Saint Laura Montoya

María Laura Montoya Upegui was born on May 26, 1874, in Jericó, Antioquia, Colombia. When she was two her father was killed in a civil war, leaving the family in poverty. She became a teacher to support her mother and grew in a deep life of prayer.

Moved by the abandonment of the Indigenous peoples, whom many in her time looked down upon, she set out in 1914 with a few companions to Dabeiba, in the jungles of Antioquia, to live among the Emberá people and teach them the faith. There she founded the Congregation of Missionary Sisters of Mary Immaculate and Saint Catherine of Siena, known as the Lauritas. She faced criticism, poverty and illness, and spent her last nine years in a wheelchair, still guiding her sisters. She died in Medellín on October 21, 1949. Pope Francis canonized her on May 12, 2013.

In Colombia her feast is celebrated with great joy, especially in Jericó, her hometown, and in Medellín, where her sisters keep her shrine and tomb. Her missionaries serve Indigenous communities in many countries of Latin America and Africa.

Colombians honor her as an example of respect for Indigenous peoples and of missionary courage.