Blessed María del Carmen González Ramos

María del Carmen González-Ramos García-Prieto de Muñoz (30 June 1834 – 9 November 1899), also known by her religious name María del Carmen of the Child Jesus, was a Spanish Roman Catholic professed religious and the founder of the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Hearts. She married in mid-1857 – against her parents' advice – to a brash and dissolute husband and secured his repentance not too long before his death. The religious was beatified in mid-2007 under Pope Benedict XVI though the pontiff delegated Cardinal José Saraiva Martins to preside on his behalf. María del Carmen González-Ramos García-Prieto de Muñoz was born in Málaga on 30 June 1834 as the sixth of nine children to Salvador González and Juana Ramos. She was baptized at the parish of Saint Mary Major on 1 July 1834. Her mother died on 12 July 1855 and her father died on 8 March 1871. Private tutors oversaw her education. She married on 9 May 1857 to Joaquín Muñoz del Caño – despite the objections of her parents – who turned out to be a violent and unfaithful man. Nevertheless, she saw her duties as a wife as a sign from God and suffered for Him while hoping that her husband would repent until he approached her on 15 July 1878 and announced he would be turning his life around. He begged that she forgive him for his misdeeds. Her husband died after an illness on 3 October 1881. In 1882, the Capuchin priest Bernabé de Astoraga (her spiritual director) and some female friends helped turn her home into a combination of a clinic and school where she would invite people in who needed her aid. On 8 May 1884 she began living with women she rallied at the convent of Our Lady of Victory that she founded in her hometown in a move that established the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Hearts. On 10 May 1884 the order received diocesan approval from Bishop Miguel Salazar Gomez while it later received papal approval after her death from Pope Leo XIII on 3 May 1902.