At Madrid in Spain, Blessed Rita of the Sorrowful Virgin of the Heart of Jesus Pujalte y Sánchez and Francisca of the Heart of Jesus Aldea y Araujo, virgins of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and martyrs, who, while the religious persecution during the civil war was raging, were seized by the enemies of the Church in the college chapel and shortly afterward were shot through with bullets in the street.
Died: 1936
Beatified: 10 May 1998 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 20 July
They lived heroically a single, perfect adherence to Christ and the same ardent charity toward their neighbor.
Pope John Paul II
The Blessed Rita Dolores Pujalte y Sánchez and Francisca del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Aldea Araujo were two sisters killed during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). During that period the Church paid an enormous tribute: some seven thousand religious men, religious women, and priests were assassinated.
Both belonged to the Sisters of Charity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, founded in 1877 in Spain by the Venerable Isabel de Larrañaga. After her, Rita Dolores had served as the Congregation’s second superior.
When the martyrdom took place, on 20 July 1936, the two were at the College of Santa Susanna in Madrid. Rita, by then eighty-three years old and blind, was being cared for by Francisca, a fifty-five-year-old nurse. After breaking into the institute for poor girls, the revolutionaries pretended — at the entreaty of their fellow sisters — to spare them. In reality they loaded them onto a truck, drove them to Canillejas, a suburb of the capital, and shot them. In 1940 their bodies were exhumed and found incorrupt.
They were beatified together on 10 May 1998.