Blessed Eusebia Palomino

Eusebia Palomino Yenes (15 December 1899 – 10 February 1935) was a Spanish Roman Catholic professed religious and a professed member of the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco. Palomino worked as a domestic during her adolescence, having withdrawn from her education to support her parents. She later worked with the Salesian Sisters before beginning the process of becoming a member of that order in the 1920s. She continued many of the same duties afterward and became known for her devotion to the five wounds of Jesus Christ and to the Via Crucis. Palomino's beatification cause commenced on 15 December 1981, and she was titled as a Servant of God. The ratification of a decree recognizing her life of heroic virtue allowed Pope John Paul II to name her Venerable on 17 December 1996. That same pope confirmed a miracle attributed to her intercession and beatified Palomino on 25 April 2004 in Saint Peter's Square. Eusebia Palomino Yenes was born in Cantalpino on 15 December 1899 as the third of four children to Agustin Palomino and Juana Yenes de Villaflores; an older sister was Dolores. Her father worked as a seasonal farmhand and during winter - when there was no work - he would go to towns close to home to beg for food; she would go with him on these trips around 1909 and he would often teach her catechism. Palomino made her First Communion aged eight and dubbed this her first "encounter" with Jesus Christ. In 1906 she entered a girls school but withdrew to support her parents. Palomino first worked as a domestic servant in a rich household before serving in an orphanage in 1911 alongside her older sister Dolores. Once a week she would go to the Sancti Spiritus school chapel that the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco managed and she came to know them; the sisters asked if she would work for them and so she served as a maid and a cook the religious.