María Albertina Prudencia Ramírez Martínez, SMCR, also known as Madre Albertina (28 April 1898 – 20 July 1979), was a Nicaraguan Catholic mystic and religious leader who founded the Missionary Servants of Christ the King, the Madre Albertina Sisters, and the Servants of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

Biography

María Albertina Prudencia was born on 28 April 1898, the penultimate of the children of Leonor Martínez Solórzano and Alberto Cristóbal Ramírez Briones. She was baptized on 9 May 1898 in the

Old Cathedral of Managua The Old Cathedral of Managua, known as the ''Catedral de Santiago'' (St. James' Cathedral) in Spanish, is a cathedral in Managua, Nicaragua. The Cathedral was designed by Belgians, Belgian architects. Its neoclassical design was said to have bee ...

and her

Confirmation In Christian denominations that practice infant baptism, confirmation is seen as the sealing of the covenant (religion), covenant created in baptism. Those being confirmed are known as confirmands. The ceremony typically involves laying on o ...

in 1904 at the Cathedral of León and, finally,

First Communion First Communion is a ceremony in some Christian traditions during which a person of the church first receives the Eucharist. It is most common in many parts of the Latin tradition of the Catholic Church, Lutheran Church and Anglican Communion (ot ...

in the same parish as her baptism on 4 December 1910. To this end, Prudencia founded the Nazareth House for disadvantaged girls in 1935 (closed in 1943) and the Association of Missionary Servants of Christ the King in 1943, which would receive Papal approval in 1946. In 1952, the Unión de Mujeres Americanas recognized Prudencia's work and dubbed her a "Prominent Woman of Nicaragua" for her social work. Mother Prudencia died on 20 July 1979 in

Granada Granada ( ; ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada (Spain), Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence ...

Nicaragua Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, comprising . With a population of 7,142,529 as of 2024, it is the third-most populous country in Central America aft ...

. Twenty years after her death, on 17 October 2001, the Diocese of Granada began the process of

canonization Canonization is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint, specifically, the official act of a Christianity, Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon ca ...

for Mother Prudencia and on 19 November it was approved with the ''

nihil obstat (Latin for 'nothing hinders' or 'nothing stands in the way') is a phrase traditionally used by Catholic Church authorities to formally declare that there is no objection to the publication of a book. It also has other uses. Publishing The ...

Biography

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