User:Gotc 92/María Juana Guillén Ramírez

María Juana Guillén Ramírez ( Orihuela, December 27, 1575 – Orihuela, June 2, 1607) was a Spanish Augustinian nun recognized as venerable by the Catholic Church.

Biography
She was born on December 27, 1575 in Orihuela in the Kingdom of Valencia (now in Spain in the province of Alicante), baptized the following day and given the name Leonor Juana. From her youth she loved solitude and prayer, devoting long hours to prayer. At the age of ten, during her first communion, she took a vow of virginity. Despite this, her mother has the firm intention of marrying her and tries to persuade her daughter, who resists her. She cuts her hair, dresses very modestly, wears a hair shirt, spends many hours in church, and often fasts on bread and water. Faced with such determination, her mother ends up accepting that she enter the convent.

After hesitating between different communities, Juana chose the San Sebastián monastery of the Augustinian sisters of Orihuela. She entered there on May 15, 1597, she took the religious habit and renounced her Christian name for Maria Juana. She made her religious profession the following year.

Silence favors his attraction to meditation, because in addition to the hours he dedicates to manual work, reading, eating and sleeping, he spends the whole day in the choir, having a particular devotion to the Wounds of Christ and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. According to his biographer, he had frequent visions of Jesus, the Virgin, and Saint John. Her sisters are also convinced that she has the gift to read her hearts because she reveals her pangs of conscience to show them the solution.

He fell ill on August 6, 1606 and had to stay in bed until the following November 5. She died on June 2, 1607. The entire city of Orihuela wanted to give her a superb funeral because she was already considered a saint.

Veneration
In 1616 his body was deposited in the church of the monastery at the request of the Augustinian fathers and notables of the city of Orihuela. At the same time, the beatification process was opened. The bishop of Orihuela sent a canon to Rome to take a copy of the process, but the commissioner died on the way and all trace of the file was lost. In 1857, the superior of the Orihuela convent tried to revive her cause but Rome asked her for the documents of the diocesan process. She searched from top to bottom in the archives of the monastery, the bishopric and other convents without result.

In 1886, a sister asked for further investigation but the other nuns were convinced that the case was lost. She finally gets permission to do some research and finds the file in a dusty old bag. María Juana Guillén Ramírez was recognized as venerable on November 19, 1970 by Pope Paul VI.

Notes and references

 * 1) Illustrated lives of the saints: June, t. VI, Good Press
 * 2) Life of Sor Juana Guillén, Pamplona, ​​Diocesian Press, 1914
 * 3) Regnabit: Universal Magazine of the Sacred Heart: Friend and Apostle of the Heart of Jesus: Sister Jeanne Guillén, t. XIV, 1927, p. 39 to 51
 * 4) Pontifical Catholic Yearbook, 1901, p.520 and 521
 * 5) http://newsaints.faithweb.com