Donizetti Tavares de Lima
The Vatican record
- 9 October 2017 — Heroic virtue declared — title Venerable (decree list, 2017)
- 6 April 2019 — Miracle through their intercession approved (decree list, 2019)
Who they were
Donizetti Tavares de Lima was born at Cássia, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, on 3 January 1882; his music-loving father named him after the Italian composer. He studied law, then trained for the priesthood, and was ordained on 12 July 1908.
As parish priest of St Anthony's at Tambaú, where he spent most of his life, he bought land and houses for people who had nothing, built a home for the old and poor and a nursery for children, and spoke out against social injustice. He died at Tambaú on 16 June 1961 with a great reputation for holiness, and is buried in St Anthony's.
The miracles
A baby boy — Casa Branca, São Paulo, Brazil — 2006
A baby born in 2006 at the Santa Casa de Misericórdia hospital in Casa Branca had club feet on both sides. He was healed through Father Donizetti's intercession, and went on to live a normal life.
Why that counted as sanctity
On 9 October 2017 the Church declared that this life showed the Christian virtues to a heroic degree, and gave the title Venerable. The case of a baby boy was examined by the Church's doctors and theologians and approved as a miracle on 6 April 2019, opening the way to beatification.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints - biography of Blessed Donizetti Tavares de Lima, with the miracle
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — promulgated decrees (causesanti.va), summarised in our own words
- Not yet in Wikidata. Name as the Vatican spells it.
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.