María Rafols Bruna

María Rafols Bruna was born in Barcelona on 5 November 1781 as the sixth of ten children to the middle-class Cristóbal Rafols Cunillera and Margarita Bruna Brugol.^[3] Her father found work as a miller.^[2]

In May 1873 she and her relations relocated to La Bleda where – on 27 May 1785 – she received the sacrament of Confirmation from the Carmelite Bishop of Barcelona Gabino Valladares. Bruna completed her education at a boarding school in Barcelona.^[1][3] In 1792 she moved once again to the town of Santa Margherita where her little brother Juan died in 1793 – five siblings of hers died sometime in their childhoods – while two uncles died sometime between 1793 and 1794. Her father died on 10 July 1794.^[3]

María Rafols later joined a group of twelve women placed under the direction of Juan Bonal Cortada who administered in a small Zaragoza hospital and arrived there in December 1804 to the hospital of Nuestra Señora de Gracia.^[2] The group dedicated itself to children who were abandoned as well as the disabled and those with mental conditions. She helped Cortada mold that small group into a religious order that she helped him to co-found on 28 December 1804. In 1806 she became the Mother Superior – a position that often put her into conflict with the hospital workers.^[1]

During the Napoleonic Wars she worked in the bombed ruins in order to save children and to tend to ill people. On 4 August 1808 the hospital the sisters were working in was bombed so the group had to take refuge elsewhere. The French withdrew on 14 August 1808 but later began another siege on 10 December 1808. Bruna even ventured into the French camp after the second bombing hit in order to plead with General Jean Lannes for his help in tending to the ill and the wounded.^[2] Bruna resigned as president of the hospital's board on 12 November 1811 and then made a trip to Orcajo in Daroca. She became superior once more on 10 August 1812 after a new constitution for the order came into effect though she was later forced to resign after internal difficulties. She was later appointed once again as superior and held that from 1826 until 1829.

María Rafols – alongside other women - made her vows into their order on 16 July 1825.

The outbreak of the Carlist War saw her arrested on 11 May 1834 on the charge of acting against Queen Isabel II of Spain and was imprisoned and exiled in Huesca. But after a period of imprisonment – where she met Dominican friars – she was later released on 11 May 1835.^[2][3] María Rafols was later allowed to return to Zaragoza in 1841 after being confined in exile in her hometown since her release and in 1845 asked to retire though continued to still pursue the order's work.

The religious order received papal approval from Pope Leo XIII on 14 January 1898 after providing the congregation with the decree of praise on 13 April 1889. The religious order's constitutions received initial approval in 1883 and then went on to receive the full papal approval of Pope Pius X on 11 March 1904.^[2]