Saint Paulina of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus

She was born Amabile Lucia Visintainer on December 16, 1865, at Vigolo Vattaro in the province of Trent, to parents the Holy See biography describes as practicing Catholics and very poor. ¹ In September 1875, when she was nine, the family emigrated with many others from Trent to the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, where they founded a settlement they named Vigolo, now part of Nova Trento. ¹⁶ John Paul II, beatifying her in Santa Catarina in 1991, presented her as the daughter of one of the immigrant families from the Tyrol who, he said, gave that state its particular character. ⁵

After her first Communion, at about twelve, she began to teach the catechism to children, visit the sick and clean the village chapel. ¹ Vatican News adds that her wish to serve was confirmed by a dream in which Our Lady asked her to begin a work, and in a second account speaks of prophetic dreams telling her to work for the salvation of Mary's daughters. ⁶⁷ Those dreams are reported by Vatican News; the Holy See biography does not mention them. ¹

On July 12, 1890, Amabile and her friend Virginia Rosa Nicolodi took in a woman suffering from cancer. ¹ Vatican News gives the woman's name as Ângela Lúcia Viviani and the place as Nova Trento. ⁶ The Holy See dates the beginning of the congregation from that day. ¹ John Paul II said in his canonization homily that the people came to call the house the "Little Hospital of St Virgilius", and that it was there that "being-for-others" became her guiding motive. ³ Vatican News describes it as a small wooden house. ⁷

The two dates that follow are not the same in every version of the Holy See's own biography. The English text says that "in December of the same year", 1890, she and her first two companions, Virginia and Teresa Anna Maule, professed their vows and she took the name Sister Pauline of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus. ¹ The Spanish text places the bishop of Curitiba's approval of the congregation on August 25, 1895, and the vows in December 1895. ² Both are given here.

John Paul II called the congregation "the first religious community in Southern Brazil". ³ Vatican News goes further and calls it the first women's congregation founded in Brazil. ⁷ The Holy See biography says vocations came despite "the poverty and the difficulties in which they lived". ¹

In 1903 she was elected superior general for life and left Nova Trento for the district of Ipiranga in São Paulo, to care for orphans, the children of former slaves, and old and abandoned former slaves. ¹ The National Catholic Register notes that slavery had ended in Brazil only in 1888. ⁸

In 1909 Archbishop Duarte Leopoldo e Silva of São Paulo removed her as superior general. ¹ The Holy See gives no reason; the Register says it followed conflict within the community. ¹⁸ She was sent to work with the sick at the Santa Casa and the elderly of the Hospice of Saint Vincent de Paul at Bragança Paulista, and was no longer allowed an active role in the congregation she had founded. ¹

The biography calls her response "the most shining page" of her life, and quotes an account of it: "She threw herself on her knees... she humbled herself... she answered that she was most ready to hand over the Congregation... she offered herself spontaneously to serve the Congregation as an underling". ¹ The archbishop decreed that "she should live and die as an underling". ¹ John Paul II, in 1991, called that period of her removal particularly heroic. ⁵

In 1918, with the archbishop's permission, the superior general, Mother Vicência Teodora, called her back to the mother house at Ipiranga, where she stayed until her death, living what the Holy See calls a hidden life of prayer and care for the sick sisters. ¹ She told her spiritual director, the Jesuit Father Luigi Maria Rossi, "The presence of God is so intimate to me that it seems impossible for me to lose it; and such presence gives my soul a joy which I can not describe". ¹

The Holy See granted the congregation its Decree of Praise on May 19, 1933, acknowledging her as "Venerable Mother Foundress". ¹ For the congregation's fiftieth anniversary, on July 12, 1940, she wrote a Spiritual Testament: "Be humble. Trust always and a great deal in divine Providence; never never must you let yourselves be discouraged, despite contrary winds. I say it again: trust in God and Mary Immaculate; be faithful and forge ahead!" ¹ John Paul II quoted another passage of it in 1991, in which she urged her sisters to charity, especially toward the sick of the Santas Casas and the old people in the hospices. ⁵

From 1938 she suffered from diabetes. ¹ After two operations, first her middle finger and then an arm were amputated: her right arm, according to the Holy See, and her left, according to the National Catholic Register. ¹⁸ She spent her last months completely blind, and died on July 9, 1942, with the words "God's will be done". ¹ Vatican News says her remains lie in the Chapel of the Holy Family and Saint Paulina at Ipiranga. ⁶

John Paul II beatified her at Florianópolis, the capital of Santa Catarina, on October 18, 1991, at an open-air Mass. ¹⁵⁷ He closed that homily by repeating, in words translated here from the Portuguese, that Brazil needs saints, many saints. ⁵ He canonized her in Rome on May 19, 2002, Pentecost Sunday, with four others, calling her "Pauline of the Suffering Heart of Jesus". ³ Speaking to the Brazilian pilgrims the next day, he compared her witness to "a tiny seed planted by the divine Sower" that had grown into a leafy tree throughout Brazil. ⁴

The Holy See sums up the charism she left her sisters as "the sensitivity to hear the cry of reality with its needs, and in the willingness to serve, in the Church, the most needy and those who live in situations of great injustice". ¹ The National Catholic Register attributes that sentence to John Paul II's beatification homily; on vatican.va it is the biography's own prose. ¹⁸ Vatican News reported in 2021 that the congregation worked in twelve countries. ⁶

The National Catholic Register calls her "the patron of diabetics", the illness that cost her an arm and her sight. ⁸ It is the only source consulted for this page that names a patronage. ¹³⁶⁸ The Holy See biography entrusts to her the people and the Church of Brazil and her congregation, without calling that a patronage. ¹

Saint Paulina's feast day is July 9, the anniversary of her death in 1942. ¹⁶⁸⁹ Vatican News says she is celebrated throughout Brazil and abroad, and that the two places drawing the most pilgrims are the Sanctuary of Saint Paulina at Nova Trento, where her work began, and the chapel at Ipiranga where she is buried. ⁶ In 2020 Vatican News reported the sanctuary's annual festival on Sunday, July 12, the anniversary of the founding, held that year without public Masses because of the pandemic. ¹⁷

Her congregation began with one sick woman, who in the Register's account had no family, taken in by two young women in a small wooden house. ¹⁷⁸ John Paul II said the community was born "in response to the plans of Providence". ³

At forty-three she lost the office she had held, and with it any say in the work she had begun. ¹ The sources do not say she was vindicated. She was brought back to the mother house nine years later, and lived there as one sister among the others for the rest of her life. ¹ What the biography records is that she accepted it, and told her spiritual director of a joy she could not describe. ¹

Her last years were spent losing a finger, an arm and her sight to diabetes. ¹⁸ Her last words, as the Holy See gives them, were "God's will be done". ¹

Her testament asks two things of her sisters: to be humble, and never to be discouraged, "despite contrary winds". ¹ She wrote it after more than thirty years of living out the first.