Some new Chileans I've "met"

Today is All Saints Day!!

These two amazing people are Chile's very own saints. There stories, images, and names are everywhere. After seeing their statues in churches, seeing streets and buildings and churches named after them, and hearing people mention their names and their stories, their presence really starts to be an everyday part of living here.

St. Teresita de Los Andes

She is the first Chilean saint!
She lived from 1900 to 1920.
She was a Carmelite nun, and a mystic.
She died 11 of a painful illness months after entering the monastery .
The Chileans really, really love her. Her image is everywhere!

In a letter to her brother Luis dated 11 June 1919, shortly after she had entered the monastery, she wrote "How fortunate I am to sacrifice all for God! But this all is nothing in comparison to what Our Saviour sacrificed for us, from the crib to the Cross, from the Cross even to humbling Himself completely under the form of bread. He, wholly God, under the species of bread, and even to the consummation of time. Oh the grandeur of infinite love! A love which is not known, a love which is unreturned by the majority of men... You ask me to assure you in my letters that I love you always as a sister. Do you doubt it for an instant? Perhaps you do not know that my heart is perfected by the divine love, and the more perfect it is, the greater and more profound is my love? Well, then, do not doubt for a moment that I pray for you and that my prayer is a song of love... When one is in love, he cannot talk about any other object than his beloved. And when the beloved unites in himself every possible perfection, what then? I do not know how I can do otherwise than contemplate him and love him. What do you want, if Jesus Christ, that Madman of love, has driven me mad? I endure a martyrdom, Luis, when I see noble and well born hearts, hearts capable of loving what is good, not loving the immutable Good..."

Saint Padre Alberto Hurtado

Father Hurtado is another beloved Chilean (1901-1952). He studied law at the Universidad Católica (where I go to school!), and was in the same course with my host mother's father! All through highschool and college he spent his free time helping the poor. He is known for driving through Santiago in his green pick up truck, giving many people lifts to the homeless shelters, and to mass on Sundays. He also found Hogar de Cristo, a foundation to help the poor, that today runs everything from homeless shelters to funeral homes for the less wealthy. There are many statues of him around Santiago, in which he almost always depicted at work. He was a true everyday saint, who walked alongside Christ daily, before becoming a priest, as he answered His call, and then as he served the poor.

Here are some (translated) paragraphs about him:

With great generosity he spent his free time visiting and helping the most needy. Finishing highschool he studied law at the UC, working at the same time to help his widowed mother, but his vocation was to be something else, to be a priest. He spent long hours pray over it, and God heard his prayer - his mother received some money that would help her, and with which she live tranquilly, so that Hurtado could realize his call to priesthood.

With untiring love, he went out in his green truck to bring in the poor and the children to take them to the Hogar to drink warm milk and sleep in a real bed. In the needy Padre Hurtado always saw the suffering Christ. Later he founded workshops to educate them and help make them able to seek a dignified job. Between his many activities he also published magazines, gave conferences over the preisthood, problems of adolescents, Catholicism, and education.

He died of cancer in 1952. They say that on his death bed, he only prayed repeatedly with the words "Contento, Señor, Contento." (Lord I am content).



He was beatified by PJP II in 1994.

He was canonized by PB XVI in 2005.

(PS....you guys should look up our saint from the US...Mother Cabrini!! )