Mother Margarita Maria; Started Hospital in Duarte

Margarita Maria, the diminutive mother superior who fled the terrors of the Mexican Revolution to found a haven in Southern California for girls suffering from tuberculosis, is dead at age 85.

She died Wednesday and her funeral Mass will be celebrated Saturday at the chapel of Santa Teresita Hospital in Duarte, a hospital she started in 1930 at the suggestion of her then-archbishop, John Cantwell.

With a $22,000 loan, Mother Margarita began her sanitarium on a three-acre farm, with farmhouse, garage and two small utility buildings.

From 12 beds, the facility expanded to 131 and then--as the scourge of tuberculosis was conquered--to a full-service hospital with 283 beds on 17 acres.

In 1981, three years before she was to retire as administrator, she led a drive that produced a five-story medical office building on the grounds.

She had undertaken that project when Santa Teresita began suffering through lean economic times and she needed to supplement the hospital’s income.

“She’s a hard person to say no to,” said Duarte City Manager Ken Caresio in 1986 as he reviewed her fund-raising accomplishments.

A miracle worker? he was asked. “She must have a connection with somebody.”

Mother Margarita Maria was born in the small town of Ameca in the state of Jalisco to deeply religious parents. She was invited to join the Carmelita Order in Guadalajara when she was 20.

But shortly after she took her vows she was forced to flee the anti-Catholic forces prevalent during the Cristero Rebellion, a war between government troops and guerrillas.

She came to the United States in 1927 amid stories of priests and nuns facing firing squads in Mexico.

Settling in Duarte, she and Mother Luisa Josefa founded a congregation of Carmelite nuns and then the hospital, originally for tubercular girls.

“By Christmas (of 1930) we had 16 patients,” she said in a 1986 interview. “The government paid us $1.05 for each patient for each day of treatment.” She recalled making bedside tables from fruit crates and using what beds were available for the patients while the nuns slept on boards.

Before the hospital ceased as a tuberculosis facility in 1955 it had treated more than 2,000 victims of that disease.

“She was a woman of great faith and vision,” said Sister Vincent Marie, Mother Margarita Maria’s successor as administrator of Santa Teresita. “She had that rare combination of spirituality and business.”

Mother Margarita Maria had a slightly more earthy view of herself and her accomplishments.

“You’ve got to have problems or it’s not God’s work,” she said.