Venerable Soledad Torres Acosta

María Soledad Torres y Acosta (2 December 1826 – 11 October 1887) - born Manuela - was a Spanish Roman Catholic professed religious and the founder of the Servants of Mary. Her apostolic actions - and those of her order - were dedicated towards the nursing of the sick and the poor in the places that it operated in. Torres' childhood consisted of the desire to join the religious life and managed to join a priest's fledgling religious cluster of women after the Dominicans refused to admit her due to her frail constitution. But a series of struggles saw her in a conflicted position of leadership that saw her removed and reinstated twice. Torres was beatified in 1950 and was later proclaimed a saint in 1970. Her liturgical feast is affixed to the date of her death as is the norm. In 2016, a movie was produced in Spain (original title: Luz de Soledad) that tells her vocation and the struggles during the early years of her life as founder. Manuela Torres Acosta was born on 2 December 1826 as the second of five children to Francisco Torres and Antonia Acosta in Madrid; she was baptized as "Antonia Bibiana Manuela". Her parents ran a small business in their home near the Plaza de España. Torres received her education from the Vincentian Sisters and often visited the sick in her neighborhood. The girl also helped at a free school for the poor that the order managed. In about 1850 she felt called to enter an enclosed religious order and applied to a Dominican convent (not too far from her home) for admission as a secular religious but had to wait until there was room for her. In 1851 she heard of the efforts of Miguel Martínez Sanz (a Third Order Servite) who was the parish priest in Chamberí. Martínez envisioned founding a group of seven women who would minister to the sick and poor of his parish in their own homes since those people often could not afford proper hospitalization.