RAFFAELLA MARIA DEL SACRO CUORE, blessed. - In the world Raffaella Porras y Ayllon, foundress of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, born at Pedro-Abad on 1 March 1850, died at Rome on 6 Jan. 1925.
Orphaned in 1869, after a childhood marked by the deepest piety, she wished to enter the Society of the Reparatrix Sisters of Cordova, whose convent was being built at her and her sister Dolores’s expense. But, upon that community’s departure from Cordova, R. was ordered to take charge of a new Congregation, which, after the foundation of the house at Madrid, the archbishop of Toledo wished to call that of the “Reparatrix Sisters of the Sacred Heart.” The name, however, was later changed by the Holy See to that of the “Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”
R., unanimously elected mother general in 1887, devoted herself to the drafting of the rules and to the formation of the religious with extraordinary zeal; but five years later she relinquished office for the sake of the Institute’s harmony and peace. From that day, for 32 years, spent for the most part in Rome, she led a heroic life in complete obscurity; indeed, she was surrounded by such neglect that not only was she never again entrusted with any office, but even the young recruits did not know that she had been their foundress. Death overtook her in this state of humiliation.