Confiscation

The laws previously passed by Benito Juárez were suddenly re-enforced late in 1877 when soldiers broke down the door to the Beaterio.  Alarmed neighbors ran to get the Oratorian who was their guardian who tried to convince the soldiers to leave, but they insisted house belonged to the government. There were sixteen beatas in residence at the time the soldiers forced them out, occupied the house and turned it into a military garrison.  A few days later the water supply to the house was mysteriously cut off and the soldiers had no choice but to leave though the house remained under government control.  Madre Luisa disguised herself as a homeless women with nowhere else to go and was allowed to move back in, but the government sent a rowdy band of hoodlums to live there too.  The ruffians were so abusive of Madre Luisa that she was forced to move to a neighbor's house where she could keep an eye on the property from a safe distance. This went on for months until the squatters eventually gave up and moved out.  Madre Luisa gathered together a few beatas who remained nearby to reoccupy the house.  As soon as the beatas returned the flow of water was mysteriously restored. Madre Luisa was reinstalled as superior of the community by the Bishop of Léon in 1878.  However, the community couldn't receive new postulants until they repaired the interior that had been completely destroyed.  The Oratorians took up a collection and sent them the funds to begin the restoration.  Ten years later they received two new postulants, Sor María Refugio del Corazón de María and Sor María Catalina del Sagrado Corazón and a revered elder Sor María Anastasia de la Concepción, went home to God in peace.  Madre Vicente del Sagrado Corazón was elected sub-prioress in 1890, and Sor Margarita López, Sor María Carmen del Sagrado Corazón and Sor Josefa de Jesús Nazareno entered as postulants the following year. They were a community of seven including Madre Luisa.