Bl. Laura Evangelista Alvarado Cardozo

Laura Alvarado Cardozo was born in Choroní, Venezuela, in 1875. She wanted to become an enclosed nun, but her father refused, and she obeyed him. Her spiritual director, Father Justo Vicente López Aveledo, instead set her to work in a small hospital he had started.

With other women volunteers she founded a new congregation, today the Augustinian Recollect Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and took vows in 1902 as Mother María of St Joseph. The sisters ran orphanages and homes for the elderly and the poor. She died in Maracay in 1967. Beatified in 1995, she was the first Venezuelan woman to be declared Blessed.

Laura Evangelista Alvarado Cardozo was beatified in 1995.

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