiago del Estero, a province north of Buenos Aires. At 15, she left the comfortable life of her home and the privileges of her family to join the Jesuits — at a time when women’s options were limited to marriage or joining a convent.

“She was a rebel, just like Jesus,” Cintia Suárez, co-author of the biography Mama Antula, the First Female Saint of Argentina, told The Associated Press. “She confronted her father, saying ‘I’m not going to get married or become a nun.’ She didn’t want to follow orders.”

Mama Antula collaborated in the performance of spiritual exercises based on the writings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Company of Jesus in 1534, her biographer wrote.

When the Spanish crown expelled the Jesuits from America in 1767, considering them a threat to its interests, Mama Antula decided to take up the mantle and continue her work, even at the risk of being imprisoned.

She was a very astute woman who, against the prejudices of the time, had the ability to persuade parish priests and bishops to continue the spiritual exercises of the Jesuits despite the prohibition. “Patience is good, but perseverance is better,” is a phrase attributed to her in historical texts collected in Suárez’s biography.

“Mama Antula’s charity, above all in the service to the neediest, is today very much in evidence in the midst of a society that runs the risk of forgetting that radical individualism is the most difficult virus to overcome,” Francis told a group of Argentine pilgrims Friday.