Sister Maria Troncatti embodies a profound motherhood, rooted in her intimacy with Jesus and nourished by constant prayer. This dimension leads her to bear witness to the Father's love with tenderness, so much so that she is affectionately called "Madrecita" by the Shuar Indians. With patience she educates to peace and forgiveness in a context of conflict, welcoming the needy and offering affection and security. Her Marian filiality with Mary Help of Christians is transformed into an educational motherhood that makes her "helper" for the people entrusted to her.

Her motherliness....

Her missionary zeal...

Sister Maria's missionary vocation was born as a child, reading the life of missionaries in the Salesian Bulletin, which nourished in her the desire to become a Daughter of Mary Help of Christians "missionary among savages and lepers".

In the Community of Nizza Monferrato, where she was in 1922 as a nurse, Sister Maria Troncatti received from Mother Caterina Daghero the destination, no longer among the lepers as she dreamed, but among the people of Ecuador who inhabit the Amazon rainforest. Despite the changed perspective, the missionary impetus with which he accepted the obedience that, in 1936 before leaving, he expressed to his family by writing: "with all my heart I go: I always have my thoughts on the mission".

"With all her heart she was the yardstick of her missionary passion, so much so that, when Mother General sent her to work in the Amazon jungle, she affirmed that she was 'happier every day' than her religious and missionary vocation" (Mother Chiara Cazzuola, Circ.1046)

"Sister Maria Troncatti, passionate about the Salesian mission, infects the people and her own sisters by radiating her great love to young people, so that they may be happy in time and eternity. Her boldness and the courage of her faith nourish even in young women the commitment to be 'true missionaries'" (Mother Chiara Cazzuola, Circ.1046).

Artisan of Reconciliation and Peace

With her strong desire to "help people to encounter Jesus" and to "give him souls", in 47 years of missionary life Sister Maria found herself faced with the "law of the forest", the revenge that reigned supreme between settlers and Shuar, which she faced with a tireless work of education, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace between the two sides: "It cares for one and the other indiscriminately, helps them to live in a more fraternal way. She dialogues and advises women farmers to sow words of goodness, justice, brotherhood and equality among the people, knowing that, through the educational power of women, it is possible to form future generations to a more respectful coexistence and acceptance of diversity" (Mother Chiara Cazzuola, Circ.1046).

Despite this, when the tensions between the two ethnic groups worsened at the end of the 1960s, she accepted the inspiration, generated by her mother's heart, to offer herself to God as a victim of reconciliation between the two peoples she loved so much. With the power of persuasion and goodness, Sister Maria managed to stop the nascent revenge and to be listened to as a messenger of peace and forgiveness.

The sign of peace between the two peoples is tangible after his death, caused by the crash of the plane with which he went to the Spiritual Exercises, in the rainbow that remains in the sky until the moment of his burial, and much more in the presence of the motherhouse that accompanies the settlers and Shuar in resuming to live together with a new force of fraternity, according to what he had taught them.