World News
Colombia's first saint spent years working with indigenous people
Ezra Fieser
Catholic News Service
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
In early January 2005, Carlos Eduardo Restrepo, a Colombian anesthesiologist
suffering from lupus and a severe infection in his thorax, faced death.
His family and friends were preparing for the worst. He was given last rites.
But then an image of Blessed Mother Laura Montoya appeared to him, he said.
"I remember it very well. In the moment, I was calm. I prayed to her: Help
me get through this and it will allow you to get to the altars," he told
the newspaper El Colombiano.
Restrepo survived and was cured of his disease.
"If this wasn't a miracle, I don't know what is," he said.
Pope Benedict XVI recognized it as a miracle last year, making it the second
miracle attributed to Mother Montoya. In 1994, a Colombian woman, Herminia Gonzalez
Trujillo, who had been hemorrhaging due to uterine cancer, was cured after praying
to Mother Montoya.
Mother Montoya, who died in 1949 after a career spent working with poor indigenous
Colombians in difficult circumstances, will be canonized May 12 and will become
the first Colombian saint.
"It's an incredibly important and happy moment for us," said Sister
Cristina Santillan of the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of Mary Immaculate
and of St. Catherine of Siena, which Mother Montoya founded.
That Mother Montoya will be the first saint born in the country is historic,
considering Colombia is the sixth-largest Catholic country by population and
that more than 82 percent of its population is Catholic, according to the Pew
Forum on Religion and Public Life.
"For Colombians and for the congregation, this is a historic moment that
we will cherish," Sister Santillan told Catholic News Service in a telephone
interview from Medellin, Colombia, where Mother Montoya died.
Mother Montoya was born in a small town in mountainous north-central Colombia
in 1874. When she was just 2 years old, her father was killed during a civil
war, leaving the family in extreme poverty, according to the Vatican's biography.
FREDY BUILES, REUTERS/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICEA nun looks at an image of Blessed Mother Laura Montoya, the Colombian founder of the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of Mary Immaculate and of St. Catherine of Siena, in Medellin, Colombia, in this 2012 file photo. Mother Montoya, who died in 194 9 after a career spent working with poor indigenous Colombians in difficult circumstances, will be canonized on May 12 and become the first Colombian saint.
Raised by her grandmother, Mother Montoya trained to become a teacher
as a teenager. It was while teaching at schools in Colombia that she chose
the religious life.
After an encounter with a group of indigenous Colombians who had been mistreated,
Mother Montoya dedicated most of her adult life to working directly with the
country's poor indigenous population.
At the age of 35, she worked as a missionary in remote indigenous communities
in Colombia. Sister Santillan said Mother Montoya displayed exceptional bravery
in a time when women rarely took such a visible role. At the time, indigenous
communities were widely discriminated against.
"This was a young woman who ... at 35 years old decided to go into the jungle
to search for indigenous (Colombians), on a mule along with other young women," Sister
Carmen Uribe wrote in a blog dedicated to Mother Montoya. "It was a 10-day
journey to the reach indigenous peoples that (at the time) were considered savage,
soulless and irrational."
This work led her to start her religious order
in 1914. She dedicated the rest of her career to working in indigenous communities,
among the poorest and most marginalized in the South American country.
The congregation today has a presence in 21 countries and counts roughly
850 sisters, said Sister Santillan.
"We continue to work from the example she set for us," she said.
Mother Montoya spent her last nine years in a wheelchair, dying at the age of
75 after a prolonged illness, according to the Vatican.
The effort to have her beatified began in the 1960s. Blessed John Paul II beatified
her in 1994.
In April, the congregation she founded began to hold events to honor and inform
the public about the importance of her work.
"This is the result of decades of work," Sister Santillan said. "It
will be a remarkable day."