"My mother, my lady, my queen, teacher of meekness and humility, teach me to desire nothing more than to learn from you: most pure, most clean, most beautiful, most white, most beautiful, Holy Mary, my hope, my consolation, my happiness, my joy."

Angela was born in Seville, Spain on January 30, 1846. Her family was large, poor, hardworking, and pious. At home she learned to pray the rosary, the prayers of the month of May, and attended the dawn rosary with her father. From a young age she worked in a shoe shop, making shoes and serving the poor and marginalized. She felt called to the religious life but couldn’t find her place. In 1875, while she was in prayer, she saw Mount Calvary with a bare cross in front of Christ Crucified. She understood that she was to be crucified on that other cross. Guided by her confessor, Fr. Torres, she discovered that the Lord was calling her to found a new congregation, Institute of the Sisters of the Company of the Cross. The statutes of the Institute were approved in 1879. The Sisters of the Cross would live in great austerity while attending to the sick and needy. Though Sister Angela was relatively uneducated, she left us writings of great spiritual value. In her beatification, John Paul II said that: “The austere life of the Sisters of the Cross is fruit of their union with the redemptive mystery of Jesus Christ… Their example is a permanent sign of a charity which does not pass away.” Sister Angela of the Cross died in Seville on March 2, 1932. She was beatified November 5, 1982, and later canonized in 2003, by John Paul II.