Sister Mary of the Trinity: The Mystic of Pretoria

The sainthood cause of Sr Mary of the Trinity, a 20th-century mystic who died 1942 in Jerusalem, means that Pretoria may one day have a locally-born saint. This is the amazing spiritual journey — from South Africa to the Holy Land — of Sr Mary of the Trinity.

The recent opening of the sainthood cause of Sr Mary of the Trinity by the patriarchate of Jerusalem means that Pretoria may well have its own locally-born saint one day.

The Poor Clare Sister, who is regarded as one of the great mystics of the 20th century, was born in Pretoria in 1901. The opening of her sainthood cause was announced by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the patriarch of Jerusalem, in an edict on November 29, 2024.

Sr Mary of the Trinity was born as Louisa Jaques on April 26, 1901, in Pretoria. Her father, Numa, was the founder of the Calvinist mission in Pretoria and Johannesburg. Louisa’s mother, Elisa, died shortly after giving birth to her, so the girl was raised by her aunt in Switzerland.

After completing her schooling, Louisa worked as a secretary and governess. In May 1920, she returned to South Africa, but left the following year to care for her ailing aunt.

Louisa was a level-headed woman of culture with a fine artistic mind, but also very sensitive. She was prone to poor health due to her lingering tuberculosis. A woman of strong will, she relentlessly sought the truth, both moral and religious — a quest that sometimes brought her to tears.

She also experienced disappointments at work, had a doomed infatuation for a married man, and with her working in Milan and her family far away in Switzerland, South Africa and the United States, Louisa was lonely.

Night of despair and hope

During the night of Sunday, February 14, 1926, Louisa was in deep despair about what she felt was the absence of God. She later recalled how she was rejecting God: “There is no God. What people say about him is nothing but a farce. Life is not worth living. That’s what led me to think of a long chain of unnecessary sacrifices and struggles: God is not there! I knew despair! To die, to die…”

But this, a spiritual nadir, was the beginning of her conversion and vocation — or, as she called it, “my weaknesses and the Lord’s mercy”. In the midst of that despair, Louisa, still a Calvinist, suddenly had a vision of a woman clothed in the habit of the Poor Clares.

“I saw the shadowy form of a woman coming into the room as if through a French window. She approached quickly and noiselessly, standing near the foot of my bed without touching it. She had wide sleeves, with her hands crossed inside them. I couldn’t see her face because she seemed to be wearing a kind of cowl, something I had never seen before — perhaps her veil was simply lowered,” Sr Mary of the Trinity later recalled.

“She was tall, straight, and panting as if she had been running. From time to time, she turned her head towards the window by which she had entered, as though someone were waiting for her outside. It seemed that she wore a plain cord as a belt, and she had no cloak. Her robe fell straight. I believe it was dark brown, though I could have been mistaken. I saw only an outline rather than specific details.

“The nun frightened me terribly. I thought it was death, coming to claim me. She must have stayed part of the night, for when I awoke after dozing for a while, it seemed she was still there. I quickly closed my eyes to avoid seeing her any longer! She said nothing, but a ray of light had penetrated my despair.”

From that moment on, Louisa was drawn to Catholic churches, feeling an irresistible pull which she later recognised as the Eucharist. “I had no idea what was going on, but I was drawn there,” she recalled. Still, at that point she had no desire to become a Catholic.

Conversion to Catholicism

Soon after, her friend Verena Pfenniger converted to Catholicism. On a holiday they spent together in the Alps, Louisa was experiencing an interior struggle. Verena noticed this and counselled her friend her that Our Lord “makes himself very small to come to us, hidden under the appearance of bread, so as to help us… If only you knew.”

With these words Louisa felt a desire to receive the Holy Eucharist. She requested to be instructed in the faith, and a year later, on March 19, 1928, she was received into the Church and received her first Communion.

The conversion distressed Louisa’s family, which in turn pained her. “I could have escaped from it, because I did not at all see it as the will of God, which I was seeking in a groping way. But then I would have lost an inner peace deep within myself, a peace without which I could not live,” she later remembered.

At the time Louisa was working for a Milanese countess, but now heard the call to the religious life. She began visiting various convents to discern her vocation. In 1929, a congregation accepted her, but Louisa’s persistent bronchial ailment forced them to release her.

Two years later, she joined the Society of the Heart of Mary and completed a five-year novitiate. Known as Sr Monique Marie du Bon Pasteur, she taught in a Catholic school in the Swiss city of Neuchâtel. But soon she realised that her true vocation was in the contemplative life.

A priest, Fr Maurice Zundel, who wrote books on mystical theology, encouraged her to join the Poor Clares. In 1936, she briefly entered their convent at Évian, France, but was soon unjustly dismissed.

Return to South Africa

Louisa returned to South Africa with her sister Alice on August 10, 1937, and worked for three Jewish families as a tutor. She considered joining the Poor Clares in Johannesburg, but they delayed her application. Instead, inspired by the writings of Charles de Foucauld, she went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, arriving there on June 24, 1938.

In Jerusalem, she stopped in the chapel of the Poor Clares’ convent, where Foucauld had stayed, for adoration. A Sister joined her and, after a brief conversation, spontaneously asked Louisa whether she wished to enter the convent. She did. On June 30 — six days after arriving in the Holy Land — she joined the community. Two years later, she professed vows. Taking the name Mary of the Trinity, she found direction in the daily routine of prayer, charity, silence and service.

Messages from Jesus

In the convent, located on the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, she also experienced inner locutions of Christ. He told her: “You must forget yourself and discover my voice”. In January 1940, her spiritual director, Franciscan Father Sylvère van den Broeck, encouraged the nun to write down her spiritual reflections.

Sr Mary of the Trinity died on June 16, 1942, of typhoid fever. She was 41 and had been in the Poor Clares’ convent for only four years. In one of those inner locutions, Jesus had told her: “Be my little seed planted in Jerusalem, to bear fruit in my Church.” That instruction is inscribed on her tombstone at the Santa Chiara convent’s cemetery in Jerusalem’s Hanock Albeck Street.

Her reputation for sanctity spread over the years, and the publication in 1954 of her written reflections, under the title The Spiritual Legacy of Sister Mary of the Holy Trinity and edited by Fr van den Broeck, brought her to the attention of readers around the world and across generations.

The book is still in print and, with the launch of her sainthood cause, the spiritual writings of Sr Mary of the Trinity, the daughter of Pretoria, will doubtless attract a new keen audience.

Published in the March 2025 issue of The Southern Cross magazine