Nazaria Ignacia March Mesa

During her years in Oruro, Nazaria Ignacia perceived the need to create a new missionary institute adapted to the realities of South America. In January 1925, during Ignatian spiritual exercises, she received the inspiration to found a congregation specifically dedicated to the mission among the poorest. On June 16, 1925, she began to gather a first group of ten Bolivian women around this project. The congregation, first known as the Missionaries of the Pontifical Crusade, received diocesan canonical erection on February 12, 1927, and obtained pontifical status on June 8, 1935; it received its definitive approval on June 9, 1947, under the name of Crusading Missionaries of the Church. The works of the congregation were multiple and innovative: catechesis for children and adults, promotion of the dignity and rights of women, opening of female labor unions—among the first in Latin America—, creation of soup kitchens (the "poor man's pots"), workshops and schools for destitute young girls, shelters for the elderly, orphans, and disabled persons, and ministry in prisons. Nazaria Ignacia assumed the office of Superior General starting on June 1, 1930. In less than twenty years, the congregation expanded to Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, and Spain, and then, after her death, to Portugal, France, Italy, and Cameroon.

The spirituality of Nazaria Ignacia was rooted in an early mystical experience—the words "Follow me" heard during her first communion—and flourished in the Ignatian school, from which she drew inspiration to draft the constitutions of her congregation. These constitutions placed the social action of women, articulated with evangelization, in the first rank, and defined as a distinctive trait an exceptional filial bond with the Sovereign Pontiff, which explains the initial name "Pontifical Crusade." Mother Nazaria practiced a radical detachment from material goods—the founding of the congregation began with only forty centimes—and a limitless charity toward the most destitute. Throughout her life, she faced opposition from her own family regarding her vocation, the trials of illness, political difficulties in Bolivia, and the traumas of the Spanish Civil War. She endured these trials with a serenity that struck her contemporaries. At her death, which occurred on July 6, 1943, the testimonies of those who had known her unanimously attested to a "great reputation for holiness." The fact that her body was found incorrupt during the exhumation in 1993 was held by her followers as an additional sign of her holiness, even if the Church has not officially pronounced on this point within the framework of the cause for canonization.

The cause for the beatification of Nazaria Ignacia March Mesa was introduced under the pontificate of Paul VI on September 6, 1966. Pope John Paul II recognized her heroic virtues and proclaimed her Venerable on September 1, 1988, after the validation of a first miracle on February 25, 1989. He solemnly beatified her on September 27, 1992, in Saint Peter's Square in Rome. For the canonization, a healing that occurred in La Paz, Bolivia, was submitted for examination: Carlos Alberto Jiménez Durán, hospitalized in a state of extreme gravity following a hypertensive crisis and post-surgical complications that had plunged him into a coma, recovered completely after a novena was made to Blessed Nazaria by his relatives and a relic of the religious sister was placed upon him. The doctors could not explain this healing. Pope Francis authorized the promulgation of the decree recognizing this miracle on January 26, 2018, after the approval of the file by the competent dicastery on September 22, 2017. The canonization was celebrated on October 14, 2018, in Saint Peter's Square, along with several other blessed, during a ceremony presided over by Pope Francis. Her liturgical feast is set for July 6, the anniversary of her death.

The legacy of Saint Nazaria Ignacia March Mesa is measured first by the vitality of the congregation she founded, the Crusading Missionaries of the Church, whose communities are active in South America, Europe (Spain, Portugal, France, Italy), and Africa (Cameroon). The congregation continues to work in the areas she had outlined: catechesis, service to the poor, promotion of the dignity of women, and support for the clergy. The cult of the saint is particularly vibrant in Oruro, Bolivia, where the motherhouse of the congregation has housed her remains since 1972. Her example is often cited as a prefiguration of the social teaching of the Church and the pastoral concern for human peripheries that characterizes the pontificate of Pope Francis. The date of her canonization—October 14, 2018—is part of a group of canonizations including, notably, Paul VI, Oscar Romero, Francesco Spinelli, Vincenzo Romano, Maria Katharina Kasper, Nunzio Sulprizio, and the spouses Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi. Cardinal Becciu, then Substitute of the Secretariat of State, described her as a "missionary for Bolivia and Argentina" whose life illustrated the power of the Gospel in the service of the poorest.