María Ascensión Nicol y Goñi, O.P., (14 March 1868 – 24 February 1940) was a

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religious sister A religious sister (abbreviated ''Sr.'' or Sist.) in the Catholic Church is a woman who has taken public vows in a religious institute dedicated to apostolic works, as distinguished from a nun who lives a cloistered monastic life dedicated to pr ...

of the

Third Order of St. Dominic The Third Order of Saint Dominic ( la, Tertius Ordo Praedicatorum; abbreviated TOP), also referred to as the Lay Fraternities of Saint Dominic or Lay Dominicans since 1972, is a Roman Catholic third order affiliated with the Dominican Order. Lay ...

. She co-founded and was the first Prioress General of the Congregation of Dominican Missionary Sisters of the Rosary, which she helped to found in

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Life

Background

She was born Florentina Nicol y Goñi on 14 March 1868 in

Tafalla Tafalla is a town and municipality located in the province and autonomous community of Navarre, northern Spain. The Postal code is 31300. Tafalla is an industrial and agricultural town. It produces beef, mutton, pork and chicken. History Pr ...

Navarre Navarre (; es, Navarra ; eu, Nafarroa ), officially the Chartered Community of Navarre ( es, Comunidad Foral de Navarra, links=no ; eu, Nafarroako Foru Komunitatea, links=no ), is a foral autonomous community and province in northern Spain, ...

, the youngest of the four daughters of Juan Nicol y Zalduendo, a shopkeeper specializing in farming items, and of Águeda Goñi y Vidal, who died in 1872. As a child, she had many duties, including helping her family with the household chores. In 1878 a cousin of her father, who was a

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nun A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...

, offered to educate his middle two daughters at the boarding school of her monastery, the oldest having already married. Agreeing, he sent the girls to study. They later entered the monastic community themselves as Carmelite nuns. In December 1881 Nicol was enrolled by her father at the boarding school of the Beaterio (Convent) of Santa Rosa in

Huesca Huesca (; an, Uesca) is a city in north-eastern Spain, within the autonomous community of Aragon. It is also the capital of the Spanish province of the same name and of the comarca of Hoya de Huesca. In 2009 it had a population of 52,059, almo ...

, a religious community of cloistered Sisters of the

, which was considered a prestigious school in the region. It was there that she was able to experience for herself the

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, which raised questions in her mind about her future. Her father and stepmother withdrew her from the school in February 1883, considering that she had received sufficient education for a female. During that time, however, she had felt called to join the Dominican Sisters who had taught her, but she returned home to reflect on her choices. By the following October Nicol had received the permission of her father to enter the convent. He then took her back to Huesca, where they visited her two sisters who were Carmelite nuns, after which she entered the

novitiate The novitiate, also called the noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a Christian ''novice'' (or ''prospective'') monastic, apostolic, or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether ...

of the beaterio. In 1886 she professed

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, taking the

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of Mary Ascension of the Sacred Heart. She then became a teacher at that school and served in that capacity for the next 27 years. Under the

anti-clerical Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historical anti-clericalism has mainly been opposed to the influence of Roman Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, which seeks to ...

laws promulgated in the early 20th century, however, the Spanish government took over the school and expelled the Sisters in 1913. Deprived of their traditional ministry, the Sisters decided to act on a proposal they had long considered, namely,

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service, about which they had learned from the periodicals issued by various missionary congregations. They wrote to