María Ascensión Nicol y Goñi, O.P., (14 March 1868 – 24 February 1940) was a Spanish Roman Catholic religious sister of the Third Order of St. Dominic. She co-founded and was the first Prioress General of the Congregation of Dominican Missionary Sisters of the Rosary, which she helped to found in Peru. Life Background She was born Florentina Nicol y Goñi on 14 March 1868 in Tafalla, Navarre, the youngest of the four daughters of Juan Nicol y Zalduendo, a shopkeeper specializing in farming items, and of Águeda Goñi y Vidal, who died in 1872. As a child, she had many duties, including helping her family with the household chores. In 1878 a cousin of her father, who was a cloistered Carmelite nun, offered to educate his middle two daughters at the boarding school of her monastery, the oldest having already married. Agreeing, he sent the girls to study. They later entered the monastic community themselves as Carmelite nuns. In December 1881 Nicol was enrolled by her father at the boarding school of the Beaterio (Convent) of Santa Rosa in Huesca, a religious community of cloistered Sisters of the Third Order of St. Dominic, which was considered a prestigious school in the region. It was there that she was able to experience for herself the religious life, which raised questions in her mind about her future. Her father and stepmother withdrew her from the school in February 1883, considering that she had received sufficient education for a female. During that time, however, she had felt called to join the Dominican Sisters who had taught her, but she returned home to reflect on her choices. By the following October Nicol had received the permission of her father to enter the convent. He then took her back to Huesca, where they visited her two sisters who were Carmelite nuns, after which she entered the novitiate of the beaterio. In 1886 she professed religious vows, taking the religious name of Mary Ascension of the Sacred Heart. She then became a teacher at that school and served in that capacity for the next 27 years. Under the anti-clerical laws promulgated in the early 20th century, however, the Spanish government took over the school and expelled the Sisters in 1913. Deprived of their traditional ministry, the Sisters decided to act on a proposal they had long considered, namely, missionary service, about which they had learned