A Local Saint

Although our taxi driver didn’t speak much English, and our Portuguese is minimal and tinged with Spanish, Larry and I communicated quite well with our cabbie in Salvador.

I’m embarrassed to admit, however, that I never quite caught his name. When we first asked, he rattled off a lengthy moniker, something like, “Juan Jose Carlo da Silva.”

“Can we call you Juan?” Larry asked.

“No, I’m Juan Jose Carlo da Silva,” he replied. So we left it at that.

The first place JCDS took us was a shrine to a local saint, “St. Irma Dulce of the Poor.”

Not only was St Irma Dulce born in Salvador, but she is the first saint to be born in Brazil. She was beatified in 2011.

From what our cabbie told us, St Irma Dulce dedicated her life to caring for poor people.

While the body of St. Dulce is in a box tomb, an effigy of her lies inside a display case on top of it.

I barely had time to snap a few photos before JCDS whisked us of to the “room of miracles” which was full of ex votos and other testaments to miracles attested to the workings of St. Irma Dulce.

Afterwards, we took a quick peek into the gift shop. There is a cafe, too, but we weren’t ready for a coffee break yet.

As we continued our tour through Salvador, I saw numerous street murals depicting St. Irma Dulce along the way.Read more