Caterina Carrasco Tenorio

The life and work of Caterina Carrasco Tenorio are inseparable from the foundation of the Congregation of the Franciscan Tertiary Sisters Flock of Mary (Hermanas Terciarias Franciscanas del Rebaño de María). On the advice of the Bishop of Cadiz, Mgr Félix María de Arriete y Llano, she left the Company of Mary in 1876. She then began giving lessons to adults and unschooled young girls in Cadiz. It was at this time that she met her spiritual director, Father Francisco de Asís Medina y Muñoz (1840-1908), a canon of the Cathedral of Cadiz. The latter was looking for a collaborator to take care of an orphanage and a boarding school for abandoned young girls. On August 10, 1876, they opened a school together for young working women, named "Flock of Mary of the Divine Shepherdess" (Rebaño de María de la Divina Pastora), in homage to the Capuchin devotion to the Divine Shepherdess encouraged by Mgr Arriete. On October 4, 1878, the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, Caterina and three companions took the Franciscan habit in the old Capuchin church of Cadiz, marking the official birth of the new congregation. Despite difficult beginnings, marked by the death of Mgr Arriete in 1879 and the departure of the first companions, the foundress persevered. In 1887, the institute received a house as a gift to welcome orphans. On February 3, 1891, Mgr Vicente Calvo y Valero, the new Bishop of Cadiz, approved the constitutions of the congregation. Caterina pronounced her perpetual vows on August 12, 1891. From 1892, the institute began to found new houses.

The process for the canonization of Caterina Carrasco Tenorio began at the diocesan level. The diocesan phase of the inquiry was officially opened on December 19, 2009, in the parish of Nuestra Señora del Rosario in Cadiz, under the presidency of the diocesan bishop, Msgr. Antonio Ceballos Atienza. This phase aimed to collect testimonies regarding her life, her writings, and her reputation for holiness. After the closure of the diocesan inquiry, the file was transmitted to Rome, to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

On April 26, 2016, Pope Francis received in a private audience Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and authorized the promulgation of the decree recognizing the heroic virtues of the Servant of God María de la Encarnación (Caterina Carrasco Tenorio). By this act, she was declared venerable. For her to be beatified, the official recognition of a miracle attributed to her intercession by the Holy See is now required.

The spirituality of Caterina Carrasco Tenorio is deeply rooted in the Franciscan charism, characterized by humility, evangelical poverty, and absolute trust in Divine Providence. She loved to repeat, like Saint Francis of Assisi: "My God and my all." Her charity was expressed through a maternal attention toward the most destitute, particularly orphaned and abandoned young girls, for whom she did not hesitate to beg in order to ensure their daily subsistence. She wrote that the superior of her congregation must have "true motherly bowels" for the sisters and for the orphaned children. In the final part of her life, tested by serious respiratory problems and having become completely blind in 1915, she endured her illness with deep peace and total abandonment to the divine will. She passed away on November 24, 1917, in Cadiz. Today, the legacy of the Venerable is perpetuated through the Sisters of the Flock of Mary. The congregation, aggregated to the Order of Friars Minor on July 9, 1926, and recognized as being of pontifical right in 1982, continues its charitable and educational work in Spain, but has also expanded internationally, notably to Peru (in the Peruvian Amazon) and Kenya, caring for children, the elderly, the sick, immigrants, and the homeless.