Vatican confirms Mama Antula as patron of the missions in Argentina

The Dicastery of Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments of the Holy See confirmed the election of María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa—Santa Mama Antula—as patron saint of the missions in Argentina.

She is the first holy woman born in the territory that is today the Argentine Republic, and who at the time of the birth of the country carried the message of the Gospel and spread the spiritual exercises throughout thousands of kilometers.

Born in 1730 in Villa Silípica, current territory of the province of Santiago del Estero, the brand new patron saint of the missions traveled through the current Argentine provinces of Santiago del Estero, Tucumán, Salta, Jujuy, Catamarca, La Rioja and Córdoba, until arriving in 1779. to Buenos Aires. This entire region was, since 1776, territory of the nascent Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.

In Buenos Aires he founded the Holy House of Spiritual Exercises – still active – thus continuing the legacy of the Jesuits after their expulsion. Heroes of the time passed through there, among them Viceroy Santiago de Liniers, and several of the “men of May”, protagonists of the first national government, such as Cornelio Saavedra, Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli and Mariano Moreno.

Mama Antula updates God’s “all-terrain” love

Upon learning of the decree that declares her patron saint of the missions, the Archbishop of Bahía Blanca and new president of the Episcopal Missions Commission, Mons. Carlos Alfonso Azpiroz Costa, shared a reflection with ACI Prensa.

“The love of God—according to Saint Paul—believes all things, excuses all things, hopes all things, endures all things. This love, which is an all-rounder, comes from the Old Testament, from tradition,” he noted.

“We hear Jesus remember that tradition, saying: You will love the Lord with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your spirit, with all your soul… And also, upon leaving for heaven, in the command to his apostles, Jesus returns to repeat that ‘everything’: I have received all power in heaven and earth; go to all nations; teach them everything that I have taught them; and I will be with you every day until the end of the world.”

Today, the prelate assured, “we celebrate that ‘everything’ in the person of Mama Antula, whom the Holy See, that is, Pope Francis, has allowed to be the patron saint of the missions in Argentina.”

She, he stated, is “a truly iconic figure, a representation of the most beautiful of the Church, a laywoman faithful to the Spirit and a tradition of the Society of Jesus, itinerant, evangelizing, concerned above all with the spirituality that nourishes evangelizing action. through the spiritual exercises of San Ignacio, traveling throughout the NOA, Córdoba, La Rioja, Santiago del Estero, going to Buenos Aires, even Uruguay,” he described.

“I especially celebrate and celebrate this patronage of a woman,” he emphasized.

“The voice of Francis resounds again, which he told us, when he told the young people, and repeated tirelessly in the synodal hall: everyone, everyone, everyone,” he concluded, wishing “that God bless the Argentine Church through this woman “so special that it invites us to that totality of the Gospel.”

A call to restart the evangelizing path

For his part, Father Mario Tenti, rector of the Mama Antula Sanctuary in Villa Silípica, told ACI Prensa that “it is a very great blessing for all the devotees,” especially for the Archdiocese of Santiago del Estero and “for the Silipiqueño town, where Mama Antula is from.”

Secondly, the priest considered this appointment as “a call that Pope Francis is making to us to encourage, accompany and promote missionary activity in the Church, this emerging Church that Pope Francis speaks so much about; a field hospital Church, that goes out of its institutional framework to heal the wounds of those who suffer, to console the sad, to bring Jesus to others as Mama Antula did.”

“Hopefully it will be a real and concrete motivation for the Church in Argentina to get out of its ‘missionary laziness’, and begin to encourage in the dioceses, the laity especially, and of course also the religious and priests, to live the Church in a missionary key, that everything that is done in the Church has this missionary perspective of bringing Jesus to already baptized Catholics, who have their faith dormant or dormant, and to those who still do not know Jesus, who need to find themselves. “With Him, enjoy His love, His mercy, His forgiveness.”

“May this appointment be for the Argentine Church a restart of the evangelizing path that so many took at the beginning of the viceroyalty and later, as Mama Antula did,” he hoped.