Beatified: 25 September, 1988
Optional Memory: 6 November
“Sanctify yourself and sanctify others.”
Blessed Josefa Naval Girbés was a Spanish Secular Carmelite. She has been recognized across Spain for her commitment to Church life and in the field of education. She became well known for her personal holiness and the conduct in which she led her life.
Blessed Josepha Naval Girbes was born at Algemesi in the Archdiocese of Valencia, Spain. When she was a young woman, she took a vow of chastity. A member of the Third Order Secular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Teresa of Jesus, she had great devotion for the Virgin Mary. She always wore her scapular and her rosary.
Her mother died on 19 June, 1833 at the age of 35, and Josefa was forced to leave school in order to look after her siblings. She was the eldest of five children raised in a devout family.
Blessed Josefa lived a perfectly simple life, opening her home as a school for embroidery. She used the quiet hours of labour to instruct her young female students about the Catholic faith. She was well known for instructing her girls that their primary mission in life should be to “sanctify yourself and sanctify others.”
She worked with cholera patients towards the end of her life and this led to her death in 1893 combined with her heart condition that hastened her death. She began to feel chronic pains in 1891 due to a heart condition and was in great pain as a result of it. She died in 1893 after a long illness related to that heart ailment. Her last request was granted: to be buried in the brown tunic and white mantle of the Carmelite habit.
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