Blessed María Agustina Rivas López

María Agustina Rivas López, known as Aguchita and baptised Antonia Luzmila, was born at Coracora in Peru on 13 June 1920. At fourteen she moved to Lima to study at the Colegio Sevilla, run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, and drawn to consecrated life she entered the same congregation in 1941, professing temporary vows in 1945 and perpetual vows in 1949. She lived in Lima until 1988, serving as cook, cleaner, nurse and teacher, working with children who were abandoned, at risk or poor, and assisting the novice mistress. In 1988, while the Maoist movement Shining Path was carrying out its terrorist campaign, she was sent to La Florida in the region of Junín, where the congregation ran a mission supporting peasant and indigenous women.

Despite the growing danger the sisters confirmed their presence, running programmes in health, education, nutrition, literacy, handicrafts and family catechesis, and she took the assignment as a further chance to be with the poorest. On 27 September 1990 Shining Path fighters burst into La Florida, ordered the inhabitants into the main square, and killed her.