A decree of the late Holy Pontiff permitted the introduction of the cause of the canonization of Mary Guyard Martin, known in religion as Mother Mary of the Incarnation, foundress of the Ursuline Convent at Quebec. There is in this much to console and encourage us. Up to this step no servant of God who lived or labored even transiently in any part of our continent lying north of the Rio Grande had ever been proposed for that exceptional public honor which the church permits by a decree of canonization.
To any servant of God whose life, stamped with the impress of sanctity, seems to justify a belief on our part that he is now reigning with Christ in glory, we may address our prayers to obtain those more abundant temporal and spiritual graces which we crave as a means to our ultimate end, salvation; but this devotion is for our own closet. The church permits no public honors till she has examined with the closest scrutiny the life, writings, virtues, and miraculous gifts of the one whom thousands are honoring in private.
Exalted sanctity was developed in the mission life in our northern wilds, in the first rude cloisters, in laborious ministry, in patient suffering; but there were no monarchs or wealthy communities to undertake the long and often expensive investigations and evidence demanded at Rome, where, as the saying is, it almost requires a miracle to prove a miracle.
Spanish America under the Catholic kings was differently situated, and that part of the western world numbers not a few canonized or beatified, as well as many whose process of canonization, begun long since, has been laid aside amid the changes in the political world, which in this century show us the government in almost all Spanish-speaking countries the enemy of religion.
Mexico and Peru were the two great centres of Spanish power, originally rich, prosperous, semi-civilized states. In and between these two states flourished nearly all those whose canonization was undertaken or completed. It would be an error, however, to suppose that the Spanish colonies were all that the church desired, or that they were models for a Christian state. The popular picture of them is dark enough, and the untempered zeal and vivid imagination of Las Casas gave to the enemies of Catholicity and Spain an authority for the most fearful charges. Calm Spanish accounts, however, reveal facts which show that, in the mad rush for wealth aroused by the opening of these golden realms, an immigration poured into our shores which made light of the salutary teachings of Catholicity, and even of humanity or the natural law. The sudden wealth did not tend to chasten or spiritualize these natures in which pride, avarice, and lust held such sway. Yet it was with adventurers of this kind that the church began her mission to bring the Indian to the Gospel, the Spaniard back to the spirit of the Gospel. There was opposition alike from Indian and Spaniard. If missionaries fell, slain by the Indians whom they sought to enrich with blessings beyond all price, a bishop died like St. Thomas of Canterbury, slain by his own Christian countrymen. Shining sanctity, however, exerted its influence and ultimately prevailed.
In Mexico the humble Franciscan brother Sebastian de la Aparicion filled Puebla with the odor of his virtues, and the process of his canonization attested his sanctity so clearly that he was beatified by Pope Pius VI. The causes of the Venerable Gregory Lopez and of the Venerable John Palafox, Bishop of Puebla and Viceroy of New Spain, were also introduced, while missionaries either born in Mexico, like St. Philip of Jesus, or laborers for a time in that field, won in Japan the crown of martyrdom, recognized by the beatification of the church.
St. Louis Bertrand for several years illumined by his holy life and gospel eloquence the coast of South America from Panama to Santa Marta and Carthagena, laboring among the Spaniards and the conquered Indians, and endeavoring, as did all his order, to save the latter from misery here and hereafter, as well as to bring his own countrymen to the practice of the religion which they professed. As though one saint prepared the way for another, Blessed Peter Claver came in the next century to devote his life on that same coast to a still more degraded race, the enslaved African. New Granada thus has her saints, but Peru is the favored spot in our whole continent—Peru, where religion seems at so low an ebb, where governments of a day, put up for sale by prætorian guards, agree only in one point: hostility to the church of God and to the well-being of the people. Peru was above all other parts blessed by the example of exalted sanctity. St. Toribius Mogrobejo, called from among the laity to the archiepiscopal see of Lima, illustrated his stewardship by untiring zeal—reviving religion in the clergy and people, extending the missions, erecting institutions of learning and charity—and by the wise decrees of synods and councils confirming his holy work. Among those who labored in his diocese was the holy Franciscan St. Francis Solano, whose zeal has made his memory hallowed from Tucuman, in the Argentine Republic, to Panama, but who is honored especially at Lima, long the scene of his apostolic ministry. His heroic virtues, the miraculous gifts with which God endowed him, gave a force to his words that no human eloquence could equal and the most hardened sinners could not resist.
While Lima, the City of the Kings, had these two brilliant examples before her, a child of benediction was born of a father Spanish in origin and an Indian mother. Little Isabel Flores y Oliva was, however, known from her cradle as Rose, and the church, in canonizing her, adopted this name, which St. Toribius, too, gave her when he conferred the sacrament of confirmation. Her wonderful life of austerity and zeal, of intense love of God and her neighbor, has made the name of the Lima virgin known throughout the world; and even before her canonization she was declared protectress and principal patron of all the churches of the New World.
She is one of the glories of the Order of St. Dominic, and in her day two humble lay brothers, in convents of the same order in Lima, were conspicuous for sanctity. Blessed Martin Porras, a mulatto, holy, zealous, full of love for the sick, the poor, and the afflicted, was looked upon by all as a saint and an angel of mercy. His labors and his fame were shared by the Spanish lay brother Blessed John Massias. What a privilege it must have been to have lived at that time in Lima!
Coeval with the last of these flourished in Quito the secular virgin Mariana de Paredes y Flores, whose life so resembles that of St. Rose that she has been called the Lily of Quito. Her beatification by the late Pope Pius IX. gave us another patroness for the western world.