Blessed Benigna Cardoso da Silva (1928-1941) was beatified as a virgin martyr on October 24, the anniversary of her death, at an outdoor Mass in Crato, a city of 130,000 in the Brazilian state of Ceara (map).

The devout 13-year-old girl was slain with a machete as she resisted an attempted rape. Cardinal Leonardo Ulrich Steiner of Manaus (Brazil), who presided at the beatification Mass (video), sought her intercession as a “defender of the dignity of women, as an icon against the sexual abuse of girls and adolescents, as the girl of mercy in [her] care for the elderly, as one who has indicated the path of purity, liberty, and sanctity.”