María Guadalupe García Zavala

María Guadalupe García Zavala was born on 27 April 1878 in Zapopan, in the Mexican state of Jalisco, to Fortino García and Refugio Zavala de García. Raised in a devout Catholic family, she was known from youth for piety and practical charity. As a young woman she became engaged to Fortino Arreola Sandoval, but after a period of prayer and counsel she judged that she was called to consecrated service rather than marriage. With the support of her spiritual director, the priest Cipriano Iñiguez, she broke off the engagement in order to devote her life to the sick and the poor.

In 1901 she and Father Iñiguez co-founded in Guadalajara the Congregation of the Servants of Saint Margaret Mary and of the Poor. The community’s apostolate was the nursing of impoverished patients who could not obtain hospital care. The sisters established what became the Hospital of the Sacred Heart in Guadalajara. García Zavala, known as Mother Lupita, served for many years as superior general. She was remembered for humility: she begged alms to sustain the hospital, shared the most menial work of the house, and personally nursed the ill, including those with contagious disease.

During the religious persecution in Mexico associated with the Cristero conflict of the 1920s, she and her sisters continued their work under severe restrictions. The hospital served as a place of refuge in which priests could be hidden and the sacraments administered in secret. She urged the community to remain faithful and to receive all who came for care, regardless of political side. After the most intense years of persecution she continued to govern the congregation and to extend its works of charity among the sick poor.

She died in Guadalajara on 24 June 1963. Pope John Paul II beatified her on 25 April 2004; Pope Francis canonized her on 12 May 2013. The Catholic Church keeps her feast on 24 June. The congregation she co-founded continues its apostolate of care for the sick poor.