“Make all one family in Christ.”
Born in 1848 and of eight children, Dolores Sopena of Spain suffered from poor eyesight after a bad eye operation at the age of 8. The appointment of her father to the office of judge brought her into the company of high society. But disillusioned by the empty vanity of the social functions she attended, Dolores turned her ear to the care of the sick, nursing a leper and two victims of typhoid fever as a teenager. She had kept this from her parents because she was afraid that they might forbid her from continuing her work but she found it as her calling.
In her late teens, early twenties, the family had moved to Madrid where Dolores chose a spiritual advisor and began teaching the Catholic doctrine to women in prison, the Princess Hospital and the Sunday Schools.
The family then moved to Puerto Rico when she was 23 and she began her contact with the Jesuits. She founded the Association of the Sodality of the Virgin Mary and the schools for the disadvantaged where she taught reading and writing as well as Catechism.
Because of her father’s work, she was continuously moved about but later returned to Madrid. Everywhere she went she found a spiritual advisor and sought devoting herself to catechizing, teaching and nursing the needy, eventually founding a lay catechetical apostolate that she named the “Work of the Doctrines.” Within 4 years she took 199 trips all over Spain to consolidate the organization which later changed to “Centers for Workers’ Instruction”. The main objective was to bring people together to give them an opportunity to learn and help each other.
Towards the end of the 19th century, it was inconceivable to find a woman, who would go out to work in the poor neighborhood. In 1914 she founded a community in Rome and in 1917 opened her first house in the Americas.
She died on January 10, 1918 and on April 23, 2002 John Paul II advanced her to beatification status.
For God’s Glory.
