José Maria de Yermo y Parres

José María de Yermo y Parres was born on 10 November 1851 at the Hacienda de Jalmolonga in the municipality of Malinalco, in the State of Mexico. His mother, María Josefa Parres, died only days after his birth, and he was raised by his father, the lawyer Manuel de Yermo y González, together with a paternal aunt. The family belonged to the landed gentry and possessed substantial means. As a boy he was sent to Mexico City for his early schooling and from childhood showed a marked piety and an interest in the condition of the poor.

After discerning a priestly vocation he entered the conciliar seminary of León in Guanajuato and was ordained to the priesthood on 24 August 1879. In the exercise of pastoral ministry he was confronted with the widespread destitution of late-nineteenth-century Mexico—the sick without care, abandoned elderly people, orphans and the urban poor. On 13 December 1885, in León, he founded the Congregation of the Servants of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the Poor, a community of women religious dedicated to nursing, sheltering the homeless and educating neglected children in a spirit of reparation to the Sacred Heart. Under his guidance the congregation opened hospitals, asylums, schools and houses of mercy in several Mexican cities.

Yermo y Parres lived in personal austerity, combining administrative labor with long hours of prayer and Eucharistic devotion. He insisted that the poor were to be treated as living images of Christ rather than as objects of mere pity. In his later years he made Puebla his principal residence, directing the motherhouse and the expanding network of works from there. He died in Puebla on 20 September 1904, at the age of fifty-two, exhausted by illness and by the labors of his apostolate.

His reputation for holiness endured among the sisters and the people he had served. Pope John Paul II beatified him on 6 May 1990 and canonized him on 21 May 2000 in Saint Peter’s Square, presenting him to the Church as a model of priestly charity and preferential love for the poor. His liturgical feast is observed on 20 September. The congregation he founded continues its charitable work in Mexico and in other countries.