Born on October 20, 1953 in Sitio Malhada da Areia, in the municipality of Açu, a very poor area of the State of Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil), in the second marriage of the farmer Joào Justo da Fé, a widower with three children, with the young Maria Lucia de Oliveira, Lindalva was the sixth among the thirteen brothers and sisters of the second marriage. She was baptized on January 7, 1954 in the Olho d’Agua chapel of the vast parish of Açu, by Fr. Julio Alves Bezerra, who was parish priest for 40 years.

From a modest family, but rich in faith and Christian practice, we can say that the young Lindalva had as her first spiritual teachers her own parents: her mother taught her the first rudiments of the faith and Christian prayers, and her father often read the Bible to her and her younger siblings, accompanying them to Mass when it was celebrated near their home.

To allow the children to go to school regularly, Joao moved to the city of Açu in 1961, where, after many sacrifices, the family managed to buy a house, where they still reside. From a very young age, Lindalva felt a special inclination for small children and dedicated much of her time to caring for them; from her mother she learned to help poor children and even spent some nights taking care of a dying child, the son of a neighbor.

Nearing the end of elementary school, Lindalva made her First Communion at the age of 12. Her adolescence passed between school, taking care of the grandchildren and children of her acquaintances, playing with her friends and, on weekends, harvesting farm produce to earn some money and help the family. Always willing to help the little ones, the elderly and the sick, Lindalva continued to dedicate herself to her studies until, in 1979, she graduated as “Administrative Assistant” at the Helvécio Dahe Institute in Natal, where she lived with her brother Djalma’s family. From 1978 to 1988 she worked as a saleswoman in some stores and later as a cashier at a gas station, and any money she earned was sent to her mother or saved some to buy herself a dress, usually jeans and T-shirts, as she considered them more modest than other clothing.

In her younger years, she remained committed in Natal helping her brother Djalma’s family in the education of their children; among her friends she did not lack people she fell in love with, but these were fleeting crushes, and her commitment to her work and her relationship with her family was constant, while her behavior was always exemplary. During her years in Natal she began to frequent the Sisters’ House and the Institute for the Elderly, dedicating herself generously to volunteering.

The exemplary death of her father in 1982 (caused by an abdominal cancer; he was lovingly cared for by Lindalva in the last months of his life), prompted her to reflect on her existence and to orient her life decisively to the poor. After the death of her father, while she was working, she enrolled in nursing, guitar and cultural courses, and from 1986 on she began to attend the Vocational Movement of the Daughters of Charity, regularly participating in formation meetings and maturing in her heart the desire to serve the poor.

The Sisters had long noted her almost natural inclination to help children and the marginalized, the joy that distinguished her when she was with the elderly; and she sometimes urged the Sisters themselves to recognize Christ in the elderly whom they assisted, so that they would love their work more. Sister Dejanira, superior of the Institute, soon took notice of Lindalva and invited her to vocation meetings.

By the end of 1987, having made up her mind, Lindalva applied for admission to the postulancy of the Daughters of Charity. She was 33 years old at the time and in her application she emphasized her decision to dedicate herself totally “to the service of the poor” and “to follow Jesus Christ with more love,” but above all her deepest feelings: “I want to have heavenly happiness, to overflow with joy and desire to help my neighbor, to be tireless in doing good.”

After her Confirmation on November 28, 1987, received from the Archbishop of Natal, Msgr. Vivaldo Monte, Lindalva also received, exactly one month later, the affirmative response of the Provincial Visitatrix of the Daughters of Charity, and on February 11, 1988, she began her postulancy at the Provincial House in Recife.

During her postulancy, Lindalva constantly uplifted her companions and Sisters with her availability to the poor and with her joy. As she wrote to one of her friends, she only wanted to “serve with humility in the love of Christ” and she gave proof of this by working in a slum with very poor children and even going so far as to transport bricks to build houses for the poor. This same active commitment also characterized her prayer life with the elderly, and in her letters we can read her thoughts: “No one in this world lives without love, without a friend… our life is an eternal making of a Friend, it is the constant search for this nourishment that makes us grow in the love of Christ, who loves us.” In her June 3, 1989 letter to the Provincial, she asks “humbly to enter the Novitiate, with the deepest ideal of serving Christ in the poor”.

On July 16, 1989, Lindalva and five other companions began their novitiate in Recife. From the letters she wrote to her mother and to her friend Amara, we can appreciate the feelings of happiness, joy and total apostolic dedication with which she was preparing to embark on the new path of formation. During these months she also took an interest in her family members who were distant from God and, in particular, she urged her brother Antonio, an alcoholic, to make a change in his life; she wrote to him: “Think about it and make yourself a gift. I pray a lot for you and I will continue to pray and if necessary I will also do penance so that you can become a real person, following Jesus, who fought to the death for the life of sinners, and giving his own life, not as God, but as man, for the forgiveness of sins. In him we must take refuge, only in him is life worth living.” The following year, her brother gave up drinking, and she received another joy when she learned that her friend Conceicao had decided to enter the Daughters of Charity. Lindalva wrote to her: “How beautiful it is to love God and his holy Mother. If I love you my heart is in God. Only I can see God through the people with whom I have contact, whoever they may be. Everything is transformed into joy, into love, into contact with nature, and to be free to love and to understand that only in Him is it worthwhile to think about tomorrow, when I think and see the creatures, the animals, nature, I am very sure of God’s love and mercy towards humanity, so ungrateful and conceited.”

Lindalva’s superiors were very pleased with her, emphasizing her total availability, rather natural and continuous, and “her great love for the poor”. At the end of her novitiate, on January 29, 1991, Sister Lindalva was sent to serve the 40 elderly people in a nursing ward of the Abrigo Dom Pedro II, a municipal hospital in Salvador de Bahia. Her simplicity in her treatment, and the cordiality and joy with which she cared for all the people, earned her the esteem of her companions, the hospital staff and the patients. Even during a couple of painful situations, due to some cysts for which she was operated on, her behavior always remained cheerful and jovial, never asking for anything for herself. She submitted herself to the most humble tasks in the service of the elderly of the community, especially the most suffering ones, offering them material and spiritual help, encouraging them to continually receive the Sacraments, singing and praying with them, taking them out for walks without hesitation, being totally “transparent” with her Superior, and friendly and affable with her Sisters. Lindava’s joy and availability continually shone through, along with her spirit of prayer and a dynamic optimism that is contagious to the people with whom she collaborated. During a spiritual retreat in January 1993, paraphrasing St. Vincent, she declared in her diary that she felt more fulfilled and happy in her work than the Pope in Rome.

On January 1993, the Abrigo hospital welcomed a 46 year old man, Augusto da Silva Peixoto, who, although not entitled because of his age, managed to be admitted as an elderly resident by a recommendation. Sister Lindalva treated him with the same courtesy with which she treated all the patients, but the man, with a difficult and unpleasant character, fell in love with the young Sister and so began a difficult period of trials for Sister Lindalva. Lindalva, understanding Augusto’s intentions, tried to let him know by all means to keep his distance and began to treat him with prudence, but Augusto did not hesitate to explicitly declare his lustful intentions and even bragged about them to some of his companions at the hospital.

Sister Lindalva began to fear this man and confided this to some of her friends and Sisters. The most comfortable, simple and immediate solution could have been to take her away from the hospital, but her affection for the elderly held her back and one day, during a recreation, she confided to a Sister: “I would rather have my blood spilled than leave.” Augusto’s insistent demands to Sister Lindalva to give her more special treatment, in terms of dinner schedules and the distribution of household goods and medicines, forced the Sister to approach the director of the Social Service of the Abrigo hospital with determination. On Wednesday, March 30, the official, Margarita Maria Siva de Azevedo, reminded Augusto to behave in a more respectful manner with the Sister and the residents, and the man promised to improve his attitude.

In the days immediately preceding Holy Week, Augusto reached a state of mind in which anger and hatred, frustrated sexual desire and humiliation, resentment and the spirit of revenge impelled him to hatch a criminal plan: on Holy Monday, April 5, he bought a fishmonger’s knife at a fair and especially from then until the night of April 8, as his roommates would testify, he showed signs of great impatience and agitation. He spent the night of Holy Thursday walking from the bedroom to the bathroom, and to his roommates who questioned him, he replied that he was suffering insomnia.

On Good Friday, April 9, at 4:30 a.m., Sister Lindalva participated in the Way of the Cross at Abrigo Parish, dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Boa Vista; as Dr. Iraci Bonfim Gomez, who was at her side, testified: “Sister Lindalva walked in prayer, singing and walking with firm serenity”. Afterwards, Sister returned to Abrigo and went, as usual, to the St. Francis Pavilion to serve breakfast to the elderly. On the back wall of the refectory room, on the men’s floor, is the table behind which she served meals to the male patients, and behind it a little door with an outside staircase leading to the garden.

It was Good Friday: at seven a.m. sharp, as every morning after preparing the bread, milk and coffee, the nun stood behind the table while the first elderly people were already seated. Augusto had also gotten up early and, sitting on a bench at the entrance to the pavilion, had waited for Sister Lindalva to pass by. He calculated the time it would take Sister Lindalva to reach her place of service, then reached the outside steps, opened the door and immediately behind the Sister who was about to pour the coffee into the cups, took out his knife, put his hand on the shoulder of Sister Lindalva, who turned towards him and he gave her a first violent slash in the neck, above the left collarbone: the blade, passing through the jugular vein, penetrated deep into the lung. Sister Lindalva collapsed to the ground and cried out several times “God protect me,” while the murderer, in a mad and uncontrollable rage, holding the nun’s body suspended by one arm, continued to pierce her innumerable times in different parts of her body. Blood gushed out copiously at once, while those present, after a first moment of bewilderment, tried to intervene, but Augusto, brandishing the knife, from behind the table, threatened death to anyone who approached and shouted “Ah, I should have done it sooner!”.

While the elders fled the ward, Augusto continued to slaughter the poor body with uncontainable hatred. The autopsy counted 44 injuries scattered all over the body, so much so that Dr. Freire, the doctor of the Abrigo, rushed into the ward and did not immediately recognize in those poor remains the Sister she knew so well, mistaking her for one of the employees. Augusto, as if he had suddenly calmed down, sat down on a bench, wiped the knife on his pants and threw it on a table, then exclaimed, “She never loved me!” and turning to the doctor said, “You can call the police, I am not running away; I did what had to be done.” Later he verified this and, when he confessed, before the ecclesiastical and civil courts, he declared that he had killed her precisely because she had rejected him.

Hatred and anger, frustrated male pride and a deep intimate obscenity drove Augustus to barbarously murder the young Sister. But she had already repeatedly offered her life to Christ in consecrated virginity defended with zeal until death, in the gift of herself to the poor and to her neighbor. As is clearly stated in the Positio prepared for the Cause of Beatification, her refusal to yield to sin “caused her death as a consequence of her choice of life, founded on faith lived.”

While the police took Augusto with them, the investigators went to the place of martyrdom and at 10:30 a.m. the body was transferred to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Great was the sadness and pain of the forensic doctor, Dr. Bonfim, when she recognized in those poor remains the little Sister who a few hours before had walked serenely by her side on the Way of the Cross through the narrow streets of the neighborhood.

Around half past seven in the evening, when the restored body was taken back to the chapel of Abrigo, it was an impressive spectacle: it was Good Friday and the procession of the dead Christ, which every year went through the streets of the neighborhood, priests and people at the same time, stopped at the Chapel of Abrigo. The coffin with the body of Sister Lindalva, passing through a crowd of people, was placed in the center of the Chapel, between the coffin of the dead Christ and the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, and there the images remained until after the funeral: groups of school children, priests and religious of all congregations, people of all classes and social status, evangelicals of all Christian denominations. On the morning of Holy Saturday, Archbishop Cardinal Lucas Moreira Neves, celebrating the funeral ceremony, highlighted the coincidence between the violent death of the martyr Sister Lindalva who had given her life to the service of the poor, and the passion and death of Christ.

On Holy Saturday, Sr. Lindalva was accompanied by an immense crowd to the place of her burial and, in the midst of a large crowd of priests and religious, a Sister sang at her tomb the sweet song that she had always sung to all her sick: “God is good.”

Today, in the place where she was killed there is a huge image that commemorates her, along with many flowers, which are also always present at her tomb, while countless reports of graces and spiritual favors continually point her to the Church of God, which one day, hopefully soon, will canonize this virgin and martyr of modern times. The blood of Sister Lindalva continues today to intercede for us and to cry out from the soil to her brothers and sisters, in the footsteps of Christ, St. Vincent, and St. Louise, is the invitation to the essential values of being Christian and of being consecrated: absolute and true love for Christ and his Gospel, the preferential option of the charism for the poorest of the earth, prayer as the intimate root of our work, and the spontaneous joy and gladness that must always accompany our witness in the world.

Vincenzo de Cicco cm