Franciscana Cirer

Francinaina Cirer Carbonell (also known as Francisca Ana Cirer Carbonell or Franciscana Cirer) was born on 1 June 1781 in Sencelles, a rural municipality in the interior of Mallorca in the Balearic Islands of Spain. She spent her entire life on the island, through the Napoleonic period, the Bourbon restoration, and the social and ecclesiastical upheavals of the first half of the nineteenth century. From youth she was drawn to prayer and to practical service of the poor and the sick of her parish. Although she felt a vocation to consecrated life, she remained a laywoman for most of her years and carried out an informal apostolate of charity in and around Sencelles.

In the Vincentian spirit of service to the needy she gradually gathered companions who wished to live a common life of charity. Late in life, in 1851, she founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul of Mallorca (Hermanas de la Caridad de San Vicente de Paúl), an institute devoted to care of the sick, education, and other works of mercy. She became the first superior of the community. The foundation thus took place when she was already in her seventies, after decades of unofficial charitable work under limited resources and the political difficulties of mid-nineteenth-century Spain.

She never married and had no children; her life was that of a consecrated woman given to religious community and service. Cirer died in Sencelles on 27 February 1855. Local devotion to her continued after her death. The cause for her beatification proceeded in the twentieth century, and Pope John Paul II beatified her on 1 October 1989 in Saint Peter's Square. She has not been canonized. The Catholic Church commemorates her on 27 February. She is remembered especially on Mallorca as foundress of her congregation and as a model of perseverance in charity.