María Josefa Segovia Morón

María Josefa Segovia Morón was born in Spain on 10 October 1891 to Manuel Segovia Rubio and María de los Dolores Morón; her sister was Isabel Segovia Morón (she had eight children) following her marriage.

In 1913 she graduated from the La Escuela Superior del Magisterio in Madrid and returned to her hometown after this. It was there that she met Saint Pedro Poveda Castroverde who - upon learning about her - invited her to serve as the director of an institute that he wished to open; she was 22 and did not consider this to be an impediment despite what she perceived as potential inexperience.[2] She accepted and the two went on to establish the Teresian Institute.[1] She also began to pinpoint the areas the institute would focus on; Poveda said to her in 1922 in public: "You embody the spirit of the Teresian Institute".

Morón abandoned plans to live the conventional life to instead devote herself to the maintenance and the direction of the numerous academies of the institute that were opening across Spain. She presented this in Rome to Pope Pius XI in a private audience on 11 January 1924 and received the pontiff's canonical approval after having received initial ecclesiastical approval back in 1917.[1][2]

She served as the institute's first director.[1]

In 1936 she learned that her friend Poveda had been killed during the Spanish Civil War - which had started the month Poveda was killed - and she wrote of it to the institute not long after. She then had to grapple with directing the institute alone. She helped to prepare the canonization cause of Poveda and was one of the main witnesses called.

Morón died on 29 March 1957 following an operation. Following her death the Archbishop of Madrid Casimiro Morcillo González said that her holiness would soon be recognized - this prompted calls for a process of canonization.

The beatification process commenced under Pope Paul VI on 10 October 1966 after being accorded with the title of Servant of God and the commencement of an informative process that concluded its work on 16 July 1973. Her spiritual writings received the approval of 26 November 1976 as being orthodox and not in contradiction of the faith while on 27 January 1995 the Congregation for the Causes of Saints validated the informative process.

The C.C.S. assumed possession of the Positio and tasked theologians to evaluate it before the C.C.S. themselves voted on its contents. On 19 December 2005 she was proclaimed to be Venerable after Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged her life of heroic virtue.

The miracle needed for her to be beatified was investigated in Spain and was validated in Rome on 8 November 1999 while a medical board met and approved the miracle a decade later on 15 January 2009.

The current postulator that is assigned to the cause is Dr. Encarnación González Rodríguez.

• Hagiography Circle
• Saints SQPN
• Teresian Institute