Moisés Lira Serafín

Moisés Lira Serafín was a Mexican Roman Catholic priest of the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity of Mary Immaculate (Misioneras de la Caridad de María Inmaculada). He was born on 3 September 1893 in Tlalchichilpan, in the State of Mexico, in central Mexico. His life unfolded across the late Porfiriato, the Mexican Revolution, and the long aftermath of constitutional anticlericalism. From a Catholic upbringing he entered religious life in the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, a clerical congregation founded in Mexico in 1914 by the French priest Félix de Jesús Rougier, whose spirituality emphasized the Holy Spirit and a demanding priestly interior life.

Ordained to the priesthood in the 1920s, he worked as a formator, confessor, preacher, and spiritual director rather than as a public prelate. He never became a bishop. The 1920s and early 1930s were years of severe pressure on the Mexican Church, including enforcement of the anticlerical provisions of the 1917 Constitution and the Cristero conflict of 1926–1929, when public worship and clerical activity were often restricted or driven underground. Within that setting Lira Serafín was remembered as a discreet, charitable priest whose direction stressed humble service, Eucharistic piety, trust in providence, and a filial devotion to the Virgin Mary, especially under the title of the Immaculate Conception.

In the 1930s he founded the Missionaries of Charity of Mary Immaculate, a congregation of women religious combining works of charity with a strongly Marian and contemplative spirit. He remained a member of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit while serving as founder and spiritual father of the new community, which took root in Mexico. His influence was that of a director of souls and a founder of a religious family, not of high ecclesiastical office. Contemporary notices present him as modest in manner and insistent that charity in ordinary duties was the practical expression of the Gospel.

He died in Mexico City on 25 June 1950. A reputation for holiness persisted among those who had known him and among the sisters of the institute he had founded. A cause of beatification was later introduced; the Church recognized the heroic character of his virtues, declaring him Venerable, and accepted a miracle attributed to his intercession. He was beatified during the pontificate of Pope Francis. He has not been canonized. His liturgical commemoration is associated with 25 June, the day of his death. In the Mexican Church he is remembered as a twentieth-century priest-founder who lived religious life through persecution and reconstruction, and as the spiritual father of the Missionaries of Charity of Mary Immaculate.