Blessed Laura Evangelista Alvarado Cardozo

Laura Evangelista Alvarado Cardozo (25 April 1875 - 2 April 1967) was a Venezuelan religious sister who had established the Augustinian Recollect Sisters of the Heart of Jesus as a means of aiding the ill. Upon her profession she assumed the religious name María de San José. During her life she was contemporaries with José Gregorio Hernández. She was beatified in 1995. Laura Evangelista Alvarado Cardozo was born on 25 April 1875 as the eldest of four children to Clemente Alvarado (d. 1890) and Margarita Cardozo; her brothers were Octaviano, Panchita and Clemencia. She received Confirmation at the age of two in 1877 from the Archbishop of Caracas José Antonio Ponte. She was baptized on 13 October 1875 and received it from Father Jose Maria Yepez while her godparents were Manuel González and Dolores Bravo Sofia Cardozo - a cousin of hers. She commenced her studies in her hometown but was forced to complete it in Maracay when she moved with her parents and siblings. She commenced her studies at the age of five and completed them in September 1892 at the age of seventeen. It was around this time that she felt called to the religious life and confided this to her spiritual director Father Vicente Lopez Aveledo. It was on 8 December 1892 that she made a vow to God to remain a perpetual virgin in his service. At the age of thirteen on 8 December 1888 she received her First Communion and focused on preparing children for the same sacrament from that point until she was eighteen. In 1893 she Father Aveledo's new order devoted to the Blessed Mother. Around that time in 1893 she made a personal resolution: "I want to be a saint, but a real saint ... my Jesus, You and only You are the goal of all my striving". On 3 November 1893 she began to work in a small hospital and assisted patients that suffered from smallpox. She also volunteered in other hospitals. From 1897 until 1898 she worked as a volunteer in the hospital of San José.