personal data
Maria Magdalena do Espírito Santo de Araújo was born on May 23, 1863, in the village of Juazeiro. She was the daughter of Antônio da Silva Araújo and Ana Josefa do Sacramento. As described by the writer Manoel Diniz, she “was mestizo, hair almost frizzy, she wore shortly cut, medium height, slight, small head, a little bit rounded, almost black eyes and soft in expression, slightly thick lips, small nose, slightly protruding cheeks, small chin, well proportioned neck”. According to Father Azarias Sobreira, who met her, she “did not arouse attention except for the simplicity of her mannerisms, good domestic education, easy intelligence of things, despite being illiterate”.
Daughter of a poor family, she had a difficult childhood, she worked and prayed a lot, she was an artisan. She spun cotton and made rag dolls for sale. On the orders of Father Cicero, she taught this trade to some girls her own age. She also worked in a pottery, counting bricks.
As she lost her parents very early, she went to live in Padre Cicero's house. She began to wear the habit of a butt in 1885, at the age of 22, after having taken part in a kind of butt course, (at actually, an eight-day spiritual retreat) given by Fathers Cícero Romão Batista and Vicente Sóter de Alencar.
Father Cícero had a special regard for Blessed Maria de Araújo, which is why, when she died, he paid special attention to her. She ordered a burial for him in the Capela do Socorro and provided him with a burial worthy of an illustrious person.
Blessed Maria de Araújo died on January 17, 1914, when the so-called Sedition of Juazeiro was in progress.
On October 22, 1930 her tomb was secretly opened by order of the Bishop of Crato. The tomb, built inside the Chapel of Socorro, was totally destroyed and the mortal remains of the Blessed were buried in an unknown place.
Health
Maria de Araújo's state of health was the reason for much controversy among historians. In testimony given to the priests who carried out the First Inquiry on the miracle, she stated that she suffered from stomach discomfort, but she only vomited blood once, because of a fall she suffered during one of the nervous attacks she had had since she was a child. Some biographers even said that she was hemophiliac, tuberculous, epileptic, unbalanced, but there is no document of this. On the contrary, the doctor Marcos Madeira, who examined her repeatedly, officially attested in a document drawn up and which is part of the Inquiry, that she did not discover in Beata “the smallest wound, ulcer or wound of any kind on the tongue, gums, larynx and, finally, in the entire cavity oral".
The miracle
Certainly the most important and controversial fact in Maria de Araújo's life is the so-called miracle of the host. This event, which caused so much trouble for the Blessed and also for Father Cicero, occurred for the first time on March 1, 1889. And it basically consisted of the following: Upon receiving the host, in a communion officiated by Father Cicero, Blessed Maria de Araújo was unable to swallow it, as the sacred particle was transformed in live blood, as was later attested by the doctors invited by Father Cicero to examine the blessed and witness the phenomenon, which was repeated dozens of times for about two years old.
But the phenomenon was not just that. On other occasions the host also became a fleshy portion in the shape of a heart. And wounds were opened on the body of the saint, which after a while disappeared mysteriously, leaving no trace. She also had blood sweats and went into ecstasy. And in the testimony given to the First Commission of Inquiry, appointed by Bishop Dom Joaquim José Vieira to investigate the phenomenon, she she said that when she went into a trance she visited hell and purgatory, and spoke to Jesus Christ from whom she heard and transmitted teachings in Latin. All of this left Fathers Clicério da Costa Lobo and Francisco Ferreira Ântero, members of the First Commission of Inquiry, amazed.
So far four hypotheses have been raised to try to explain the miracle of Juazeiro. The first, defended by Father Cícero and other colleagues in cassocks and mainly by Professor José Morocco, attributes to the fact divine nature, being, therefore, a miracle.
The second, officially defended by the Church, says that everything was "vain and superstitious wonders and imply the most serious and detestable irreverence and impious abuse of the Most Holy Eucharist." The third, created by Father Antônio Gomes de Araújo, a historian from Rio de Janeiro, classifies the fact in the category of hoax, the result of a chemistry made on the basis of a solution of phenolphthalein plus starch, conceived by Professor José Morocco and the connivance of Blessed Maria de Araújo. And the fourth, more recent, defended by parapsychologist Maria do Carmo Pagan Forti, says that “the crucifixions and miraculous stigmas verified in Maria de Araújo are results, certainly, of her emotional imagination, of the influence of her psyche on the organism", and that the presence of blood can be attributed to a "case of contribution”.
In this new approach, the blood was real, healthy, but from Beata, thus discarding the hypothesis of deception.
In fact, a similar hypothesis had already been raised at the time of the occurrence of the so-called miracle, by Dr. Júlio César da Fonseca Filho, who in a letter addressed to Bishop Dom Joaquim José Vieira attested that the phenomenon that happened in the blessed was not a matter of imposture or simulation, but of hysteria.
The blessed today
For some time now Maria de Araújo has been attracting the attention of historians and researchers. Her life has been the subject of several academic papers. Lately she hasn't been called a liar anymore. In the view of parapsychologist Maria do Carmo Pagan Forti “she was not a liar and you cannot reduce her figure to the phenomena happened to her, calling her alienated, someone outside of reality, a symbol of cultural backwardness and religious ignorance. She was a mystic in the noble sense of the word, as were Saint Francis of Assisi, Tereza D'Avila, João da Cruz, the great European mystics”.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Araújo, Antonio Gomes de.(Fr.) (1956). Apostolate of the Scam. Crato, Itaytera Editions.
Dantas, Renato (1982). The butts of Juazeiro and Cariri. Juazeiro do Norte, ICVC Editions.
Diniz, Manoel (1935). Jeweler's Mysteries. Juazeiro, Typography of O Juazeiro.
Forti, Maria do Carmo Pagan (1991). Maria de Araújo, the Blessed from Juazeiro. São Paulo, Paulines.
Oliveira, Amália Xavier de (1981). The Father Cicero I knew. 3rd. ed. Recife, Massangana.
Sobreira, Azarias (1969). The Patriarch of Juazeiro.
Walker, Daniel (1996). Maria de Araújo, the blessed of the miracle of Juazeiro. Juazeiro, IPESC Editions.
Source:http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Order B - Biography - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/beata-maria-de-araujo.htm