Maria Bernarda Bütler

At the invitation of Bishop Pedro Schumacher, Bishop of Portoviejo, María Bernarda left the monastery of Altstätten on June 19, 1888, with six companions to travel to Ecuador. It was there that a new religious congregation was born under her leadership: the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary Help of Christians (Suore Francescane Missionarie di Maria Ausiliatrice), dedicated to evangelization, education, and service to the most destitute. The sisters opened communities in Chone, Santa Ana, and Canoa, devoting themselves to the poor and indigenous populations. In 1895, a climate hostile to the Church forced the foundress and her sisters to leave Ecuador. At the invitation of Bishop Eugenio Biffi, Bishop of Cartagena, María Bernarda and her companions were welcomed in Colombia on August 2, 1895. Cartagena became the heart of her work: the congregation spread there in service to the sick, children, the poor, and the marginalized. Concerned with the essential, she recommended to the sisters to "give preference to the care of the indigent over any other activity." Under her leadership, the institute experienced sustainable growth and spread well beyond the Colombian borders.

The spirituality of María Bernarda was marked by a profound Eucharistic adoration. She confided: "The Holy Spirit taught me to adore, praise, bless, and give thanks to Jesus in the tabernacle at all times." This intimacy with Christ present in the Eucharist sustained her life as a missionary and founder. During the canonization mass, Pope Benedict XVI highlighted her love for the Lord, "almost impossible to explain to those who have not personally experienced it," and recalled that she carried in her heart the words of the psalmist: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." Despite grave difficulties—forced exile from Ecuador, material precariousness, and distance from her homeland—she maintained a joyful fidelity to her vocation. Her concrete charity toward the destitute, the sick, and the excluded, joined to a life of prayer and abandonment to Providence, earned her a reputation for holiness very early on. At her death, the city of Cartagena already venerated her as a true saint.

The reputation for holiness of María Bernarda Bütler led to the opening of her cause. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 29, 1995, in Rome. Her canonization was celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI on October 12, 2008, in Saint Peter's Square, during a ceremony that also raised Gaetano Errico, Alphonsine of the Immaculate Conception, and Narcisa de Jesús Martillo Morán to the honors of the altar. This event held particular significance, as María Bernarda is widely considered the first saint from modern Switzerland. In his homily, Benedict XVI presented her as "a figure very dear and particularly present in Colombia," praising her missionary fidelity and her Eucharistic spirituality. Her liturgical feast is set for May 19, the anniversary of her death. The recognition of her virtues by the Church was based, according to the ordinary procedure for the causes of saints, on healings recognized as miraculous, attributed to her intercession.

The legacy of María Bernarda Bütler is perpetuated first through the congregation she founded, the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary Help of Christians, present in many countries in the service of education, healthcare, and assistance to the poor. Deeply attached to Cartagena, where she lived for nearly thirty years, she remains a very beloved figure there: her remains, transferred in 1956, are venerated in the Chapel of Piety at the Biffi College in Cartagena, Colombia. As the first saint of modern Switzerland, she is also honored in her native country, in Aargau, and her influence thus unites Europe and Latin America. Her life illustrates the missionary zeal of a religious sister who departed late, at the age of forty, for distant lands, and the close bond she was able to forge between Eucharistic adoration and concrete service to the most destitute. Her cult, vibrant in both Colombia and Switzerland, testifies to the fruitfulness of an existence given to the evangelization of the peripheries.