Mother Antonia

Mother Antonia, or Madre Antonia as she is known in Spanish, is an American-born Roman Catholic nun and activist, who resides in a Mexican maximum security prison. Born as Mary Clarke in 1926, she has lived for the past three decades in a 10’ x 10’ concrete cell at La Mesa penitentiary in Tijuana, Mexico, one of Mexico’s most notorious prisons, caring for the inmates. In the 1970s, she chose to devote her life to the Church after she had a nightmare, in 1969, that she was a prisoner at Calvary and about to be executed when Jesus appeared to her and offered to take her place. She refused his offer, touched him on the cheek and told him she would never leave him, no matter what happens to her. She had been married twice and had seven children, living in affluent Beverly Hills, but both her marriages ended in divorce. As an older, divorced woman, Clarke was banned by church rules from joining any religious order, so she went about her work on her own. She sold her home and all her possessions, and founded an ord