Hilda Alonso Llevada

Sister Hilda Alonso, a devout Cuban nun who founded the community of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in Miami, dedicated to caring for the poor, who before living in exile was director of La Inmaculada School in Havana. She lived 101 years.

With her distinguished spirit of humility, simplicity and charity and driven by the love of Christ and a life of deep contemplation and prayer, Sister Hilda was a bearer of joy and hope in her work serving the most marginalized members of society, not only in Miami and Cuba, but also in Puerto Rico and Haiti.

Hilda was born in San Juan y Martínez, in the tobacco fields of "La Perla del Rosario", Pinar del Río, in the far western part of Cuba. Daughter of a Christian family, her parents Ramón and Catalina, she had two siblings, Alicia and Riselo.

She studied at La Inmaculada School and in 1946 obtained a doctorate in Education from the University of Havana.

She entered the Company of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul on May 25, 1946, in Havana, making her first vows in 1951.

From that year until 1959, she served as director of La Inmaculada School, then Director and Superior of Belén School, in Santiago de Cuba, Oriente. She worked with great enthusiasm for Cuban children and youth.

She left Cuba in 1961 and became Principal of La Milagrosa School in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and Superior of the Study House, a residence for young university women.

She arrived in Miami in the summer of 1971 to work in the Gesù parish with newly arrived Cubans accompanied by a delegation of five Sisters, responding to an invitation from Archbishop Coleman Carroll that aimed to mitigate the pastoral difficulties faced by the Catholic Church in serving the Hispanic flock following the arrival, in the course of the previous decade, of thousands of practicing Cuban Catholics stripped of the most basic resources.

Archbishop Carroll assigned the Daughters of Charity to the Gesù Church, Miami's oldest Catholic parish, in downtown, where the Hispanic Catholic Center operated, whose services to refugees included medical and dental assistance, childcare, psychological counseling, English classes and high school courses in Spanish.

In 1972 she returned to Puerto Rico after being appointed Provincial of the Daughters of Charity in this territory. She also founded the mission of the Daughters of Charity in Haiti.

Since her return to Miami in 1981, Sister Hilda worked as Director of the religious education program at San Vicente de Paul Parish in Miami. For many years she has worked for the missions in Haiti and Cuba, sending large donations.

She has also been responsible for the spiritual direction of the Association of Former Students of the schools of the Daughters of Charity of Cuba. It was in the Ermita where they conquered the most hearts with their missionary Catholicism and kind smiles. In the sanctuary, they carry out assistance work, consoling and encouraging the afflicted; they assist in the administrative office; they perform manual labor; they participate in prayers and festive singing of the liturgy. They are also responsible for the announcements for mass, distribute the readings and watch over sacred music.

On October 8, 2008, after Cuba suffered two strong hurricanes in less than a week, Monsignor Juan de la Caridad García Rodríguez, then Archbishop of Camagüey and President of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba, writes these words to Sister Hilda on behalf of the Cuban bishops:

"What illusion you have given us! What charity you have shown us! What hope you have awakened! What peace to know that love lives and is capable of helping despite so many difficulties! What joy to know that the Daughters of Charity grow in love and cause mercy to grow in other people!"

The letter was read and delivered personally by Monsignor Juan de Dios Hernández Ruiz, auxiliary bishop of Havana.

Sister Hilda remained active, directing the collection and shipment of containers with food, medicine and other supplies to the missions in Haiti and Cuba, until she retired in 2014, at age 93, for health reasons.