Founder, Carmelites of Charity (1783–1854)
St. Joachima was born to an aristocratic family in Catalonia. At sixteen, she married a young lawyer from Barcelona whom she had met at her sister’s wedding. Each of them had privately considered religious life, and soon after their marriage they both confided fears that they had missed their true vocations. They consoled themselves with the promise that if they still felt the same way after raising a family, they would each enter religious life.
Joachima and her husband went on to have nine children. Their married life was not without sufferings, including the death of two children and the need to flee before the invasion of Napoleon. But overall it was a happy life, and Joachima felt blessed. When her husband died, Joachima, then thirty-three, adopted a life of penance and mourning. After seven years, however, she felt the time had come to keep her resolution. Though she wished to join a contemplative order, her confessor persuaded her instead to found a new order, the Carmelites of Charity, dedicated to nursing the sick.
Joachima pursued this plan, eventually establishing hospitals throughout Catalonia. Two of her daughters wished to join the congregation, but she dissuaded them: “What sacrifice will you be offering to your bridegroom [Jesus Christ], if you stay with your mother?”
She died of cholera on August 28, 1854. She was canonized in 1959, with a feast on May 19.
“Joachima, your spouse on earth has died. Now I have chosen
you to be my bride.” —The voice of Christ, according to St. Joachima de Vedruna
