March 20, 1862
Bogota, Colombia
Dear Sister Maria de los Angeles,
My heart aches for my dear Bogota. Again the Church is under the attack of the radical leadership of our liberal president, General Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera. It has been just over ten years since his removal of our Archbishop, and few will fail to remember what resulted from the Vatican’s disdain – Colombia was condemned by our Holy Father Pope Pius IX! I was in my first years in the convent and will never forget the hardships my fellow sister’s and I faced after Mosquera seized control of both convents and monasteries, shutting them down and leaving us in poverty. If it were not for the generosity of a local family opening their home to me, I am sure I would have starved and been left to die on the condemned streets under Mosquera’s rule.
Sister, when Mariano Ospina Rodriguez was elected by popular vote to become Colombia’s president in 1857, my heart had hope for a long awaited light in the blanket of darkness cast upon the Church for all these long years. I was so hopeful that peace might have finally befallen our beloved Church and Colombia’s new federal republic with the leadership of a conservative president. This burning optimism was made ever stronger when the once banished Jesuits were again welcomed back into the country by Rodriguez! But alas! My heart had been conquered by a false hope and is now left downtrodden and in agony!
The day the light was extinguished will forever remain branded in my memory - July 18, 1861. It was the day Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera and his golgota’s captured Bogota; the day Mosquera’s secular tainted hand reclaimed presidency as well as supreme commander of war! Oh Sister Maria, the Church has once again been imprisoned to secular regulations and authority! The people have been cast under the haze of this Progressive movement and are deceived by empty promises.
Church lands are being confiscated and the people are tricked into believing it is to better the nation as a whole. I see only the pockets of the wealthy feasting off the lands once governed by God’s Church! Mosquera seizes not only chapels and monasteries to be sold to developers. No! He purges the state of schools, hospitals and houses to sell to merchants and landowners all in the name of “Progress”. What is this progress? All I see is the temptation for power and greed flourishing in Colombia’s streets, spilling out through corruptions bullet holes as crimson blood from our friends made enemy!
Sister, my heart grows weary as I watch my people consumed in this civil war and every day I ask our Lord why? For what purpose are the lives of our fellow neighbors being cut short? What leads us to turn against each other and soak this land with the blood of our brothers and sisters? Just yesterday a supporter of Rodriguez was executed under the orders of Mosquera. He was made guilty for his misplaced loyalty, yet no one paused to see his role as a forever loyal father to five young children and a wife carrying the soon to be sixth child. Our economy is in shambles. Our nation exists apart from the nation of God. And our hearts have become hardened against our own fellow countrymen – our brothers, sisters, fathers, sons.
I beg you pray for my war torn nation and I seek your words of counseling. Sister Maria, I am lost to what my hands, the hands of a simple nun, can do for my people who have been severed from the very Church that nourishes my soul. Sister Maria, my teacher, my guide, down what path will Colombian peace find sustenance? Down what path am I to guide my lost countrymen? What path will bring serenity to the hearts of my nation?
Your return letter is anxiously awaited by your forever obedient daughter,
Sister Isabella de la Luz
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