MARIANNA di GESE DE PAREDES Y FLORES, saint. - B. at Quito on 31 October 1618, d. there on 26 May 1645. She is Ecuador’s first saint. Orphaned of both parents at only five years of age, she was taken in by her elder sister, donna Jeronima De Caso Miranda, and educated together with three nieces of her own age, with whom she devoted herself to unusual exercises of penance and prayer in a spirit of expiation. Not yet ten years old, she united herself to God by the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
She vainly attempted to go to the country of the Mainas, pagan Indians whom she wished to convert to the faith, and likewise to withdraw with her companions into an eremitical life; when her relatives’ efforts to place her in a convent failed, M. chose a special kind of secluded life, in three rooms of the house reserved for her, bare and devoid of furnishings, where for long hours she gave herself to meditation and contemplation and to practices of austerity, interrupted only in order to go to the church of the Jesuits (by whom she was spiritually directed), to attend Mass and the practices of worship, or to perform works of charity.
A model of Christian charity, goodness, and innocence, rich in prophetic charisms, she soon became the spiritual help of the citizenry, who had recourse to her as to a saint.
Beatified by Pius IX in 1853, she was canonized by Pius XII in the Holy Year 1950. Ecuador has proclaimed her a national heroine. Feast: 26 May.