MARIA ANTONIA OF SAINT JOSEPH. - M. A. de la Paz y Figueroa, b. at Santiago del Estero (Argentina) in 1730, d. at Buenos Aires on 6 March 1799.

Having consecrated herself to the service of God at the age of 15, and having gathered around herself, as in a kind of congregation without fixed rules, a group of young girls, she undertook to promote the practice of popular missions and spiritual exercises. When the Jesuits were expelled in 1767 from all the Spanish dominions, M. A., with the favor of the civil and religious authorities, wished to continue their work, preaching to the people and the clergy and traveling from 1775 to 1799 through the vast regions of Tucuman, S. Miguel, Rivia and Corduba; she was also at Buenos Aires, at Montevideo and at Rio de la Plata, always with great fruit of conversions. At Buenos Aires she also founded a house of exercises, where from 1780 to 1788 more than 70,000 persons passed through.

The cause of beatification was introduced in 1917.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: C. Clair, Une apôtre des Exercices spirituels, M. A. de la Paz, 1720-99, in Messager du S. Coeur, 80 (1903), pp. 398-409, 462-69; AAS, 9 (1917), pp. 432-38.

Celestino Testore

@incollection{ec8_maria_antonia_di_san_giuseppe, author = {Testore, Celestino}, title = {Maria Antonia di San Giuseppe}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VIII}, pages = {129}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/maria-antonia-di-san-giuseppe} }

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Maria Antonia of Saint Joseph

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