Blessed Candelaria of Saint Joseph

Susana Paz Castillo Ramírez was born at Altagracia de Orituco in Venezuela in 1863. Her father died when she was seven and the family gradually lost everything; her schooling went no further than rudimentary reading, writing and arithmetic. At twenty-four, on her mother's death, she took charge of a household that included her siblings, cousins and some of her mother's godchildren. Venezuela in those years was marked by strife and civil war, and after the earthquake of 1900 Altagracia suffered the devastation of the Liberation Revolution; Susana nursed the wounded herself and prepared the dying. When two doctors founded Saint Anthony's Hospital in 1903 the parish priest, Father Sixto Sosa, asked her to help run it. Other women joined her, and a small community formed around the sick, with God is Love for its motto and daily begging for what it needed. On 31 December 1910 it was established as a diocesan institute, the Sisters of the Poor of Altagracia de Orituco.