Originally from Galatina, she is the foundress of the Daughters of Santa Maria di Leuca.
She is the first blessed woman of Salento. Mother Elisa Martinez, native of Galatina, foundress of the Congregation “Daughters of Saint Mary of Leuca”, will be proclaimed on the morning of Sunday 25 June, in the Basilica-Sanctuary of Leuca. Eucharistic celebration and beatification rite, representing Pope Francis, will be held by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. At the ceremony, no less than three thousand faithful are expected, coming from all over Italy, and in Delegation, from the 55 Congregations of the over 600 “Daughters” scattered throughout the world.

The news was made official yesterday morning in the Archbishop’s Palace of Lecce, by the bishop of Ugento-Santa Maria di Leuca, Monsignor Vito Angiuli, in the presence of the coordinator of the organizing committee of the event, Don Giuseppe Indino, and the Superior General of the Congregation, Mother Ilaria Nicolardi, on the occasion of the press meeting presented by don Gionatan De Marco.

To the landlord, the metropolitan archbishop Michele Seccia, engaged in the already planned pastoral visits, in the hands of the vicar general, don Gigi Manca, Monsignor Angiuli gave a small gift: a bas-relief of modern sacred art.

“The hospitality of Archbishop Seccia – Monsignor Angiuli said – is the sign, of substance and not of opportunity, of the great union that reigns in the Church of Salento, which today welcomes the news of the beatification of Mother Elisa Martinez, the first in history of Salento, which is moreover a woman. Which is no small matter for our Church, which is often accused of being sexist”.

At the beatification process of the Mother of Galatina, who died in Rome in 1991 at the age of 86, after the assessment of the heroic theological (faith, hope and charity) and cardinal (prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice) virtues, which earned her the elevation to Veneranda, as has already happened for another Salento, Don Tonino Bello di Alessano, who died in 1993 in Molfetta where he was bishop, came after a second verification, of the Canonical type, relating to a miraculous event. For Mother Elisa, standard bearer of the assistance of single mothers, prisoners and migrants, but also of early childhood education and catechesis in the parishes, it has to do with the marked sense of motherhood, which since birth, in the distant 1938 in Miggiano, of the Pious Union of the Sisters of the Immaculate, then Congregation of the “Daughters of St. Mary of Leuca”, marked her earthly journey.

The miracle concerns the birth of a little girl from the Marches, who risked not being able to come into the world due to the sudden complications in her mother’s pregnancy, in the fifth month of gestation. The doctors had advised the puerpera to abort her, but the woman opposed it with all her strength, relying on the prayers of Mother Elisa and her “Daughters”. Inexplicably also from a medical-scientific point of view, the child then came into the world, enjoying, like her mother, excellent health.

“Like all the ‘Daughters’ today and yesterday, Mother Elisa lived her spiritual motherhood every day – underlined the bishop of Ugento-Leuca -. She took care of women in difficulty, gave them hope and encouragement, welcomed their children. And this is a sign of modernity. The same I found in a text by the gynecologist Donato Dellino, which recently appeared in the ‘Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno’, in which the heartbreaking lament of women who practice abortion is underlined, and the accusation of obscurantism against doctors who do not practice it , and for this reason they are accused of not being in step with the times”.

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