Bonifacia Rodríguez y Castro

With a few young women from Salamanca, Bonifacia had initially formed an Association of the Immaculate and Saint Joseph (known as the Josephine Association), intended to preserve and train young female workers. Under the inspiration of the Jesuit Francisco Javier Butiñá, this project became a new religious congregation. On January 10, 1874, in her own workshop in Salamanca, Bonifacia began common life with six other women, including her mother: thus were born the Siervas de San José (Servants of Saint Joseph). Three days earlier, on January 7, 1874, the Bishop of Salamanca, Joaquín Lluch y Garriga, had signed the decree of erection for the institute. The founding intuition was to recreate the "workshop of Nazareth": in the image of the Holy Family where Jesus, Mary, and Joseph lived by the work of their hands, the congregation united prayer and labor, offering honest work to poor and unemployed women while sanctifying the life of the worker. The institute received pontifical approval from Leo XIII in 1901 and spread beyond Spain.

Bonifacia's spirituality is rooted in the hidden life of Nazareth: sanctifying daily work, living evangelical humility and simplicity, and conforming her existence to that of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the workshop. This fidelity was tested by a harsh internal contradiction within the congregation. In 1882, following tensions, she was removed from the governance of the institute she had founded; humiliated, she left Salamanca and established a new community in Zamora on July 25, 1883, where she remained in obscurity until her death. In this trial, she discovered, in the words of the Church, "a new dimension of following Christ: the cross." During the canonization, Benedict XVI emphasized that she "knew how to combine her following of Christ with careful daily work," finding God in the heart of ordinary labor. Her reputation for holiness grew especially after her death, when her congregation fully recognized her as its founder and undertook the rehabilitation of her memory.

The beatification process recognized the heroic virtues of Bonifacia Rodríguez y Castro and the lasting fruits of her work. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on November 9, 2003, in Rome. Her canonization was celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI on October 23, 2011, in Saint Peter's Square, during a ceremony that also raised Guido Maria Conforti and Luigi Guanella to the honors of the altar. Her liturgical feast is set for August 8, the anniversary of her death. In the canonization homily, Benedict XVI presented her figure as that of a woman who united the following of Christ with daily work performed with care, and made the workshop of Nazareth a "school of Christian life."

Bonifacia Rodríguez y Castro is honored as the first saint born in Salamanca. Her legacy is carried on by the congregation of the Servants of Saint Joseph (Siervas de San José), whose communities have spread throughout Spain and, subsequently, into Latin America and beyond, faithful to the charism of the sanctification of work and the service of working women. Her body rests in the chapel of the Sagrada Familia college in Salamanca, a place of memory and devotion. Her spirituality of the "workshop of Nazareth," which links prayer and daily toil and confers a spiritual dignity upon manual labor, remains a point of reference for her spiritual daughters and for the pastoral care of the world of work. The city of Salamanca, which once saw her depart into oblivion, celebrates in her today one of its glories.