Saint Teresa of the Andes

Saint Teresa of the Andes, in religion Teresa of Jesus, was a Chilean Discalced Carmelite nun. Her name was Juana Fernández Solar, and those close to her called her Juanita. She entered the monastery at the age of eighteen and died of typhus eleven months later. She is the first saint of Chile. The Church commemorates her on April 12, the day of her death.

She was born on July 13, 1900, in Santiago, the daughter of Miguel Fernández and Lucía Solar. She had three brothers and two sisters. The family was well-off and sincerely devout. Juanita studied at the school of the Religious of the Sacred Heart in Santiago, first as a day student and from 1915 to 1918 as a boarder.

She noted in her diary that Jesus began to take her heart for himself shortly after the earthquake of 1906. By nature she was proud and stubborn. The turning point was her First Communion, received on September 11, 1910: while preparing for it, the girl began to work steadily on her character. At the age of fourteen she resolved to become a Discalced Carmelite. A year later she made a private vow of chastity, at first for nine days, and from then on she renewed it continually.

She did not keep apart from her peers. She was cheerful and sociable, played sports, liked music and singing, and delighted in the beauty of nature. Her friends sought her advice and support. During vacations in the countryside she taught catechism and helped the poor, especially children. She read the writings of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity.

On May 7, 1919, she entered the small, poor monastery of the Discalced Carmelite nuns dedicated to the Holy Spirit in Los Andes, about 90 kilometers from Santiago. On October 14 she received the habit and began her novitiate as Teresa of Jesus. She worked in the garden and at other simple tasks, and with her superiors’ permission she wrote many letters in which she shared her faith. She understood the vocation of a Carmelite as a continual offering of herself for the sinful world and prayer for priests. She said that she had found heaven on earth.

In Holy Week of 1920 she fell ill with typhus. Because her life was in danger, she was allowed to make her religious profession before the end of the novitiate. She died on the evening of April 12, 1920. She was nineteen years old, three months short of her twentieth birthday.

She left a diary and letters, from which we know her spiritual life. John Paul II beatified her on April 3, 1987, in Santiago, during his journey to Chile, and canonized her on March 21, 1993, in Saint Peter’s Basilica. He called her the first fruits of holiness of the Teresian Carmel in Latin America and held her up as a model for the young. Her relics rest in the Shrine of Auco in Rinconada de Los Andes, to which thousands of pilgrims come.