Carmen Elena Rendiles Martínez was born in Caracas on August 11, 1903, into a large family, without her left arm. She grew up using a prosthesis and never let the missing arm set the limits of her life; the sisters who knew her later said it was easy to forget it was missing.
On February 25, 1927 she entered the Servants of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, a congregation of French origin, taking the religious name María del Monte Carmelo. She was made novice mistress at thirty-three, superior of her house in 1947 and provincial superior in 1951, and through the 1950s she led the Venezuelan sisters through a slow separation from the French mother house.
In 1965 the Holy See approved the Venezuelan branch as a congregation of its own, the Servants of Jesus (Siervas de Jesús) of Caracas, with Mother Carmen as its first superior general, an office she held until her death. The sisters teach, keep parish sacristies and altars, and adore the Blessed Sacrament — the Eucharist was the centre of everything she asked of them.
Her works were schools: a college at San Cristóbal in 1950, the Colegio Belén in Caracas in 1955 on land given to her four years earlier, a school at La Punta near Mérida the same year, and in 1959 her own family home in El Paraíso, Caracas, given over to the education of poor girls. Priests came to her for counsel, and she was known in Caracas as a spiritual guide to the clergy.
A car accident in 1974 left her in a wheelchair for her last three years. She died in Caracas on May 9, 1977, and her tomb is by the door of the chapel of Jesús Hostia at the Colegio Belén; the room where she lived has become an oratory where the sisters keep adoration.
Pope Francis approved a miracle through her intercession in December 2017, and she was beatified in the university stadium of Caracas on June 16, 2018 by Cardinal Angelo Amato, the third Venezuelan to be beatified. At the Angelus the next day the Pope praised 'her faith as a disciple' and entrusted the Venezuelan people to her prayers.
On March 28, 2025 Pope Francis authorised the decree of a second miracle, and Pope Leo XIV canonised her on October 19, 2025 — the first Venezuelan woman among the saints, at the same Mass as José Gregorio Hernández. Leo XIV named her in his homily, with Vincenza Maria Poloni, among the 'charismatic founders'.