Saint Joaquina Vedruna

Joaquima de Vedruna Vidal de Mas, CCV (or Joaquina, and Joaquina of Saint Francis of Assisi in religion; 16 April 1783 – 28 August 1854) was a Spanish Catholic religious sister and the founder of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity. First she married a nobleman despite her desire to become a nun though she and her husband both desired the religious life; the couple bore nine children but she and her children fled after Napoleon invaded the nation to which her husband remained to fight as a volunteer and later died leaving her widowed but free to pursue her religious inclinations. Her canonisation was celebrated on 12 April 1959. Joaquima Vedruna Vidal de Mas was born on 16 April 1783 in Barcelona to the nobles Lorenzo de Vedruna – who worked for the government – and Teresa Vidal; her baptism was celebrated on the day of her birth in the parish church of Santa Maria del Pi. In 1795 she expressed a desire to become a Carmelite but her parents believed she was not mature enough to make such a decision. Her childhood was a pious one and she fostered a special devotion to the Infant Jesus while being known for her obsessive cleanliness and she received her First Communion in 1792. On 24 March 1799 she married the barrister and landowner Teodoro de Mas (the firstborn of his own household) with whom she had nine children; both husband and wife later became members of the Third Order of Saint Francis and she became known as "Joaquina of Saint Francis of Assisi". Her husband was a friend of her father and was undecided about which of Lorenzo's three daughters to wed: he gave the three a box of almonds and the two older girls rejected it as a childish gift but she accepted and said: "I love almonds" and thus he settled on her.