Saint of the Day: Bl. Florentina Nicol Goñi

Co-foundress of the Dominican Missionaries of the Rosary (1868-1940)

Her life

+ Florentina was born in Tafalla, Spain. Educated by the Dominican nuns in Huesca, she joined their community in 1885, receiving the religious name “Ascensión of the Heart of Jesus.

+ For the next several years she served as a teacher in the nuns’ school, which was taken over by the Spanish government in 1913, at which time the nuns were expelled.

+ Sister Ascensión became a missionary in Peru, where she taught girls and cared for the sick and poor. It was there she helped establish a new congregation, the Dominican Missionaries of the Rosary, in 1918.

+ Blessed Florentina Nicol Goñi died on February 24, 1940, and was beatified in 2005.

For prayer and reflection

“I invite you to keep alive in your heart the apostolic ardor, born from love for Jesus, that Mother Ascensión lived and knew how to pass on to her spiritual daughters.”—Pope Benedict XVI

Vocations

To learn more about the Dominican Missionaries of the Rosary, visit: http://misionerasdominicas.org/en/

Spiritual bonus

On this day, we also remember Blessed Josef Mayr-Nusser. A husband and father who was also a member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Josef was a vocal advocate of the poor and opposed the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. In 1944, he was drafted into the German army but he refused, stating that his faith prevented him from taking the oath of loyalty and obedience to Hitler. Josef was imprisoned for his opposition and beliefs and he was sentenced to be executed in the Dachau concentration camp; he died of dysentery on a train on route to the concentration camp on February 24, 1945. Blessed Josef Mayr-Nusser was beatified in 2017.

Prayer

O God, who called blessed Florentina to seek your Kingdom in this world through the pursuit of perfect charity, grant, we pray, through her intercession that we may advance with joyful spirit along the way of love. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(from The Roman Missal: Common of Holy Men and Women—For Religious)

Saint profiles prepared by Brother Silas Henderson, S.D.S.