[4] Believers claim that, while Maria Esperanza considered becoming a nun, it was revealed to her in a vision on October 3, 1954, that her calling was to the married life.

Believers hold that, from her youth, Maria Esperanza lived a life of virtue and fidelity to God and received the gifts of supernatural knowledge, healing, visions, discernment of spirits, locution, ecstasy, levitation, the odor of sanctity, the stigmata, and the ability to read the hearts of others.

[7] In 1979 she created the Betania Foundation, a lay movement designed to evangelize, educate and develop society's well-being and family life, and promote social justice.

Still, she became a world-renowned figure after Mary allegedly appeared to her and 150 others at a farm named Finca Betania in Venezuela on March 25, 1984.

The apparition was deemed valid by Bishop Pio Bello Ricardo of Los Teques, Venezuela, in 1987.