María Berenice Duque

María Berenice Duque Hencker was born Ana Julia Duque Hencker on 14 August 1898 in Salamina, in the department of Caldas, Colombia. She was the eldest of nineteen children of Antonio José Duque Botero, a farmer, and Ana Hencker Mejía. She grew up in a devout Catholic household in rural western Colombia at the turn of the twentieth century. Baptized in infancy, she was formed in the faith at home and in local Catholic schools, received the sacraments of initiation as a child, and from an early age expressed a desire for consecrated life and for service to the poor.

In 1917 she entered the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation in Medellín. She made her first profession of vows in 1919, taking the religious name María Berenice, and later pronounced perpetual vows. For more than two decades she lived as a Dominican sister, working mainly as a teacher and in community leadership. Her educational apostolate brought her into daily contact with abandoned children, the sick, and families living in poverty in Antioquia, and these encounters deepened her conviction that the most neglected required a dedicated religious presence.

With the approval of Church authorities she founded in 1943, in Medellín, the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Annunciation (Hermanitas de la Anunciación). The new institute was inspired by the mystery of the Annunciation and devoted to evangelization and to the integral care of the poorest, especially children, the elderly, the sick, and those on the margins of society. As foundress she formed the first members, shaped the congregation’s constitutions and spirit, and directed its early houses and works of charity and education. The congregation received diocesan recognition and subsequently developed as a community of humble service rather than of large institutions.

She remained the spiritual and practical guide of her sisters into advanced old age. María Berenice Duque Hencker died in Medellín on 25 July 1993, at the age of ninety-four. A cause for her beatification was later introduced. In December 2017 Pope Francis authorized the decree of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints recognizing that she had lived the theological and cardinal virtues to a heroic degree, and she was declared Venerable. She has not been beatified or canonized, and the Catholic Church has not assigned her an official feast day or patronages. She is remembered in Colombia as a teacher, foundress, and servant of the poor, and her congregation continues the work she began.