Beatification Ceremony for Mexican Nun EFE
go to original April 22, 2012

A man wears a cross, a cartoon image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and a portrait of the late sister Maria Ines Teresa Arias outside the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Saturday, April 21, 2012. (Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated Press)

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's Sister Maria Ines Teresa Arias of the Most Holy Sacrament was beatified Saturday before thousands of the faithful who crowded the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City for having brought back to life a child who was drowned in 2001 and who was present at the ceremony.

Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, presided over the beatification ceremony where he read a letter in Latin from Pope Benedict XVI authorizing the Mexican nun to be entered in the book of the blesseds.

In the sermon read by Amato, he spoke of the papal visit to Mexico a month ago and said it was "an inspiring lesson for a future of peace, harmony and well-being" that can and must replace the scourge of violence the country is going through.

The ceremony began with a reading from the biography of Sister Maria Ines (1904-1981) who had a long missionary career during which she founded the Congregation of Poor Clare Missionary Sisters in 1945 and the Missionaries of Christ for the Universal Church in 1979.

Taking part in the ceremony was the child Francisco Javier Carrillo Guzman, who fell into a swimming pool and drowned when he was only 1 1/2 years old. On Saturday he was chosen to present a relic of that miraculous event to the nun, a lock of his hair.

After the doctors trying to save him declared him dead from asphyxiation, he incredibly recovered with no ill effects, a miracle that Pope Benedict XVI has confirmed.

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