Within the space of one week in June, our sisters and partners-in-mission honored three women whose inspirational lives form a single thread running through our history and mission today: the feast days of Blessed Marie-Thérèse de Soubiran and Blessed Maria Droste zu Vischering fell on June 7 and 8, respectively, and the birthday of Blessed MarÃa Agustina Rivas López, known affectionately as Aguchita, was celebrated on June 13.
They lived in different eras and on different shores — France, Germany, Portugal, and Peru. Each faced her own particular trial. Yet each responded to suffering and uncertainty with an unflinching trust in God. Across the Good Shepherd mission, from the Philippines to Portugal, from Lebanon to Angola, from Peru to Madagascar, their spirit continues to take flesh in the daily work of the mission.
Marie-Thérèse de Soubiran: Hope in the Midst of Injustice
Born in France in 1834, Marie-Thérèse founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Marie-Auxiliatrice, dedicating herself to education, healthcare, and care for the vulnerable. However, she was falsely accused of financial mismanagement, stripped of her leadership, and forced to leave the congregation she had built. In 1874, she was welcomed by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity in Paris, where she lived quietly until her death on June 7, 1889.
Her ability to hold hope steady in the face of injustice echoes throughout the world today. In the Philippines, the Provincialate community gathered for prayer on her feast day and found her story uncomfortably resonant with the world around them: poor governance, economic hardship, natural disasters, and the grief of sudden, senseless loss. “While we cannot overcome every crisis,” the community reflected, “we can wait patiently for the light, respond with compassion to the situation before us, nurture life-giving relationships, and choose hope grounded in trust in God.” These are Marie-Thérèse’s own instincts, discovered anew. The guest floor for visitors to the Good Shepherd Compound in Quezon City has now been named Marie Thérèse Place to honor the spirit of hospitality she embodied.
Maria Droste: Love That Works Itself to Death
Maria Droste zu Vischering was born into German aristocracy in 1863 and might have lived a life of comfort. Instead, she entered the Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd in 1888 and was soon sent to Porto, Portugal, to revive a struggling house. On her arrival, she placed an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the chapel. From that gesture flowed everything else — a ministry among the poor and vulnerable, the introduction of the first Fridays of the month as days of prayer and devotion, and an extraordinary mystical life that she kept almost entirely hidden.
Sr. Gudula Busch (left) from Germany, who passed away in 2023, knew her writings intimately. She credited the perseverance of her 61 years of religious life to Maria Droste zu Vischering, whom she described as “a fully normal Good Shepherd sister with lots of work, relatively little time for prayer and study of spiritual writings — she had a striking personality with rough edges. She literally worked herself to death and loved without limit“. Following her death on June 8, 1899, the very feast of the Sacred Heart she had spent her life promoting, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart.
Maria Droste’s legacy reaches far beyond Portugal, where sisters, friends, and neighbors still gather at Casa Irmã Maria in Porto to pray at her relics. This year, at the spirituality center there, a triduum of prayer, music, and celebration was held for her feast day — ending with Mass, a game tracing her life, and a visit from the Bishop of Porto*.
In Lebanon, a mother named Huda watches her four children, who once struggled to read, thrive at the Good Shepherd Social Center: “The center has become a place where my children feel safe, respected, and motivated.” In Angola and Mozambique, the Sister Maria of the Divine Heart Community and the Sister Maria Droste Community transform the lives of women and their families through skills training.
In the Philippines, the Maria Droste Wellness Center continues to provide healthcare services to our elderly sisters, while the former novitiate, Maria Droste House (above), in Itaosy, Madagascar, bearing her name, reminds young people in formation of the call to a life lived with generosity.
Miraculously, in Mexico, Mercedes Isabel López EcheverrÃa (left), who spent nearly ten years in pain, fear, and anxiety as she suffered serious health problems, credits the intercession of Blessed MarÃa for having survived a nine-hour surgery in February 2025 and making a full recovery.
Aguchita: Fidelity to the End
The most recently beatified of the three, Aguchita was born in Peru in 1920. A teacher and pastoral worker, she gave herself especially to rural indigenous communities and poor women in the Peruvian jungle. On September 27, 1990, she was murdered by the Shining Path guerrilla movement while carrying out her mission in La Florida. She was beatified in that same town in 2022, Pope Francis confirming that her killing was motivated by hatred of the faith.
On June 13, 2026, approximately seventy young people from the Deanery of Chanchamayo gathered at her sanctuary for a vocational day under the theme “We were born to serve, we live to love.” Walking the route of her martyrdom, they discovered how her testimony continues to inspire choices marked by love, solidarity, and commitment to others. In Madagascar, a preschool (below) bears her name, passing her values — faith, courage, respect, service — to the youngest children in education.
One Heritage, Many Faces
Together, these three Blesseds express the breadth of the Good Shepherd mission today. Maria Droste reminds us that prayer must open the heart to concrete compassion. Marie-Thérèse shows that hidden fidelity can sustain communities through transition and pain. Aguchita teaches that love for those most at risk may demand courage, truth, and even the gift of one’s own life. In them, we recognize their inspirational lives as companions for the journey.
At the Akhanani Good Shepherd Mission in South Africa, partners-in-mission and children prayed with these blessed women in mind and reflected on the way they “led with love, walked in the footsteps of Jesus, and remained faithful to their calling.” That same recognition echoes from Portugal to the Philippines, from Peru to Angola — wherever sisters and partners-in-mission educate children, accompany women, welcome families, advocate for justice, and pray for a wounded world.
*Read more about this year’s events here.
