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March 14, 2001
Martyred nun beatified by Holy Father in Rome
The Order of Friar Servants of Mary of the United States Province provided the following biography.
Spanish Servite Sister Maria Guadalupe Ricart Olmos, murdered Oct. 2, 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, was beatified in Rome by Pope John Paul II on March 11.
Born Feb. 23, 1881 at Alabal, Valencia, Sister Guadalupe entered the cloistered convent in Mislata in 1896. In the convent she held the offices of mistress of novices and superior, which she carried out with dedication and humility. In her cloistered life, there was nothing out of the ordinary but her simplicity and absolute fidelity to all the values proper to her contemplative vocation.
In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, Sister Guadalupe was forced to leave her convent when it was taken over by the military. She returned to the home of her parents, where she continued to offer her witness of faith for the conversion of sinners and that Catholic Spain might not lose the faith.
At midnight, Oct. 2, 1936, the military broke into her home and dragged her into an open field, where she was killed for being a vowed religious and celibate by choice.
Her body was found the next morning in a neighboring village. She was buried along with other religious sisters in a common grave. In 1939, the convent at Mislata was returned to the Servite nuns and a year later her remains were exhumed and laid to rest in the confines of the Servite community in Valencia.
