Ursula Micaela Morata

Ursula Micaela Morata, (Cartagena, Spain, 21 October 1628 - Alicante, Spain, 9 January 1703), nun, mystic, founder of the convent of Capuchin Poor Clares nuns on Alicante, (Spain).
== Childhood ==
She was born in a socially rich family, being the minor of thirteen brothers. Her father, Marco Aurelio Morata and Iscaya, of Italian origin, were horseman of the State of Saboya. Her mother, Juana Garibaldo, was madrilenian, but also Italian ancestry. Both died with three days of difference in 1632, telling Úrsula with three years of age, being then to the care of their sister greater Sebastiana.
To the four years first mystical experience in the middle of an attack had his of smallpox that it put the death on the brink of madness. She relates it:
"…give me a paroxysm that I was, to my to understand, without senses twenty-four hours little more or less. What in that time it enjoyed my soul it is not possible to declare. I saw an immense clarity and divine light, that without offering me object nor image some at sight one enjoyed the powers and senses, that to my to seem it seemed was or in the glory…"
Autobiography, Cap I.
Her spiritual learning began in this form, acquiring the dominant ideas of the time as far as concerns oration, uninformed and mortifications, happening to him in these practices other mystical experiences.
With respect to her education, it is necessary to emphasize that by disposition of its sister it learned to read and to write, little current thing at this time, especially in the women.
== Youth ==
In 1647, she made the religious vows in the convent of Capuchin Poor Clares nuns on Murcia.
In 1648 plague it whipped Murcia, becoming Sister Ursula nurse of the stinked out ones. In 1651 and 1653 the underflow of Segura river. This forced the community of nuns to leave the monastery and to take refuge in Mont of the Hermitages. During this period, Sister Ursula Micaela lived the dark night, stage of spiritual crisis between mystics. In 1652 it received the mandate of its confesor to write her autobiography.
== Spiritual walking ==
In 1653, like at night dark conclusion, she experimented transverberation of the heart of similar way a Saint Teresa of Ávila:
"…An angel with a fire dart was shown to Me in spirit that me put it in the heart. He was so great the pain and fire that I felt, that penetrated all my bones to me and I fell in earth in a faint. But the angel stopped to me so that me he did not make bad. I was this thing of one hour enjoying and suffering what I do not know to say, but that it burnt to me and burned in flames from God…" Autobiography, Cap. VI
Sister Ursula Micaela lived diverse also present supernatural experiences in others mystics: visions, locutions, miracles, extrasensory perception, etc. Emphasizing specially by bilocation, that even took it nations to other; and by prophecy, which it turned it oráculo which the town in search of advice approached, among them Charles II of Spain and John of Austria the Younger, with those who she maintained correspondence.
In 1661 it was chosen advisor and secretary of the community.
== Foundation in Alicante (Spain) ==
right|250px|thumb|Azulejo of the foundation
In 1669 the managements began to found a convent of Capuchin Poor Clares in the city of Alicante (Spain). The difficulties were diverse, and the foundation was not even carried out 1672. The first residence was provisional, in a house that lacked the appropriate conditions for the communitarian life. For that reason one began the construction of convent and church, paid for with anonymous alms, John of Austria the Younger, and under the protection from Charles II of Spain. The works would not even finalize 1682. The title of the monastery was Triumphs of the Blessed Sacrament.
It exerted the position of vicar even 1699 in which it was chosen abbess, office that carried out until its death. In her Autobiography, she didn't gather hers last experiences, because she let write in 1684.
== Death and cause of beatification ==
After two years of laborious disease she died 9 January 1703, 75 years old. The fame of sanctity and the social prestige that had reached caused that hers corpse remained exposed in the church by 6 days. The body remained incorrupt, it warms up and flexible at all moment, reason why grave did not occur him. In 1742 bishop of Orihuela Juan Elias Gomez, when still intact finding it, it sent that the corpse remained in a coffer without being buried. Thus it has been conserved until the present time, still remaining incorruptible and flexible.
The sanctity fame whereupon died Sister Ursula Micaela, took to bishop of Orihuela-Alicante Jose de la Torre to start proceedings on hers life and virtues in 1703 with views to the beatification process. By it burns it of archives during War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713) and Spanish Civil War(1936-1939), these documents were lost. Nevertheless, they were saved Autobiography, 24 letters, and some other testimonies relative to Servant of God. The diocesan inquiry for beatification was opened by bishop of Orihuela-Alicante Rafael Palmero Ramos 11 October 2006 and closed 11 June 2009.
== Bibliography ==
* Memorias de una monja del Siglo XVII., by Vicente Benjamin Piquer Garcés, Alicante, 1999.
Category:1628 births
Category:1703 deaths
Category:Catholic spirituality
Category:Christian mystics
Category:Christian writers
Category:Franciscan nuns
Category:17th-century Spanish people
Category:17th-century women writers
Category:Spanish Roman Catholic nuns
Category:Spanish spiritual writers
Category:Venerated Catholics
Category:17th-century venerated Christians