Leticia Aida Guardiola-Saenz

Leticia Aida Guardiola-Saenz, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Christian Scriptures at Seattle University, WA passed away Wednesday January 8th 2025. Leticia was born December 9, 1962 in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, the third of four daughters to Samuel Guardiola Cervantes and Maria Imelda Saenz Garza.

She was raised in the borderlands between Mexico and the United States and her experience of borders and bridges—of diversity and hybridity—shaped both her life and her critical lenses for her life’s work, interpreting and teaching interpretation of the Bible.

She was a well-respected scholar internationally and her main academic and teaching interests were representations of women in scriptures, cultural interpretations of Jesus, biblical spiritualities, and decolonial hermeneutics. She especially cherished her involvement with the Hispanic Summer Program and the Hispanic Theological Initiative, where she taught and mentored the next generation of Latin American Bible scholars/ministers, as well as her work with pastors and students of the Bible at a diversity of educational venues, including the Academy for Spiritual Formation, The Institute of Biblical Formation for the Archdioceses of Los Angeles, various churches and parishes, and most recently, Holden Village.

Leticia loved learning and she loved developing knowledge. She studied. From her first day of Kinder, Leticia rarely left school again. Her undergraduate studies ran the gamut from accounting to Spanish literature and she ended up with two Bachelor degrees from the Tecnológico de Monterrey, in Monterrey, Mexico, before realizing a call to serve God in a more direct and comprehensive way and made the decision to attend seminary in the USA. From there her call took shape through dual Masters degrees in Theological Studies and Divinity at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Chicago, where her professors encouraged her to pursue her doctorate. This led her to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where she earned her Ph.D. in New Testament. There she met kindred spirits: scholars who sought to use their Biblical studies, their hearts, minds, and the Word, to change the world, to realize into being a loving kin-dom where the lived gospel was liberative, loving, open, authentic and healing.

She was passionate about Jesus, Sofia, and the Spirit alive and at work in the world. She was called by God to be a Bible scholar and teacher, and was passionate about teaching others, not what to think, not to interpret the Bible in a particular way, but for those for whom the Bible was an important part of their faith or their journey with God, as pastors or as lay Christians, to give them tools to liberate, lift up, access meaning in their lives today.

She said that as long as the Bible is preached and there are people continuing to hear it in the pews, she would teach methods to allow its liberative, transformational power to be known and heard. And she delighted in that work.

Leticia was a gifted musician, guitarist, song-writer, and ukulele evangelist. She was an avid world traveler who loved museums, enjoyed getting to know new places and spaces and calling them her own, and who prized beauty, especially in art and music. She adored the works of Van Gogh and Mozart, and of the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. She was always experimenting with how to use pop culture stories of how we become “a person for others” in her teaching, and that led her to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, and Marvel comics. She was playful, funny, witty in both English & Spanish, authentic, gentle, and always willing to offer her services with humility in community or individually.

She lived her faith. She was kind, generous. She noticed others and she made them feel seen.

She is survived by her partner, Susan Tuller, also of Seattle, WA, her mother, Maria Imelda Saenz Garza of Reynosa, and three sisters: Sandra Guardiola of Reynosa, Diana Guardiola and her husband, Dr. Daniel Jiminez of Navarre, Spain and Martha Guardiola Reimer and her husband David of McAllen, Texas. She is also survived by 5 nieces, 4 nephews and “grandchildren” Josue, Luz, Job and Tycho, all of whom she adored and all of whom claim right of favorite. And they all were.