Blessed María Carmen Lacaba Andía and 13 Companions

The best known of the fourteen is Mother María Carmen Lacaba Andía, superior of the monastery in Madrid. Baptised Isabel, she was born at Borja near Zaragoza on 3 November 1882, an able musician who heard the Lord's call early; the Conceptionists were the natural choice, since her mother worked at their convent, and at eighteen the enclosure opened to her. For many years mistress of novices, she was remembered as gentle and affable yet severe and unshakeable in faith, marked by her capacity to forgive and by her silence in prayer. When the situation in Spain collapsed, superiors advised the sisters to leave their monasteries for private flats; but there were elderly sisters and sick sisters, and many stayed, above all those in charge.

On 22 August 1936 the abbess Mother Inés de San José and Sister María del Carmen de la Purísima Concepción were taken from the monastery of El Pardo in Madrid, and both shed their blood in hatred of the faith. On 17 September the superior and another sister disappeared from the monastery of Escalona near Toledo. On 8 November ten more sisters of the Madrid monastery were shot, sustained to the end by Mother María Carmen.