[2] Ignacia was the eldest and sole surviving child of María Jerónima, a Filipina, and José Yuco, a Christian Chinese migrant from Xiamen, China.

[6][7] At that time, there were only two religious houses for women in the Philippines: the Beatero de Santo Domingo and Santa Clara Monastery, and they only permitted to admit those of pure Spanish ancestry.

In hopes of changing this racially structured ecclesiastical limitation, Ignacia began to live alone in a vacant house at the back of the Colegio Jesuita de Manila, the Jesuit headquarters.

[3] Popular folk tales describe a penitential form of spirituality and mortification of the flesh which sustained these women in hardship, especially during times of extreme poverty when they had to beg for rice and salt and scour Manila's streets for firewood.

It was later implemented with the approval of Pope Clement XIV, which was a blow to Ignacia's group as the Jesuit priests were expelled from the Philippines and deported to Spain and Italy.

On July 31, 1906, the American Archbishop of Manila Jeremiah James Harty assisted the religious sisters in the canonical erection of Mother Ignacia's congregation, which was previously postponed in the filing of 1732 due to an incorrect process of petitioning to Rome.

On January 12, 1948 (the 200th anniversary of the death of Mother Ignacia del Espíritu Santo), Pope Pius XII issued the Decree of Definitive Papal Approbation of the Constitutions.

In a papal decree dated July 6, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the findings of the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and declared that ...the Servant of God Ignacia, foundress of the Religious of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is found to possess to a heroic degree the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity toward God and neighbor, as well as the cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude.