Eladio Mozas Santamera

Eladio Mozas Santamera was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest of the nineteenth century, known principally as the founder of the Congregation of the Josephine Sisters of the Most Holy Trinity (Hermanas Josefinas de la Santísima Trinidad). He was born on 18 February 1837 in Cantalojas, a small municipality in the province of Guadalajara in central Spain, within the historic region of Castile and the then Diocese of Sigüenza. Widely available historical notices give little detail about his family beyond his rural Castilian origin. He was formed for the diocesan priesthood and ordained a priest of the Diocese of Sigüenza. He remained a secular, diocesan priest throughout his life and did not enter a male religious order.

In the pastoral setting of Restoration-era Spain he exercised ministry in that diocese at a period when the Spanish Church was engaged in education, care of the sick, and other charitable works amid social change. Congregational tradition associates him with a marked devotion to Saint Joseph and to the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. Those two foci of piety later became the distinctive spiritual marks of the institute he founded. His concern for Christian education and for assistance to people in need, especially in modest or rural settings, led him to gather women into a religious community dedicated to such apostolates under the patronage of Saint Joseph and the Holy Trinity.

The Congregation of the Josephine Sisters of the Most Holy Trinity originated in the 1880s in connection with Sigüenza and the surrounding district of Guadalajara. Mozas Santamera acted as founder and first spiritual guide of the sisters, who took up teaching, care of the sick, and other works of mercy. In its early years the community developed as a congregation of diocesan right. He himself did not become a religious in the canonical sense of membership in a male order; his role was that of a diocesan priest-founder. The sisters later expanded their presence in Spain and, in subsequent generations, beyond Spain.

He died on 18 March 1897 in Madrid, at the age of sixty. He has not been beatified or canonized, and the Catholic Church has not assigned him a liturgical feast day or official patronages. His historical significance rests on the foundation of the Josephine Sisters of the Most Holy Trinity, who continue to regard him as their founder. Details of his burial place are not firmly established in readily verifiable public historical accounts. The outline of his life remains that of a relatively little-known diocesan priest whose principal documented legacy is the religious congregation he established in late nineteenth-century Spain.