Irmã Dulce

In 2011, she was beatified with papal approval by Cardinal Geraldo Majella Agnelo, the penultimate step toward sainthood. In May 2019, Pope Francis, during an audience given to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints Prefect Giovanni Angelo Becciu, recognized the second miracle needed to officially canonize her as a saint. She was formally canonized on 13 October 2019, making her the first Brazilian female saint.

On 13 May 2019, Congregation of Saints Prefect Angelo Becciu approved a miracle needed to make her a saint. The decree recognizing the second miracle was then signed by Pope Francis, thus ensured that Pontes would be canonized. It was announced on 1 July 2019 that Pontes would be canonized with four others on 13 October 2019, making her the first Brazilian female saint.

On 9 June 2010, Pontes was finally buried at the Imaculada Conceição da Madre de Deus church, in Salvador, Bahia. It was discovered that her body was naturally incorrupt and even her clothes were still preserved 18 years after her death.

On 27 October 2010, the Archbishop of Salvador announced that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints had recognized a miracle attributed to her intersession, paving the way for her to be beatified. The pope officially approved on 10 December 2010. Pontes was beatified in a Mass on 22 May 2011, in Salvador, Bahia. The Mass was presided over by the Archbishop of Salvador and the Primate of Brazil, Cardinal Geraldo Majella Agnelo, who conducted the beatification by mandate of Pope Benedict XVI; the service was attended by about 70,000 people. President Dilma Rousseff and Governor Jaques Wagner also attended.

On 20 January 2009, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints unanimously recommended to Pope Benedict XVI that he proclaim Pontes's heroic virtue. Pope Benedict XVI approved and on 3 April 2009 granted her the title Venerable. Pontes's body was exhumed and examined on 9 July 2010 as part of the beatification process, and was found to be still incorrupt.

On 10 May 2007, in a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Brazil, the Governor of São Paulo and former Presidential candidate José Serra said he would send a letter to the Vatican in favor of Pontes's beatification.

In June 2001 the process continued in the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. In June 2003 the Congregation received the positio. At that same time, the Vatican formally recognized a miracle performed by the intercession of Pontes.

Pontes received the title Servant of God under Pope John Paul II with the beginning of the cause for her beatification in January 2000 under the Archbishop of Salvador da Bahia and Primate of Brazil, Geraldo Majella Agnelo. who examined her virtues, fame of sainthood and the tireless determination of a life dedicated to the needy.

At the time of her death in 1992, Pontes had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, she had received two personal audiences with Pope John Paul II, and she had, almost single-handedly, created one of the largest and most respected philanthropic organizations in Brazil. She was named the most admired woman in the history of Brazil by O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper and the most influential religious person in Brazil during the 20th century, by ISTOÉ magazine.

After being hospitalized for 16 months, Pontes died on 13 March 1992, at the age of 77, in Santo Antônio's Convent, and she was buried at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. On 26 May 2000, her body was transferred to the Chapel of Santo Antônio Convent.

During the last 30 years of her life, Pontes's lungs were highly impaired and she had only 30% breathing capacity. In 1990, her respiratory problems began to worsen and she was hospitalized. It was in her sick bed that she received the visit of Pope John Paul II (whom she had met, for the first time, in 1980).

Pontes's work impressed the President of Brazil, José Sarney, who in 1988 nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize, with support of Queen Silvia of Sweden.

There, in 1960, the Santo Antônio Hospital, consisting of 150 beds, was inaugurated. On 26 May 1959 the Charitable Works Foundation of Sister Dulce was born, a result of the determination of a religious sister who was tireless in her attendance to the sick and to the beggars who lived on Salvador's streets.

In 1949, she started caring for the poorest of the poor in her convent's chicken yard in Salvador, Bahia. Today, more than 3,000 people arrive every day at this same site (where the Santo Antônio Hospital now stands) to receive free medical treatment. She also established CESA, a school for the poor in Simões Filho, one of the most impoverished cities in the state of Bahia.

Determined to house sick people who came to her for help, in 1939 Pontes started to shelter them in abandoned houses in Salvador's 'Ilha dos Ratos' (rats' island) district. Then she would go in search of food, medicine and medical care. Later, when she and her patients were evicted from the neighborhood, she started housing them in an old fish market, but City Hall denied her the use of the space and told her to leave.

During the same year, she founded the "São Francisco's Worker's Union", the first Christian worker's movement in Bahia. A year later, she started welfare work in the poor communities of Alagados and Itapagipe. It was then that they started calling her the "Angel of Alagados". In 1937, she transformed the Worker's Union into the Worker's Center of Bahia.

Irmã Dulce, also known as Saint Dulce of the Poor (26 May 1914 – 13 March 1992) was a Brazilian Catholic Franciscan Sister who was the founder of the Obras Sociais Irmã Dulce (Charitable Works Foundation of Sister Dulce).