Blessed Mary of the Espousals Irigoyen

María Catalina Irigoyen Echegaray was born at Pamplona in 1848, the last of eight children. The deeply Christian formation she received at home was completed at the Dominican college of her city, where she began to show an ardent desire for prayer and long adoration before the Eucharist. She wished from early youth to enter the Servants of Mary, but the early death of her parents, the illness of her brothers and the counsel of the foundress, Saint María Soledad Torres Acosta, delayed it until 31 December 1881, when she was admitted to the novitiate at Pamplona; by then she was already known among the poor and sick of the city as a generous helper. She professed at Madrid on 14 May 1883 and gave herself to nursing the sick in their own homes. During the epidemic of 1890 and the recurring outbreaks of cholera her care was admired, and without fear of contagion she tended the most desperate cases. Bone tuberculosis in 1913 ended her nursing and turned her service into continual intercession before the tabernacle.