Maria Refugia od św. Anioła

Who they were

María Roqueta Serra was born on 20 April 1878 in Gabarra, a small village in the Spanish province of Lleida, and entered the novitiate of the Carmelite Missionary Sisters in Barcelona in 1897, taking the religious name Sister Maria Rifugio di Sant'Angelo. Despite suffering from heart disease, she worked faithfully and humbly in various houses of the congregation, praying even while doing the hardest chores.

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War she was serving as assistant to the local superior, Sister Speranza della Croce, at Vilarrodona. Taken in by a local family when the sisters had to leave their school, she was later recaptured with her superior after failing to find shelter with her own sister, and the two were shot by militiamen on the road to La Rabassada, near Barcelona, on 31 July 1936. She was beatified with 63 other martyrs of the Spanish Civil War in Rome on 28 October 2007.

The miracles

As a martyr she was raised to the altars without a miracle.

Why that counted as sanctity

Carmelite Missionary Sister shot with her superior during the Spanish Civil War; beatified with 64 martyrs of that persecution in 2007.

The cause