BUFFALO, N.Y. — As a horse-drawn carriage led a funeral procession down Buffalo’s Niagara Street, a young man approached a 2 On Your Side news crew and asked, “Who’s this for?”
When the man was told it was Maria Gauthier, he replied, “Oh, she’s a big deal.”
She is a very big deal, especially in the city’s Hispanic community, where she almost universally known.
Gauthier was a rarity, a Hispanic woman who has been a religious leader here since the 1960s. She and her late husband, Luis, were both reverends living in New York City.
Her son says in 1967, the couple got a new assignment from the Pentecostal Movement for the Council of Missionary Church of Christ: Go to Buffalo. And off they went.
The Gauthiers arrived not really knowing anyone. But Maria marveled at the warm Buffalo welcome they received.
Her grandson Rev. Gabriel Gauthier shared the story at Friday's funeral, “She said if people could serve me like that and be nice to us the way they were nice and they didn’t have to be, how much more should we serve others?”
Part of that service was having a hand in establishing some 20 churches in Western New York.
Luis Gauthier passed away in 1997, but Maria continued on. What helped fuel her love affair with the city was her broad definition of family. To her, if she met someone, they became her family.
Her son, Bishop Angel Gauthier, says the way she lived was an extension of her faith, “A woman that knew how to love God. I want you to know she took her last breath in her sleep ... but her legacy will live on."