Blessed Elvira Torrentallé Paraire

Elvira of the Nativity of Our Lady (Spanish: Elvira de la Natividad de Nuestra Señora), born Elvira Torrentallé Paraire on June 29, 1883, in Balsareny, and died on August 19, 1936, was a blessed of the Catholic Church, a Spanish martyr of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity, and a victim of the religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, murdered in hatred of the faith (odium fidei). She entered the novitiate on September 9, 1906, and made her perpetual vows in Cullera in April 1908. From 1925 to 1933, she served in Valencia, after which she was sent to Cullera, where the Carmelites of the congregation founded by Joaquina de Vedruna operated a school for girls. Serving as superior, she fulfilled her vocation through piety, modesty, diligence, and love for the Eucharist. She was arrested along with her fellow sisters on August 15, 1936, by a detachment of anarchists. She was murdered on the Playa del Saler near Valencia on August 19; immediately before her death, she led the group in singing a hymn about the love of Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The informative process took place in Valencia between 1952 and 1956. She was beatified as part of the group of José Aparicio Sanz and 232 companions, the first to be raised to the altars of the Catholic Church in the third millennium by Pope John Paul II at the Vatican on March 11, 2001. Her liturgical memorial is celebrated by Catholics on her dies natalis (August 19), as well as on September 22 as part of the group of martyrs.