VEDRUNA, JOAQUINA de, blessed. - Foundress of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity, b. in Barcelona on 16 Apr. 1783, d. in Vich on 28 Aug. 1854.
Married at the age of 16 to Teodoro de Mas, by whom she had 9 children, she was an admirable example of a Christian wife and mother. Widowed at the age of 33 (1816) and retired to the family estate at Vich to oversee the administration of the extensive property, she returned to her former ideal of religious life, and meanwhile, while attending to the devoted education of her children, she gave herself to a life of extraordinary solitude and austerity. Then, in 1826, when she felt fully free, as her children had departed either for marriage or for the cloister, she gathered 9 companions around her and, under the guidance of the Capuchin Stefano di Olot, founded with them the Institute of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity, with the purpose of providing for the education of girls, especially poor girls, and for the care of the sick. The Seven Years' War, persecutions, the solitude of exile, and the desolation of prison greatly harmed her work; yet it recovered in 1843, rapidly increased in the number of houses and vocations, and above all enlarged the spiritual good accomplished among the ranks of girls, educated in a thoroughly living and Christian spirit, and of the sick, cared for with every solicitude. V. was beatified on 19 May 1940. Feast: 22 May.