Every life marked by an early loss learns, one way or another, to search for meaning where none seemed to exist. Laura Montoya was only two years old when her father was murdered during a civil war in Colombia, and the childhood that followed was one of poverty and labor. It was from this difficult beginning, not from an easy path, that one of the most determined missionaries in Latin American history was born.
Born in Jericó, in the Antioquia region, on May 26, 1874, Laura trained as a teacher at the Escuela Normal de Institutoras in Medellín and taught in several Colombian cities for more than a decade. In 1907, already an experienced teacher in Marinilla, she felt an insistent call to what she herself called the work among the Indians.
On May 5, 1914, with the support of Bishop Maximiliano Crespo, she left Medellín with five companions, among them her own mother, bound for Dabeiba, deep in the Colombian jungle. There, on May 14, she officially founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of Mary Immaculate and St. Catherine of Siena, determined to live among the indigenous peoples rather than merely visit them.
Her method was unusual for the time: learning the language and customs of each people before proclaiming the gospel, respecting what she called the dearest affections of each culture. This choice also brought her opposition within the Church itself: an apostolic prefect went so far as to accuse her of governing the congregation without consulting anyone and of acting out of vanity in the letters where she reported on the missions, accusations that an investigation by the Apostolic Nuncio ultimately did not confirm.
She spent the last nine years of her life in a wheelchair, without ever ceasing to write and guide the sisters by letter. She died in Medellín on October 21, 1949, leaving behind 90 houses and 467 religious sisters of the congregation in three South American countries. She was beatified in 2004 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2013, becoming the first Colombian saint.
The life of Laura Montoya reminds us that God’s call rarely respects the limits an era imposes on those who receive it, neither the orphanhood of childhood nor the fact of being a woman in a Church that did not yet make room for her. Her insistence on learning before teaching remains a test of humility for every mission that today seeks to be faithful to the gospel and to one’s neighbor.
