Bl. Francinaina Cirer Carbonell

Francinaina Cirer Carbonell was born in 1781 at Sencelles on the island of Mallorca, Spain, the youngest of six children of a farming family. She never went to school and could not read or write. Even so, she taught the catechism to children and adults in her village.

She spent her youth in prayer, farm and household work, and caring for the sick. At seventeen she became a Franciscan tertiary, a lay member of the Franciscan family.

At the age of seventy-two she founded a community of Sisters of Charity in Sencelles to carry on works of charity. She took the name Sister Francisca Ana of Our Lady of Sorrows. She died at Sencelles in 1855. John Paul II beatified her in 1989.

Francinaina Cirer Carbonell was beatified in 1989.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.