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Biography

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Lindalva Justo de Oliveira was born on 20 October 1953 in the municipality of Açu, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte in northeastern Brazil. She was the daughter of João Justo da Paixão and Maria Lúcia de Oliveira and grew up in a large, devoutly Catholic family of modest rural means. Formed in the faith from childhood, she was remembered for piety and a practical willingness to help others. After her schooling she took paid work, including as a receptionist, in order to contribute to the support of her family. In adulthood she discerned a vocation to consecrated life and sought admission to the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, the congregation founded in the seventeenth century by Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac for direct service of the poor.

In the later 1980s she entered that congregation, completed her formation, and made religious vows. In 1991 she was assigned to the Abrigo Dom Pedro II in Salvador, Bahia, a residential shelter for elderly and destitute men. There she served in the everyday care of the residents, including work as a receptionist and aide. Those who knew her described her as cheerful, dedicated, and attentive to the elderly poor in her charge. She combined the Vincentian emphasis on humble service with a firm attachment to her religious consecration, including the vow of chastity.

On the morning of 9 April 1993, Good Friday, she was attacked at the shelter by Augusto da Silva Peixoto, a man who had frequented the institution and had developed an obsessive attachment to her. After she had refused his advances and sought to have him kept away, he stabbed her to death with a knife while she was carrying out her duties among the residents. She was thirty-nine years old. The attacker was arrested. Church authorities later judged that she had died as a martyr in defense of her chastity.

Devotion to her spread in Bahia and elsewhere in Brazil. A cause for beatification was introduced, and on 2 December 2007 she was beatified in Salvador during a public ceremony presided over by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, then prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, acting in the name of Pope Benedict XVI. She is venerated in the Catholic Church as Blessed Lindalva Justo de Oliveira. Her liturgical commemoration is associated with the date of her death, 9 April. She has not been canonized. She is remembered especially as a witness of charity toward the elderly poor and of fidelity to consecrated chastity.

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