Thousands of Catholic faithful in Brazil celebrate female saint

Salvador (Brazil) :Tens of thousands of Catholic faithful flocked to a football stadium in Brazil Sunday to celebrate the Vatican’s canonization into sainthood of Sister Dulce Lopes Pontes, dubbed the “mother of the poor.” Sister Dulce, as she is affectionately known in the world’s biggest mostly Catholic country, was one of five people elevated by the pope to the highest position within the church on October 13.
But for many devotees in hot and humid Salvador, where Sister Dulce was born in Brazil’s northeast in 1914, the nun was a saint long before the Vatican recognized her two “miracles”.
“Now, everyone sees her as a saint. But for all the work that she did, for us, she was always a saint,” Creusa Costa, 59, told AFP, as she decorated a statue of Sister Dulce with flowers at the entrance of her sanctuary in a poor neighborhood of the capital of Bahia state.
Most new saints must have two “miracles” to their names — usually scientifically inexplicable healings, attributed to prayers.
Sister Dulce, who died in 1992, is the first Brazilian-born female saint.