Don José Gras y Granollers, founder of the Institute of the Daughters of Christ the King, was born in Agramunt (Lleida), on January 22, 1834 into a family of poor farmers.
We know little about his childhood, as he did not like to talk about himself; It seems that he was a formal and pious child, more a lover of study than of play. As soon as he was old enough, he was forced to help his father in the fields.
As a child I had a great desire: to be a priest. In 1846 he left Agramunt to enter the Seminary. He walked the 120 km that separated him from Barcelona.
In 1847 he began his ecclesiastical studies in this city. A tireless writer, he began to write collaborating with his articles in various newspapers and magazines when he was still a seminarian, also publishing some pamphlets and books.
On March 20, 1858, he was ordained a priest in Barcelona.
Until 1866, when he settled permanently in Granada, as Canon of the Abbey of Sacro Monte, he engaged in various apostolates: Professor of Dogmatic Theology, for two years, at the Seminary of Tarragona; coadjutor of the parishes of S. José and Stos. Justo and Pastor of Barcelona; tutor in Madrid and Écija (Seville) of the children of some noble families.
Already in Granada, he founded in 1866 the Association of a religious-literary nature, "Academia y Corte de Cristo", in order to publicize and worship the Sovereignty of Jesus Christ and, as a means to achieve the proposed end, the magazine El Bien which he published for more than fifty years, until his death in Granada, on July 7, 1918.
In 1876, with the desire to make Christ reign in the family and in society through teaching, he founded the religious Institute of Daughters of Christ the King. He died in Granada on July 7, 1918.
All the love for Christ that burned in his heart, all his desire to make him King of all hearts, made his life can be summarized with two words that were for him motto, synthesis of his life, manifestation of his thought and expression of their dreams: CHRIST QUEEN.
