We have a new Carmelite saint!!!

It was only yesterday that I realised Pope Francis was visiting Belgium with the intention of canonising one of St Teresa’s devoted companions and followers – Ann Lobera (1545-1621), known in religion as St Ann of Jesus.  This remarkable lady could neither hear nor speak until the age of seven.  She entered St Joseph’s convent in Avila in 1570.  Teresa quickly gave her positions of authority and in 1575 she became the first Prioress of the Beas convent.  She became involved in the bitter dispute arising from the amendments to the constitution by Nicolas Doria (1539-1594); she and others were punished for obstinacy and forced to do penance, which in Ann’s case involved denial of communion and separation from the other nuns for three years.  She was then rehabilitated and she became prioress of Salamanca.  After this she joined a party of nuns who founded the Discalced Carmel in France – where it soon flourished to an extraordinary degree, with the foundation of a very large number of convents in the seventeenth century.  She was involved in the foundation of three of them but was then called to Brussels in 1607.  This extraordinary woman went on to found two others in Belgium and to assist in the foundation of two more, including one in Cracow in Poland.  She died in Brussels in 1621.   As a foundress she can be compared to the great Teresa, with whom she shared a high degree of courage and fortitude.  We today tend not to appreciate the monumental influence that Teresa had on her own generation.