Saint Who?
Saints Who Were Instruments of Healing
Blessed Maria Troncatti
Religious († 1969)Feast: August 25
Maria was born in Italy in 1883 into a poor farming family. She decided to enter the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco as a young woman. Despite two serious illnesses, she became a religious sister and completed her training as a nurse. She used this training to care for wounded soldiers during World War I.
In 1922, her order sent her to serve as a missionary sister in Ecuador. Her life was in danger almost immediately. When she arrived, the daughter of the tribal chief had been wounded in crossfire. Sister Maria was told she would be killed if the girl died. The operation she performed to remove the bullet was successful and saved the girl’s life. It also won the respect of the native people.
Maria never returned to Italy. Instead, she served the Shuar people of Ecuador for the rest of her life. To bring the Gospel to them as a catechist, she traveled to remote areas in the Amazon rainforest. She also opened a clinic to provide them with medical care, and she personally cared for them as a nurse, surgeon, anesthetist, dentist, and orthopedist. When she died unexpectedly in a plane crash, the people mourned the death of the woman they had nicknamed Madrecita Buena, “the good little Mother.”
Source of every good and all love,
may we bring your healing to those
who are sick and suffering.
