MARIA ANTONIA di SAN GIUSEPPE. - M. A. de la Paz y Figueroa, b. at Santiago del Estero (Argentina) in 1730, d. at Buenos Aires on 6 March 1799.
Having dedicated herself to the service of God at the age of fifteen, and having gathered around herself, as in a kind of congregation without fixed rules, a group of young women, she began to cultivate the practice of popular missions and spiritual exercises. When the Jesuits were expelled in 1767 from all the Spanish dominions, M. A., with the support of the civil and religious authorities, wished to continue their work, preaching to the people and clergy and traversing, from 1775 to 1799, the vast regions of Tucuman, S. Miguel, Rivia, and Corduba; she also went to Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Rio de la Plata, always with great fruit in conversions. At Buenos Aires she also founded a house for exercises, through which more than 70,000 persons passed from 1780 to 1788.
The cause of beatification was introduced in 1917.