Saint Maravillas de Jesús

María de las Maravillas de Jesús, OCD (born María de las Maravillas Pidal Chico de Guzmán; 4 November 1891 - 11 December 1974) was a Spanish Discalced Carmelite. She founded several houses of her order and even set one up in India after serving a brief exile with other Carmelites due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Pope John Paul II canonized her during his apostolic visit in Madrid in 2003. María de las Maravillas Pidal Chico de Guzman was born as the last of four children in Madrid on 4 November 1891 and was baptized on 12 November in the local parish church of San Sebastian. She was known as "Mavi" as a child. Her father was Luis Pidal i Mon (†1913), the second Marquis of Pidal, and her mother was Cristina Chico de Guzman i Munoz. Her father was the first Minister of Development and was later the national ambassador to the pontifical see. Her maternal grandmother would tell her the lives of the saints and in 1896 she made a private vow to remain chaste in an effort to follow the example of Saint Agnes. Her grandmother died at the beginning of 1914 after her father died in late 1913. In 1903 she took the Jesuit priest Juan Francisco Lopez as her spiritual director and he remained as such until she entered the order. María received her confirmation in 1896 and later received her first communion in 1902. In autumn 1918, she and her mother went for a walk and María's mother gave her the blessing to become a nun. María entered the Discalced Carmelites in Madrid at El Escorial on 12 October 1919, where she took the religious name María de las Maravillas de Jesús ("Mary of the marvels of Jesus"). She made her first profession on 7 May 1920. In 1923 she decided to found a convent in Getafe at the Cerro de los Ángeles near the monument erected in the geographical center of Spain.