BOGOTA, Colombia — For weeks, billboards on buses and television spots have been announcing what promises to be Colombia’s next big prime-time sensation.
But the planned debut Wednesday of a TV soap opera dramatizing the life of Colombia’s only Roman Catholic saint is shrouded in controversy after devotees of the missionary nun known universally as Madre Laura filed a lawsuit seeking to correct what they say is an unseemly depiction.
Born in Colombia’s coffee-growing region in 1874, Laura Montoya was a nun and teacher who devoted her life to protecting indigenous tribes from discrimination, when not outright violence, by the country’s white elite. Her work on their behalf was emulated in poor, mostly black and indigenous communities across Colombia. Today hundreds of missionaries from her order are in 21 countries, from Angola to Haiti.
Montoya was canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI and her sainthood confirmed by Pope Francis a year later in a ceremony that saw Colombia, one of Latin America’s most fervently Catholic nations, rejoice with pride.
Bogota-based Caracol, which is producing the 24-episode mega-production “Laura, the Colombian Saint,” is known as one of the most-thriving telenovela factories in Latin America. But most of the network’s productions, with names like “Without Breasts There’s No Paradise” and “Cartel of the Snitches,” tend to follow more sinful story lines that are popular with audiences but often criticized as inappropriate.
Given the anything-goes reputation of Colombia’s airwaves, often in conflict with the country’s deep faith, some sort of combustion over the series’ premiere probably was unavoidable.
The Congregation of Missionaries of Mary Immaculate and St. Catherine of Sienna, the order founded by Montoya, says that, despite repeated requests, it was never consulted by Caracol about the script. The group questions the network’s right to use Montoya’s name and image. Caracol said it can’t comment while the lawsuit is pending.
