AMERICA/PERU - Recognition of the martyrdom of "Aguchita": religious missionary among the indigenous Ashaninka people
PERU
Lima (Agenzia Fides) - Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on May 22 to promulgate several decrees, including the one recognizing the martyrdom of the Servant of God, Sister María Agostina Rivas López, known as Aguchita, a Peruvian nun committed to the defense of the people and young Ashaninka, an indigenous people of the Amazon largely present in South America, especially in Peru and Brazil. She was murdered in hatred of the faith in 1990 by the Sendero Luminoso terrorist group. The date of her beatification will be announced shortly. The note from the Peruvian Bishops' Conference, sent to Fides, recalls that Aguchita was born on June 13, 1920 in Coracora, Ayacucho. At the age of 14 she went to Lima to study at the Seville School, run by the Sisters of the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd. Attracted by the consecrated life, she entered this Congregation in 1941 and made her perpetual religious profession on February 8, 1949. In 1988, she was sent to the mission of the Congregation in the city of La Florida, in Junín, where she stayed despite the dangers and risks she faced. She pledged to defend the Ashaninka peoples, decimated in the early 20th century by the exploitation of rubber and the destruction of their forests, as well as by disease and slavery.