Saint Cándida María de Jesús

She was born at dawn on May 31, 1845, at the farmhouse of Berrospe in Andoain, in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa, and was baptized Juana Josefa the same day in the parish church of San Martín. ²⁶ She was the eldest child of Juan Miguel Cipitria and María Jesús Barriola, who were weavers, and her family and childhood friends called her Juanitatxo. ²⁶⁷ John Paul II, beatifying her, said that as a girl she had to look after her younger sisters and brothers in a large family. ⁵ The Diocese of San Sebastián says the couple had six more daughters. ⁶

She was confirmed on November 5, 1848, at the age of three. ²⁶ In 1852 the family moved to Tolosa for better work, and there, at ten, she made her First Communion in the parish of Santa María. ²⁶ The 2010 booklet says the joy of that first meeting with Jesus stayed with her all her life. ² The diocese adds that the deaths of two younger sisters, one a baby she had looked after, affected her deeply. ⁶

In Tolosa a young priest, Martín de Barriola, became her confessor, and to him she said she felt the call of God, in words the sources give as "Yo, sólo para Dios," "I, only for God." ²⁶ She did not, the diocese says, feel drawn to the convent of the Poor Clares. ⁶ When a young man of a well-off family asked for her hand, she had to tell her parents of her vocation, which grieved them. ⁶

In 1863, at eighteen, she left home for Burgos and went into service. ⁶ Her first employers, the diocese says, did not like her leaving the house to go to Mass; her confessor there, the Jesuit Ramón Sureda, found her a place with the Sabater family, whose mistress asked her first thing to come with her to Mass in the mornings. ⁶ The household had seven children and plenty of work, and she helped the family in their charity to the poor. ⁶ The booklet places in her years as a servant in Burgos the saying Benedict XVI later quoted, "Where there is no room for my poor, there is no room for me either," translated here from the Spanish. ¹²

In June 1868 she moved with the Sabaters to Valladolid, where she met the Jesuit Santos San José Herranz, who would help her discern her vocation and shape her work. ⁶⁷ John Paul II said that in Valladolid, while she served a family and lived a life of penance and prayer, she began to think of founding a congregation called the Daughters of Jesus. ⁵ The diocese dates the moment: April 2, 1869, praying before the altar of the Holy Family in the church of the Rosarillo, when she was twenty-three. ⁶

She told Father Herranz what had happened, and also what stood most in the way: she could neither read nor write. ⁶ For two years he helped her learn Spanish properly, and Latin. ⁶ Benedict XVI said that God brought this girl of simple origins very early, "with the guidance of her Jesuit spiritual directors, to make the firm decision to live 'for God alone'." ¹

In the fall of 1871 she went with Herranz to Salamanca. ⁶ With the support of Father Juan Bautista Bombardó and of the bishop, Joaquín Lluch y Garriga, she founded the congregation there on December 8, 1871, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and took the name Cándida María de Jesús. ²⁶ Its purpose, in the booklet's words, was the Christian education of children and young people and the advancement of women. ² She was its superior from the beginning. ⁶

The first school opened in Salamanca on January 1, 1874. ⁶ The booklet says she opened schools for children of every social class, at a time when mixing them seemed a utopia, and Sunday schools for young working women and domestic servants. ² She made her first vows on December 8, 1873, and wrote the constitutions with Father Herranz on the model of the Society of Jesus. ²⁶ The Diocese of San Sebastián records the diocesan approval of 1872 and the bishop's definitive approval in 1892; to give the work stability she went to Rome, and Leo XIII granted pontifical approval on September 18, 1902. ²⁶ She made her final vows in Salamanca on September 24, 1903, with forty-one other sisters. ⁶

The congregation spread through the towns of Castile, among them Arévalo, Peñaranda de Bracamonte, Segovia and Medina del Campo, and back to Tolosa in the Basque Country. ⁶ Her mother died in her company in San Sebastián in July 1884, while they were praying the Rosary, and her youngest sister, Ángela, later joined the congregation. ⁶ Father Herranz died at Loyola in August 1896 and her father in Tolosa the following year, and she could be with neither of them at the end. ⁶ In October 1911 the first five Daughters of Jesus left for Brazil. ⁶

Her health was delicate, and more than once she was bedridden for long periods. ⁶ Near the end, the booklet says, when she was asked whether she wanted to receive Communion one last time, she answered, in words translated here from the Spanish, "What? Do I want to? Not once, but a thousand times if I could!" ² Before she died on August 9, 1912, in Salamanca, she said, in words likewise translated, that she felt "most tranquilly tranquil," and also: "Forty years of religious life, and forty years all for God." ²⁶ Benedict XVI noted that she had kept faithfully to her first decision, "as she herself recalled when she was about to die." ¹ John Paul II said that her tomb is kept in Salamanca. ⁵

John Paul II recognized her heroic virtues on July 6, 1993, and beatified her in May 1996 together with María Antonia Bandrés, one of the first fruits of her schools; the Dicastery and the Diocese of San Sebastián give May 12, the 2010 booklet May 26. ²³⁵⁶ Benedict XVI canonized her in Saint Peter's Square on October 17, 2010, with five others, among them André Bessette and Mary MacKillop. ¹³ The Diocese of San Sebastián calls her the first woman of Gipuzkoa to be declared a saint. ⁶

One record has not caught up. The Italian bishops' printing of the Roman Martyrology for August 9 still enters her as "Beata," blessed, a text from before her canonization; the canonization itself is recorded by the Holy See. ¹³⁴ The booklet says the congregation is now in seventeen countries, in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia. ²⁶

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Cándida María de Jesús, so none is given here. ^1234567 Benedict XVI presented her to her daughters as "a very lofty model of life to imitate." ¹

Saint Cándida María de Jesús's feast is kept on August 9, the day she died. ³⁶ The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints gives it as her liturgical memorial, and the Roman Martyrology enters her that day at Salamanca as the founder of the Daughters of Jesus "to collaborate in the work of the Christian formation of children," words translated here from the Italian. ³⁴

When she first felt called to found a teaching congregation, she could not read or write. ⁶ The booklet says her simple background, slight education and lack of money show that what made her equal to the work was her trusting answer to God's call. ²

Benedict XVI used her to answer Jesus's question in the Gospel of the day, whether the Son of Man will find faith on earth: looking at her, he said, "we can say 'yes' with relief and firmness." ¹ He said she lived "for God and for what he most desires: to reach everyone, to bring everyone the hope that does not disappoint, especially to those who need it most." ¹

She was not spared. The booklet quotes her, in translation from the Spanish: "Without the cross one gets nowhere. Let crosses come, and let God's will be done." ² She lost her mother, her director and her father, and could be with only the first of them at the end, and her own health was poor for much of her life. ⁶

Her daughters remember her saying that she wanted to do "what God wants, and only what God wants," and that she called the Virgin Mary the congregation's true founder; both are translated here from the Spanish. ⁷