Mercedes de Jesús Molina

Mercedes de Jesús Molina y Ayala (* February 20 or September 24, 1828 at the Hacienda El Guayabo near Baba , today's Los Ríos province ; † June 12, 1883 in Riobamba ) was a Christian benefactress, mystic, missionary and founder of the order (based on Rosa von Lima ) is also called Rosa vom Guayas . She is a blessed of the Roman Catholic Church.

Life

Mercedes de Jesús Molina was born in Baba in what is now the province of Los Ríos in 1828 as the daughter of large landowners. (Her hometown was then part of the Guayaquil Department of Greater Colombia .) When she was two years old, her mother moved with her to Guayaquil after the death of her father . In 1841 the mother also died. Mercedes de Jesús resigned from her marriage in 1849 and devoted herself to religious and social work, in particular with orphans , without entering an order. She lived in a house with her sister María until 1867, before moving to a private orphanage that was run by one of her aunts, who was a nun. In her religiosity she was strongly influenced by the model of the 1950 canonized mystic Mariana de Jesús Paredes y Flores (1618–1645), who is said to have appeared to her in prayer. Already in her sister's house she had often offered shelter to local orphans, especially young women; In the 1860s, for example, Narcisa de Jesús Martillo, who was beatified in 1992 and canonized in 2008, lived in her household and prayed with her.

In 1870, Mercedes de Jesús went to the Ecuadorian Amazon to participate in the missionary work of the Shuar in the newly built mission station in Gualaquiza . The mission station was subordinate to the superior of the Jesuits in Ecuador, Father Domingo Bovo García , whom she had met in Guayaquil. In 1871 she returned from the Amazon lowlands and initially worked in Cuenca again as a helper and teacher in a school she founded for orphans. In 1873, in Riobamba, she founded the congregation of the Sisters of Saint Marianna of Jesus ( Hermanas de Santa Mariana de Jesús in Spanish ), named after their religious model , who in turn ran a school she had founded, which looked after orphans and abandoned children, especially girls , turned. The statutes of the Order, written by Mercedes de Jesús Molina in 1870, were confirmed by the Vatican in 1948.

beatification

On February 1, 1985, she was beatified by John Paul II . Her feast day is June 12th.

literature

• Ekkart Sauser :  Mercedes de Jesús Molina. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 21, Bautz, Nordhausen 2003, ISBN 3-88309-110-3 , Sp. 1019.
• Rodolfo Pérez Pimentel, entry in the Diccionario Biográfico del Ecuador , Guayaquil 1987-, Volume 4, p. 280 (Spanish)
• Rodolfo Pérez Pimentel, El Ecuador Profundo , Volume 2, sections “Tres beatas guayacas” and “Mercedes Molina en Gualaquiza” , p. 301ff. (Spanish, first edition 1970)

Web links

• Vatican Document on Beatification (Spanish)