Mother Margarita Maria Lopez de Maturana

Mother Margarita Maria transformed a cloistered monastery into a missionary order which now has more than 500 members working on five continents. Mercedarian Missionary sisters came to the Kansas City area in 1946 and established Our Lady of Mercy Country Home in Liberty.

In the early 20th century, missionaries on their way to India and China often stopped in Berriz, Spain, at the cloistered Vera Cruz monastery of the Order of Mercy to ask for their prayers. The missionary fervor resonated with a young teacher at the monastery school.

Mercedarian Missionary Sister Mary Ann Becmer, vicar general of the congregation, said that Pilar Lopez de Maturana entered the Order of Mercy in 1903, when she was 19. She made her first profession of vows that year, taking the religious name Margarita Maria. She made her final profession in 1904.

Sister Margarita Maria dreamed of practicing the fourth vow taken by members of the Order of Mercy. Mercedarian religious, both men and women, vow to lay down their lives for Christians who are captives or whose lives are in danger, Sister Mary Ann said. The fourth vow originated in 1218, when Saint Peter Nolasco founded the order to ransom Spanish Christians who were captives or slaves of the Moors.

Sister Margarita Maria believed the best way to practice that vow was to transform the Vera Cruz monastery into a missionary congregation and "make Christ known to the ends of the earth," said Sister Mary Ann.

Father Inocencio Lopez Santamaria, then-Master General of the order, brought Sister Margarita Maria's project to the attention of Pope Pius XI. The first experimental expedition of six nuns was sent to Wuhu, China in 1926, with the pope's blessing. The second missionary group went to Saipan in the Mariana Islands in the South Pacific in 1927, and a third to Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands of the present Federated States of Micronesia, in 1928. Sister Margarita Maria was elected superior in 1927.

In 1930, the Vera Cruz nuns voted unanimously to become missionaries. The transformation was granted by the Vatican's Sacred Congregation of Religious a few months later. The new congregation was to be known as the Mercedarian Missionaries of Berriz, and Mother Margarita Maria was elected as its first superior general.

She died of cancer in 1934. Her cause for sainthood has been in process since 1961.

During World War II, a small group of Mercedarian Missionaries who had been teaching in Saipan were captured and held prisoner by the Japanese for several years.

Shortly after their liberation in 1945, a young U.S. Air Force chaplain from Kansas City, Father Arthur M. Tighe, landed with his squadron on Saipan. Father Tighe met the sisters' superior, Mother Angelica Salaberria.

On June 8, 1945, Father Tighe, later Msgr. Tighe and pastor of Visitation Parish, with pilots Captain Criss and Lieutenant McDonald and several members of their crews, visited the sisters. The officers were to go on a bombing mission that afternoon and were certain they were going to their deaths, recalled Mother Angelica in 1995. Father Tighe asked the sisters for prayers, then picked up an English dictionary belonging to Mother Angelica and turned to the first blank page. On it Father Tighe wrote, "When the crews of Captain Criss and Lt. McDonald are rotated home, it is agreed that Father Tighe will be sent home to establish a motherhouse for the Mercedarian Missionaries of Berriz.

"Resolved on this eighth day of June, the feast of the Sacred Heart, in the year of Our Lord, 1945.

Signed: Arthur M. Tighe, Angelica Salaberia."

The Japanese formally surrendered to the United States on Sept. 2, 1945. Captain Criss and Lt. McDonald survived and were rotated home. Father Tighe returned to Kansas City and asked then-Bishop Edwin V. O'Hara to help bring the Mercedarian Missionaries to the Diocese of Kansas City.

Bishop O'Hara invited the sisters to Kansas City but, said Sister Mary Ann, probably neither he nor Father Tighe really believed they would come. "Imagine his surprise in late 1946, when Father Tighe answered the telephone and heard Mother Josephine Martinez saying the sisters were in New York."

They had arrived without a way of supporting themselves, so Bishop O'Hara provided the sisters with a new ministry: caring for the elderly.

He had purchased the former Grace Methodist Hospital at Ninth and Harrison streets several years before and saw the arrival of the sisters as a way to turn the one time hospital into a nursing home for women.

After much scrubbing and painting and remodeling, Our Lady of Mercy Home was dedicated on Nov. 1, 1947.

Our Lady of Mercy Country Home in Liberty was built in the early 1960s as a training home novitiate for the Mercedarian Order. In 1971, the decision was made to remodel the novitiate into rooms and apartments for the elderly. The Country Home was dedicated in 1972.

In December 2005, the Vatican approved the Cause of Beatification for Mother Margarita Maria. Mercedarian Sister Flor de Maria Alvarez, vice postulator for the Cause, and a team of doctors determined that a miraculous healing had occurred through her intercession. One miracle is required for beatification.

Beatriz Romero Escalante was 46 when she was hospitalized in Mexico City in 1999 with a terminal case of pancreatitis. Sixteen days later, after prayer through the intercession of Mother Margarita Maria, by the Mercedarian community and her family, Escalante was totally cured. She was able to return to her normal life immediately.

The Beatification of Mother Margarita Maria will take place on Oct. 22, in the Cathedral of Santiago in her hometown of Bilboa. Pilgrims, school alumni and religious are expected to come from all over the globe. Beatriz Escalante plans to attend with her family.

"This is a culminating moment for our order. We've waited more than 40 years for this," said Sister Mary Ann. "It will be the event of the year in Bilboa. Mother Margarita Maria is the first woman from Bilbao to be beatified. It's also significant that the ceremony will take place on Mission Sunday."

The 16 sisters at Our Lady of Mercy Country Home plan on a commemoration of the beatification around the time of the ceremony, said Sister Mary Ann.

She added that the order plans to keep the event as simple as possible. "We did a year of reflection on the deep spirituality and charism of our foundress. We try every day to pass on her values of solidarity with the poor, mercy and justice. Her parting words were that we were not to worry, she would take care of us from heaven. And I believe she has."

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