As a little girl in León, Nicaragua, Mother Adela Galindo would never have pictured herself delivering a keynote speech at the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis.

The foundress of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary (SCTJM) gazed out at nearly 60,000 people gathered at Lucas Oil Stadium July 21, 2024, on the closing day of the congress. Standing only 5-foot-2 on the massive stage, her wide gray eyes danced with emotion under the taupe folds of her veil. The five-day event stemmed from the U.S. Catholic bishops’ efforts to deepen devotion to Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist.

“What a pressure!” Mother Adela joked, sending laughter rippling across the stadium.

But the words flowed out of her nonetheless: a belief that had been her life raft through war and grief, now spoken as a call to Catholics from across the nation. “No darkness is greater than the light of the Eucharist … no violence is greater than the peace that flows from the heart of Our Lord.”

She would know. She survived the depths of 20th-century violence, her very vocation arising out of struggles and miracles alike.

Born in León on Nov. 21, 1961, Mother Adela’s teenage years were marked by the enmity between the Somoza dictatorship, which controlled her native country from 1936 to 1979, and dissident-communist Sandinistas. Despite the hardships of the civil war, which took center stage in her day-to-day in the form of death threats and the loss of loved ones, she would go on to emigrate to the United States, earn a master’s degree and three doctorates, and eventually found a religious order with convents in the United States and around the world. 2026 marks Mother Adela’s 41st anniversary of consecrated life.

‘She Is a Gift to My Heart’

Asked what Mother Adela means to him, Brother Iñigo Johnpaul Isla says, “For me, [she] has simply always been my mother.”

Becoming the first professed SCTJM religious brother in 2022, the 27-year-old Mexican American has known Mother Adela since he was 7 years old. “I’ve laughed with her and cried with her. She corrects me when I make mistakes and calls me to more every day. She is a gift to my heart.”

Brother Iñigo Johnpaul is just one of approximately 80 religious (sisters, brothers and priests) belonging to the international religious congregation Mother Adela founded in Miami in 1990. 

They come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, at minimum bilingual in English and Spanish. The SCTJM has a unique Marian spirituality, promising “total Marian identification and availability.” They work in parishes, schools and diocesan administration and have a large and active lay branch. In Miami, the SCTJM is known for recording music, baking fresh bread and hosting weekly Eucharistic adoration flooded by young people. 

In her early 60s, Mother Adela is an accomplished woman even by secular standards, having received the keys to the cities of Miami and Doral, Florida, as well as Church honors such as Dame of the Holy Sepulchre. As a mother foundress, she recognizes how everything in her life carries significance not only for herself but for those she leads. 

“What the Lord works in the foundress through her whole life is the ‘school’ that is going to be manifested in a blossomed manner through the charism that she’s supposed to give — not only to those who will come after her, but to the Church,” Mother Adela says in conversation with the Register.

One such milestone occurred when Adela became part of the Charismatic Renewal at 12, deepening her closeness to the Holy Spirit, a hallmark of SCTJM spirituality. As it turned out, it was a good thing the 12-year-old developed this reliance on the Holy Spirit: Her time “living the Acts of the Apostles” was just beginning.

War-Wracked Youth

“It only takes one day for peace to be lost,” warns Mother Adela. “It only takes one minute,” she adds, before recalling a poignant story.

In the blink of an eye, she remembers the civil war charging into her quiet life as a teenager in Nicaragua. 

For Adela, who held a prominent place in the Charismatic youth community, even something as innocent as carrying a guitar to a prayer group became life-threatening. Both the pro-dictatorship and Sandinista sides associated music with politics, and a guitar was as good as a target on her back. 

She remembers striding through war-wracked neighborhoods, straining her ears, on the alert for any signs of approaching violence. Not that this deterred the Catholic community: If they were barred from assembling in churches, they met in houses. 

Sometimes, however, the war hit very close to home.

Adela was worried about her good friend, her school volleyball captain. The other teen had withdrawn into herself, losing her usual passion for her favorite sport. Her once-joyful eyes had gone bitter.

When Adela arrived at her friend’s house to find out what was going on, the other girl’s reaction was cryptic. “I’m going to tell this to you because you’ve been my friend for so many years.” She set down a large box on the table. 

Adela couldn’t believe what was inside.

A machine gun.

“I’m leaving tonight,” the girl said. “I’m joining the forces of the Sandinistas.”

Adela’s heart beat faster. “Do you know you’re going to kill people or you’re going to be killed? You’re so young; you can study, become a good professional; you can do something for our country from another angle!”

The other girl laughed. “Keep living in your fantasy.” She lifted the gun. “This is the only way.”

Adela grabbed her rosary. “I chose to fight, too, but with a different weapon. This weapon has more power than your machine gun. It has the power to change hearts, which is the way to peace.”

Her old friend wouldn’t listen. Still, they parted with a hug, her friend reluctantly permitting Adela to pray for her.

“Two days after, she was killed,” Mother Adela recounts in her retelling to the Register. 

All these years later, Mother Adela shares the story with young people on retreat. One of her community’s priorities is sharing the Rosary with children, hoping they will respond.

Spurred on by the latest in a series of death threats, young Adela emigrated to Albany, New York, in March 1979, after graduating high school, eventually reuniting with family in Miami. By 1983, she was working with a Charismatic group based in Immaculate Conception Catholic Parish in Hialeah, Florida. Adela facilitated yearly mission trips for young people, visiting impoverished areas of Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic’s capital, where food and medicine were needed.

Little did she know that these pilgrimages would put into motion the beginning of everything. 

Vocational Call

Aug. 14, 1985: Stopping for dinner, the pilgrims to Santo Domingo were met by a husband-and-wife team whose charismatic gifts were well-regarded. During the previous year’s pilgrimage, Adela had been strongly convicted of having a vocation to religious life, despite always having assumed married life awaited. Without telling the couple about her situation, Adela prayed with them.

Mother Adela recounts that both she and the woman experienced a startling vision. 

“I began to see internally, not with my eyes open, this humungous heart,” Mother Adela recalls. “I knew it was the Sacred Heart because it had a very open wound. I was walking alone towards that wound.” 

That was as far as the other woman’s vision went. However, Adela’s included more detail. 

In the vision, it was as if she were beckoning someone. A group of young women strode forward, walking into the Sacred Heart. A second time, Adela beckoned, and this time a crowd of laypeople responded, from young people to families to singles. The third time, a group of men walked into the Sacred Heart.

The man from Santo Domingo praying with her started prophesying, she recalls. “The prophecy was all over my life: from the beginning, from my conception, until that moment.” The prophecy included, “I have formed you through many experiences in life to prepare you for what is coming.” 

“Of course, I cried my eyes out,” she says. “I knew something was coming, but I didn’t know what.”

The following morning, Aug. 15, Adela was struck by a mysterious illness. The doctor believed it was food poisoning.

Regardless, Adela was determined to attend the closing Mass of the pilgrimage celebrating the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pale and nauseous, she managed to make confession. She told the priest she felt something wasn’t right: “I have a sense that the enemy is trying to stop something.”

Incredibly, immediately after the priest prayed with her, her symptoms ceased.

During Mass, according to their pilgrimage tradition, they consecrated the accomplishments of the mission trip to the Blessed Mother. Additionally, Adela made a private vow to consecrated life, speaking aloud in her own words, holding a rosary and candle. “I am the only one that has made vows in tennis shoes, jeans and a T-shirt with Our Lady on it,” she jokes. Her private vow is the basis of the SCTJM formula today.

To her bewilderment, young pilgrims were in tears, another rested in the Holy Spirit, and then, to top it all off, the lights flickered, according to her recollection — and in total darkness, Adela’s candle glowed.

Out of nowhere, two young women shouted, “That means that the Lord is going to use you to be a light to others.”

On Sept. 3, after their return to Hialeah, those same two young adults, Maria Antonia and Carmen, spoke up during their prayer group. “We can’t take our minds off what we saw on Aug. 15. We’ve been praying and praying, and the Lord is calling us to do the same as you.” At their words, a newcomer, Ana Margarita, jumped in as well.

“I realized, ‘Wait a minute, this is getting out of my hands,’” Mother Adela recalls as she remembers her shock. “I went to speak to the archbishop.”

After a long road of discernment alongside the Archdiocese of Miami, in 1990, Archbishop Edward McCarthy approved the SCTJM as a public association of the faithful in view of becoming a religious congregation of diocesan right. 

“Do you understand what that makes you?” he asked Adela. “You are the foundress.”

A religious congregation of diocesan right as of 2000, the SCTJM has expanded to four other countries besides the United States, including Italy, Poland, Paraguay and Spain. Mother Adela continues to invite young people to let God transform their lives, and they continue to respond.

‘My Spiritual Mother’

Sister Lily, 23, was a recently converted atheist from Illinois when she attended an event for college students where Mother Adela was speaking. “I couldn’t even pick up my pen, and my heart was pounding in my chest,” she recounts. The 18-year-old “felt like the other 100 college students disappeared, and it was just her and I in the room.” 

“I understood by the grace of a conviction in my heart that I was listening to my spiritual mother.” She adds, “To this day, to think about it, I am overcome by such an immense gratitude that brings me to tears.”

Sister Ana Margarita Lanzas, one of the three original young women to join the SCTJM, went from fallen-away Catholic to current vicar general. When she met Adela more than 40 years ago, Ana Margarita had recently returned to the Church after a difficult period in her life. 

“I am in debt with Mother forever. She’s the only one who really believed in what God was doing in me.” She adds, “Without her ‘Yes,’ I would not be here. If that younger Adela would have closed the door, I don’t know where I would be.”

‘Behold’ Before the Congress

What went through Mother Adela’s mind that last day of the National Eucharistic Congress, as she spoke the words: “We need a new Pentecost”?

Was she remembering her high-school graduation punctuated by explosions? The Catholic community who risked everything to practice the faith? 

By the end of the talk, she was holding back tears. “Our Lady needs us to cry out to the world: Behold the Lamb of God. Behold my Eucharistic Son. Behold the Heart that has loved you so much. Forget not his love and do not forget to love. Because only love that is visible is credible.”

The attendees rose to their feet, applauding.