Blessed María Pilar Izquierdo Albero

María Pilar Izquierdo Albero (27 July 1906 – 27 August 1945) was a Spanish religious sister who founded the Missionary Work of Jesus of Mary (1939). Albero founded her order at the end of the Spanish Civil War - when it was safe to do so - after having rallied from a serious form of blindness and paralysis from 1927 to 1939 though her order was later disbanded and restarted again after a series of complications. Pope John Paul II beatified her in Saint Peter's Square on 4 November 2001. María Pilar Izquierdo Albero was born in mid-1906 in Zaragoza as the third of five children and her childhood saw her foster an ardent desire to enter the religious life, though future circumstances would hinder her attempts. She was baptized on 5 August 1906. Albero did not attend school and as a result did not ever learn in her childhood to either read or write. From 1918 until 1920 she was struck with a serious disease and remained confined to her bed for most of that duration in Alfamen until she rallied and began to work at a shoe warehouse to support her parents' financial situation. In 1926 - while returning home from work - Albero fell off a tram and fractured her pelvis while in 1927 she became paraplegic and blind due to an outbreak of cysts on her body. Albero opened her home for persecuted Christians during the Spanish Civil War and around the time it began starting to open up about her ideas in forming a religious order dedicated missionary work. But the ongoing conflict made this a great risk and so she decided to wait until the right time while in the meantime rallying people to join her. On 8 December 1939 - the Feast of the Immaculate Conception - she was suddenly cured of her blindness and paralysis to which she attributed to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and began to concretely implement her work; she founded her order formally on 16 November 1939.