In the years to come, la pobre Sofia—encouraged not only by vecinos and comadres, but by the hundreds of petitions she received in the mail everyday, asking for prayers from the mother of the little crazy saint who died twice and her similarly ethereal sisters—became the founder and la first presidenta of what would later be known worldwide as the very prestigious (if not a little elitist) organization M.O.M.A.S., Mothers of Martyrs and Saints.

Furthermore, by then, it would be pretty evident that contrary to what people said during Sofi’s thifty-eight-year presidency (appointments, like to the board of M.O.M.A.S., were for life, like judges), that you had to be the mother of a daughter to even be considered, it would eventually be about fifty–fifty. That is, there was an equal portion of male and female santos and martires represented by las M.O.M.A.S.; and by the middle of the new century, quite a few mothers of men were getting in with ease.

All that bad talk regarding M.O.M.A.S.’s discriminating against men, or rather the mothers of men, probably got its start back in Belen with la Mrs. Torres, the mother of Fe’s one-time fiancé, Tom, who, on no fewer than twelve occasions over a period of twenty-five years—until her death, in fact—kept applying for nomination.

The thing was, of course, that the first and obvious reason why she was never eligible was simply because of the unfortunate but crucial criteria that the martyr or saint up for consideration would have to have transcended this life already, the form of “death” itself sometimes being the all-telling proof of qualification.

Everyone knew that.

Tom Torres, meanwhile, lived well beyond the national average for anybody and kept Mrs. Torres company as her dutiful son until his mother’s passing. “What does she have to complain about?” Sofia would ask the committee every time it got a new application from Mrs. Torres. “I think it just kills her that her ’jito never ‘mounted to nothing more than the manager of a gas station!” And of course, she was right.

The decision as to whether a “’jito” of a M.O.M.A.S. member would be designated as a saint or a martyr was also very touchy for a lot of people. To be a martyr, of course, was a lot easier than to be considered a santo by anybody’s standards. Saints had the unquestionable potential of performing miracles while martyrs were simply revered and considered emissaries to the santos. In many cases, this was nearly an impossible decision to make, except in the one of the original founding president’s; there was never no question at all about that: Sofia had truly been the mother of a saint.

La Loca did not have to appear with the stigmata or thorn marks on her forehead before her final death to prove her sainthood to no one. And, remaining as ornery after she “transcended” as in her incarnated days, she made very occasional ectoplasmic appearances at the national and international conventions—although locally, back in Tome, for a long time people claimed to catch sight of her by her favorite acequia where a shrine in her honor had been built by don Domingo (“Father of the Saint”), shortly after her burial.