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Founding member of Poor Clares’ monastery in Denver dies
By Father Blaine Burkey, O.F.M. Cap.
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Sister Maria Isabel Valtierra, O.S.C. Cap. |
Sister Maria Isabel Valtierra, O.S.C. Cap., founding member of Denver’s Capuchin Poor Clare community, died surrounded by her sisters in her room at Our Lady of Light Monastery in north Denver on Nov. 22.
Born on a farm in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, on March 11, 1924, Maria Longinos Valtierra entered her order’s monastery there at the age of 29, and made first profession of vows on Sept. 8, 1955.
From childhood, she had sought to become a nun; but her parents, Ines Valtierra and Severa Delgado, urged her to remain with them, helping run the farm and selling its products in town. Both parents died in 1952, and within months she was in the convent.
Sister Valtierra was a strong woman and a hard worker; and for most of her 36 years at the Irapuato monastery, she worked in the altar bread office, the sacristy and the kitchen. She also cared for the sick sisters, washing their clothes by hand and providing other services they needed. This was in addition to the many hours all of the sisters devote daily to communal and personal prayer.
When the community was invited to make a foundation in Denver, she was one of the first to volunteer. Though 64 by the time the nuns immigrated in 1988, she had great enthusiasm and determination to serve in this new adventure. During her first years in Denver, she was sacristan, a task she liked very much, and was sad when she was no longer able to do it. She said she liked to be near the tabernacle and to clean and work in a very direct way for the Lord. She also enjoyed working in the bakery and garden.
“Sister was a very simple soul,” according to Mother Maria de Cristo Palafox, abbess at Our Lady of Light. “She characteristically felt free to express her thoughts and feelings, and presented herself exactly the way she was.
“She was a woman full of life and joy,” Mother Palafox added. “Nurses at the hospital and those from hospice were surprised at sister’s joy and ever-present smile, no matter how sick she was. Doctors told her she had only six months to live. She told them that they didn’t know that, and that only God knew. Then she lived seven more years.”
“She always animated recreation time with her wit and ability to make everybody laugh,” Mother Palafox added. “I loved and admired very much her passion and intensity in everything she did.”
A number of the other sisters singled out sister’s humility in often asking the community to forgive her faults. Each of them also recalled her expressions of appreciation for even the slightest favor done for her.
“Sister Isabel was far-sighted like the wise virgins with their lamps ready,” said Sister Maria de Jesus Armadillo, a former abbess of the monastery. “Until she was unable, she would rise before the other sisters to be on time for the day’s first community prayer. She was a woman of prayer, especially before Jesus in the Eucharist. Her prayer was simple, but constant, especially her intercessory prayer.”
Father Charles Polifka, provincial minister of the Capuchin friars, said that when he was going on a journey somewhere in his province’s three-state area, Sister Valtierra “always blessed me and commanded the angels to go with me.”
Both the sisters and friars recalled her broad, signature smile.
“All she would have to do to get into heaven was smile,” Capuchin Father David Gottschalk said at a Mass celebrated at her deathbed. “No one can resist that smile.”
Sister Valtierra was the third of five children and was the last to die. Her sister, Francisca, died less than a month earlier.
After a funeral Mass, celebrated at the monastery’s St. Patrick’s Oratory on Nov. 29, feast of All Saints of the Franciscan order, Sister Valtierra’s body was buried in the Capuchin plot at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge.
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