The incarnated beatitudes

"I would like to visit a prisoner who never receives any visitors," Viqui Molins asked, and they brought into the visiting room a boy who did not know who his father was, who did not know his mother because she died during childbirth and who crossed the Strait of Gibraltar hiding under a truck when he was 11 years old"I don't care if I get out of prison, because nobody is waiting for me outside," she told him, "and I don't care if I die because nobody will mourn me." Viqui replied that she would miss him. They saw each other every week for four years. The boy ended up calling her "Mom."

And so it was every day, for decades, in the life of the Teresian nun Maria Victoria Molins. Looking and hugging were her way of serving. Looking because, in her words, "only the one who looks can act, and there is a part of society that is invisible." And hugging with a huge smile as a way of saying everything and saying it well. With Peio Sánchez, parish priest of the parish of Santa Ana, and hundreds of volunteers, they set up a "field hospital" in the style of those that Pope Francis asked for in large cities: churches also open to host and make the Sermon on the Mount a reality. During the pandemic, we were lucky to have Santa Anna. Yesterday, Peio reported the death of Viqui with a very typical touch of humor: "His heart has failed him. It was to be expected, because he has been the one who has given the most, his heart."

This country loses an extraordinary woman and gains a historic example of commitment to the poorest. The Viqui Molins Foundation has the difficult task of continuing to see with her eyes and act with her coherence, now that she is no longer with us. And the Church has a new saint.