Saint Maria Bernarda Bütler

She was born at Auw, in the Swiss canton of Aargau, on May 28, 1848, and baptized Verena the same day. ¹⁴ She was the fourth of the eight children of Henry and Catherine Bütler, whom the Holy See's biography calls modest but exemplary country people. ¹ The Diocese of Augsburg describes them as long-established farmers. ⁴ She grew up healthy, happy and fond of the outdoors, started school at seven, and made her First Communion on April 16, 1860, a day the Holy See says left a lasting mark: devotion to the Eucharist would be the foundation of her spirituality. ¹

At fourteen she left school to work on the farm, and fell in love with a young man. ¹ Feeling God's call, she broke off the engagement. ¹ Augsburg says she had resolved at fifteen to give herself entirely to God. ⁴ The Holy See quotes her account of this time: "The Holy Spirit taught me to adore, praise, bless and give thanks to Jesus in the tabernacle at all times, even at work and in real life." ¹

At eighteen she entered a convent near home as a postulant, and soon came back, sure it was not the place God wanted her. ¹³ On her pastor's advice she then entered the monastery of Maria Hilf at Altstätten on November 12, 1867, at nineteen. ¹³⁵ The Holy See calls it a Franciscan monastery of Mary Help of Sinners; Augsburg and Catholic News Agency call it a Capuchin convent. ¹⁴⁵ She took the habit on May 4, 1868, with the name Sister Mary Bernard of the Heart of Mary, and made her profession on October 4, 1869, intending to serve God in the contemplative life until death. ¹ ACI Prensa gives her religious name as María Bernarda del Sagrado Corazón de María. ³

She was soon made mistress of novices, and then superior. ¹³ The sources date this differently. Catholic News Agency says she became mother superior only four years after entering; Augsburg says she was elected in 1880 and confirmed twice; the Holy See says she served as superior on three occasions, for nine consecutive years. ¹⁴⁵

Peter Schumacher, the bishop of Portoviejo in Ecuador, described the plight of his people and asked her to come. ¹ She saw God's will in the invitation. ¹ Once the bishop of St. Gall's initial resistance had been overcome and a pontifical indult obtained, she and six companions left Altstätten for Ecuador on June 19, 1888. ¹⁴ She was forty, as Catholic News Agency puts it, when she received her missionary vocation, and she never saw Switzerland again. ¹⁵

She had meant to open a daughter house of the Swiss monastery. ¹³ Instead, the Holy See says, she became the foundress of a new congregation, and Augsburg dates its birth from the filial house to 1892. ¹⁴ The bishop gave her the parish of Chone, where the Holy See describes a total lack of priests and little religious practice. ¹ The sisters worked with families, learned the language and the culture of the people, taught children and young people and nursed the sick, and houses followed at Santa Ana and Canoa. ¹³⁴

It was hard going: absolute poverty, torrid heat, risks to health and safety, misunderstanding from Church authorities, and the departure of some sisters to form a separate congregation under Blessed Charitas Brader. ¹ The Holy See says she bore all of it in silence, forgave those who made her suffer, and prayed for them. ¹

In 1895 a violent persecution of the Church in Ecuador drove her and her sisters out. ¹³ Augsburg says the state had begun taking over the Church's property and institutions. ⁴ Not knowing where to go, she set out with fourteen sisters for Bahía and from there toward Colombia, and while they were still wandering, Bishop Eugene Biffi invited them to his diocese of Cartagena. ¹³ They arrived on August 2, 1895, the Franciscan feast of the Portiuncula, and were lodged in a women's hospital known as the "Pious Work", where she would live for the rest of her life. ¹

From Cartagena the congregation spread through Colombia and then to Austria and Brazil. ¹³⁴ She told her sisters, in words the Holy See and ACI Prensa both record, "Open your houses to help the poor and marginalised. Give preference to the care of the indigent over all other activity". ¹³ She led the congregation for some thirty years, then resigned as superior general and went on caring for the youngest sisters, by ACI Prensa's account, with humility and good cheer. ¹³

Struck by severe abdominal pain, she died at the "Pious Work" in Cartagena on May 19, 1924. ¹³ The Holy See counts her years at death as 74, with 56 in consecrated life and 38 in the missions; ACI Prensa says she was 76, with 57 years in religious life, and Augsburg also gives 76. ¹³⁴ The pastor of Cartagena's cathedral told his people that morning, "A saint has died in this city, this morning: the reverend Mother Bernard!", and her tomb became a place of pilgrimage. ¹

John Paul II beatified her on October 29, 1995, and Benedict XVI canonized her on October 12, 2008. ¹³ Catholic News Agency called her the first modern Swiss woman to be canonized, and Augsburg says hers was the first canonization of a Swiss woman. ⁴⁵ Her motto, the Holy See says, was "My guide, my star, is the Gospel". ¹

In the canonization homily Benedict XVI said the Eucharist was the source of her spirituality and of the missionary drive that took her from Switzerland to Ecuador and Colombia. ² Through serious adversity, including exile, she carried in her heart the words of the psalm, "Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side". ²

The Diocese of Augsburg names her patroness of Cartagena, the city where she lived her last twenty-nine years. ¹⁴ No other source consulted states a patronage. ¹²³

Her feast is May 19, the day of her death. ¹³⁴ The Colombian Episcopal Conference's department of liturgy lists her on that day, as "santa María Bernarda Bütler, virgen", among the saints proper to Colombia, in the calendar the Colombian bishops approved in 2023. ⁶ ACI Prensa writes that the Church celebrates her every May 19, and the Diocese of Augsburg gives the same date as her day of remembrance. ³⁴

She tried a convent at eighteen and went home, and the second door she knocked on was the right one. ¹³ Then, after twenty years in an enclosed life she had meant to keep until death, she left it at forty for a country she did not know. ¹⁵ Her life does not show a single clear call followed in a straight line. It shows someone listening for the will of God more than once, and changing course when she heard it.

The mission she went out to found was not the one that came about. ¹ She meant to start a daughter house and found herself foundress of a congregation; she meant to stay in Ecuador and was driven out with her sisters, and for a while had nowhere to take them. ¹³ Benedict XVI said she held to the psalm of the dark valley through it. ²

She asked her sisters to prefer the poor to every other work. ¹³ She lived in a hospital in Cartagena for twenty-nine years, and when she died there, the cathedral pastor told the city that a saint had died. ¹