Saint Laura Montoya

She was born on May 26, 1874, at Jericó, in the department of Antioquia, the second of three children of Juan de la Cruz Montoya and Dolores Upegui. ¹⁵ A priest of the Colombian Episcopal Conference writes that she was baptized that same day because her mother insisted, telling her husband, in his account, that before the child could be their daughter she had first to be a daughter of God. ⁵ Her congregation says the baptism came four hours after her birth, and that the parish priest named her María Laura de Jesús. ⁷

When she was two her father was killed. The Holy See says he died "defending his Country"; her congregation, in a fratricidal war in defense of religion and country; Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education, in "the Colombian Civil War of 1876". ¹⁶⁷ His goods were confiscated and the family was left in extreme poverty. ¹⁷ Her mother taught the children to pray and to forgive, including the man who had killed their father. ¹⁵

Laura was sent to live with her grandmother, and the Holy See's biography says she suffered greatly from misunderstanding and lack of affection, feeling herself "orphaned". ¹ Her congregation describes her going from relative to relative, begging for affection. ⁷ She found her refuge in God. ¹ At seven, both Colombian sources recount, she had an experience in front of an anthill that she later called the "golpe del hormiguero", the blow of the anthill, a sudden awareness of God as her Father. ⁵⁷

At sixteen her mother told her to train as a teacher so she could help support the family. ¹ She had grown up with almost no schooling, and the Holy See calls her culturally and academically "ignorant" at the time, but she was admitted to the teachers' college for women in Medellín and stood out for her marks. ¹ She taught in several towns of Antioquia and then at the Colegio de la Inmaculada in Medellín, and she taught her pupils the Gospel along with their lessons. ¹⁷

She longed to be a Carmelite, enclosed and given to God alone. ¹⁷ Her congregation says she wanted to go to God "like a cannonball". ⁷ At the same time she felt a growing desire to carry the Gospel to people who had never heard it, and she was ready, the Holy See says, to give up the dream of Carmel if God wanted something else. ¹

In 1907, at Marinilla, she wrote that God had wrapped her in his fatherhood and made her, "in the most intense way", a mother to those who did not know him, so that she felt their pain as a mother would; the words are translated here from her congregation's Spanish. ⁷ She called the plight of the Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples "mi llaga", my wound. ⁷ The Holy See's biography says she wanted "to become an Indian with the Indians to win them all for Christ", in an age when many considered them "wild beasts", and that she meant to break down that racial discrimination. ¹ John Paul II said at her beatification that she "considered herself as mother to the Indians". ²

Her congregation tells a story from these years in her own words. She had saved for many years to make a journey on behalf of the Indigenous peoples, and instead she showed the money to the Virgin, weeping, asked her to put their cries before the Pope that very night, and put off the journey until an answer came. ⁷ Two months later, on the date she had named, Pius X issued an encyclical, dated June 7, 1912, in which, as she tells it, he told the bishops of his compassion for them. ⁷

In 1914, with the support of Bishop Maximiliano Crespo of Santa Fe de Antioquia, she left Medellín for Dabeiba, in the forests of Antioquia. ¹⁷ The sources differ on the details. The Holy See says she set out on May 14 with four other young women. ¹ Her congregation says the group, which it calls the "missionary catechists of the Indians", left Medellín on May 5, five companions with her, among them her own mother, Dolores Upegui. ⁷

The new community took the name of the Missionaries of Mary Immaculate and Saint Catherine of Siena. ¹² Some people dismissed them, the Holy See says, as "religious goats" heading into the wilderness to catechize the "beasts", and some of the scorn came from inside the Christian community. ¹ Her congregation, which presents "religiosas cabras" as her own phrase for their way of life, adds that some prelates of the Church did not understand her at the time and accused her. ⁷ She cared little for public opinion. ¹

Far from any church, she wrote to her sisters, in her congregation's Spanish, that they had no tabernacle but they had nature, and that God was present in both, though differently, and love must know how to find him wherever he is. ⁷

She wrote a directory for her sisters and other works, her Autobiography among them, to help them understand their call and keep a balance between the apostolic and the contemplative life. ¹⁶⁷ Her congregation names also the "Voces Místicas", meditations drawn from the contemplation of nature, and calls the Autobiography her masterpiece. ⁷ What she taught by example the Holy See calls the "pedagogy of love", the only way, in her view, into the hearts and cultures of the people she served. ¹

Pope Francis described it at her canonization as "an effective pedagogy that respected their culture and was not in opposition to it". ³ He said she "truly made herself all things to all people", and that she teaches us "to accept everyone without prejudice, without discrimination and without reticence". ³

The last nine years of her life were spent in a wheelchair, and she went on teaching by example, word and writing. ¹⁷ She died in Medellín on October 21, 1949, after what the Holy See calls a long and painful illness. ¹ At her death, according to her congregation, there were 467 sisters in 90 houses in three countries. ⁷ The Holy See's biography of 2004 counted her sisters in 19 countries of America, Africa and Europe; the congregation's site now says 21. ¹⁷

John Paul II beatified her on April 25, 2004, saying she founded her congregation "with the aim of bringing the light of the Gospel to the inhabitants of the forests". ²⁷ Pope Francis canonized her on May 12, 2013, with the Martyrs of Otranto and the Mexican foundress María Guadalupe García Zavala, and called her "this first saint, born in the beautiful country of Colombia". ³

The Holy See's biography and the papal homilies name no patronage for her. ¹²³ A classroom resource from the University of Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education calls her "the patron saint of orphans and anyone who feels left out", and asks her intercession "for people who suffer from racial discrimination and for the people of Colombia". ⁶ That is the only statement of a patronage found, and the page leaves it in the resource's words rather than turning it into a category.

Her feast is October 21, the day she died. ¹⁵⁶ The Colombian Episcopal Conference's department of liturgy lists her on that day, as "santa Laura de Santa Catalina de Siena Montoya y Upegui, virgen", among the celebrations proper to Colombia. ⁴ That Proper Calendar was approved by the Colombian bishops on February 9, 2023, and confirmed by the Dicastery for Divine Worship on November 9, 2023. ⁴

Her life began with a killing and a confiscation, and with a mother who taught her children to forgive the man responsible. ¹⁵ The sources do not say the loss stopped hurting. They say she grew up feeling orphaned, and took the hurt to God. ¹⁷

What she is remembered for is a refusal to accept the way her own society talked about the Indigenous peoples. ¹ She went to live with them, and the price was ridicule, some of it from fellow Catholics and churchmen. ¹⁷ Francis drew from her life a warning against "the indifference and individualism that corrode Christian communities". ³

She had wanted the silence of a Carmelite cell, and spent her life in the forest instead, and the end of it in a wheelchair. ¹⁷ Her congregation says she chose the tangled forest for her cell. ⁷

A priest of the Colombian bishops' conference closed his reflection for her feast with a line from her Autobiography: "Piense en que mi paz es hija de la confianza en Dios", think that my peace is the daughter of trust in God. ⁵