María Emilia Riquelme
Spanish religious
Feast: 10 December (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
The Vatican record
- 14 December 2015 — Heroic virtue declared — title Venerable (decree list, 2015)
- 19 March 2019 — Miracle through their intercession approved (decree list, 2019)
Who they were
María Emilia Riquelme was born in Granada, Spain, on 5 August 1847. Two small brothers died young and her mother died in an epidemic in 1855; at twelve she privately vowed her life to God.
In 1896 she founded the Missionaries of the Blessed Sacrament and Mary Immaculate, devoted to Eucharistic adoration and to serving those in need. Illness and criticism from some of her sisters led to her being replaced as superior; she accepted it, and died praying and smiling on 10 December 1940, telling her sisters: 'I do not want to be a saint alone.'
The miracles
A man — Medellín, Colombia — 2003
On 14 August 2003 a man was taken into a clinic in Medellín with peritonitis caused by acute pancreatitis. Despite emergency surgery he worsened, with respiratory failure, and was put on a ventilator in intensive care; when his condition seemed beyond saving the doctors performed a tracheotomy, which was followed by an aggressive abdominal infection. He recovered after prayers to Mother María Emilia.
Why that counted as sanctity
The case of a man was examined by the Church's doctors and theologians and approved as a miracle on 19 March 2019, opening the way to beatification. Beatification followed on November 2019.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography of Blessed María Emilia Riquelme, with the miracle
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — promulgated decrees (causesanti.va), summarised in our own words
- Wikidata Q55837909 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — María Emilia Riquelme y Zayas (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.