Venerable Tomás Morales

Tomás Morales Pérez (30 October 1908 - 1 October 1994) was a Spanish Catholic priest and professed member from the Jesuits who founded the Institutos Seculares de los Cruzados de María. Morales moved to Madrid as a child in 1909 where he studied law in Madrid at the college there and obtained his doctorate in Bologna at the college there. He entered the Jesuits in 1932 and was ordained a decade later in Granada before he began serving as a teacher in Badajoz. He founded his secular institute for the purpose of engaging in a social apostolate and his strong Marian devotion led him to write on and promote the recitation of rosaries on a frequent basis. He had been known in life for his holiness and the cause for his beatification opened less than a decade after his death in 2000. He became titled as a Servant of God upon this point. He became titled as Venerable on 8 November 2017 after Pope Francis confirmed that the late priest had led a model life of heroic virtue. Tomás Morales Pérez was born on 30 October 1908 in Macuto in Venezuela to Antonio and Josefa. He was baptized and confirmed in the Basilica of Santa Ana in Caracas on 18 April 1909 and one month later was taken to Madrid to live there. He did his first studies at the Colegio Aleman in Madrid from 1914 until 1917. He made his First Communion in the Buen Suceso parish church in Madrid on 19 March 1917 while that September entered the Jesuit-run Nuestra Señora del Recuerdo college in Chamartín de la Rosa from 1917 until 1924. He did further studies in law at the college in Madrid and while there was active in several movements. He served as a member in the Asociación de Estudiantes Católicos and served also as its president. He was also the president for the Federación de Estudiantes Católicos de Madrid from 1928 until 1930 while also serving at some point as the spokesperson for the Junta Suprema de la Confederación de Estudiantes Católicos de España.