Rome (Italy). As part of the itinerary in view of the Canonization of Sister Maria Troncatti (1883-1969), developed by the Historical Spiritual Liturgical Commission to learn more about the figure of the Blessed, the 8th video, released on the 25th of each month in memory of his birth into heaven, on September 25, 2025, proposes the interview with Monsignor Néstor Vidal Montesdeoca Becerra, Salesian of Don Bosco, Apostolic Vicar of Méndez, in Ecuador, which highlights the universal aspect of Sister Maria’s Holiness
Having experienced the last phases of the beatification and canonization process of Sister Maria Troncatti up close, Monsignor Montesdeoca recognizes how from 2012, the year of the Beatification until 2025, the year of Canonization, the Church “has traveled a long journey to know, appreciate, and enhance this figure, and to recognize how that humble and simple woman was a somewhat hidden star of holiness but now it begins to shine with greater brilliance.”
For him, in fact, she is truly admirable as “one of the many missionaries” who came to serve the Gospel in these marginal and little-known lands of the country, in the central-south of the Amazon, a humble and simple woman, gradually transformed into a source of holiness and was recognized as “a true saint” by the people:
“This holiness was manifested, not because she spent all day praying, but because she knew how to harmonize in her life and work with prayer, the Eucharist, devotion to the Most Holy Virgin Mary with the pastoral, missionary, catechetical work of proclaiming the Gospel, but also with the educational work to form boys and girls to be good Christians and honest citizens, especially those in the mission area, especially the indigenous Shuar, both in Macas and later in Sevilla Don Bosco and then in Sucúa.”
The Apostolic Vicar then recounts the different steps of the process that transformed Sister Maria into the universal heritage of the Church, along the path of the Cause of Beatification begun with Monsignor Teodoro Arroyo Roveli. Monsignor Montesdeoca himself chose, at the request of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, that the celebration of the Beatification be held in Macas on 24 November 2012, and that it be presided over by Cardinal Angelo Amato, SDB, then Prefect of the Causes of Saints.
From that moment, he was able to see how the Blessed became the heritage of the whole Church, “Seeing how a small seed was transformed into an enormous tree, a gigantic tree of holiness full of fruit for the glory of God and the joy of the whole Church, not only of the vicariate of Méndez, not only of the Ecuadorian, Latin American Church, but of the whole Church.”
In the last part of the interview was highlighted the relevance of the passionate missionary action of Sister Maria, promoter of human rights “in an era when there was not much talk about it”, a promoter of women within a male chauvinist culture, both on the colonist and Shuar side, but above all “promoter and prophetess of the peaceful social integration of peoples.”
“It is important, in addition to her career as a nurse, missionary, educator, to have given her life, to have offered her life so that there would be social peace, so that there would be no clashes, there would be no massacres, because each one was her spiritual child, because everyone was a child of God.”
Lastly, the Bishop underlines the trait of spiritual motherhood, which he finds as a fundamental need for today. “She was, in other words, a mother, both on a material and spiritual level and this maternal sign is what must be the task, for example, of a missionary today, not only to dedicate herself to the specific tasks assigned to her, but above all, to seek this spiritual motherhood.”
