María del Monte Carmelo Sallés y Barangueras

María del Monte Carmelo Sallés y Barangueras was born on 9 April 1848 in Vic, in Catalonia, Spain, the second of ten children of José Sallés y Vall and Francisca Barangueras y de Planell. Raised in a devout Catholic family of modest means, she showed from childhood a strong religious sensibility and a particular devotion to the Virgin Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception. The political and social unrest of nineteenth-century Spain, including conflicts over the place of the Church in public life and education, formed the setting of her youth. Her parents at first hoped she would marry and arranged a match, which she refused, convinced that she was called to consecrated life rather than to marriage.

In 1869 she entered the Adoratrices in Barcelona, a congregation dedicated to eucharistic adoration and works of charity, but she remained only a short time, leaving because of health and a sense that it was not her lasting vocation. In 1871 she joined the Dominican Sisters of the Annunciation in Vic, received the habit the following year, and made religious profession. As a Dominican she worked as a teacher. She became convinced that the Church in Spain needed a new institute devoted to the integral Christian education of girls and young women, including the poor, grounded in the equal dignity and intellectual capacity of women and men and in a distinctly Marian, Conceptionist spirituality. That vision met resistance within her community.

With a small group of companions and with ecclesiastical permission, she left the Dominicans in 1892 and founded in Madrid the Congregation of the Conceptionist Missionary Sisters of Teaching (Hermanas Concepcionistas Misioneras de la Enseñanza). Known in religion as Carmen of Jesus, she intended the new community to offer girls of every social class a serious intellectual, moral, and religious formation, not a merely ornamental or purely domestic curriculum, so that they might take a responsible part in family, Church, and society. She faced poverty, misunderstanding, and hostile rumour as she opened the first houses and formed the first sisters. Despite those obstacles the congregation took root in Spain and later received diocesan and then Roman approval.

She spent her remaining years governing and forming the young institute. She died in Madrid on 25 July 1911. After her death the Conceptionist Missionaries continued to grow and eventually established works beyond Spain. The cause for her canonization was introduced in due course. Pope John Paul II beatified her on 15 March 1998, and Pope Benedict XVI canonized her on 21 October 2007. Her liturgical memorial is observed on 25 July. She is remembered as a foundress and as an advocate of the Christian education of women in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spain.