Saint Laura Montoya

St. Laura Montoya was born at Jericó, a small town in Antioquia, Colombia, on May 26, 1874 AD. She was baptized four hours after her birth. In 1876 AD her father, Juan de la Cruz Montoya, was killed in a civil war, and his enemies seized the family's property.

Her mother, Dolores Upegui, met the loss with forgiveness and strength, and St. Laura learned from her to forgive. Dolores Upegui could not support three children, so she sent St. Laura to live with relatives. There St. Laura was misunderstood and went without affection, felt like an orphan, and looked to God for refuge.

St. Laura Montoya had little formal schooling before she was sixteen and taught herself to read and write. In 1890 AD her mother told her to train as a teacher so she could help the family with money. She won a scholarship to the Normal de Institutoras, the teachers' college in Medellín, and stood out for her marks.

At Amalfi, her first post after she qualified in 1893 AD, some of the town's officials disliked how much religion she put into her lessons. When civil war closed all the public schools, she kept teaching her preschool class in her own house. From February 1897 AD, at Santo Domingo, she taught the Catholic faith to the children of farming families.

St. Laura Montoya hoped to become an enclosed Carmelite nun. At the same time she wanted to carry the Gospel to the farthest corners of the earth. While teaching in Medellín she heard of Indigenous peoples in the mountains and forests who did not know Christ and were not counted as full citizens.

In 1907 AD, aged thirty-three, she went to Marinilla to found a school for girls. One afternoon after class she went to the church to pray before the Blessed Sacrament. There she had a mystical encounter with the Trinity.

In 1908 AD St. Laura Montoya made her first missionary journey, with a priest, to the Guapá-Chamí region. Seventy-two Indigenous people were baptized. Afterwards she resolved to give her whole life to the missions.

She chose her companions from among her own pupils. In May 1914 AD she left Medellín with them and with her mother for the mountains of Dabeiba. That year they set up their first mission house at Dabeiba.

At Dabeiba, Mother Laura and her sisters lived with the Emberá-Katío and as they lived, to remove every difference between the sisters and the people. The congregation's guides told the sisters to bring the people gifts and to accept the gifts they were offered, but never to show that they wanted any. Mother Laura learned the people's language, defended their culture and worked for roads, bridges, workshops and telegraphs.

At one of her first meetings with them, Mother Laura painted a hen on a board and offered it food. She pretended to feed the painted hen so they would see it could not eat, as a step toward showing them a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Some families feared baptism, because they believed the baptized could be taken to Medellín as soldiers.

Young women joined Mother Laura, climbing mountains, pushing into dense forest and crossing rivers to bring the Gospel to the Indigenous peoples. Some churchmen disapproved of sending women out as front-line missionaries, and they thought Mother Laura was mad. Some prelates made accusations against her, and critics mocked the congregation as a family of religious goats heading off into the wilderness.

Pope John Paul II wrote that, beset by slander and hardship, she found her strength in God and in the Virgin Mary. In 1916 AD the congregation received its first approval, and Mother Laura became its first superior general. She governed it until 1929 AD.

From 1915 AD Mother Laura photographed the mission's work with a Kodak A-130 camera she had bought. On her journeys she wrote on whatever she had, down to newsprint and cigarette paper. In 1922 AD she bought a typewriter.

The newspaper El Colombiano printed her letters from Dabeiba without her knowledge. In 1929 AD she set up her own printing press, Santa Teresita, at Santa Fe de Antioquia. In 1936 AD she founded the magazine Almas (Souls) and shared its direction with other sisters and an Indigenous man.

In 1938 AD Mother Laura again became superior general of the congregation, and she held the office until her death. In her illness she grew steadily heavier, and she spent the last nine years of her life in a wheelchair. Almost paralyzed, she prayed and wrote to her sisters, urging them on in their work.

After a long and painful illness, and having received the sacraments, she died at Medellín on October 21, 1949 AD. At her death the congregation had 467 sisters. Her sisters, the priests who knew her well and the whole Colombian people mourned her, and the people of Colombia at once called her the missionary of Colombia.