Servant of the Poor (1914–1992)

Irmã Pontes was born in Salvador, Brazil, to a well-to-do family. As a child, the sight of homeless beggars in her neighborhood inspired her to devote her life to the poor. At eighteen she joined the Congregation of Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, a Franciscan community founded in Brazil in 1910. She took the religious name Dulce, after her mother, who had died when she was three.

Within a year of entering religious life she had formed the Workers Union of St. Francis, the first Christian worker’s movement in Brazil. Meanwhile she took to sheltering homeless sick people in abandoned houses, begging for food and medicine. As their numbers steadily increased, Dulce begged permission from her superior to house them in the chicken sheds of the convent. Eventually this gave rise to St. Anthony’s Hospital, a complex of medical, educational, and social services. She could never pass a person in need without seeing the face of Christ: “We may be the last door, and for this reason we cannot close it.” In 1959 Sr. Dulce’s various programs were consolidated as the Charitable Works Foundation of Sister Dulce (OSID).

Twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, Sr. Dulce became one of the most beloved figures in Brazil. She died on March 13, 1992, and was beatified in 2011.

“There is nothing better that you can do in this world than to totally give yourself to God in the person of the poor and our needy brother.”

—Blessed Dulce Pontes