Saint Paulina of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus

Amabile Lucia Visintainer was born on December 16, 1865, in Vigolo Vattaro, in the Trentino region, then part of Austria-Hungary. In 1875 her family emigrated to Brazil with other Trentino families and settled in Santa Catarina, in the area of today's Nova Trento. As a young woman she taught catechism, cleaned the chapel and visited the sick.

In 1890, with her friend Virginia Nicolodi, she began caring for a woman dying of cancer in a small house, the start of the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. As Mother Paulina she guided the sisters' work with orphans, the elderly and former slaves, but in 1909 she was removed as superior and lived for decades in hidden obedience. In her last years diabetes cost her a finger, then her right arm, and finally her sight. She died in São Paulo on July 9, 1942. Saint John Paul II beatified her in Florianópolis in 1991 and canonized her in Rome on May 19, 2002, the first saint for Brazil.

Thousands of pilgrims visit the Sanctuary of Saint Paulina in Nova Trento, Santa Catarina, especially around July 9, to pray at the places where she lived and served.

People living with diabetes and other chronic illnesses ask her help, and her sisters continue her work in schools, homes for the elderly and missions in Brazil and other countries.