SAN JOSÉ DE LA PAZ, MARÍA ANTONIA

The "Beata de los Ejercicios" who founded Argentine retreat houses based on the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises; b. Santiago del Estero, Argentina, 1730; d. Buenos Aires, March 7, 1799. Nothing is known of her early life except that she lived as a beata in her native city and under the spiritual care of the Jesuits came to appreciate the closed retreat as a means of personal sanctification. Even though she was of a retiring, shy disposition and the circumstances of the times did not favor any work so intimately identified with the Jesuits, after their expulsion in 1767 María Antonia felt impelled to propagate this idea. At first the authorities, both ecclesiastical and lay, were hostile to her plans and the people called her a witch, probably because she wore as an outer garment a Jesuit mantle given her by one of the departing fathers. Her tact and firmness finally won over even such antagonists as Bp. Sebastian Malvar of Buenos Aires and Viceroy Vértiz. In time she founded houses for closed retreats in Santiago del Estero, Salta, Jujuy, Córdoba, Montevideo, and finally in 1779 in Buenos Aires. In the last house from 1779 to 1784 more than 30,000 people, including the former viceroy of Peru, Manuel de Guirior, and his wife, made the ten-day retreat. These were not endowed retreat houses in the colonial pattern. Maria Antonia administered them, contacted the priests to give the retreats, and supported them from alms and offerings of the retreatants. Her work survived her death and the numerous revolutions of the early 19th century.

Bibliography: p. leturia, "Ejercicios cerrados en la América Española," Manresa 6 (1930) 272–283.

[a. s. tibesar]