María de la Purísima de la Cruz

Childhood and education in Madrid

María Isabel Salvat Romero was born on 20 February 1926 in Madrid to a Christian family of good social position. She was baptized on 27 February of the same year. She attended the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary conducted by the Irish Sisters in Madrid, where she received her First Communion on 24 May 1932 after careful preparation. She approached the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist frequently and cultivated a filial devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, praying the Rosary daily.

Civil War exile and return

In 1936 the Spanish Civil War forced the family to flee Madrid for San Sebastián to escape persecution. They remained there until 1938. During this period María Isabel continued her studies at the College of the Company of Mary and received the sacrament of Confirmation. After the war the family returned to Madrid and settled again in the Salamanca district. The Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary reopened in 1939–1940, and María Isabel completed her secondary studies there in 1943–1944. In recognition of her exemplary conduct she received the Medal of Daughter of Mary on 10 December 1943. With her friends she assisted at the Residence of the Sisters of the Poor by serving meals to the elderly, taught catechism in the parish on Sundays, and visited the homes of the poor to bring them aid and encouragement.

Vocational decision and entry into the Institute

Her love for the poor led her to choose the Sisters of the Company of the Cross, founded by Saint Angela of the Cross in Seville in 1875 to serve the sick and the poorest families in their own homes. On 8 December 1944, at the age of eighteen, she entered the institute in Seville. She began her novitiate on 9 June 1945 and lived the charism with joy, showing herself a model religious. She made temporary vows on 27 June 1947 and perpetual vows on 9 December 1952.

Early assignments and perpetual profession

In the following years she was entrusted with the direction of elementary schools in Lopera, Valladolid, and Estepa. She also served as local superior of the house in Estepa, sub-novice mistress, novice mistress, and provincial. In every community she spread simplicity, joy, and goodness, accepting with a spirit of sacrifice the privations of religious life and the poverty of the houses and the sick she served. She remained faithful to the rule and encouraged the sisters by her example to observe community discipline.

Election and service as Superior General

On 11 February 1977 she was elected Superior General, an office she held until her death, being re-elected in 1983, 1989, and 1995. She consulted her council on all matters, organized programs of ongoing formation, prepared general chapters with care, and conducted canonical visits to foster spiritual renewal. With courage and trust in divine providence she founded seven new houses, one of them in southern Italy. Through 152 circular letters she urged fidelity to Christ, the Gospel, the Virgin Mary as Queen and Mother of the Company, the Church and her magisterium, and the charism of Saint Angela of the Cross, whose beatification she promoted and witnessed in 1982.

Final illness and death

In 1994 she was diagnosed with cancer. She accepted the illness with serenity and continued all her duties as Superior General. In August 1998, though gravely ill, she made a canonical visit to the houses in Argentina. On her return the doctors told her that little time remained. She asked with peace, "How many months?" and then "How many weeks?" Receiving no answer, she exclaimed, "What joy, we are going to the house of the Lord!" She fulfilled her obligations until two days before death, explaining to the community on 29 October the meaning of true poverty of spirit. On 31 October 1998 she died peacefully in Seville.

Recognition by the Church

Her funeral was held on 2 November and was attended by a great multitude who testified to her reputation for holiness. She was beatified in Seville on 18 September 2010 and canonized in Rome on 18 October 2015; her feast was assigned to 18 September.

May María de la Purísima de la Cruz intercede for us, and may we imitate today the holiness this Life has shown.

APOSTOLIC LETTERS

on the completed Beatification

BENEDICT XVI

for perpetual remembrance of the matter

«My son, do not forget my law, and let your heart keep my precepts; for length of days and years of life and peace will they add to you. Mercy and truth will not forsake you» (Prov 3, 1-3).

The wise man of Israel exhorts his disciple to preserve the received doctrine as a precious treasure to be handled carefully, since in it he will find a fruitful and rich purpose for his own life and that of others. The truth of this purpose, confirmed by human experience and illuminated by divine inspiration, shines clearly from the life, spirituality, and works of the Servant of God Maria of the Immaculate Conception, in the world Maria Isabella Salvat y Romero.

The Servant of God was born on the 20th day of February in the year 1926 in Madrid from a well-endowed family. The following day, she was brought to the baptismal font of the parish church of Our Lady of the Conception, where she assumed the name Maria Isabella. The domestic environment, strongly informed by a religious spirit, as well as the beginnings of her education, deeply imbued her with Christian virtues, which she more prudently fostered at the Maternal School of Madrid of the Blessed Virgin Mary, administered by Irish sisters and attended from her girlhood.

In the year 1936, with the Spanish civil war breaking out, the family moved to Portugal, but two years later, returned to their homeland, first to the Basque town of San Sebastian, then to the city of Madrid.

During these years, Maria Isabella cultivated all personal and cultural gifts by which she was prepared for a comfortable social life, highly esteemed for the middle class from which she came. She herself began to clearly perceive the vocation to consecrated life, so that, after a petition, in the year 1944 she was received as a Postulant in the Congregation of the Sisters of the Society of the Cross. The following year she received the religious habit and began the novitiate, taking the name Sister Maria of the Immaculate Conception of the Cross.

During the time of formation, she already stood out for great zeal, spirit of sacrifice, and integrity of life. Especially she showed love of poverty, humble and integral conversation, and a strong spirit of obedience. In the year 1947 she pronounced religious vows.

Considering her human and spiritual formation, the administration of the college of the place Lopera near Jaen was entrusted to her, which others followed in the cities of Valladolid and Estepa; and others also in other houses of the Congregation. Moreover, she was appointed Provincial Moderator, then General Councilor, and finally General Moderator of the Institute. With the approval of the Holy See, she was elected three times to this grave office, which, in the arduous times after the Second Vatican Council, was to be carried out with great burden. Nevertheless, she expended her strength to adapt the Constitutions of the Institute so that the original charism would be preserved and esteemed through fidelity to the Gospel and the Magisterium of the Church, through the Eucharistic and Marian dimension, through adaptation to tradition and the contemporary perspective of the Church and society. Sister Maria observed fidelity not as a tedious repetition of recommended formulas, but as an effective desire to fulfill the duties which the Lord had given her. In all circumstances she turned her eyes to Saint Angela of the Cross, Foundress of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Society of the Cross, as an inexhaustible source of fidelity to tradition, while the Congregation was being renewed.

With particular zeal she took care of the continuous formation of the sisters so that in those uncertain years the testimony of her life would shine and be an example of fortitude for many of them. She showed herself solicitous in promoting vocations, the fruits of which also visibly came, so that the Servant of God was compelled to establish other religious houses in other towns of Spain and Italy.

Joyful and mild in spirit, she fostered a spirit of trust and communion in the Institute; above all, her solid spirituality moved her intentions and actions. She demonstrated an active religious experience, exercised with a living knowledge of the presence of God; she incessantly sought His will, nourished by the sources of prayer and contemplation. She showed herself ready to meet the needs of others, especially the needy, and to handle the difficulties of contemporary society. She so directed her soul to perfection that she attained constant and fervent exercise of human and Christian virtues.

A tumor having been detected, she was subjected to surgical section in the year 1994. With wonderful docility and great fortitude of soul she faced the disease and for four years continued to exercise her work with a generous spirit. In the last days of her life, the greater the pain with which she was afflicted, the greater the trust she renewed in God's benevolence and prepared herself to meet the Bridegroom.

She died piously on the thirty-first day of the month of October in the year 1998 at the Alma House in Seville. Innumerable priests, religious women, and faithful participated in the celebration of the exequies, which confirmed the reputation of sanctity already recognized in the life of the Servant of God.

On account of which reputation, the Ordinary Process was instructed at the curia of Seville from the twentieth day of the month of February in the year 2004 to the fifteenth day of November of the same year, whose validity the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved by a Decree issued on the second day of July in the year 2005. With the Position prepared, on the sixth day of June 2008 the Particular Congress of the Theological Consultors was held, who professed that the Servant of God had exercised the theological virtues, the cardinal virtues and those annexed to them in a heroic manner. The same was declared by the Cardinal Fathers and Bishops gathered in the Ordinary Congregation on the second day of December in the year 2008.

We Ourselves, accepting the votes of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and considering them ratified, ordered that the Decree on the heroic virtues of the Servant of God be drawn up on the seventeenth day of January in the year 2009. For the cause of beatification, the healing of a girl, already subjected to surgical section due to a congenital heart disease, from long-lasting post-anoxic cerebral damage, was presented. On the first day of July in the year 2009, the Medical Council of the same Congregation unanimously judged that the same healing had occurred beyond the powers and laws of nature, and the Particular Congress of the Theological Consultors, held on the fifth day of December in the year 2009, attributed that miraculous healing to the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God. The same judgment was rendered by the Cardinal Fathers and Bishops in the Ordinary Congregation held on the seventh day of March in the year 2010. Therefore We Ourselves ordered the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate the Decree on the matter. We also decreed that the rite of Beatification be celebrated in Seville in Spain on the eighteenth day of September in the year 2010.

Today therefore in Seville, by Our mandate, Our Venerable Brother Angelo, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, read the text of the Apostolic Letters, by which We enroll the Venerable Servant of God Maria of the Immaculate Conception, in the world Maria Isabella Salvat y Romero, in the number of the Blessed:

We, fulfilling the votes of Our Brother Juan José Asenjo Pelegrina, Metropolitan Archbishop of Seville, as well as of many other Brothers in the Episcopate and many faithful, by the advice of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, by Our Apostolic authority grant the faculty that the Venerable Servant of God Maria of the Immaculate Conception, in the world Maria Isabella Salvat y Romero, virgin, Superior General of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Society of the Cross, who, illuminated by the wisdom of the Cross, dedicated her life to helping the needy and the sick and to the education of Christian youth, be henceforth called by the name of Blessed, and that her feast may be celebrated annually on the thirty-first day of October, on which she was born into heaven, in the places and ways established by law. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

What We have decreed, We will that it have force now and in the future, all things to the contrary notwithstanding.

Given at Rome, at Saint Peter's, under the ring of the Fisherman, on the eighteenth day of the month of September, in the year 2010, the sixth of Our Pontificate.

By mandate of the Supreme Pontiff

Tarcisio Card. Bertone

Secretary of State

Place of the Seal

In the Secret. of State tab., n. 146.706