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Ana Josefa Pérez Florido was born on December 6, 1845 in Valle de Abdalajís, Spain, the last of five children of José Pérez and María Florido.
When she was three, Ana’s mother died. Fortunately, her paternal grandmother, Teresa Reina, stepped in to take charge of Ana’s education. As part of her religious education as a Catholic Christian, Ana developed a special devotion to St. Mary and St. Joseph of the Holy Family.
As a young woman, she had two marriage proposals from men of good families, but her father rejected both men because of political reasons. Ana, instead of being angry, was relieved, for she felt no call to the married life. Later, other men asked her to marry them, but she refused. Her father was not pleased at her refusal, and he was even more upset when she told him she planned to enter religious life. In fact, he blocked her entrance into the Sisters of the Poor.
Before he died in 1872, however, José Pérez gave his blessing to Ana to enter religious life. He died on January 11, 1875.
After her father’s death, Ana began caring for the elderly and abandoned persons in her town. The town leaders were so impressed with her work, that they asked her to open a house for the elderly. Naturally, she was delighted to do so, and on the feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 1875, Ana opened a house for the elderly that she called “The Porch of Bethlehem.”
Although Ana joined the Mercedarian Sisters in 1878, she decided that order was not for her. Instead, she founded her own order that received approval on Christmas Day, 1880. She made her first profession in 1891 and took the name “Petra of St. Joseph.” Sister Petra named her order, the Congregation of the Mothers of the Abandoned. Within the next few years, the order had established a hospital, kindergarten, and two houses.
Sister Petra died on August 16, 1906 in Barcelona, Spain. She was beatified on October 16, 1994. Blessed Ana Petra Pérez Florido’s feast day is August 16.
