Madre Vitória da Encarnação

Vitória da Encarnação (6 March 1661 – 19 July 1715) was a Brazilian Catholic nun in the Church and Convent of Our Lady of the Exile , the first female convent in Salvador, Bahia.

The case for Vitória da Encarnação's beatification was opened in 2019. In 2021, the Archbishop of Bahia Dom Sérgio da Rocha praised the nun, saying "We have a great deal to learn from Madre Vitória da Encarnação. She is a symbol of all the Church seeks: prayer, contemplation, fraternal life, charity, poverty, detachment, and a life of simplicity. If not this way, there is not space for God in your heart."

Early life Madre Vitória da Encarnação was born in Salvador, Bahia, on 6 March 1661 and baptized in the old Cathedral of Salvador. She was the daughter of Infantry Captain Bartolomeu Nabo Correia and Luísa Bixarxe, and had one brother and three sisters.

A few years later, Vitória began to have frequent dreams about the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus calling her to a religious life. Despite the frequency of these dreams, Vitória initially still did not want to enter the convent, but after a particularly vivid nightmare of a ship in a terrible storm at sea where impious people faced damnation but the religious passengers were contentedly on the path to salvation, she embraced a religious life.

Historian William de Souza Martins argues that Monteiro da Vide's hagiography of Madre Vitória da Encarnação shows the influence of contemporary models of female piety and devotion from the period, including Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Rose of Lima.