Saint Dulce of the Poor (Irmã Dulce)

Maria Rita de Souza Brito Lopes Pontes was born on May 26, 1914, in Salvador, Bahia, and lost her mother when she was six. As a teenager she was already bringing the sick and poor into her family's home. She entered the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God and received the religious habit on August 13, 1933, taking the name Sister Dulce.

In Salvador she cared for the sick in abandoned houses, helped found a workers' association, and around 1950 received permission to shelter about seventy sick people in the chicken coop beside her convent. That coop became the Santo Antônio Hospital, and in 1959 she founded the Obras Sociais Irmã Dulce, which still serves thousands of poor people. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988 and was visited by Saint John Paul II in 1991. She died in Salvador on March 13, 1992, was beatified there in 2011, and Pope Francis canonized her on October 13, 2019.

Because March 13 falls in Lent, the Archdiocese of Salvador chose August 13, the day she received the habit, for her feast. Thousands of people gather at her sanctuary next to the hospital in Salvador, where her tomb is.

Bahians call her "o Anjo Bom da Bahia", the Good Angel of Bahia. Many families keep her photo, with her blue-and-white habit and big smile, in their homes and businesses.