Isabel Méndez Herrero

Isabel's religious life took place within the Congregation of the Servants of Saint Joseph (Siervas de San José), a religious institute founded in 1874 in Salamanca by Saint Bonifacia Rodríguez Castro and the Jesuit priest Francisco Xavier Butiñá. The charism of this religious family is deeply linked to the world of work, aiming to evangelize, educate, and socially promote women and young girls of the working class. Isabel nurtured an ardent desire to go to mission countries. However, in July 1947, barely two months after her profession, doctors diagnosed her with severe pulmonary tuberculosis. Faced with this dramatic announcement ("Your lungs are being destroyed"), she accepted this trial with heroic faith: "From now on, I will be a missionary through suffering and prayer. I am happy. My life for all." She was then transferred to the Saint Teresa House (Casa de Santa Teresa) in Salamanca. On December 5, 1948, she was admitted to the "Los Montalvos" anti-tuberculosis sanatorium, located in the province of Salamanca. Her condition being deemed incurable and extremely serious, she was brought back to the Casa de Santa Teresa on July 29, 1950. Despite her consuming illness, she was authorized to pronounce her perpetual vows on April 6, 1952. On December 8, 1952, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, she committed herself by a private vow to always do "what is most perfect." On December 23, 1952, she received the Viaticum and the Anointing of the Sick for the first time. She lived one more year of intense interior offering before passing away on December 28, 1953, at noon, while pronouncing her final words: "Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit."

After her premature death at the age of 29, the reputation of holiness of Isabel Méndez Herrero spread rapidly among the faithful of Salamanca. The process for her canonization officially began after obtaining the Nihil obstat from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on April 13, 1978. The diocesan cognitive process was opened in Salamanca on May 25, 1979, and closed on October 25, 1980. The validity of this diocesan inquiry was formally decreed by the Holy See on December 20, 1985. The Positio on her virtues and reputation of holiness was submitted to the Roman Congregation on October 13, 1992. The cause was temporarily set aside in order to focus efforts on that of the founder of the congregation, Saint Bonifacia Rodríguez Castro, who was canonized in 2011. On March 25, 2014, the Congress of Theological Consultors examined Isabel's cause and issued a unanimous positive vote. On June 30, 2015, the ordinary session of the cardinals and bishops of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints confirmed in turn the heroicity of her virtues.

On July 16, 2015, 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 Isabel Méndez Herrero. The decree was officially published on July 17, 2015, declaring the young religious Venerable. Her remains rest today in the chapel of the College of the Holy Family (Colegio Sagrada Familia) in Salamanca, installed opposite the tomb of the foundress, Saint Bonifacia Rodríguez Castro. Her liturgical feast is set for December 28, the day of her entry into eternal life. Her beatification now requires the official recognition of a miracle attributed to her intercession.

The spirituality of the Venerable Isabel de María Inmaculada is characterized by a total and joyful abandonment to the divine will, lived in the heart of an ordinary existence transfigured by suffering. She herself summarizes her spiritual attitude with this formula: "Disposed to what God wants, when He wants, and in the way He wants!" Although deprived of the possibility of physically going on mission, she lived her missionary vocation in a purely interior way: "I will be a missionary through sacrifice and prayer." Her sisters in the community testify that she hid her sufferings behind a constant smile, to the point that "no one left her without being contaminated by something of God." Her interior life went through moments of profound mystical union ("To pray? I think of nothing, I feel God very close") but also of great dryness and darkness ("The darkness is very dark... My prayer is now at the foot of the cross"). Faced with the intensity of her illness, she confided: "I would never have believed it possible to suffer so much, but I do not regret having given myself either. If I had a thousand lives, in each one of them I would do the same." The day before her death, she expressed her filial trust in the Virgin Mary: "Travel preparations? None. To sleep in the arms of my Mother in heaven." Her spiritual legacy is mainly preserved through her writings and correspondence, published under the title Cartas en la noche (Letters in the Night), which continue to inspire the faithful through their testimony of faith and hope in the midst of trial.