The following is Rita’s sharing of what she recalls happened to her as told to her by her mother.
In the beginning of February 1960, the Mayor, Ignacio Benavente, announced from a loud speaker that was secured high up on a pole in Susupe Village, that there was a measles outbreak on the island of Saipan. The announcement informed the community that if anyone contracted measles, they should be isolated from the rest of the family. I was 10 years old at the time and in the 4th grade at Mount Carmel School.
About two days after the announcement, Sr. Trinidad Benavente, my teacher at the time, sent a note to my mother to pick me up at school because I had a high fever. Throughout the night I continued to run a high fever. The next day, my brother David also had a high fever. I recollect being placed in a separate room in our house with my brother. My uncle and father’s brother, Dr. Calistro Cabrera, came to visit and brought some apples and oranges. My mother gave my brother and I an apple. This was a rare treat for us, so I was over- joyed to have been given an apple. I particularly remember enjoying its smell and rubbing the apple with my hands when my Mom left the room. This is the last thing I can remember.
Based on my mother’s account of what transpired afterwards, this is what happened. Mom returned to the room shortly after giving us the apples, with some soup for us to eat. She saw the apple at my side which had slipped out of my hand. She asked me to sit up to eat, but I did not respond. She then asked me to open my mouth so she could feed me and I just stared at her blankly. She continued to speak to me to elicit a response, but none came, though my eyes were still wide open. She held my face and turned it around to face her directly. She spoke to me loudly and called
my name repeatedly. By this time, she had become very worried, when she realized that I was not focused or responding to her at all. She then ran out to Tun Ignacio Benavente’s house, the Mayor, who was our next door neighbor, to use their phone. She called the Municipal Police for medical help. The police jeep arrived shortly and took us to the Chalan Kanoa Dispensary, which is where the U.S. Post Office is now located. My mother carried me into the dispensary and I was placed on a hospital bed. She told me that as soon as she laid me down on the bed, I began to have seizures. Immediately, I was placed in an ambulance and transported to the NOB (Naval) Hospital located on Navy Hill. (The place where the hospital was once located, is now the home of the Maturana MMB Sisters.)
It was a heart-breaking moment for my family when the doctors placed me in an oxygen tent and informed my mother that I was in an unconsciousness state. Fr. Arnold Bendowski was notified and he came almost immediately and anointed me with the Sacra- ment of the Sick. My school and the Mercedarian Sisters were notified by Fr. Arnold about my condition, and news spread quickly around the whole island that I was dying. Sr. Bertha Salazar, Sr. Remedios Castro and some other Mercedarian Sisters came to visit me and placed a round medal with a relic of Mother Margarita on my chest. They prayed with my family. They comforted my parents sharing with them that the Sisters and the whole school were praying for the intercession of Mother Margarita Maturana. They handed my mother a prayer book produced by Mother Margarita and a picture of her and asked my mother to continue to pray for Mother Margarita’s intercession. By this time, I was very ill and my whole body was covered with the measles.
My mother and father along with family members, the Mercedarian Sisters and the school continued to pray for the intercession of Mother Margarita. My mother shared how they rubbed the relic over my chest while reading the Book of Psalms, pleading for Mother Margarita’s intercession.
While they prayed, family members took turns holding a stick in my mouth to prevent me from biting my tongue during seizures that took over my body periodically. My lips were chapped and cracked from the continuous high fever. My mother or another family member would frequently moisten my lips using wet gauze soaked in blessed water taken from the grotto where a statue of Santa Lourdes is placed in As Teo on Saipan.
A few days after February 11, 1960, while still unconscious, my parents, my older sister, and other family members were still by my side praying and holding the stick in my mouth, when the nurse came in to check my vitals. She suddenly dropped what she was holding and rushed to notify the doctor that she could hardly detect my pulse. A Dr. Smith came to my side and pried my eye open and looked into it. In doubt, he grabbed his keys out of his pocket and pressed them re- ally hard under my foot to see if I would respond. My mother recalls that he pressed so hard she wanted to cry because, she imagined it had to be very painful. He raised my leg high and dropped it from a distance, shaking his head when my body gave no response. Dr. Jose T. Villagomez and Dr. Francisco T. Palacios who were assisting Dr. Smith were present at this time.
It was a moment every family member of mine dreaded, most especially my parents. “She’s gone, I’m so sorry” Dr. Smith told them. At the doctor’s pronouncement, everyone was in tears and family members quickly passed the word around that I had died. I was told I stopped breathing for fourteen (14) minutes. The oxygen tent was removed. My lifeless body was being prepared to be sent home for burial.
As is a customary tradition, my family waited for Nanan Chong, my grandmother, to arrive at the hospital to give me her blessing, with a sign of the cross on my forehead before my body was removed from the hospital for burial. Before she could arrive, fourteen minutes later, my lifeless little body signaled a very faint, barely visible, sign of life. This was followed by a short, quick spasm and finally a breath of life! everyone around was in disbelief and with mixed emotions; afraid to be overjoyed as they could not believe what they were seeing or hearing. Immediately, I was placed back in the oxygen tent.
Dr. Smith examined me and told my parents that because I was without oxygen for more than several minutes, fluid may have entered my brain and I would likely be in a vegetative state. My father then hugged him and said in Chamorro to “please keep my daughter alive even if just for me to hold her and look at her always.”
For five more days I remained unconscious. I learned some of my siblings at home were also ill by this time. My mother had to leave me to care for them as well and prepare some of my bedding. While she was gone, my right hand started to move and I reached out to Nan Ame, my Dad’s sister, who was by my bedside. She said I was trying to give her something. My older sister Margaret was by my side attending to me as well. My sister told me I started saying words but no one could understand me. She said I was calling her and my aunt by different names. Nan Ame and Margaret both shared how people gathered around me to hear me speak. My aunt said, although I mumbled words that were difficult to understand, my hand kept trying to give her something. She said she opened her hand and pretended to receive what I was trying to give her. She asked me what it was that I put in her hand. “Hafa esti?”, she questioned. She understood one of my words as “lisåyu” which means “a rosary”. She asked me more ques- tions and understood that what I was telling her was that I was praying the rosary with someone at the Church. Anxious to hear me speak, they kept asking me questions to keep me talk- ing. They said I told them the same thing over and over again, that I came from Church praying the rosary with Santa Bernadita. I later told them that Santa Bernadita told me “to go home because it was not time and to go home and pray”.
Around the time I awoke and started to speak, my mother was walking from our house in Susupe to the Daidai Store in Chalan Kanoa to get white material to make pillow cases for me at the hospital. As she walked down the street, she could barely see the Post Office, but was able to see my Uncle Segundu Sablan, her brother (who was the Postmaster at the time), standing in the middle of the road signaling her to hurry up, because there was a message from the hospital. My mother remembered that her brother was standing about three hundred feet away but her anxiety of not knowing what news she was going to receive, made her walk seem like she would never reach him.
As my Mother approached him, he excitedly said, “Go back to the hospital because Italang is talking.” (Italang is my nickname that my family calls me.) Feeling very elated, Mom went to the Municipal Police Office and asked for their help to take her to the hospital.
It was such a relief for my parents to receive this news; that not only was I awake, but I was talking again. The doctors had already prepared my family for the likelihood of my vegetative state, having stopped breathing for awhile and being declared dead. But God acted through the power of prayer and I believe that it is a miracle through the intercession of Mother Margarita Maturana, that I was given back life and did not end up in a vegetative state.
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Mount Carmel School was established by the Mercedarian Sisters. Today, the high school building is now named after Mother Margarita Maria Maturana. In 1960 while I was very ill, the whole school prayed for me. It is my belief that as Mother Margarita had promised her fellow sisters that she would “help them from heaven”, so she did. Their prayers were answered and I re- gained my life back. I am grateful for the prayers of the school led by the Mercedarian Sisters.
It also does not seem coincidental that what was once the NBO (Naval) Hospital, where I lay very ill and was declared dead, and is the same place where Mother Margarita performed her miracle on me, is now the home of the Mercedarian Missionaries of Berriz, called the Maturana House of Prayer.
Sometime in July 2006, the late Sr. Remedios Castro, MMB called me at home and informed me that Venerable Mother Margarita Maturana would be beatified on October 22, 2006 and insisted that I go to Spain to attend the beatification. My response to her was that “I would pray Sr. Bedu, but it might be difficult for me.” Two weeks later, I met with her at the Joeten-Daidai Social Hall at Mt. Carmel Cathedral and she again encouraged me to go. She said, “Put fabot’ Itang, prisisu na un hånåo”, “Please Itang, it is important that you go”. She further encouraged me by reminding me that I “must go because I received a favor from her.” Through her encouragement, I was able to at- tend the beatification and give glory back to God for sending Mother Margarita my way.
I feel great gratitude to God, for who I am today, because of the Mercedarian Sisters. They taught me and molded me in the ways of God as they did many others. Many of us were educated and influenced by the effort and courage of Mother Margarita and her Missionaries on Saipan. The presence of the MMB Sisters here is a continual encouragement to my faith.
Today, I am graced with good health, a husband and five children, and eight grandchildren.
Rita Cabrera Guerrero, San Vicente, Saipan
(We thank Rita for sharing her story. Would you be willing to share your story? Would you consider writing a letter to Pope Francis so that Mother Margarita will one day be acknowledged as a Saint in the Catholic Church? Committee for the Canonization of Mother Margarita Maturana)
