Maria Josepha vom Herzen Jesu Sancho de Guerra

María Josefa Sancho de Guerra, known in religion as María Josefa of the Heart of Jesus, was born on 7 September 1842 in Vitoria in the Basque province of Álava, in northern Spain. She was the daughter of Bernabé Sancho, a hatmaker, and Petra de Guerra. Her father died when she was seven years old, and the family thereafter lived in modest circumstances. From childhood she showed a marked piety and a desire for religious life. After a period of discernment she entered the Institute of the Servants of Mary in Madrid in 1860. That congregation, founded by Saint María Soledad Torres Acosta, was dedicated to nursing the sick in their own homes. She received the name María Josefa of the Heart of Jesus and spent about a decade in the institute, gaining practical experience in the care of the ill and dying.

In the course of that work she became convinced that a distinct foundation was needed, one that would combine home nursing with service in hospitals and would attend the sick by night as well as by day, with special attention to the poor. With ecclesiastical permission she left the Servants of Mary and, together with a few companions, established a new community in Bilbao in 1871. This community became the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus of Charity (Siervas de Jesús de la Caridad). The sisters professed a life of prayer and humble service, seeing the suffering Christ in the sick. The new institute faced poverty, local suspicion, and the ordinary trials of a young foundation, but it obtained diocesan recognition and began to attract vocations in the Basque country and elsewhere in Spain.

As superior general for most of the remaining forty years of her life, María Josefa formed her sisters in a spirituality centered on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, devotion to the Eucharist, and confidence in Divine Providence. She insisted that charity toward the sick required both supernatural motivation and competent, orderly nursing. Under her government the congregation opened houses in various parts of Spain and undertook hospital as well as domiciliary care. She was known for personal austerity, patience in her own illnesses, and a practical concern for the material and spiritual needs of both the sisters and those they served. By the early twentieth century the Servants of Jesus of Charity had become an established nursing congregation.

She died in Bilbao on 20 March 1912. Devotion to her memory spread within the congregation and among those who had known her work. Pope John Paul II beatified her on 27 September 1992 and canonized her on 1 October 2000. Her liturgical feast is kept on 20 March. The congregation she founded continues to care for the sick in Spain and in other countries, and her remains are venerated in the chapel of its motherhouse in Bilbao.