Sor Ana de los Ángeles, the first Peruvian beata

Ana Monteagudo Ponce de León was born in Arequipa on 26 July 1602, daughter of the Spaniard Sebastián Monteagudo de la Jara and the Arequipeña Francisca Ponce de León. She was the fourth of eight siblings. Her baptismal record was lost in the fire of Arequipa's Main Church in 1620, which is why some sources also list 1604 as a possible date of birth, although the Church and most historians take 1602.

At the age of three her parents entrusted her to the Catalina nuns of the Monastery of Santa Catalina for her education. There her vocation took root. Her parents withdrew her from the monastery during her teens, intending to arrange a favourable marriage, but she insisted on consecrating her life to God. In 1618 she began her novitiate and added "de los Ángeles" to her name.

Her life unfolded entirely within the monastery's walls: more than six decades of prayer, penance and service. In 1647, by then Mistress of Novices, she was elected prioress at the request of bishop Pedro de Ortega Sotomayor, and led a deep reform of conventual discipline.

Mystical life and writings

Sor Ana led an intense spiritual life marked by silence, mortification and charity towards the youngest and sickest sisters. Those who knew her credited her with numerous prophetic visions: tradition records a total of sixty-eight fulfilled predictions, many of them necrological in nature — announcements of illnesses, unexpected healings or unavoidable deaths — which made her a spiritual figure recognised throughout the region.

She also held a singular devotion to the souls in Purgatory, whom she called "her friends" and for whom she prayed unceasingly.

Final years

Sor Ana's final years passed in the darkness of blindness, with great difficulty walking and pains she accepted with humility and full trust in God. She died on 10 January 1686. Conventual tradition remembers that her body did not need to be embalmed because of the fragrance it gave off, and that a painter who came to the monastery to portray her — afflicted with severe pains and swelling — was completely healed when he finished the canvas: the only faithful portrait of her face that survives.

She was buried in the lower choir of the monastery's church, where her tomb still receives pilgrims from across Peru every year.

Beatification

The beatification process began on 17 July 1686, barely six months after her death, driven by the Catalina nuns themselves and by the bishop of Arequipa Antonio de León y Becerra. The dossier sent to Rome was lost — probably in a shipwreck — and the cause remained suspended for centuries.

In 1981 Pope John Paul II officially recognised as a miracle the unexplained healing of María Vera de Jarrín, attributed to the intercession of Sor Ana. On 2 February 1985, during his pastoral visit to Peru, the same Pontiff proclaimed her blessed in Arequipa before thousands of faithful.

Her tomb, in the lower choir of the monastery, remains a place of pilgrimage to this day.