Saint Mariana de Paredes

Saint Mariana de Paredes — known as the Lily of Quito — was born in 1618 in Quito, Ecuador to Don Girolamo Flores Zenel de Paredes, a Spanish nobleman of Toledo, and Doña Mariana Cranobles de Xaramilo. Orphaned young, she was raised by her older sister and brother-in-law. Drawn to prayer from childhood, she made vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience at the age of ten and, having been refused entry to religious life, lived as a Third Order Franciscan hermit in her brother-in-law's home. She practiced severe austerities — sleeping little, eating only a small piece of bread every eight or ten days, and surviving almost entirely on the Eucharist received in daily Communion. She was given gifts of prophecy, healing, and ecstasy. During the earthquakes and epidemics that devastated Quito in 1645, she publicly offered her life as a victim for the city and died shortly afterward, on 26 May 1645. According to tradition, a pure white lily blossomed from her spilled blood. Beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1853 and canonized by Pope Pius XII on 9 July 1950, she is honored as a national heroine of the Republic of Ecuador and is invoked as patron of the sick, of those rejected by religious orders, and of the Americas.