Blessed Piedad de la Cruz Ortiz Real
Also known as
- Tomasa Ortiz Real
- Pietà della Croce Ortiz Real
Profile
The fifth of eight children born to José and Tomasa Ortiz, making her First Communion awakened a call to religious life in ten-year-old Tomasa. The family moved to Canales, Spain in 1866 when her mother died. Tomasa was educated at Loreto College, and she wanted to enter religious life, but her father insisted that he needed her at home. She tried to enter a Carmelite convent in Valencia, Spain, but contracted cholera and was forced to return home where he became a textile worker and helped care for the family.
Finally on her own, Tomasa moved to Barcelona, Spain. There she had a vision of the Sacred Heart, and of Jesus who showed her the wound in his side. She withdrew to live under the Carmelite rule in Puebla de Soto, and took the name Piedad of the Cross. There she began caring for sick and orphaned children in the local hospital. She founded the Congregation of Salesian Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on 8 September 1890 with a mission to care for the sick, the elderly, the orphaned and abandoned. The Congregation continues its good work today in Argentina and Bolivia.
Born
- 12 November 1842 in Bocairente, Valencia, Spain as Tomasa Ortiz Real
- 26 February 1916 in Alcantrarilla, Murcia, Spain of natural causes
- she died sitting in a chair with a crucifix on her lips
- 1 July 2000 by Pope John Paul II (decree of heroic virtues)
MLA Citation
- “Blessed Piedad de la Cruz Ortiz Real“. CatholicSaints.Info. 7 July 2023. Web. 20 April 2024. <>