Rome (Italy). On 7 March 2024, was the fifth meeting of Salesian Thursdays at the Auxilium, by the Studies Center on the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians of the Pontifical Faculty of Education Sciences “Auxilium” in Rome. The 2023/2024 program, in continuity with the insights realized for the 150th Anniversary of the FMA Institute, has as its unifying theme: Preventive system. Salesian Education yesterday and today.
“Sister Maria Romero: educator, catechist, social promoter” is the theme of the meeting, held by Sister Marianela Fernández Alfaro, FMA, Director of the Sister Maria Romero Archive and Academic Coordinator of the Historical Center Sister Maria Romero, in San José de Costa Rica.
Maria Romero (1902-1977), Daughter of Mary Help of Christians of Central America, is presented as an educator, catechist and catechist formator, and original creator who has generously devoted herself to the promotion of young women and of the poorest. Animated by great human sensitivity, by an active and tireless faith, during her religious life she developed some courageous educational choices in contact with local needs, always attentive to the signs of the times and to God’s calls.
Without losing her sense of obedience and humor, in addition to her mission in school, she went out to go to the outskirts, to the borders of the most vulnerable, not alone, but gradually involving the Sisters, girls, priests, lay people. In this way, by also arousing “misioneritas“, little missionaries of the Gospel of goodness to bring joy and faith among poor families, she managed to bring many students of the school closer to the reality of poverty and degradation, so close and at the same time far away in the same city of San José of Costa Rica.
In her last stage, always provoking wide collaboration, Maria Romero was able to create a stable House for social works, taking into account especially the educational ones, which the Lord and the Virgin inspired her, as she wrote. She became a true entrepreneur for good, raising the condition of many families. A few decades after her death, the House is still the driving force of many works and initiatives, founded on the awareness of the dignity of every person.
Like every journey, even that of Maria Romero, despite being rich with joys and satisfactions, it was not easy, both for her personal limitations and for the many sufferings and obstacles that presented themselves to her. But her total trust in the Lord and in Mary Help of Christians has always been, as for Saint John Bosco and Saint Mary Domenica Mazzarello, her joy, strength, peace and motivation to go forward with Salesian enthusiasm.
The video, made in the places where Maria Romero lived and worked, highlights the link between biography and geography, local microstory and transnational irradiation of an educational charism lived out in the concreteness of the needs of the young.
