Blessed María Sagrario de San Luis Gonzaga

Elvira Moragas Cantarero, religious name María Sagrario de San Luis Gonzaga, (8 January 1881 – 15 August 1936) was a Spanish nun of the Order of the Discalced Carmelites of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. Her initial path was to follow her father in the pharmaceutical business and she excelled in this and having become one of the first women to become a pharmacist. This continued after the death of her father when she assumed control of the business and later stepped aside for her brother to take over when it became clear that she felt inclined to enter the religious life. Her time in the convent saw her assume leadership roles in which she was protective of her fellow nuns with an amiable disposition. But the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War forced her to flee into hiding alongside another nun while refusing her brother's invitation to live with him since she wanted to ensure her fellow religious were kept safe. But she herself was captured and later shot dead in the middle of the night when the militia grew furious with her silence during interrogations. Her death caused for widespread calls for the beatification process to be introduced and which later opened in 1962 under Pope John XXIII; she became titled as a Servant of God once the cause commenced. Pope John Paul II beatified Moragas in mid-1998 in Saint Peter's Square. Elvira Moragas Cantarero was born in Lillo in Toledo in 1881 as the third of four children born to Ricardo Moragas and Isabel Cantarero. Her father worked as a pharmacist and took control of the business from his father Severiano Moragas. Her elder sister Sagrario (born in 1879) died in 1890. The Moragas moved to Madrid in 1886 after King Alfonso XIII appointed her father as a pharmaceutical advisor to the monarch; the Moragas had been in El Prado from 1885 and in Madrid lived at 97 Bravo Murillo Street above their store.