Cardinal Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, as Pope’s Representative, celebrated the Beatification Mass of the nun, who died in 1991, in the Sanctuary of Santa Maria di Leuca, which gives its name to the Congregation she founded. You have always felt protected by the hands of God, said the cardinal, even in moments of misunderstanding.
“I would like to dilate my heart to embrace all creatures scattered in every corner of the Earth, especially the most needy and marginalized”. These are the words said by Mother Elisa Martinez, founder of the Congregation of the Daughters of Santa Maria di Leuca, which were recalled by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in the celebration of the Beatification Mass of the Salento nun in the Shrine congregation gives its name, representing Pope Francis.
A spiritual building built on humility
She loved the poor, “because in them she discovered the clearest face of Christ”, underlined Semeraro, reiterating several times how humility was the virtue that most characterized the life of the Blessed, born in Galatina in 1905 and died in Rome in 1991, who dedicated his Congregation to the formation of adolescent girls, early childhood education, assistance to single mothers and parish service. In fact, humility was “the cement with which Mother Elisa built her spiritual edifice, so that she did everything with joy without expecting human compensation or appreciation” and “on the contrary, accepting those humiliations that the very service of neighbor entails”. Hence the push towards “the humble, the poor, the sick and the suffering”.
God welcomes us in everything
The Gospel of the day recalls how the Lord never abandons anyone, even if one suffers and Mother Elisa, recalls the prefect, “felt exactly like this: always guarded by the hands of God, even in moments of misunderstanding, suspicion and rejection”. “She”, in fact, “was well aware that God welcomes us in all that we are and in all that happens to us”.
An inspiration for all of Salento
The Beatification Mass was celebrated “under the gaze of the Virgin” at the Sanctuary of Santa Maria di Leuca, and it was “the first time that such a liturgy has been celebrated in our land”, recalled Cardinal Semeraro, born in the province of Lecce, “and this can become for all of us a signal, a call, a pressing invitation to be saints”. A “gift that this land of Salento of ours receives today”, because, as Pope Francis has often recalled, “holiness, even if it has its call from Above, nevertheless normally has its roots in human habitats, ‘in history of land and of the Church’”.
