St. Teresa of the Andes

St. Teresa of the Andes was born Juana Fernández Solar on 13 July 1900 at Santiago, Chile, into a well-to-do family. A lively and affectionate girl, fond of horseback riding and tennis, she was drawn from her youth to a deep interior life of prayer and to the writings of St. Teresa of Ávila and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and she came to understand that God was calling her to the hidden life of Carmel.

In 1919 she entered the Carmel of Los Andes, taking the name Teresa of Jesus, and though she lived there less than a year, she attained a remarkable maturity of holiness, given wholly to love of Christ and to prayer and sacrifice for others. Foreseeing her own early death, she fell ill of typhus and died on 12 April 1920, at only nineteen, making her religious profession on her deathbed. Her letters and diary, revealing the depth of her union with God, spread her fame widely. Canonized in 1993, she was the first saint of Chile and the first Discalced Carmelite of the Americas to be canonized. Her memory is kept on 13 July.