Donizetti Tavares de Lima

Donizetti Tavares de Lima was born on 3 January 1882 in Cássia, in the interior of Minas Gerais, Brazil, the son of Eleutério Tavares de Lima and Francisca Cândida de Jesus. He grew up in a Catholic household in late-nineteenth-century rural Brazil and entered seminary formation as a young man. He studied at the seminary in Uberaba and was ordained a priest of the Latin Church on 12 July 1908. In the years after ordination he served as a diocesan priest in several parishes in the region, carrying out ordinary pastoral work among small-town and rural congregations rather than belonging to a religious order.

In 1926 he was appointed parish priest of Tambaú, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, and he remained in that charge until his death. There he became known for an austere and unpretentious manner of life, for long hours in the confessional, and for devotion to the Eucharist and to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Parishioners remembered him as approachable and as attentive to the poor. He lived in modest circumstances and did not seek ecclesiastical advancement, remaining a simple parish priest of what was then a relatively obscure town.

From the middle of the twentieth century, and especially during the 1950s, Padre Donizetti acquired a wide popular reputation as a miracle worker, above all for reported healings of the sick. Pilgrims began to arrive in Tambaú in very large numbers seeking his blessing. Contemporary accounts describe crowds gathering at the parish church of Saint Anthony, where he would appear at a window or from the tower to bless the people. Church and civil authorities at times tried to control the crowds and to examine the phenomena; he himself was described as unwilling to claim personal credit and as attributing any graces to God. Despite the publicity and the strain it placed on the parish, he continued his routine of sacramental ministry until the end of his life.

He died in Tambaú on 16 June 1961 and was buried in the parish church of Saint Anthony, which became a place of pilgrimage. A cause for beatification was later introduced. Pope Francis authorized a decree of heroic virtues in 2019, declaring him Venerable, and he was beatified on 23 November 2019 in Tambaú, with Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu presiding as papal delegate. His liturgical memorial is kept on 16 June. He has not been canonized.