Maria de Ágreda Theological Institute
About the Institute
The Maria de Ágreda Theological Institute exists to form individuals for the service of the Church through academic study, prayer, and evangelization. The institute offers courses in philosophy and theology taught by professors who hold ecclesiastical licenses and doctoral degrees in their respective disciplines. Through this program of formation, seminarians are able to pursue their studies within the Diocese of Las Cruces while remaining close to the people and communities they are preparing to serve. The institute also promotes ongoing formation for the wider Church by sponsoring monthly seminars and lectures for priests, deacons, religious, and lay faithful. In addition, the Diocese is developing new programs through the institute for the formation of permanent deacons and the laity, further strengthening its mission of evangelization and service throughout southern New Mexico.
The Maria de Ágreda Theological Institute is currently located at the Diocese of Las Cruces Pastoral Center in Las Cruces, where the Bishop of Las Cruces has dedicated half of the facility to the institute’s mission and work.
Institute at a Glance
Continuing the Mission of María de Ágreda
For centuries, the Catholic faith has been transmitted in the lands of southern New Mexico through missionaries, catechists, and faithful witnesses who proclaimed the Gospel with courage and conviction.
Among the most remarkable of these figures is Venerable María de Jesús de Ágreda, the 17th-century Spanish nun known as the “Lady in Blue.” Although she never physically traveled to New Mexico or the American Southwest, numerous missionary reports and enduring Native oral traditions recount that God granted her the extraordinary mystical gift of bilocation—the ability to be present in two places at once.
According to these accounts, while she remained in her cloistered convent in Ágreda, Spain, she was mystically present among the Jumano and other Indigenous peoples of what is now New Mexico, Texas, and the surrounding region. There she instructed them in the Christian faith and encouraged them to seek out Franciscan missionaries for baptism and further catechesis. When Native peoples later presented themselves at the missions asking specifically for priests, they reported having been taught by a woman dressed in blue, matching the habit worn by Mother María and giving rise to her enduring title, the “Lady in Blue.”
By bearing her name, the institute seeks to carry forward her extraordinary legacy of evangelization and Catholic formation in the Southwest—preparing faithful disciples equipped to serve the Church with wisdom, evangelical love, and a true missionary spirit.
