The youngest of eight, and raised by her elder sister, Mary Ann was born in Quito, Ecuador, which had been brought under Spanish control in 1534. Ann lived an imagenable life of prayer, She joined the Secular Franciscans and led a life of prayer, a strong devoty to our Blessed Virgin, and penance at home, leaving her parents’ house only to go to church and to perform some work of charity.
*She received the habit of the Third Order from the Franciscans in her native town of Quito. It is reported that the fast which she kept was so strict that she took scarcely an ounce of dry bread every eight or ten days. The food which miraculously sustained her life, as in the case of Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Rose of Lima, was, according to the sworn testimony of many witnesses, the Eucharist alone, which she received every morning in Holy Communion. At some point early in her life, Mariana entered the Third Order of St. Francis and took the religious name of Marianna of Jesus at that time.
*Mariana possessed an ecstatic gift of prayer and is said to have been able to predict the future, see distant events as if they were passing before her, read the secrets of hearts, cure diseases by a mere sign of the Cross or by sprinkling the sufferer with holy water, and at least once restored a dead person to life. *During the 1645 earthquakes and subsequent epidemics in Quito, she publicly offered herself as a victim for the city and died shortly thereafter. It is also reported that, on the day she died, her sanctity was revealed in a wonderful manner: Immediately after her death, a pure white lily sprang up from her blood, blossomed and bloomed, a prodigy which has given her the title of "The Lily of Quito". *The Republic of Ecuador has declared her a national heroine.
She established in Quito a clinic and a school for Africans and indigenous Americans. When a plague broke out, she nursed the sick and died.
She was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1950.
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