Maria de Lourdes Guarda

Despite her immobilization, Maria de Lourdes spent nearly fifty years bedridden at the Hospital Humberto Primo in São Paulo. She worked from her bed, doing knitting and embroidery. Her room became a place of spiritual comfort. In 1967, she entered the secular institute Caritas Christi, pronouncing her final vows there in 1975. She became actively involved in the Christian Fraternity of Disabled Persons (FCD). Elected national coordinator in Brazil from 1981 to 1992, she traveled throughout the country and Latin America on an adapted stretcher to found more than 250 groups of the Fraternity, restoring hope to disabled persons.

The life of Maria de Lourdes was a testimony of heroic faith in the face of extreme suffering, including kidney failure, diabetes, and bladder cancer. She passed away on May 5, 1996, in São Paulo at the age of 69 with a great reputation for holiness. Initially buried at the Saudade cemetery in Salto, her remains were exhumed and solemnly transferred on September 30, 2011, to beneath the Holy Family altar in the Our Lady of Monte Serrat mother church in Salto.

The cause for canonization was opened by the Diocese of Jundiaí. After the nihil obstat was obtained in 2007, the diocesan inquiry took place from 2008 to 2013, validated by the Vatican in 2019. The Positio was submitted to Rome in April 2021. On November 21, 2025, Pope Leo XIV authorized the promulgation of the decree recognizing her heroic virtues, officially conferring upon her the title of Venerable.

Maria de Lourdes' spirituality was based on the joyful offering of her sufferings in union with the Passion of Christ, nourished by prayer and Eucharistic devotion. Close to the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she lived in confident abandonment. She is famous for her maxim: 'Nenhuma deficiência é impedimento para a vida' (No disability is an obstacle to life). Through her smile and her dynamism, she remains a model of lay holiness and an inspiring figure for the pastoral care of people with disabilities.