María de Jesús de Ágreda, the mysterious "Blue Nun"

In 1629, the Franciscans of the Vieja Isleta convent, near the future city of Albuquerque, were surprised to see a delegation from the Jumano Indian tribe on their doorstep. The missionaries had never ventured into the remote region of what was to become New Mexico. However, in hesitant Spanish, the natives told them of their desire to have Catholic priests visit their tribe to baptise them. The religious questioned them, and discovered that these people, who had never been evangelised and who said they had never had any contact with Europeans, had been taught catechism by a young, beautiful woman, a Westerner wearing a blue cape. This detail reminded the superior of a letter recently sent by the archbishop of Mexico, in which he asked him if he had heard rumours about the presence in New Spain of a woman evangeliser. And so begins the mystery of the Lady in Blue, also known as as the "Blue Nun".

Les raisons d'y croire :

• María de Jesús made her religious profession in 1620, and it was evident and certain that the 16-year-old would not leave her convent until her death in 1665, a fact to which her entire community, her confessor and her superiors could testify.

• However, no sooner had María made her profession than strange phenomena began to occur (levitations, ecstasies and raptures), attracting the attention of the Inquisition, which was suspicious of such events for fear of simulation or diabolical counterfeiting. She was kept under close surveillance by ecclesiastics used to unmasking deceptions.

• When she woke up from one of her ecstasies, Sister María told her confessor, Juan Jimenez Samaniego, her future biographer, that she had had what she thought was a strange and vivid dream that felt very real: she recalled going on a journey that was both instantaneous and very long, as she had time to contemplate countries and oceans, to feel the alternation of night and day, and the change of climate, before arriving in a region populated by pagans to whom she spoke of Christ, in their language, which she obviously did not know.

• According to her, this experience was repeated more than five hundred times, before ceasing in 1631. The young woman knew nothing of bilocation, which allows certain mystics to be physically present in two places at once, usually publicly praying in their convent, and busy elsewhere with various tasks, sometimes thousands of miles away, where bona fide witnesses observe them, before recognising them years later.

• María's reaction was remarkable: faithful to the Church's advice in such cases, she began by recounting everything under the cover of confession, knowing that a diabolical imposture disclosed in the sacrament would vanish, which was not the case - a proof that the phenomenon came from God.

• Despite the accuracy of her memories, María couldn't imagine for a moment that she had been transported to that faraway land, which she identified as New Spain, in America. She thought she was deluding herself and looked for proof. In one of her dreams, she remembers distributing to the natives a batch of rosaries that she kept in her cell. She went to check, convinced that they were in the drawer where she kept them, but after a meticulous search she had to face facts: the rosaries had disappeared and couldn't be found. She began to wonder about the possibility of inexplicable travels.

• Struck by the story, one of her superiors, Brother Sebastian Marcilla d'Agreda, decided to find out for himself. In 1627, he wrote to the Archbishop of Mexico, Francisco Mansoy y Zuniga, asking him if he had heard of a mysterious European woman evangelising Indian tribes. The archbishop received the letter in 1628 and passed on the request to the missions. His letter reached Albuquerque just as the Indian delegation was arriving at the Franciscans' door.

• The Indians' interrogations all described a young woman wearing a blue cloak, as in the portrait of a nun of the same order as María, displayed in the convent; they specified, however, that the woman in the image was old and that their visitor, who was very beautiful, was in her twenties.

• There was no doubt that the native had received a Christian education, as evidenced by their correct answers to the catechism questions. They explained that this lady showed them how to get to the Franciscans, of whose existence they were unaware, and told them to ask for priests to teach and baptise them. Their wish was granted shortly afterwards.

• While the missionaries were still more than a day's walk from the Jumano country, they were surprised to see their neophytes appear, having been warned of their arrival, they said, by the Lady in Blue.

• In the months that followed, the priests performed over two thousand baptisms. From 1631 onwards, having completed her mission, the Lady in Blue made no further appearances.

• One of the Franciscans in New Mexico, Alonso de Benavidès, took advantage of a return to Spain to investigate the Lady in Blue, on the pretext of looking for people who could help him find funds for the Indian missions. He was told about the abbess of the Franciscan nuns of Ágreda, who was passionate about the issue, which she seemed to know well, and who was very involved in helping the missionaries.

• But Mother María was very evasive when he questioned her and only agreed to talk about her bilocations under duress from her superiors, like all mystics who have had this kind of experience, which they avoid talking or boasting about - further proof of María 's honesty. As the conversations progressed, Father Alonso could not help but agree with everything the abbess had to say about New Spain, its people, beliefs, customs and traditions. He said that only someone who had lived there for years could speak of it with such accuracy. He was stunned when Sister María  described in detail the layout of his convent and the appearance of his brothers, whose name she knew too..

• Historians have managed, thanks to María 's accounts, to identify precisely the places she went to and the peoples she evangelised, showing that she went to West Texas and Eastern New Mexico, visiting the Texans, the Jumano, the Yamanas and the Chillescas, among others.

• Between 1635 and 1650, María was questioned at length three times by the Inquisition. Most of these interrogations concerned the revelations she claimed to have received directly from Our Lady from 1637 onwards. However, eighty questions related exclusively to the bilocations. They were not the subject of any accusation, nor were they ever called into question.

• The Indian tribes still have very vivid memories of the Lady in Blue, who has become the stuff of legend. It seems that María de Jesús de Ágreda returned to visit them twice after her death, in times of calamity, in the 1840s, when she was seen treating the sick during an epidemic, and again during the Second World War.