A Spanish religious in colonial America

In the year 1576 he arrived in Quito, capital of the Royal Audience of Quito (today Ecuador), a group of Franciscan religious conceptionists from Spain. They founded the first women's contemplative community in South America. Among them was a 16-year-old girl born in Madrid: Mariana de Jesús Torres and Berriochoa. No one could imagine at that time that that girl would become the protagonist of one of the most extraordinary and, at the same time, most forgotten mystical phenomena in the history of the Church in the New World.

Mariana entered the convent of the Immaculate Conception of Quito and spent her whole life there. He professed religious vows and was elected on several occasions superior of the community. From the first years of his religious life he experienced mystical phenomena of an extraordinary nature: ecstasy, visions, inner locutions and an ascetic life of remarkable intensity. It was known in the convent for its charity, its humility and its ability to radiate a peace that other religious described as supernatural.

The 16th and early 17th century Quito was a city in formation: halfway between Andean indigenous tradition and Spanish culture transplanted into the New World. Evangelization was advancing among difficulties; the Church was trying to root Christianity in a deeply different cultural soil. The contemplative communities such as Mariana were, in this context, centers of prayer and spiritual life that supported with their intercession the missionary work on the periphery.

The apparitions of Our Lady of Good Success

The first apparitions occurred around 1594. Mariana claimed to see the Virgin Mary under the title "Our Lady of the Good Success of the Purple Hands," a title that referred to divine providence that guides to the good end all the matters entrusted to her. The apparitions lasted for decades, with particular intensity between 1594 and 1634.

The element that distinguishes the apparitions of Quito from most medieval and modern Marian phenomena is its prophetic content oriented towards the distant future. The Virgin did not speak to Mariana about her time - the 16th century - but about the coming centuries. In particular, he described in detail what would happen in the twentieth century: a profound crisis of faith, the decline of religious vocations, the advancement of immorality, the weakening of ecclesiastical discipline and an incarnated struggle in the Church between fidelity and apostasy.

«Llegarán tiempos de gran tribulación para la Iglesia. Muchos sacerdotes abandonarán su vocación. La inmoralidad dominará las costumbres. Pero la Virgen no abandonará a sus hijos. En el momento más oscuro, la luz volverá.»

This prophetic character of messages - their orientation to times very after Mariana's life - makes them a fascinating and, at the same time, methodologically sensitive object of study. The inevitable question is: when were the texts containing prophecies written? Are they contemporaries of Mariana or were they later elaborated and attributed to it retroactively?

The prophecies about the 20th century

The corpus of prophecies attributed to Mother Mariana covers several areas of the life of the Church and of society. Those who have received the most attention from the devotees are those who deal with the religious crisis of the twentieth century: the reduction of priestly and religious vocations, the loss of the sense of the sacred, the extension of public immorality, the challenge to ecclesiastical authority and the weakening of faith in the people.

These issues are obviously the same as those of the 20th century pontiffs from Pius X to John Paul II, who continue to be the subject of pastoral debate in the 21st century. What makes the attribution of these concerns to a 16th-century religious is striking is the specificity with which some texts describe problems that were hardly foreseeable four centuries earlier.

Among the prophecies most cited by the devotees is that of masonry: Mother Mariana would have announced that a secret organization would infiltrate the Church to destroy it from within. It also mentions the challenge to Christian sexual morality, the crisis of marriage and the family, and the apostasy of entire nations. Those who defend the authenticity of prophecies point to the consistency between these announcements and the historical developments of the 20th century; the skeptics respond that the tribulations of the Church are a recurring theme at any time and that no prophecy is required to anticipate them.

The Miraculous Image of 1611

One of the most documented episodes of Mother Mariana's life is that related to the image of Our Lady of Good Success that is venerated in the convent of the Immaculate Conception of Quito. According to tradition, on the night of February 2, 1611 - the feast of the Presentation of the Lord - the Virgin appeared to Mariana and told her that she wanted to see her image sculpted for the convent.

The sculptor in charge was Francisco del Castillo, a prominent artist of the colonial Quito. According to the hagiographical account, while working on the image he found it difficult to reproduce the face Mariana had described to him. At a given time, Mariana had a vision during which she saw three angels who ended the face of the image on the charge of Heaven. On returning to the workshop, the sculptor found his face completely finished so that he had not executed.

The face of the resulting image presents an expression of sadness that has attracted the attention of all who contemplate it. According to the Marian tradition of Quito, the Virgin explained to Mariana why her image had that gesture: the sad face reflects the pain of the Mother of God in the face of the sins of the world and, in particular, in the face of the tribulations that the Church will suffer in the coming times.

The image of Our Lady of Good Success remains venerated in the convent of the Immaculate Conception of Quito. It has a place of honor in the convent chapel and is the object of intense devotion among the Quiteños faithful and among the pilgrims who come from all over Ecuador and other Latin American countries.

Mother Mariana: asceticism and mystique

The life of Mariana de Jesús Torres presents the typical features of the Christian mystic of his time: intense body penance, long fasting, night vigil and a constant search for union with God. These elements, which in contemporary spirituality are assessed with greater caution than in the past, were in the 16th and 17th century recognized signs of holiness in the context of the tridentine reform.

Mariana was superior of the convent on several occasions, which implies that her companions recognized her as a person of spiritual authority and capacity of government. She was not a mystic retreat in her cell unrelated to the community: she was an active woman in the conventional life, able to lead a religious community and make practical decisions.

He died on 16 January 1635. The religious who knew her left written testimonies about her virtues and the extraordinary phenomena they had observed during her life. These testimonies are the main documentary basis on which the cause of beatification is based.

• 1576Mariana de Jesús Torres arrives in Quito with the first religious conceptionists. She's 16.
• 1594First apparitions of Our Lady of Good Success to Mariana in the convent of the Immaculate Conception.
• 2 feb. 1611Apparition linked to the sculpture of the image: the face of the Virgin, according to tradition, is completed in an extraordinary way.
• 1634Last documented apparition.
• 16. 1635The death of Mariana of Jesus Torres in the convent of Quito.
• 17th centuryFather Manuel Sousa Pereira writes Mariana's first biography, which collects messages and prophecies.
• Siglo XXRethinking the figure of Mother Mariana and growing devotion to Our Lady of Good Success, especially in Latin America.
• Twenty-first centuryThe cause of beatification follows its course in the diocese of Quito. The devotion extends to Spain, the United States and other countries.

The convent of the Immaculate Conception of Quito

The convent where Mother Mariana lived and died is one of the oldest and most significant in Ecuador. Founded in 1577 - one year after the arrival of the group of religious of which Mariana was part - it has continuously maintained its community life for over four hundred and fifty years. In that regard, it is one of the oldest religious institutions in South America.

The convent is located in the historic center of Quito, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978. The architectural complex is remarkable: Baroque cloisters, colonial gardens, a large church and an art gallery that retains important works of the Quiteña school of painting and sculpture. The image of Our Lady of Good Success occupies a prominent place in the convent chapel and is accessible to visitors in the times established by the community.

The religious conceptionists who live in the convent today are the direct successors of the community founded in the 16th century. They maintain the contemplative life and care for the image and spiritual legacy of Mother Mariana. The cause of beatification of the latter is one of its priority pastoral concerns.

The Beatification Process

The cause of beatification of the Mother Mariana of Jesus Torres was opened by the diocese of Quito. The diocesan process collected the available testimonies, studied the writings attributed to Mariana and analyzed the extraordinary phenomena described in historical sources. The file was sent to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome, where it follows its course.

The promoters of the cause point to several specific difficulties: the antiquity of the sources (from the 17th century), the need to separate the verifiable historical facts from the legendary elements accumulated over the centuries, and the question of the prophetic content of the messages, whose authenticity has not been the subject of a formal ecclesiastical declaration.

The devotion to Mother Mariana and Our Lady of Good Success has grown markedly in recent decades, especially in the most traditional Catholic circles that see in the supposed prophecies about the twentieth century a precise description of the challenges facing the contemporary Church. This devotional basis is informal support for the cause, although formal beatification depends exclusively on the canonical process in Rome.

Our Lady of Good Success and Latin American Spirituality

The devotion to Our Lady of Good Success has a special spread in Latin American Catholic circles that feel called to a more traditional spirituality. The prayer groups dedicated to this advocation meet regularly in Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Spain and the United States. They organize pilgrimages to the convent of Quito and spread the texts of Mother Mariana in various formats.

The title of the title - "Good Success" - has a meaning that transcends individual piety: it refers to the good outcome, to the success in the ancient sense, of the great issues that are put under the protection of the Virgin. The devotees entrust to Our Lady of Good Success the affairs of the Church, the causes of faith and the most difficult problems of personal and social life. There is in this devotion a radical trust in divine providence that acts through Marian intercession.

The city of Quito, for its part, retains a first-magnitude spiritual heritage in the figure of Mother Mariana and in the image of the conceptual convent. In a city that is both the political capital of Ecuador and one of the historical centers of Latin American Catholicism, the presence of this 16th century mystic adds a contemplative and prophetic dimension that enriches the whole of a living and plural religious tradition.