María Angélica Pérez
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San Martin, Argentina
Vallenar, Atacama, Chile
María Angélica Pérez | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Virgin | |
| Born | 17 August 1897 San Martin, Argentina |
| Died | 20 May 1932 (aged 34) Vallenar, Atacama, Chile |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Beatified | 17 November 2012, Pergamino, Buenos Aires, Argentina by Cardinal Angelo Amato |
| Feast | 20 May |
María Angélica Pérez (religious name María Crescentia, 17 August 1897 – 20 May 1932) was an Argentine religious sister of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Garden. She also was known to ill people as "Sister sweetness".[1]
She was beatified on 17 November 2012 in Buenos Aires.
María Angélica Pérez was born on 17 August 1897 in Buenos Aires to Spanish immigrants Augustín Pérez and Ema Rodriguez as the fifth of eleven children.[1][2] Among all her siblings there were four brothers and two sisters.[3] She was raised on a farm and helped her father with work around the farm. She was a pious child, known for her devotion to the faith. Four siblings before her – who died in childhood – were born while living in Uruguay.
Pérez entered the congregation of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Gardenon 31 December 1915 and received the habit on 2 September 1916; she assumed religious name María Crescentia.[1] On 7 September 1918 she made her vows. She served as both a teacher and a catechist to children and from 1924 to 1928 worked in a hospital tending to patients afflicted with tuberculosis and also sick children.[2]
She was sent to Mar del Plata in 1925 to care for the ill and was infected with lung disease and so arrangements were moved for her to be transferred to a change of environment. As her health declined she was assigned to a hospital in Vallenar in Chile in 1928 and was perceived as a source of happiness and comfort to the patients.[2][3] Pérez died in 1932 in hospital. In 1966, her relics were found to be incorrupt upon inspection and were taken to Quillata. She was reinterred in the college chapel in Huerto de Pergamino in her homeland of Argentina on 26 July 1986.[1][2]
