“San Juan is Catholic”: The Hijas de María in Puerto Rico’s Parishes and Streets, 1872–1918

Abstract

Abstract: The Hijas de María, a global Catholic laywomen’s organization, were active in Puerto Rico from the end of Spanish rule through North American rule. Their organizational structure and their pieties buttressed the Church’s few pastors and, after the North American invasion, its new hierarchy. In the space that the institutional Church could not fill, the Hijas’ devotions provided the laity with new, feminized paths for holiness. The devotional life of the Hijas de María developed within new global currents in the Church, including increasing Roman influence and a greater focus on children and their potential sanctity. This is also a story of how Puerto Rican Catholic women met modernity and its secular influences and claimed the island for their own and the interests of religion and the Church.