“She had a heart for souls”: The life and cause of Servant of God Maria Esperanza de Bianchini
“Maria Esperanza exemplified the beatitudes,” says Fr. Timothy Byerley, “and therefore was continually reconciling people with God and with one another.”
Servant of God Maria Esperanza de Bianchini (1928-2004), a mystic and visionary from Barrancas, Venezuela, claimed her first mystical experience at the age of five, saying she had a vision of St. Therese of Lisieux giving her a rose. When she was twelve years old she reported having an apparition of the Blessed Mother. Throughout her life, her reported mystical gifts included healings, prophecy, reading of souls, discernment of spirits, the stigmata, transverberation, bilocation, the fragrance of flowers and perfume emanating from her person, miraculous materialization of roses, and visions and locutions of Jesus, Mary and the saints.
As a young woman, she desired to become a nun. But, in a mystical experience with Christ, she was told that it was her mission to be a wife and mother. She met her husband Geo Bianchini Gianni in Rome in 1955. They had seven children.
Maria Esperanza became known worldwide after 1984, when she and 150 other people reported seeing an apparition of the Blessed Mother at Betania, a farm in Venezuela. Her title was “Mary, Virgin and Mother, Reconciler of all Peoples and Nations.” The diocesan bishop, Msgr. Pio Bello Ricardo, approved the apparition in 1987, in consultation with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI), who was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the time.
