OUR HISTORY
St. Peter Nolasco
Peter Nolasco, founder of the order of Mercy. He was born in France in approximately 1180 A.D. Peter was a wealthy and a merchant by profession. As a merchant he made frequent business trips and while travelling around, became aware of the plight of Christians who were captured and held as slaves in Granada in the South of Spain, as well as along the African Coast. He was able to use his sizeable inheritance to ransom captives. He was deeply religious man and very devoted to the Virgin Mary.
OUR LADY OF MERCY
Our Lady of Mercy, Patroness of the Mercedarian Order. On the night of the first to the second of August in the year 1218, the Blessed Mother appeared to Peter Nolasco. She asked him to found an order to redeem Christian captives from the Moors who dominated Spain for seven centuries, taking Christians captive to the African coast, unless they renounced their religion.
The Order of Mercy (also known as Mercedarian) was officially founded on August 10, 1218 and continues serving the Church, responding to on-going modern-day enslavements in our world today.
BLESSED MO. MARGARITA
Margarita Maria Lopez de Maturana, an evangelical, strong , open, enterprising and determined woman. At the root of her spirituality we find a deep experience of God who loves us tenderly, a love that asks to be shared and known by the whole world.
September 19, 1926, after a solemn Eucharist of thanksgiving, the community of Mercedarian nuns of the cloistered convent of Berriz, with great emotion, bade farewell to their first six missionaries. From the heart of the Vizcaya Mountains, they departed to Wuhu, China, a distant and strange land for them. They are motivated by the sole desire to share the Good News of Jesus with those who do not yet know him.