Blessed Florentina Nicol Goni

(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 “Maria Ascension 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 Maria Ascension 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 Goni died on February 24, 1940, and was beatified in 2005.

Spiritual bonus

On this day, the Church remembers Blessed Marco de’Marconi. A member of the now-extinct Order of Hermits of St. Jerome, Blessed Marco was known for his intense spirit of prayer. He died at the age of thirty in 1510 and his cultus was confirmed by Pope Saint Pius X in 1906.

Vocations

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

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, one 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.